Summer in Hokkaido

At the end of my two years’ teaching in Japan I decided to travel up to Hokkaido before I flew home. None of my friends could make it so I went on my own. The cheapest ticket up there was a Seishun 18 Kippu but that meant that all my travel had to be on local or rapid trains (no express or bullet trains!). But I had a few books, my iPod, phone, camera, snacks... I caught the earliest train from Niigata at about five in the morning and finally got to Hakodate more than 24 hours later..! It’s still the longest journey I’ve ever made – made longer however by having to catch a bus for a stretch because the tracks had been damaged by heavy rain.

By the time I got to Aomori that evening I was dead tired, bored with my own company and music – and out of snacks! But I got talking to a sweet, intelligent and thoughtful boy – he was in senior high, had just come back from an exchange at a school in the UK and had been backpacking around Japan in his summer break, even sleeping rough in a park with some of the homeless in Tokyo along the way. He said he’d been a problem kid but he was good company and I guess, with my own backpack and cheap ticket, I seemed more like a student than a teacher myself. His mom was coming to pick him up to drive him the last stretch back home to Hakodate and he insisted that I go with them, and I gratefully accepted the offer.

I met some really nice people in Hokkaido – some a little overly protective when they found out I was travelling on my own – but all so friendly, generous and helpful. And Hokkaido was just beautiful – the most unspoiled bit of Japan I visited...

I’d love to go back – and next time I’ll take my sketchbook...

One of Hakodate's western-style buildings

Hakodate: famous for ika (squid)

At the Botanic Garden, Sapporo

Cycling near Furano

On my bike

At the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum (the ainu are an indigenous group in Hokkaido)

If you'd like to find out more about the Seishun 18 Kippu: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2362.html

Memories of Japan

My friend Nuria made this for me when we were both living and working in Japan.

Kawaii desu ne?

And nightmares...

These are some details from some of the sketches in my dream diary. All kinds of nightmarish fears are in it – of riots, destruction, powerlessness, hopelessness, homelessness, harm, prejudice, judgement...

But I’ve also included two images of wonder and delight – a shoal of fish swimming near me and a flock of chickens freely wandering through the countryside with me at night.

Doodles

And a few sketches. Most of these were doodled in the margins of my high school maths, biology and Afrikaans notes, and a few I did in primary school.

Good friends

I’m a hoarder of words, especially handwritten words on notes, letters, cards and postcards, and I recently found this in a box of old papers. It’s almost twenty years old..!

It’s good to know that my friends thought of me when I missed a day of school... And of course I couldn’t wait to get back..!

Sketching taxis

This is another sketch I did just for me. We’d regularly go out and do location drawing around Grahamstown in first year, and I was sitting sketching the taxis. A man carrying a bottle of beer came and sat down beside me. He said he could take me to the township – that I needn’t be scared as a lot of wit vroumense (white women) like me went there. I laughed it off and kept drawing, and he finally lurched off to ask one of my classmates. The township was only on the other side of town, but it could have been another country to me and I only went there once – to an exhibition during the National Arts Festival.

I did that one from memory and these are the charcoal sketches I was doing that day.

Dreams

I recently pulled out a pile of old notebooks and photo albums, and amongst them was a dream diary I’d begun when I was eighteen and in first year. I’d wanted something just for me – I didn’t want anyone looking over my shoulder, telling me what to draw and how to draw it. So I used a blue ballpoint pen and kept my sketches quick and rough. The perspectives might be skewed, straight lines are often wobbly, and any mistakes are worked over or shrugged off. 

Stars and snails on the cover.

Peering over the edge of my bed into a pool of water.

Class of 2011

These are some sketches I’ve done for my kind-of-comic – they’re some of the girls from the class of 2011. I taught them for three years when I lived in the Middle East. Full of fun and mischief, they made me laugh – and they made me blush! – and they made me cry – and they made me go a little bananas at times! I watched them grow, and they let me grow as a teacher and make mistakes when I also had a lot to learn. I love them to bits, beautiful girls.

Family sketches

I did these some time ago but since both have birthdays this month I thought I'd put them up here.

My dad reading on holiday - probably the newspaper or one of his magazines.

