Death Valley Sketchbook
A decade ago, I did a week-long drawing trip through Nevada and parts of California with my pal, D.Price. The sketchbook I kept (only my 7th to that point) was the first step in my publishing career. When I shared it with an editor at City & Co., who liked it so much she asked me to assemble a book of my journals. Ultimately, though I ended up placing that book with Princeton Architectural Press (Everyday Matters), it was so nice to have someone interested in my work and this concentrated drawing trip was the kick-off point.
I was flipping through the original journal today and thought I’d make a little video tour. It’s also notable as several other firsts — one of my first hand-bound books, one of the first times I made a dedicated journal for one trip, and one of the first times I experimented with watercolors.
The film I made ended up being eleven minutes long, so I cut it into two episodes. You can see them both there.
Oh, and if you like this sort of thing, let me know and I’ll do more if it. (Though I am not trying to make anything technically sophisticated with these little films, I would love to know if there’s any particular information you’d like to know about my sketchbooks). I appreciate your comments and insights.
Childhood memories
(click images to magnify)When I was a boy, I travelled a great deal. My family wasn’t in the Armed or Diplomatic services. I guess they were just adventurers, peripatetic wanderers, refugees, gypsies.
These are pages of random memories, without any real conclusions, just snapshots of stuff. I drew them from old family albums with a dip pen and india ink, painted them with watercolors. If you can bothered, click to enlarge the pages and read the captions.
My maternal grandparents (Gran and Ninny) were German refugees and were married in Rome. Mussolini threw them out in the mid 1930s.
Then they escaped to the part of India that became Pakistan (after World War II and Partition). My grandparents were doctors and they remained in Lahore for thirty-five years. My great-grandparents had also fled Germany and joined them in India, but later moved to Palestine. My mother (Pipsi from Püppchen or ‘little doll’ in German) and my uncle grew up in Pakistan, then went to boarding school and university in England.
I was born in London and first went to Pakistan when I was two. Of all the places I’d lived till I came to America, I always thought of Pakistan as home.
The long voyage to Lahore, via plane or ship, was always an event.
Snake charmers and bear trainers came to our house to perform for me.
Lahore was always bustling.
We moved to Pittsburgh when I was five, then Canberra, Australia when I was six.
At nine, I moved back to Pakistan alone and lived with my granparents for a year and a half.
Then we moved to a kibbutz in Israel.
I went to a public school and became fluent in Hebrew. I also got my first job, at a slaughterhouse. When I was thirteen, a week before the Yom Kipur War, we moved to Broooklyn.
Oregon and Back
Jack and I just spent a week driving 1,000 miles or so (a crazy distance for New Yorkers) across Oregon and back to visit our pal, d.price. It was the first time Jack has seen the huge scale of things in the West and the first time we’ve done and dad-and-boy epic drawing trip.
My journaling skills were a little rusty. I haven’t been doing bona-fied illustrated journaling in awhile; over the past few months, I’ve been drawing various things in various books in various ways. So I decided to take a long two drawing books, one larger for ink and such, the other a smaller one made by Roz Stendahl. It’s 3 and 3/16 inches by 3 and 3/4 with Fabriano Artistico 90 lb. cold press paper, palm-sized and very handy.
We began the trip a little spasmodically as you can read above. We had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. and then double back to get Jack’s passport (which turned out to be completely unnecessary — kids under 18 don’t need ID to fly).
In Portland, we rented an SUV (a very odd vehicle for me, the non-car owner) and headed east. Jack is a very able navigator and we used the Google maps function on my Blackberry. We took our time ( on my last trip to Oregon, I got my first and very expensive speeding ticket; this time, I relied on my cruise control to keep us legal) and stopped at interesting stuff along the way. Looking for lunch, we stumbled into the Bonneville Dam and its sturgeon hatchery. We learned about fish ladders and saw the most enormous fishies ever — critters a dozen feet long placidly floated past the hatchery window like prehistoric aquatic cattle. As its near the end of their trail, replicas of Lewis and Clark’s journals were also on display.
We found lunch at the politically incorrect CharBurger and then continued east.
The weather had been overcast and intermittently rainy since we’d left Portland but midday things started to heat up.We were pretty knackered from the long day and decided to make camp midway, pulling into Pendleton to find a motel. We decided to look for one where we could swim and ended up at the Travelers’ Inn which boasted a pool with the dimensions and sanitary status of a New York urinal. After paying for the night, we discovered our room was similarly fragrant; clearly the former resident had developed some sort of kidney disorder and was forced to use the thick shag rug as a bedpan.
Eschewing a dip and a nap but still anxious to escape the rain, Jack and I headed to the town cinema. A triplex, it proved to be sparsely attended. In fact, we were the only audience for the 4:40 show of ‘Tropic Thunder’, the sole patrons of all three screens. We returned to the Inn and found our next door neighbors were burning hot dogs on a propane grill outside our door.
Early the next morning, we had a hearty breakfast ( we miss Patti!) and finished the last leg of the journey. We pulled into Joseph and met up with D.Price. Dan gave Jack a tour of his meadow, pointing out the various tiny buildings he has built by hand.
There’s the studio where he writes and prints his magazines.
The sweat lodge where we would spend evenings having mystical conversations then plunging into the river.
The Kiva, Dan’s hobbit house. Inside it’s about seven feet wide in diameter, wooden walls, carpeted, low ceiling with a sky light, snug as a bug.
Here’s my impression of what it looks like inside.
Dan has a little shower room, with a gravity shower. River water is loaded into the cistern by the bucketload and then heated electrically.
Later, we were joined by Ryan White from Portland. He is a soil engineer who also likes to draw and camp. Jack and I spent the first night in tents and then we and Dan sopped places each night so we all had different sleeping experiences.
We drive around Joseph, stopping to draw. Here are pack horses that climb up the mountain trails that surround the town.
The lake is lovely and huge, filled with boats but few swimmers. Last week it was over 100 degrees but the rain has arrived and cooled everything dramatically.
Dan’s a master of improvisation and craft. He turns old bikes into fence rails, and recycles driftwood, paving stones, and old wooden signs.
Jack checks out the gallery walls of the outhouse.
Dan had some court business with his ex-wife and then we went back to drawing.
Jack’s drawing has been transformed in the past six months, since he fell in love with drawing from life. His summer arts camp helped him develop the most amazing ability to concentrate. While Dan would dash off a drawing in minutes, Jack could sit in full meditation for an hour, until he was forced to abandon his drawing midway and come with the annoying grownups. Here’s a bunch of the drawings he made on our trip.
I’m admittedly biased, but I think he’s scary good.
Dan spent years living in a teepee like this, back when dinosaurs roamed Joseph.
One of the wonderful thing about hanging out with a bunch of fellow artists, is the opportunity to compare visions. Here for example are the ways we all approached a bunch of old tractors we found in Enterprise, OR.
Personally, if I had to spend more than a couple of days in a small town like Joseph, I would blow my brains our from boredom. However, there are endless lovely things to draw there, as there are in every corner of the world.
A tornado whacked this barn a while back. Rather than fix it, the owners are waiting for Ron Paul.
One of our projects in Oregon was to help d.price to set up an online version of his ‘zine, Moonlight Chronicles. The first few pages are up and I urge you to visit his new site regularly for updates. He will continue to publish on paper but is scaling back to minimize the environmental impact of tree killing. If you like his work as much as I do, consider buying some back issues (or even the first 50 in a lovely hand-painted box).
Our drawings of an old train were constantly interrupted by the fact that the crew moved it up and down the rails.
So instead, I put some coins on the rail and the train squished them flat:
At week’s end, we drove back across Oregon. It was a super trip — one we plan to make a regular summer tradition.
I guess normal men do this sort of thing regularly, except they go fishing or hunting or play golf. We weirdoes prefer to just sit around, pen in hand, seizing the moment.
P.S. For this and probably future posts, I shall be putting my images on flicker where you can see them larger (just click on the blog image you like and it will take you to the flickr page). I have also posted a couple of hundred other pictures up there from our trip.
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An Illustrated Life Podcast 006: Rama Hughes
This week’s podcast is an interview with LA illustrator and teacher Rama Hughes.
Rama’s work is clear and confident and his ability to capture likeness is unnerving. A long time sketchbooks keeper, he has a lot of interesting things to say about incorporating art into your every day life — he and his wife Christine seem to be endlessly creative and just sit around with their friends making things while the rest of us are at McDonald’s or watching the American Idol semifinals. I urge you to listen to this interview carefully and be inspired.
I also urge you to join Rama’s Portrait Party. My family has been drawing each other for the party (I’ll post some pictures soon).
I am very happy that Rama will be represented in my upcoming book, An Illustrated Life: drawing inspiration from the private sketchbooks of artists, illustrators and designers due out in October from HOW books ( though you can pre-order it today).
