Whoa, Billy!

         I wonder if anyone has invented a holster for artists...
         I understand there are all kinds of bags and boxes and totes and collapsible easels - I have 'em! But I realize more and more lately, as I've been taking my sketchbook with me everywhere, a pen and sketchbook holster would be really convenient! This morning at a local coffee shop I saw a very interesting looking woman I thought would be perfect to sketch. Just a quick sketch would suffice, but I wasn't "set up" yet! I suppose sketching in a coffee shop is imposing enough. I forgot how awkward it can be when someone suddenly realizes they've become your subject. I try to be discreet and immediately dart my eyes in every which direction the moment the person I'm drawing looks up at me, as if to say "don't think you're special! I'm drawing that guy! And that guy! And that girl! I'm drawing everyone in this room simultaneously - everyone except you!" - and then I check the angle of their shoulder.
         So, perhaps for the purpose of sketching people, a holster is uncomfortable. Hold it right there, lady! Whoosh! Zip! Snap! Gotcha...
        But I don't think things like telephone poles and birds and parked cars mind being drawn, and I don't necessarily want to set up a whole operation on the sidewalk if a pigeon on a trash can looks particularly appealing to render! I can stand and draw, that's not the problem. It's the fumbling of pens and pencil and eraser. I'm sorry, I'm just not really a one pencil kind of girl. Even if I was, I have developed a sincere distrust for the nub of eraser on the other end of the pencil. ANY pencil. Only the kneaded kind will do. But I like value! It helps with my process and it always leaves me feeling more satisfied with my sketch - like it holds volume. I love line, but light is often, to me anyway, the most interesting thing about the thing! So I need my assortment of gray value toned brush markers! And if I want to paint?! Fuggedaboutit.
         I know it may not seem practical to have a sketchbook at my hip and ammo loops equipped with brush pens - nor very attractive, I'm sure. The fanny pack has never been a great indicator of style. But it's an unattractive accessory I could really make good use of. Besides, I don't see how it could ever get old to have my fingers hovering and twitching over my pens, ready to pull them from my holster at any moment with lightning speed, and shouting "DRAW!"

         While I've been sketching all sorts of things lately (without a holster!), today I will simply share with you a few sketches for the short I am in the very beginning stages of developing (see earlier posts).
         Included is a page of very rough conceptual ideas for the house on Main Street, positioned between the steam laundry and the furniture store, just as grandpa described, with the Napa Grocery on the corner. I've also included a page of rough character sketches of my grandpa's brother, Bill (Billy). I, along with everybody, absolutely LOVED Uncle Bill. But I obviously did not know him as a kid. Grandpa described him as rail thin with an appetite unlike anything he'd ever seen. Among the many defining traits that are Billy, this was my inspiration to get me started.
Enjoy!

The Great History Detective

         I have become slightly obsessed with the research phase of my character development. I'm not sure whether this is good or bad in the context of progress, but it has proven to be good in the "holy crap!" and "WHOA!" and "COooool!!" kind of way.
My grandfather always told stories about growing up in Napa in the 30s & 40s, about all of the characters that existed in he and his brothers' world. Built by my grandpa's words, the Napa in my mind existed outside of the town 100 miles away...it was a glorious, mythical combination of place and time in my imagination.
         It never really occurred to me to find actual photographs of my grandpa's Napa. Why mess with the Napa in my head? But as I began to sketch out how the Napa of my grandpa's childhood felt - the stories and the characters - I wanted for more reference. Obviously to get a feel for the aesthetic and for accuracy....I certainly can't draw a 1939 Oldsmobile from my head!
What began as a Google Image search has turned into full on dork-out historical detective work. I'm talking genealogical dives...into the great depths of time. I've been fitting pieces together here and there and today I found one of those odd shaped little jigsaw pieces that you really need in order to connect the two parts you've been building separately - yeah, that piece! I found that!
         After following random trails like a Basset Hound, I came across a Google street view image of the section of Main Street where my grandpa lived. On it was an abandoned furniture store. Wait..a...minute...the faded paint and shape of the building...yep. It's in the background of a photo of my grandpa and his brothers. The photo must have been taken some time around 1940 and the three boys, dressed as makeshift caballeros, are standing in front of the furniture store, with vibrant paint and clean striped awning. It was ALIVE! Do you know what this proves?!  All my detective work, piecing history together to prove that....indeed. There was a furniture store in Napa. AH HA!
         Well, at the very least, I can happily report that the Napa of my imagination and the Napa that exists in old photographs I've found online are actually quite similar. All of the photos are in black and white, though. Luckily, the Napa in my head is in full Technicolor (with an Instagram vintage filter, of course). And everything I come across is informed by the feeling of my grandfather's stories - adding life to every static image of history I find. So that's lovely.
         While it won't be winning any awards for architectural 10-minute sketch of the year...here is a little feeling sketch of the boys walking home in the golden afternoon of late summer after playing some back alley baseball. Sigh.

And a teeny tonal sketch of the Napa Grocery in my imagination Napa. My grandpa & his brothers used to don homemade capes and masks and marauder along the rooftops of the buildings on their streets.