A quick sketch of my gran, playing cards or Scrabble. She thought I'd made her look too old but this year she'll be 91 and, other than her grey hair, looks just the same!

And an unfinished sketch of my gran...

Heartless creature

This is something else I've been working on – when I’ve had the time between studies...  It’s a first attempt at a graphic short story. It’s a very mixed up kind of thing though – not quite a story, not simply an illustration. So far there’s no narration and no real dialogue. It’s a little like a one-sided conversation and I feel like I’ve drawn in all the shrugs and silences I sometimes get as replies from the teenager who I’m drawing this for.

She’s eighteen and will soon be off to college so I wanted to give her a story to take with her – something that suggests a beginning to the chapters up ahead... But it also draws on some of the stories she’s told me, her memories, her fears and dreams, what we’ve talked about... These are her stories and perhaps that’s why I’m reluctant to put them into words. She tells them far better than I can...

But of course this also isn't her story – it’s only based on her experiences, and thoughts and feelings. And it’s also metaphorical so it’s not meant to be real. But I do want her to recognise something of herself in the character – an expression maybe, a stance, her school uniform – and places, friends... There should be something true to it after all.

This is the first panel. The main character is looking out of the photograph at a paper plane just beyond the panel as it flies away. I’m using paper planes to suggest real planes and flights taking people she loves away from her. This time it’s her mom. But they also represent all their hopes and dreams and aspirations.

I wanted the photograph to suggest that we’re looking back to when she was a clear-eyed child. But, in her black and white stripes, I feel like I’ve almost made her a prisoner of that memory..! Especially as it’s also my hand holding the photograph. It’s a good thing she can see out of the photo...

This is another panel. She doesn’t always look so empty and distant but she can’t feel (or taste) a thing here. 

Any comments and suggestions about my kind-of-comic would really be appreciated as I’m still figuring things out..! Will put up some more panels soon...

Paper kisses

Isabel Greenberg won the Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica graphic short story prize this year for her story “Love in a Very Cold Climate”. It’s about a man from the North Pole who falls in love with a woman from the South Pole but they can never touch because they’re surrounded by a magnetic force field. It’s a gentle and lovely story, and it’s beautifully written and drawn. I just loved it.

I think this is one of my favourite panels... They marry anyway – two feet apart - but of course they can’t kiss. So they kiss scraps of paper and blow them to each other – the snowy skies are filled with hundreds and hundreds of paper kisses, swept away on the winds...

You can read the full story here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/71465831/LIAVCC

Maybe Mirkwood

I don’t know if it’s true... but maybe Tolkien did visit the forests of Hogsback as a very young child. And maybe, just maybe, Mirkwood did grow out of those long forgotten forests, “like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of mind...” 

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

"Not all those that wander are lost."

"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."

"The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.

Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.

The chances, the changes are all yours to make.

The mould of your life is in your hands to break."

J.R.R. Tolkien, from "The Hobbit"

Tintin in the Cape

Saw this stencil graffiti on campus. Just made me smile...

Picasso's goat

As an art student, I attempted to make some kind of reinterpretation of Picasso’s goat – it was the size of a kid and bright red. It really wasn’t much of a homage.

Years later, I saw the original at the Musee National Picasso in Paris and felt like a little girl in front of his larger than life nanny goat. In cobbling together my kid goat, I’d used a single black and white photocopy of Picasso’s ‘La Chevre’ and was just delighted by all sorts of detail that I’d missed – in the lumpy plaster, the bits of scrap metal, the wicker basket that forms the goat’s rib cage, the ceramic jug udders...

There is something so endearing and humorous – and just so goaty – about it. 

‘La Chevre’, 1950 (cast in bronze in 1952) (http://theotherparis.net)

Picasso and family, including Cabra the goat and Lump the dachshund, at home in Cannes, 1957 (http://www.hrc.utexas.edu)

And here’s another attempt, this time sketched with oil pastels.

A small pile of books

I’ve added a banner to my blog – have you seen it yet? Look on the right...  

Yep. It’s that small pile of books just beneath the list of books I’m currently reading.

It’s a pledge to read the printed word.

But I think it’s not just about reading books – it’s about sharing books.