The whole episode is 47 minutes long; it’s perfect to listen to as you draw in your own journal.
Please stay tuned and consider subscribing via RSS or iTunes* to this weekly feature until the book comes out this Fall.
See all previous episodes on my podcast home page.
Having a problem playing the podcasts? Make sure you have installed Quicktime! You can get if free by clicking this link.
Oh, and here are some pictures from the Gregory family Portrait party: (I drew Patti who drew Jack who drew me….etc.) and Roz just joined the party too. Check it out!
Meeting art
I have just arrived at the last page of my office sketchbook, the one I carry to meetings and use to write down my ‘ideas’. Flipping through this most recent volume, I came across lots of little drawings. They are generally utilitarian things, designed to record a thought or to communicate it to someone else. It’s funny, looking back through the scrawled pages, how mysterious these drawings seem now, out of context and stripped of their original purpose. Roll over the “notes” to see my annotaions of each important piece of artwork. Or should it be “Work Art”?
Update
I have not been posting. But I have been drawing. I began a new larger (8.5″ x 11.5″) book and committed to only drawing in black and white. Because of the size of the book, I keep it at home and work on drawings from pictures I have found or taken.
School for Evil – exploratory
Toward the end of Fall semester of my sophomore year, I found a small reading room deep within the bowels of my college library. It was called “The Somebody or Other Memorial Hunting and Fishing Library” and was almost always unoccupied. Its walls were lined with glass cases of leather bound editions of Izak Walton on angling and assorted dusty memoirs of African safaris and was furnished with a few oak table and soft-bottomed leather wing chairs It was a hidden treasure, my very own study, and the perfect place to while away the winter evenings. Like much of the school, the Hunting and Fishing library was criminally overheated and, after a day of lectures and an evening of French irregular verbs, I would often nod out against the comfortable soap-oiled embrace of the armchair.
One afternoon I awoke from a sweaty dream to discover that my sanctum sanctorum had been invaded; several other students had crept in while I was dozing. Embarrassed at being discovered in oblivion with my head thrown back and my mouth open and drooling, I pretended to have been lost in thought not the arms of Morpheus, grabbed my notebook and began to write the first thing that came to my pen.
This proved to be a story called “Under the Awning,” a funnyish and appropriately surreal tale of a man and a girl sheltering from the rain. Ten or so pages tumbled out of me in a flash and was published, unedited in the school literary magazine. Rereading it now, I am surprised by the unfamiliar voice of my deep unconscious and the carefree turns of phrase and plot it took.
Early this June, while walking up Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, an idea whacked my brain with the same sort of thunder bolt immediacy. It was a title of a novel, The School for Evil” and the essential elements of its plot. The whole thing struck me as from the clear blue — I haven’t written much fiction since I was in my twenties and the the idea was so developed already that I decided to pursue it. Over the next nine weeks or so, I wrote a couple of drafts of this 200 page novel, polishing it off by Labor Day.
Part of the idea was to write short chapters — fifty of them in all — and to illustrate each one with an ink painting. I drew the first ten or so and showed them to some friends. At the time, I thought the book was for children, probably ones a little younger than Jack, and wanted it to be a little shocking, a little brutal (think Edward Gorey, Lemony Snickety, Roald Dahl), and as funny and absurd as I could make it. I showed the drawings around to friends and the first ones were judged to be a bit scary — some people thought that was a fine thing, others felt they were too edgy for pre-teens. I took a second pass at the drawings and this time made them cartoony and a bit silly. I went on to make a couple dozen in this style.
While I rather doubt the book will ever be published, the process was very interesting and informative. Working from my imagination rather than just my experience was a refreshing change; writing fiction and then drawing made-up scenes was so far from the documentary journaling and non-fiction work I usually do and it opened new hidden doors in my head.
Portraits
I’ve been working on this series for a while, all in one book. They are in watercolor, pen, brush and sumi-ink. They are all drawn upside down.
I made a couple of little time-lapse films of how I drew and painted some of these portraits.
Click To Play
Amsterdam Journal
Here are some pages from the tiny journal I kept recently in Amsterdam. (Click on any thumbnail to open the gallery)
How to draw a How cover
How 
esign Ideas at Work is a great magazine, primarily for graphic designers and art directors. It has a lot of practical advice as well as coverage of the leading edges of design, advertising, and art. Recently, I was asked to write an long (8-page) article about how drawing and journal keeping can feed one’s creativity. It was a topic I’d long wanted to address to the professional image-making community because so many of those folks have lost their touch with drawing, though it was probably the very thing that got them into their chosen field at the get-go.
