LookingLand http://www.lookingland.com/index.php par grâce! quelle charité! en-us Nucleus CMS v3.51 � Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.lookingland.com/index.php/nucleus/nucleus2.gif LookingLand http://www.lookingland.com/index.php sunday foodling ~ http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=513 I have not been drawing much since last September when things took a turn for me and I had to refocus my energies elsewhere. But for whatever reason, I found myself dragging out all my art supplies and assessing the experiments I was conducting last summer. And I doodled the picture shown here (which is enlarged about 2x since it was sketched about the size of a dollar coin).

First, it's amazing to me that I haven't forgotten what little I know about drawing. Second, I've really missed my paints and pencils and markers and yes, my desk is awash in random art supplies again and my head is spinning. Why did I abandon art? Was my head really so turned around? Frightening, that.

I mean, whatever the mediocrity of my abilities with color and lighting and perspective, I still love doing it and can occasionally turn out a nice image. I shudder to think where I might be now if I had stopped obsessing about "doing it right" and just enjoyed it for what it is. And it's quite possible I will never reconcile my love of ink illustrations with the fact that a pencil is just so much more versatile and forgiving.

I have mentioned somewhere in my blog previously, how much I love Paddy Brown's The Cattle Raid of Cooley because it doesn't try to be anything fancy, focuses on the storytelling, and is more about mood and movement than realism, which is something that fascinates me in art (I love the Impressionists). I am pretty lousy at freehand drawing, however, so a straight ink like this, for me, is hopeless (I've tried). And as much as I have studied Eddie Campbell's work (and taken comfort in his liberal use of white acrylic to make adjustments), I just can't get a handle on ink as a drawing medium. If you "overdraw" something in pencil, you can scale back by erasing or even masking the messy areas with paint. If you overdraw in ink, there's only so much touch up you can do ~ and you can't touch up with acrylic if you intend to paint over it. So it's ruined.

I know a lot of artists ink their art then have it copied to watercolor paper so that their lines are smooth and so that they can experiment with colors without ruining the "original". That's too labor-intensive for me. I have known forever that I have to adopt a style that moves fast and focuses on the things I enjoy most. I simply don't have the time or discipline for anything else.


That leaves me with this: primarily hard pencil and watercolors/gouache, with some colored pencils and markers. It also leaves me with a bit of a conundrum given the narrative I have been working on, but perhaps I have always considered the "drawn" version of this an adaptation rather than the "original" form.

Of course, it will have no original form at all if I don't actually, you know, work on it. I'll go do that. Meanwhile, if you are curious at all as to the style I am leaning toward (and will likely miss by a mile given my penchant for flat monochrome), check out Winslow Homer.

Homer did a lot of watercolor on graphite. His ability with watercolor paint is phenomenal. What I wouldn't give to be able to see light and color the way he did. ]]> reconstruction http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=513 Sun, 15 May 2011 11:42:01 -0500 Gilman and Gore http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=512 Gilman: Black VengeanceI'm still taking a break from Zola, but I need to keep reading, so I was looking for some light, trashy fun stuff. Something in my range of interests (which are admittedly narrow). I decided to look for some western pulps, give them a try and came across George Gilman, author of The Edge series, which ran a little over 50 books in the 70s and 80s. Gilman gained notoriety for writing a different kind of western (for his time). His are considered some of the most violent (and graphic) westerns ever written.

Fabulous, I thought. Sounds right up my alley. First, I discovered that the books are a little hard to come by. Pricey when they can be found, and pretty scarce in any kind of bulk sales where you can get more bang for your buck. It doesn't help that Gilman was a British author writing American westerns. Since these have gone out of print, there's been no occasion for them to become fashionable again--not in this country anyway.

I finally find one titled Black Vengeance (book no. 10, pictured). It was just a few bucks and was really hoping to enjoy something, well, edgy. Sadly, I was disappointed.

The book was violent. Very violent. So many heads exploded in this single slim volume of 150 pages that I lost count. Gilman managed to pack enough mayhem and gruesomeness in this story to rival anything on cable TV these days and no one was spared: men, women, children--all ripe for the chopping block. You would think this would be something I would really dig, but I couldn't get into it. Despite being well-written, the characters just weren't very interesting to me (how much character development can you really do between all those exploding heads anyway?). Edge (the title character whose name used to be Josiah Hedges), is an anti-hero in every sense of the word, but strangely un-compelling. A drifter, a murderer, a bounty hunter, etc. I tried to appreciate his cool, silent lone gunman manner, but he kind of lost me at slaughtering a whole household of plantation people (no quarter-style). Ostensibly this is done to liberate the slaves on the premises, but it's also pretty clear that Edge and his band of Yankee guerrillas just like killing. Later he's put in command of the liberated slaves who want to become soldiers (for the purpose of vengeance). Then, after a whole lot of Nat Turner style marauding, he has a falling out with the leader of the ex-slaves and ten years later the two settle their spat on the frontier.

And there's a woman in there somewhere, but she's so boring it's not worth bothering about.

I feel like I ought to give the series another try (maybe I got a dud?). But reviews generally say it's a pretty thin series anyway. And that it covers all the usual tropes--that the only difference being the buckets of blood. Seriously? I would have never guessed that well-written slaughter could be so banal. But I guess anything will lose its luster after 100 pages or so. If I have a chance to have another go with this one, I may take it, but I won't be scouring the bookstores for it. ]]> civil war fiction http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=512 Fri, 13 May 2011 13:26:44 -0500 desk ~ ! http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=511

every weekend for the last several months at least, i have put on my list of things to do: clear desk. and every weekend i manage to not only not clear my desk, but scarcely get anything else done in my avoidance. i have this dream of what i want my desk to look like and what it will take to make it productive, but i'm pretty sure that's just rainbows and unicorns; clearly my working processes is doomed to this kind of constant disorder. and i fall into that trap of: well, if i only just had another bookcase. or: what i really need is one of those desk organizer things with the slots.

i hereby crown myself queen of the procrastinators. even writing this post is mostly just a way of avoiding facing the tasks before me. so many tasks. so little time.

if i can get this blog in some sort of decent shape today, that would be a victory. and, i don't know, maybe actually do some writing? if i were enid blyton, i would have finished ten books since the beginning of the year. looks like i have some catching up to do.
]]> desk http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=511 Sun, 1 May 2011 08:30:50 -0500 About comics ~ http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=481 them at the time, difficult though it was for me to make that decision.

So I packed up a couple of reading copies of my favorites and said goodbye to the rest of them. I visited them at Christmas most years and that was sufficient. But then I moved up north and coming home at Christmas became impractical and I began to miss my comics. I called my brother and told him to send me some ~ just a "surprise me" variety. For a while that held me. And I bought a couple here and there and was gifted some as well, but then some dark days came: I was gravely disappointed by Garth Ennis's redux of Ghost Rider (blargh ~ why, Marvel, why???), and last summer Azzarello's Loveless was a huge bust (boo!), and then I missed my comics even more because I remembered loving them and collecting them and choosing each one for its own special self from the comic boxes at the comic store (don't fergit, people, I'm old, back then there was no internet or online ordering). I missed the yellowing tape on their crinkled baggies, their stubborn little gooey orange and white price tags: .60, .80, $1.25. I knew exactly from which store each came from by their distinct packaging and pricing and by golly, i recollect buying every single dang one of them.

All this nostalgia, coupled with returning to Comic Con after some years away, made me miss my comics even more, but it finally dawned on me: I no longer live in the land of the sweat and mung. So I called my mother and told her to send my comics "home".

This past week I received three boxes of comic books. I'm still missing part of my collection, but the bulk of it has arrived. it contained a few surprises (I had no idea I had read Hellblazer for so long), and a few cringe-worthy recollections (Midnight Sons? gaggg!). But most important, among them were cherished volumes I haven't set eyes on in quite a few years and many of which I haven't read in over two decades.

I quit collecting comics during the 1990s comics bust. Hellblazer no. 87 (1995) was the last comic I made a conscious effort to buy off the stands (if I remember correctly). Interestingly, Eddie Campbell was the artist drawing the title at the time.

My collection is very small (about 300 books) and very specialized (about 5 titles), but most of it has kept its value over the years and many particular issues have continued to grow in demand. I have no idea how much my collection is worth (haven't assessed it since the 80s boom), but I'm guessing it's probably at least $1,500 without blinking (assuming much of it is generally worthless, but a handful of books tip the scales heavily). Possibly it's worth much more. Not too shabby for something I nickeled and dimed together throughout my teenage years. But I've no intention of selling any of these precious darlings, so their worth to me is really in the joy of placing them back among my embarrassingly overflowed collection of books and ephemera.

I guess I am telling you all of this as a warning. You might have to suffer endless posts about these little darlings while I reacquaint myself. ]]> the joy of comics http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=481 Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:38:20 -0500 An evening with Eddie Campbell ~ http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=465 Last night I read Eddie Campbell's Black Diamond Detective Agency, which is fairly new from First Second Books (which produces some really amazing works!). I was too overwhelmed at Comic Con this year to visit Campbell (I think my brother said he was there, but I never crossed paths with his table). So alas, I did not get a signed copy, but I'm glad to have bought a copy at all. Campbell was the first "comic" artist who inspired me to think that I could actually draw (probably From Hell was one of the first graphic novels I ever saw aside from Spiegelman that had a distinctive art style that wasn't traditional superheroes. I immediately fell in love with his inks and washes and later developed a similar affinity for his watercolors. Black Diamond Detective Agency is one of only a few full-color books of his, and I love the gritty palette he's chosen for the end of the 19th century ~ it goes well with the industrial aspects of the storyline and keeps the tone somber and noirish) like a detective book should be, right?

There's problems with the script, I think. I mean, the story is good: exploding train, missing wife, framed mystery man, even a good old-fashioned chase in a gas-saturated mine. But given another twenty pages or so, some of the more crashing scene changes and bafflingly curt dialog might have flowed more smoothly. There's also some lengthy explanations at the end: wherein the villain explains all ~ very Victorian in construction so I'll give it props for the formula, but as Campbell was working from a script by C. Gaby Mitchell and perhaps either as a difficulty of editing or a limitation of space, certain information and character development feels a wee crammed up. Or it could just be that I wanted to savor the book longer (or ghoulishly wanted more 'splosions, which is always a possibility).

Nevertheless, this is a beautiful little book and I hope we'll see more like it. I tried (perhaps in a desultory fashion given my awareness of my own personal artistic limitations), to emulate this style in at least one incarnation of Reconstruction. It didn't work out. But I'm glad to be able to admire the work here ~ even if it's something I can't reproduce, it continues to inspire.

]]> bibliophilia http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=465 Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:03:18 -0500 Don Robertson's Liminal Nightmare ~ http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=450 Holy cow, what a book! It starts off a slow burn, but turns downright harrowing toward the end (I couldn't put it down). This is not the same old tired Civil War story recycled from a lot of other books; the characters are painfully real, and their circumstances are unlike any I've seen in any other piece of fiction about this era. You'll find no tired retread of battles, no hardtack, no endless exposition about the politics of the time, no romantic Southern apologetic, no kindly woman who takes in stray soldiers and falls in love ~ all those crummy tropes have no foothold here ~ at all: this is an end to the war that's intensely human, brutal, and appalling in its brutal humanness.

I came across this book by pure happenstance. It was mentioned somewhere that Stephen King was a fan, so I took a gamble and ordered it not knowing anything about it. Now I'll definitely be looking for some of Robertson's other books ~ it's just a pity they are all out of print and he passed away shortly after this one was published (argh!).

Not for the faint of heart, Robertson doesn't shy from the baser instincts of people trapped between wanting to die and a desperate instinct to survive. I think one of the most terrifying things about reading this is that eventually you realize that there is no mercy here: at any moment in the chaos of circumstance, anything can happen. Robertson's style takes a little adjusting to (some of his dialect choices throw you out of the story until you can get a hold on them ~ and the choice to write in a dialect when it's told from an omniscient voice that roams from one character to another is, frankly, a little bizarre. But the specificity of the characters and their compelling stories more than make up for it. This book is gritty, honest, and takes chances where I've seen so many others cop out or go ridiculously over the top.

There are only a handful of books I say I wish I had written. This one joins them.]]> civil war fiction http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=450 Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:42:27 -0500 A Venture in 1777 http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=378 Let's see ~ a list of things that might make a book delightful: under 150 pages long (check), illustrations (check), George Washington (check), snow! (check), Christmas (check), Valley Forge (check!).

With a list like this, S. Weir Mitchell's A Venture in 1777 can't help but be satisfying!

Okay, so the story isn't all that much. Young Tom Markham and his twin brothers (but mostly Tom) conspire to steal an important military secret from Colonel Grimstone and relay it to Valley Forge just after Christmas. Their house is occupied by the British and they'd like very much to get rid of their unwanted guests ~ and get their father back (he is currently a prisoner of war).

Mitchell apparently enjoyed writing "historical" fiction and has a number of books set during the American Revolution and Washington's term as President. This particular little tome, he wrote for charity with the proceeds going to the Philadelphia Church Home for Children. The book isn't terribly fancy, but it does have some nice vignettes and illustrations (spot colored in cyan). The artist, unfortunately is uncredited, but you can see what nice work was done in the image below.

I have to say it was especially nice to read this simple, uplifting little story after what's been passing lately as bedtime fare. A little Mitchell is a good tonic for the ills of research. Though there is mention of the privations at Valley Forge in this book, the story is clearly written for a young audience and so the hardship and violence is kept to a minimum. That does not mean it isn't full of adventure, however, and the capture of Grimstone, especially, is a good time. I especially like Tom's sense of "fairness" in handling these matters (oh chivalry, thou art dead). Tom as a principal character is nicely restrained and his interview with Washington is the best part of the book (totally expected, of course, but also totally satisfying).

Near as I can tell, the story is entirely fictional outside of the circumstances of the war. General Washington would appear to be the only "real-life" character. I've haven't yet read any of Mitchell's Revolutionary War novels, so I don't know whether he's predisposed to adhere to much fact. His Civil War novels are certainly grounded in fact, but the historical people who appear in them generally pop in and out of scenes rather quick (much like Washington in this one).

Two amusing things about the illustration above: Tom is fifteen (nearly sixteen). In the picture he looks more like twelve! Also, do you really think Washington wore stockings at Valley Forge? Much as I like the picture, the shoes, I had to laugh at.]]> bibliophilia http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=378 Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:39:00 -0500 In memory of Angelo ~ http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=376 I spent most of Sunday gnashing my teeth. the reasons why are pointless to explain (same o'crud). then I did the stupid thing of reading myself a bedtime story so depressing that it carried my mood overnight and now I am officially in the glums.

The book, Dennis Brandt's Pathway to Hell isn't spectacularly written ~ it's rather short (barely over 200 pages), and isn't exhaustive about much ~ but that made it perfect for me: no long explanations of campaigns I already know too well, no endless nattering about hardtack. instead it's a true chronicle largely in Angelo Crapsey's own words from his letters and diary, documenting in the most painful way imaginable, his slow decline into self-destructive dementia.

Crapsey's story is unique as far as books of the war go, though there's unfortunately nothing unique about what happened to him. It tells the story that Paulson's Soldier's Heart tries to tell, but doesn't.

When I think back on the origins of Reconstruction, I think i wrote it in part because this book hadn't been written. Crapsey's story is more heartbreaking than any novel anyone could ever write: a disaster that could have been avoided a hundred different ways. The circumstances of his bizarre upbringing at the hand of a religious whack-job father, his fervor for the Union, his abolitionist sentiments that sour after emancipation drags the war into a seemingly endless slaughter, the shame of his surrender and imprisonment ~ all of it horrible, horrible ~ and then to come home to the father-figure and friend he looked up to the most only to find himself rebuffed, feared, and ostracized. And finally the everyday event that led to Crapsey's end is so banal, almost ~ so utterly human in its simple cruelty. It isn't any wonder he blew his brains out. Twenty two years old.

Of course I imagined a different end once upon a time for Reconstruction which is in many ways this same story: an endless cycle of addictions, an abusive marriage, desolation, death. Even I was never so brave to actually make any of that stick, though. I had to find some hope in there somewhere. So I did.

But there was none for a lot of young boys like Crapsey. Even Howard Bahr didn't shrink from drawing us a picture in The Judas Field (which is maybe why I didn't like that book as much as I wanted to ~ it hit a nerve with me).

So yeah. I don't know why i am writing this except to wonder at the meaning of it all. ]]> civil war fiction http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=376 Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:12:24 -0500 200 years ~ http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=270 Tomorrow being the 200th anniversary of the man in the funny hat's birthday, I sat myself down and read something that wasn't about him getting shot (yes, it's possible to find such a book in my house, believe it or not!). This is a little book written by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews after the turn of the century called The Perfect Tribute. I believe it was originally published in 1906, but my own personal edition, a well-tanned ugly duckling, is from 1908 (and has an owner's stamp of "J. Lewis Riggles" which amuses me).

The story is not badly written, but is bad in general. It's a fictional account of Lincoln's day at Gettysburg and how insecure he feels about his pithy little speech and how no one applauds and therefore it was a complete failure. Scholars have interesting things to say about why no one applauded, but I love to read the reactions from people who actually heard the speech (which is why I really love Gettysburg Remembers President Lincoln). But this isn't a review of that book, it's a review of Andrews' fictional account, so I will leave it at her interpretation for now.

The story goes from there back to Washington where Lincoln runs headlong into a young boy in a dither over his dying brother: a Confederate prisoner who needs a will so that he can leave his property to his sweetheart and she will therefore be forced to accept it (otherwise she's too prideful). Lincoln, being a lawyer, volunteers his services and they go to the prison where he draws up the business for the bravely suffering young man. In the course of their conversation, the soldier brings up the Gettysburg speech, which is in all the papers, and he talks about how astonishing it is, blah blah blah. And of course he says that not clapping was the perfect tribute because the words were so perfect and so solemn. He talks about how he'd like to shake the President's hand, he's so dern grateful. Then the fella kicks the bucket holding Lincoln's hand, never knowing it's him.

The story works, even if it is melodrama. Its apotheosic (is that a word? I doubt it) bent is only mildly disturbing and the depiction of the two southern boys as righteous, indignant, but well-meaning is a rather dull stereotype. But in 1906 I can certainly see the appeal and I enjoyed the story despite my own prejudices.

So happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln. Enjoy your celebration year!]]> civil war fiction http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=270 Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:34:37 -0600 In which I avoid things I should be doing ~ http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=269 The Smithsonian has an exhibit of the man in the funny hat's truck and deals in honor of the Obama-mama-man's inauguration. I'm going to (maybe not so delicately) avoid any discussion of why I think this is tacky, but I belong to a peculiar American minority that feels conflicted about sanctifying pseudo-martyrs. And Johnnie B., you were such a dumb cluck (I have to say it). Anyway...cool picture though! I can definitely appreciate a nice black frock.

And for the 187th time (and I mean it). I don't hate Abraham Lincoln. We've certainly had many many many worse presidents.

I wanted to launch the good ship In Pursuance this spring, but right now I'm pretty overwhelmed with other things. If I were more organized I could juggle everything a lot better. But the more I try to organize, the more I can't seem to find anything that I need. I recently acquired Lloyd Lewis' Myths after Lincoln and William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues (they followed me home!), so it's not like I've stopped thinking on the subject. If anything, I think I have a clearer angle on how I want to tell the story and I have a solid outline of the chronology. What I really need now is to get the "scholarship" part in order. And even though this is not really a story about Lincoln, I would be less than honest if I said I wasn't concerned about being fair (my biases overriding my common sense most of the time). So I want to be careful. My original intention was to avoid the issue of Lincoln & Booth altogether. They are not what the story is about. But part of me says it's absurd to think I can get away without addressing the issue. Even if it is in the Ford Theater greenroom over a game of poker. When I look at Kate Beaton's work, I think: my God, this doesn't have to be so complicated! So cross your fingers. I may get it together yet.

But today I don't have time for this. I've got an outline for a novel I'm trying to poke into some semblance of sense.]]> in pursuance of said conspiracy http://www.lookingland.com/index.phpindex.php?itemid=269 Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:48:00 -0600