Since going back to my studies full-time, I’ve been buying far fewer books than I used to but I still like to give them as gifts, especially to the children and teenagers in my life.

Here’s something small you can do to share a book...

Give a book as a gift, especially to a child

There are so many wonderful children’s books to choose from – everything from beautiful big picture books to pop-ups to board books to bath books. Or share one of your own favourite old and dog-eared children’s books with a littler member of your family.

Join your local library

Um, look it up if you don’t know where it is. And donate some of the books you’ve bought that you know you won’t read again.

Make use of your school and university libraries

While more and more books and articles are available online, libraries are still the most accessible places to read and study.

Give a book away

Find a school that could really do with more books for their classrooms or library and donate some of your books.

Lend a book

And borrow one in return – that way you should be sure to get yours back!

Recommend a book

If you really can’t be parted with a book you love, recommend it – especially to people you know don’t often read books. And create a home for your books on http://www.librarything.com/ while connecting with other readers who’ve read and loved the same books.

Release a book into the wild...

‘If you love your books, let them go.’ Let your book travel around the world – join other book lovers at http://www.bookcrossing.com/ and you can then label your book so that it won’t get lost, ‘release’ it by leaving it on a park bench, at a train station, at your favourite coffee shop – anywhere it can be ‘caught’ by another delighted reader – and then log on to see who finds it and what adventures it has had. =)

You can see more banners here: http://readtheprintedword.org/ 

A bigger pile of books - I bought these at a sale and gave most of them away.

African All Stars

And a favourite local design. Found this postcard at a shop in Long Street. Love it!

You can get in touch with Star Cards at: info@starcards.co.za

A bundle of life

A little late for his 80^th birthday but who needs birthdays to celebrate someone?

He's my compass and my touchstone.

I respect his courage to speak out against injustice – and to take an unpopular stand.

He also said, “My father always used to say, 'Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument.' Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.” 

And he does it all with such laughter and playfulness and dedication.

    

Iditarod dogs

These are from a collage that I’m making for my niece.

She’d recently watched a documentary on the Iditarod (the great sled dog race in Alaska) and was inspired to create her own Iditarod with the family dogs at home in South Africa.  She harnessed her motley team of four and roped them together with their leashes, then tried a bit of mushing – and cajoling with a carrot! (They’re very healthy – they snack on carrots.) But they didn’t get very far. Her lead dog actually froze – she sat down stiffly and simply refused to budge!

So I began to think of another expedition that the dogs might enjoy – running across the beach, following their leader who would be marching on ahead, singing to them. A little more Pied Piper...

They do prefer rolling in the sand and lolling about...

Et voila!

Friends found this in Paris and gave it to me for my birthday.

It's a cut-out postcard by Pascal Parmentier and, after a whole lot of careful cutting and snipping out and gluing together, here it is:

Merci beaucoup, Jacqui et Patrick!


You can see more of Monsieur Parmentier's postcards (and other work) here: http://www.pascal-p-parmentier.com/ Have a click - the charmingly animated M. Parmentier will make you smile.

A haiku about... falling poems?

I wrote this about ten years ago when I was living in London.

I was at work and from my window I could see a man and a woman reading on the grass below. It was a blustery day and she was leaning against him – but quite absorbed in what she was reading. It seemed like the perfect kind of solitude.

Uff!

So, my design is still not quite what I’d pictured but I’m getting there – well, somewhere. And I’m having far fewer arguments with my computer than I did when I began learning Illustrator. Though I might still be heard going, ‘What?! No? NO! No, no, no, no, nooooooo..! Oh... Okay...’

If anyone invents a computer that argues back, I’m so buying it.

Chapter 1

I found the beginning of a story at my bus stop last week.

I still don’t know who wrote it but I’ve been going up to campus and down again, imagining the two of them... She must get on at my stop but does he? Did he see her read it? Did she blush, laugh or smack him with an armful of books?! Perhaps she was quite cool and gave nothing away. Would he have been bruised or a little bit smug? Maybe he was knocked off his feet!

I sat on the bus smiling and wondering what their next chapter would be. And what title they would give their story. And how many chapters it would have...

I wonder where he wanted to take her.

And, of course, I wonder if she relented and went with him?