I am pretty happy with the article and was delighted when the senior art director for the magazine also asked me to draw the cover for the issue, a special one dedicated to Illustration. How has a fairly strict format for the cover, one that revolves around their enormous logo, so I did a design that integrated the three letters into my idea. Because illustration is a personal medium, I liked the idea of putting a thumbprint on the cover, maybe the thumb of an artist sighting his subject. I did a quick sketch of myself in that pose, colored it on my computer, and fired it off to her.
Unfortunately, the magazine’s staff felt that the image was confusing. Some didn’t like the fact that the fist might interfere with the coverlines (the titles of the articles inside). Then some others thought it was a person giving a thumbs up, rather than sighting.
Back to the drawing board. The art director suggested I just draw a hand drawing the logo filled with clouds with some art supplies scattered around. I resisted this idea and instead thought I could make a little design out of pens and stuff. I cobbled together a collage from drawings I’d already done to convey the idea.
My client didn’t like this design much because it doesn’t play up the logo enough and was a two 2-dimensional. Instead she brought up the idea they’d proposed earlier: filling the logo with sky and having a hand drawing it. I gave that a try but thought the hand looked so lonely. Instead I sketched in the artist’s head and torso too. I did another self portrait but shaved off my beard in case that was a turn-off.
The email arrived the next morning:
There are still a few hang-ups. Something about the person coming from the back of the logo is off-putting. The focus needs to be on drawing not on the person doing the drawing. The viewer needs to be in the place of the artist.
I’d like you to draw the cover as if it were a page in your sketchbook where you drew the act of drawing the cover. Forget the hands. Just draw the set up since you’re so good with everyday objects. Leave the middle just a wash background or blank so the focus is totally on the logo. I’ll attach my thumbnail. That may help.
Yesterday I started again, following the art director’s sketch. Just to put a little bit of myself into it, I added her sketch as part of the assignment, lying on the table where I drew from it.
I sent the final image to her last night but don’t expect to her about it till Monday. We’ll see. It was an interesting experience; I may have been stupid to have resisted the idea she clearly wanted me to execute and insisting on other interpretations. It’s a hard lesson to learn for a stubborn know-it-all, but I am trying.
Dibujo en Mexico*
We are back after an all too brief trip to Mexico. It’s a country that I have always liked so much but never spent time in before. I would love to do a long cross country sketchcrawl sometime. 
We stayed in Puerto Vallarta which is a touristy place with a huge Walmart and we spent a fair amount of our vacation sunbathing and reading trashy novels and eating from buffets and avoiding the horrors of New York in December and the transit strike.
I spent a grim evening at the bullfights watching four innocent creatures being tortured to death in front of several hundred tourists fresh off the big cruise ships., I went in the spirit of seeking out new adventures when possible but left feeling nauseated and vegetarian.
From a drawing perspective, this trip certainly didn’t have the immersive qualities of trips I’ve taken to Rome or Jerusalem or Paris. However I think that even a daytrip to Dayton is made richer by drawing and writing about one’s travels and so I thought I’d set down some things I’ve discovered about travel journaling:
I like to travel fairly light. I carry a smallish shoulder bag with my journal, pens, watercolors. I like NiJi waterbrushes because you can load them with water in the morning and they will carry you through the whole day without needing to carry water jars that could spill. I recommend some sort of folding stool. You can buy them light and inexpensively at camping stores and they let you set up where you want to without having to worry about being in the way or finding an empty bench.
Be prepared but not overly so. Make sure you have enough of your favorite pens but if you pass a local art supply store, always check it out. You may make some wonderful new discoveries. Don’t shlep more than would be comfortable. Improvise. I sometimes rub local soil and leaves onto my drawings for color. I’ve used pasta sauce as paint in Tuscany.
Don’t just draw postcards. It’s fine to sketch monuments and tourist spots but also try to capture local color and everyday life. Draw your meals, travel on public transportation, use art to immerse yourself in a different way of life.
Be bold. I’ve great characters in Roman catacombs, Death Valley bordellos, San Franciscan homeless shelters, and Yorkshire flea markets, all through drawing. Talk to people and don;t be embarrassed to show your work. Most people are impressed that you are even doing it and won’t judge your art as harshly as you do.
