Slices of life

The following is reprinted from Cedar Street Artworks, posted February 7, 2014

  Friend John left the table to refill his coffee mug.  I used the interval to sketch a young man in a nearby booth.  He had an I-Pad bud in at least one ear.  He was holding his radio telephone to the other.  He had the far-focused look of the typical cell-phoner, so I knew he wouldn't notice that I was drawing him.  John and I had been discussing the value that "drop-in" artwork adds to text.

  The phoner closed his conversation.  John returned to the table.  We resumed our talk.

  We recalled the old New Yorker magazine.  Before color-printing had usurped the elegant and expressive lines of its contributors' contour sketches, its editors brought life to gray pages of agate typefaces by adding column-filler drop-ins of tiny sketches, doodles, if you will.  They seemed to be mostly of street scenes -- a trash can, a fire hydrant, the wheels of a vendor's cart.  Another might be a rapid drawing of a dog walker, with the dog's tail extended into a curlicue of stars.

  When I published my Tacoma's Express magazine some 20 years ago, I reminded John, I filled out my columns with similar sketches.  That led us into a discussion of my drawing technique.

I start with the eyes, I explained.   The pupil, the lids, the eyebrow.  I find these easy to lay down in relation to each other.  Simple strokes.  Simple lines.  When you have an eye, you have the soul.  Then the second eye, if visible.  The curve of the nose where it leaves the plane of the forehead.  A nostril.  The septum, that groove that drops between the nostrils to the mouth.  The line of the cheek where it departs from the nose, and drops down to define the widest edge of the mouth.  The chin. 

  Once I have a few lines on the paper, I  use triangulation to place the others, in turn.  I find it easiest to plot three points in a problem.  I hold up a pencil to see how far to one side of a vertical line the edge of the jaw might be.  I hold it horizontally to see how far above or below the tip of the nose the ear should be placed.

  My working rule of life-sketching, I told John, is to draw what I see, not what I know.   If the model moves, or as my cell-phoner did -- set down his phone, flip closed the lid of his laptop computer, gather up these and his jacket and walk out -- I stop drawing.  And sometimes that makes for a satisfying sketch.

  But John, I've seen your work.  You knew all this all along.

Waiting for a no-show

Arriving early at Steamer's for a lunch date gave me my choice of table.  I chose a chair just east of the patio door; it gives an unfettered view of the trains as they burst from the Point

The Sauk River near Rockport

Defiance tunnel, and of The Narrows.  

It was only on a trip to the central California coast this month that I began sketching again.  Then last Sunday, while waiting for friends to leave a nearby natural-history lecture,  I drew on a postcard a Sauk River scene near Rockport, .  I added watercolor.   With time still on my hands, I did a sketch on canvas-board with acrylics, the first I'd touched that medium in at least two years.

The Narrows, looking north from Steamer's

Today I had only a Pentel Rollerball pen and my pocket notebook.  But they were enough to capture a view of The Narrows.   My friend didn't show, so I finished the sketch, ordered lunch and counted 95 freight cars rolling south and a cup of coffee later, 85 hopper cars in a northbound coal train.

I take my entertainment where I find it.

Locker-room humor

John Lane:

The pessimist believes the cup is half empty.

The optimist believes the cup is half full.

The realist figures the locker-room attendant delivered the wrong gear.

The Riviera of the Sound

A friend observed over coffee the other day that Ruston Way, with it's tourist attractions, recreation sites, upscale restaurants and the downtown-to-the zoo paved trail, is the Riviera of Tacoma.  Looking at the rest of Tacoma, he might have a point.  But it's not saying so much.

Ruston Way was named, probably, for its northern terminus, which used to be the town of Ruston.  Now the terminus is Point Defiance. Some might suggest it's time to rename the thoroughfare "Point Defiance Way."

The town of Ruston was named for Old Man Rust, who owned the smelter (didn't he?).  Rust is dead, and so is the smelter.  Anybody who knew Rust is dead, too.  So who'll complain if we rename Ruston Way?  Or for that matter, the town of Ruston?  Yeah, yeah, there's probably a couple of geezers who actually worked at the smelter, who aren't so arsenic-addled that they might bitch.  So how much taxes do they pay in Tacoma?  How many votes do they cast for Tacoma's City Council? 

If we don't call it Ruston Way, I don't know what we would call it.  Maybe one of those fancy-schmancy real-estate developer names, like Vista-view.  Hell, you idiots, vista already means view!  You just named your street Vista-Vista!

There's already a Waterview Road.  It's on the uphill side of the railroad tracks from Ruson Way, with great views of the Sound.  And the Sound of the railroad tracks.   Nice trade-off, real-estate-wise!

Legend has it there is a house off Waterview Road, or Street, or Drive, whichever, that was built entirely of contraband logs that had broken away from log rafts and piled up along Tacoma's shore.  (You haul a tractor down there early on a Saturday morning, haul the log up the street and under the tracks, then up Waterview.  Once home, you whip-saw the Weyerhaueser brand off the end for firewood, and notch the log for your dining-room wall.)

The house has a great, covered patio whose columns are old, concrete lamp posts discarded by the City of Tacoma and dumped along the shore, so the truck drivers could save themselves a run to the dump and have more time for an afternoon break at the Harbor Lights. 

At the other end of the patio, stone blocks hold back the hillside.  Clear water dribbles over them,  from natural springs that flow beneath the streets of the North End..  The sculpted stones came from old, burned-out buildings along Pacific Avenue and Broadway.

The springs fill an adjacent pond created with giant cedar logs, also hauled from the shore.  Lamp posts hold up a small, timbered bridge over the pond.

Last time I heard, a doctor lived there.  He was getting a bit addled in his retirement, but don't we all?

That's what I've been told.  As a former newspaperman, of course, I believe everything I've been told.  So should you.

So should the historic-society wonks.  If any place in Tacoma deserves to be on the Register of Historic Places, that one does.  It's got a rock or a slab of sidewalk or a lamp post from damn near every day of Tacoma's history.  At least until somebody made the city quit using Ruston Way for a dump.

And while they're at it, how about taking a look at that name, Commencement Bay?  That's a real geographical catch-phrase.  Chamber of Commerce, thanks a lot!