Our Man in Abiko's Blog, page 6

Monk-ey business

Saw this chap at Tennodai Station vying with drinks vending machines for passers-by spare change.

Master copy

There is a bit of method in Our Man’s madness. See, all this faffing about with art and stuff is not just to expand his consciousness or keep the Mitsubishi Corporation pencil division profitable, but to provide Our Man Enterprises with something tangible one day: self-made covers for self-published books that don’t immediately (or at least on second viewing) repulse readers.

So, to that end he thought he’d experiment by copying a master, none other than Geoff Grandfield who created some brilliant artwork for Walter Mosley crime novels back in the 90s for Serpent’s Tail books (pictured below) that are on Our Man’s shelves. You might know him better for his Graham Greene covers for Penguin USA (check them out on his website, they are something else).

A few immediate observations: coloured pencils on sketchbook paper, as lovely as they are, show Our Man’s limitations. Also, even a slight difference in proportions can change a person’s face quite dramatically from a mean brother to a Desperate Dan. This drawing business ain’t as easy as it looks.

Back to the drawing board for Our Man. He’s not sure that he has the wherewithal to master anything more complicated than a 4B Mitsubishi, but he’s inspired by the approach Mr Grandfield has taken and with a slight change in scene and style (less downtown LA, more shitamachi Abiko) Our Man might figure out a suitable style before one of us dies.

View of the neighbours

“Another one?”
“Yes, get a move on.”
“One? What am I supposed to do with one?”
“Well, you could take it inside and wash it. You don’t get it?”
“Oh, I get it all right. You’re the one who doesn’t get it. Why do you make me go into the kitchen one at a time?”
“They stay fresher that way.”
“That makes sense only to an idiot. Normal people don’t think like that. What kind of a man thinks like that? Put them all together.”
“That’s not the way I do it.”
“You are so annoying. Do it your-bloody-self then.”

Man and woman as overheard from Our Man’s breakfast table one Sunday morning.

Rose Hotel, Yokohama

How best to draw Chinatown, Yokohama? Probably by looking out the hotel window, for a start. But Our Man woke up this morning, contented after last night’s fill of niku-man and Tsingtao beer and was taken with the way the early morning light fell between the gap between the curtains into the corner of the room. So he drew that instead of dragons and red and gold Chinesey things.

Shinzo Abe and the Redoubling of Efforts (TM)

Cut n paste isn't just for journos anymore, now pols can do it with the Shinzo Abe Speech generator. Here's one I made just now. The algorithm's pretty easy:

I will redouble my efforts.
I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. 
I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. 
I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. 
I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. 
I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. I will redouble my efforts. 

What? It's all here.

Sleep for your supper

Not particularly happy with this one. You can't really tell from the way I've drawn this poor chap (whose only crime was of sitting opposite me on the Joban Line) that he was actually asleep.

Once again, those pesky hands are ill-defined. And the proportions of shoulders to legs were off.

Oh, how you must suffers for Our Man's art.

Kita-Senju Underground

Discovering that a) people don't tend to stand still long enough for a proper sketch, b) hands and faces are hard to do c) sketching is less pervy than photographing. But still feels a little creepy to me to do in public. Our Man will persevere.

Local colour at the Tokyo Metropolitan

Our Man read in the inspiring Playing with Sketches by Whitney Sherman that people do actually go to art museums and sketch other people's stuff.

So that's exactly what Our Man and Our Youngest did today at an Egypt exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. The sphinx was the first of the day and was a bit rushed (the sketch of it, not the, er, sphinx) but we enjoyed doing the dog vase (that our Man was reliably informed by Tokyo's preeminent J-politics blogger was one of four to contain the innards of the mummified pharoah.) There were a couple of mummies, but with no seats, Our Man didn't think he could do their caskets justice, especially with the ever-present gallery guards who had marked Our Man out as a trouble-maker.


It started with Our Youngest who had the audacity to bring an eraser along with her sketch pad. Just as her rubber hit the paper, the guard was at my ear.
"No erasers in the gallery."
"What?"
"No erasers in the gallery."
"Oh? What?"
But I didn't push it with the youngest there. It wasn't our art gallery after all. Lord knows what terrible damage eraser shavings might do to the gallery Hoovers.
So we moved on to a fresco of an Egyptian queen that we thought we could mimic. She looked cool and you could just make out the red of her skin, a couple of thousand years after the artist and subject's world had disappeared.
It was quite moving.
So we both thought we'd have a go at colouring in the sketch.
"No. Please stop. You cannot do that."
"What now?"
"You can't use the, er…"
"Eraser? We're not using an eraser."
"No, no. You can't use red pencils. No colour please."
"What?"
"No colour."
"No colour? Why not?"
"It's dangerous. It might get onto other people's clothes."
"From my pencil?"
"Yes. It's very regrettable."
"Yes, especially this being an art gallery."
"What?"
"It's funny that we can't use pencils to sketch in an art gallery, I mean this is an art gallery. Doesn't that strike you as funny?"
"You can use a pencil, a grey or black pencil but not a coloured pencil."
"That's still pretty funny."
She didn't laugh.

We finished our sketches over a vivd-red strawberry snow cone in the gallery cafe.

Unfinished lines

Why, look at that. It's a snap of a modern (prefer "modern" to the term "BMW") Mini Cooper in classic British racing green. Well, it will be when our Man finds his green pencil. It will probably be the main artwork on a kiddies English language textbook, if it makes it to the finish line.

Last of the Abikans

Or alternatively, The First of The Cross-hatchers. Cross-hatching is nothing to do with cross-dressing, as far as Our Man is aware. Cross-hatching is the art of etching pictures by drawing diagonal lines and then drawing more diagonal lines at right angles. Draw them close together and it adds shading. Rip off famous book designs and you have the bare-bones of a decent book cover. With a bit more practice. And talent. 
Our Man has been dying to write a book called "The Last of The Abikans". Sometimes the best stories start with the headline, as Our Man recalls from his days with the newsroom savages.
“There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Fenimore Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.” 
― Mark Twain,  Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses