works of wanderlust

Category: art & photography

  • Pandemic Puppies

    At least half the dogs in our neighbourhood these days are less than a year and a half old.

    The pandemic puppy phenomenon did not pass us by around here, and every day as we go for our walks in the rain, shine, epic heat or brutal cold, we encounter so many other of these pandemic pups in the park.

    Pups who have neither care nor concern that the very pandemic that forged virtually every aspect of their lives to date still has a lingering subtle effect on their human companion’s day-to-day.

    Some day, maybe even soon, things will go back to normal… ish.

    But maybe not quite yet.

  • Snow Spotting

    It’s hard to say whether dogs are philosophical observers of the universe around them, wondering at the world as it flits past their existential mindset … or if they are simply easily distracted.

    I think I’d like to think it’s the former.

    My dog and I go on three walks a day lately. This time last year, just as the snow was starting to fall, she was a two-month-old puppy and was limited to exploring the world on a short leash in the containment of our backyard.

    A year later, and we’re touring the neighbourhood by foot with regularity, often meeting new people and new dogs, stopping to sniff virtually anything … well, she does most of the sniffing.

    I’m not oblivious to the world around me, but after forty-five years something as mundane as a patch of grass sticking from the snow or a blue jay sitting on the branch of a tree is ordinary enough that I think my brain just naturally tunes it all out.

    But not her.

    Everything is a curiosity. Everything is worth stopping and savouring. If that’s not the definition of existential delight at the world … and if we can’t learn a even just little bit from that .. I don’t know what else there is to say.

  • Houseguests & Hobbled Pursuits

    Long-time friends travelled from a neighbouring province this past weekend and used our basement guest room as a free hotel suite while they were attending their son’s sport tournament in our city.

    Six hours of driving from their house to ours has not been a particularly restrictive barrier for more routine visits previously so much as a global pandemic gave everyone pause for such travel over the last two years. But as the outbreak wanes (even temporarily maybe) and as such things go, our little bubble grew to six people and two dogs for four days, and glimpses of normal peeked back into our lives, however briefly.

    Much conversation happened. And as he is a creative-minded soul, much of that much conversation swirled around our respective creative pursuits both planned and paused.

    I’ve been drawing. A little. Not so much as I used to, but a little.

    For those who have dug deeper into the archives of this site and clues bread-crumbed throughout, it may come as no surprise to learn that for three years prior to this blog I drew a small web comic chronicling the based-on-real-life adventures of a dad and his pre-teen daughter. A weekly comic peppered with kids-say-goofball-things and bad-dad-puns swirled around a stick of light-hearted family humour.

    Our houseguest was one of my fans, and since we’d last spent any quantity of time in the same room two things have happened:

    a) I’ve stopped drawing said comic, and

    b) he’s started writing (but not yet drawing) his own.

    “I was hoping you could walk me through how you make one.” He asked over dinner the first night. “For example, show me how you put a comic strip together and publish it online.”

    “Yeah, sure.” I agreed, stuffing another mouthful in between thoughts. “I mean, I can’t teach you how to draw in a weekend, but I can walk you through my workflow. Sure.”

    Putting together something as complex as a web comic series isn’t a single skill after all. Ideas turn into stories. Stories are mapped out against art. Art is compiled and refined into panels and spreads, which themselves are output as files. Files are posted and promoted and shared and enjoyed. And every one of those steps breaks down into fifteen, twenty, or maybe five-hundred individual steps and skills and practiced abilities that have been honed over decades and are yet are somehow still too rudimentary to be called expertise.

    “How do you know all this stuff?” He asked as I later walked him through the multitude of files on my computer, whizzed through the act of compiling a simple strip and exporting it as a web-friendly file. “And why did you stop?” he added, mostly pondering aloud why someone who could, no longer did, while he who yet couldn’t, struggled to begin.

    “Time.” I offered. “Inspiration. Priorities. Hobbled motivation.” It all rolled off the tongue far too easily. “Honestly, I don’t know.” I said conclusively. “Sometimes you just lose momentum, I guess.”

    “You shouldn’t have stopped.” He shrugged. “You’re so good at this.”

    And I, being terrible at taking a complement, merely laughed awkwardly and continued the tour of the comic strip factory on my computer.

    Sometimes, perhaps, maybe, hopefully even… it takes a detour through an old, familiar neighbourhood, like spending the weekend with old friends, to bump one out of a rut. I don’t know if I have been yet, but …

  • Creative Outlets

    It’s November.

    Every November for the last couple years I’ve hunkered down in front of my computer keyboard and started writing … occasionally finished writing … a novel.

    There is an online writing event called NaNoWriMo wherein those so inclined to put pen to paper (or more likely, fingers to keyboard) can launch through a month-long inspirational, deadline-based effort to scrawl out fifty-thousand words around a singular cohesive plot in one month.

    I’m skipping a year.

    It’s not that I didn’t think about it.

    A lot.

    Heck, I even roughed out a basic plot outline and started naming characters.

    Rather, it’s that I have a bunch of other projects, other creative outlets that I’ve decided to make a priority … keep a priority.

    This blog, for one, is among a small set of projects that have gnawed into my free time and tempted my distractibility to it’s frayed ends. And entering the eleventh month on the homestretch to the one year anniversary of this site, I’ve liked how it’s going and am happy with the results of the effort so far.

    I’ve also been doing a lot of drawing. The prospect of actually travelling again next year has me excited about bringing an art set on vacation and doing a lot more urban sketching. I think I’ve written about this before, but I’ve been an avid photographer for decades, and the next step for me seems to translate that compositional eye I’ve developed into something slower and more deliberate, like watercolours and sketching. That does mean that I’ve been using the free time I could have been writing a novel, and instead practicing my art skills, bringing them up to a stronger space worthy of capturing travel scenes. And while one might think a little bit of drawing practice would be quick and simple, even a basic sketch (like the one above) can consume about ninety minutes of my Sunday afternoon.

    In short, time for creative outlets is precious and limited. A new project would detract from all projects.

    Between blogging, nabbing photos for the site, doodling, and of course poking through various cookbooks trying to foster that more delicious side of my creative urge … a novel is not in the cards this November.

    My priorities are set, at least for a little while. So, thanks for reading this one.

  • How to Draw; a Poem

    I’ve been doing a lot of sketching and watercolour in my free time. I won’t claim that it’s anything amazing … not yet … but I’m enjoying my newfound hobby and I feel like I’m starting to see the world in one of two ways, things that I could paint or things that I would like to figure out how to paint.

    In the meantime, I had some inspiration for some words, rather than pictures.

    paper
    blank canvas
    rugged fibrous texture
    page coil bound bookish

    pencil
    leaden tipped
    loosely gripped anglar
    shapes hinting forms sketched

    ink
    permanently black
    deliberate lines etched
    images tracing weighty details

    paint
    wetted brush
    hues dappled pigments
    colours bouyant imitating universes

    – bardo

    I have reserved some space on this blog each week to be creative, and to post some fiction, poetry, art or prose. Writing a daily blog could easily get repetitive and turn into driveling updates. Instead, Wordy Wednesdays give me a bit of a creative nudge when inspiration strikes.