Let your art be your tour guide. Every minute you’re lying in your hotel bed could be spent drawing. The more pages you fill, the richer your memories will be. I still remember the sights and sounds of street corners from years ago just because I spent twenty minutes drawing somewhere. The memories are so much more intense than if I’d just been seeing the sights through a tour bus window.
Jot down notes as you draw, not just recording the where and when but conversations you overhear, thoughts and associations you make, smells and sounds specific to the place. Show how travel broadens your mind.
—–
*Translated by Google. Apologies if it’s garbled.
Romin’
Yesterday I managed to throw down a quick drawing at the Trevi fountain before becoming overwhelmed by sun and jetlag. This morning, chipper and well-rested, I packed up my gear to head over to the Vatican. A block from my hotel, I stepped off the too-high curb and crumpled to the ground as tendons thwanged unnaturally in my ankle. Fortunately I had the self-control to get up, hobble back up the hill to the hotel and tell the desk clerk to send me up some ice.
My outer ankle had quickly developed a lump the size of a Mallomar but after three hours in bed, pack on, hoof on pillow pile (RICE- rest, ice, compression, elevation) the patient is still pink and healthy looking and my toes waggle freely so amputation can probably be postponed. I am going to be here for a couple of more weeks so I think I’ll curb my lust for the Sistine Chapel and take it easy.
Was it the Pope, cursing me? Michelangelo pegging me for an interloper? A frustrated cobble-stone-layer who, wishing he too could be watercoloring of a Monday, decided to thwart brush wielding tourists of the future?
The irony: I was crossing the road (or trying to) to check out a place that rents Vespas. Maybe it was just as well I took my spill in my sandals, rather than scraping off several layers of skin and a handful of teeth while zooming around the Coliseum on a two stroke bike. 
I have constrained my drawing to my hotel’s neighborhood which in Rome
is not much of a liability. One could spend the rest of one’s life
drawing this city — the architecture is so rich and organic, the light
is wonderful, the juxtapositions are endlessly diverse. I did this
first piece during an exorbitant pasta lunch (more than $50 for a handful of
pasta and a cappuccino) at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant. Slumped low,
my hoof propped up on another chair, I strained to see the view over
the parapet.
A few blocks away on the Via Veneto, I discovered this marvelous
church. Beneath is a wonderfully macabre series of crypts, room after
room of Benedictine monks’ dismembered skeletons arranged into
sculptures and decorations — piles of skulls, chandeliers made of
tailbones, shoulder blade rosettes and baldacchinos made of pelvises.
Long lines of teenaged American girls file in and out, squealing “Ew,
gross!” and “Creeeeepy!”. I found it quite beautiful and touching, so
many 17th century bones committed to remind one of the temporary nature
of life on this planet, “As you were so once was I ; as I am so shall
you be.”
It was impossible to draw down there among the crowds so I retired to
the Church of the Immaculate above and drew its back room as the light
slowly faded and my watercolor box disappeared into the gloom. At one
point, a nut brown monk came over and wished me “Pace” but I was
already suffused with peace.
On the Piazza Barberini, I started to draw an old cinema surrounded by
lovely crumbling facades when a big white panel van pulled right up in
front of me and blocked my view. Instead I worked on another building,
listening with one ear to two slurring Englishwomen at the next table
who were drinking huge vasefuls of lager and snapping pix of each other
and emailing them to pals back home. Eventually my friends, the Pratts,
came and joined me and I laid down my pen.
Annie Pratt is a believer in homeopathic medicine and prescribed some
Arnica to me. The next morning my ankle was a lot less swollen and,
after various meetings on casting and production, we headed off to
visit the Colosseum and the rest of ruined Rome. It was blazing hot and
crowded and I couldn’t bring myself to tackle drawings of the broken
columns. En route, my pocket was picked on the subway; the bastards
made off with about $100. Sprained ankle, thieving gypsies, John
Roberts … I wonder what sort of bad luck I’ll face today.
I’m not the tourist type. My neighborhood in New York is always
overrun by people wearing comfortable clothes and cameras clutching
guide books and asking “Scusi, where Greenwich Village?” I am always gracious but wish they would walk a little faster and get a clue.
But in Rome, do as the Romanians do. Get a guide book, a map, and start
blundering around town. Nonetheless, despite my backpack, my folding
stool, my sandals, and my sweaty, parched ways, I try to pretend not to
be desperately foreign. Of course, I fail. Waiters address me in
English, vendors hawk after me with postcards and foot high replicas of
David
My self-loathing came to an end in Vatican City. When I lined up with
the rest of the unwashed and finally reached the portal of St.Peter’s,
I was so overcome by the beauty and splendor of the place that I just
let go and gawked. Wow. The plundered marble and bronze of the Coliseum
is mind-bpoggling lavish.. And then, waiting until the end of the day
to avoid the lines, I swept through the Vatican Museum to the Sistine
Chapel, discovering amazing things I’d never known along the way. The
map room, hundreds of yards long and encrusted with thousands of
perfect paintings worked into the walls and ceilings, the Raphael
frescoes (how could the Pope manage the hubris to command such geniuses
to paint his apartment floor to ceiling, wall after wall? Here he is a
single guy with the most ornate, Baroque pad in the universe.. How did
he sleep in there at night? It’s awesome), and then finally the
Sistine. I have read books about it, seen endless reproductions and
thought I grasped Michelangelo’s accomplishment. But to be confronted
by so much epic scenery, so many perfect, enormous bodies…; whether he painted it alone or with a crew, it’s an incredible, deeply moving feat.
I gush. I can’t help it. Despite my cynicism and my discomfort with the
Papacy’s greed, I may have to go again. My name is Danny and I’m a
tourist (don’t tell my boss — I am here working after all).
Two Roman drawings that took a while. The first about an hour, the
second, close to it,
I was moved by police three times during the first which screwed up my
sight lines a bit. The second I’m less happy with, too many stylized
people, less observed, more illustrative, too much blue underpainting,
but, whatever, it was fun to do.
Rome is just insanely great to draw because of all the details and textures and juxtapositions. Work is
done for the week — I can’t wait to spend my weekend out on my stool.
This wonderful building is on the corner of my block. It sits on top of its own little hill, surrounded by gardens. I pass it most days and finally took the time, on two separate occasions, to study it in detail. 
This city is so full of surprises. Turn a corner and a wonderful composition or juxtaposition will just jump out. This one suddenly appeared between the trees as I was hiking out to eat dinner; branches parted like a curtain to reveal this vista backed by the setting sun.
Another view that popped out; this one seen from above from a hill. These little temples must have been restored in the Roman fashion; the little tubby demons are so sweet.
The Borghese Gardens have a giant air ballon in the style of the Gondolfier Brothers. It rises silently in the air for fifteen minute trips from which one can see the whole city. Nothing in Rome is more than six stories so the big landmarks pop out across the landscape. I have now been here long enough to identify the Vatican, the Victor Emanuel Monument, the various piazzas, the Coliseum, etc.
A little bit of color, exaggerated, as it was painted in the failing light of an ending day.
I’m finally getting the hang of tires. Wheels have always confounded me when I draw cars and stuff but as I say, in Europe, I’m finally getting the hang of tyres. 
Notice the small brown mini dots on this drawing? That’s because when I start doing and drawing of something so complicated or big or whatever that I get nervous, I take a few measurements with an outstretched arm and a pen and then make little marks to indicate where things fall.
Despite all that, this drawing, made as people were rushing to work at 9 am and I had to get my ass moving for a 10 o’clock meeting, is lopsided and misisng all sorts of bits that didn’t end up fitting on the page.
Another drawing done in decline, lopsided, colored like a coloring book and full of cheats to fit stuff in. When I slow my ass way way down, I can draw things like that Vespa up above. When I rush and people hang over my shoulder and I’m roasting in the sun, Things get bleak. I know that about myself and yet I keep doing it. Sometime I can save a drawing afterwards with loads of crosshatching but it’s a lost cause, a charade, not in the moment. But, then, later in the afternoon, during the wardrobe fitting, waiting for our actors to change, I drew the Vespa which I’m pretty happy with, particularly the tyres. So even when the knack hides, it resurfaces. So shut up and do another drawing.
Chicago on four hours’ sleep
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- Watercolor and brown sepia marker
I am posting this from my room in Rome, still fairly jetlagged but eager to get out there tomorrow and start drawing. Meanwhile, here are some journal pages from the last few days while I was shooting in Chicago, specifically at an 80-year old institution called the Aragon ballroom.
Most of our days lasted more than 16 hours and we wrapped at 3 am; the effects are visible in my drawings which are actually quite nice and loose though manically, Tom Kanesian in their crosshatched detail.
My colors are a little bolder than usual — I should probably continue to paint in the gloom.
I drew entirely in Sepia ink and watercolors, and many of these entries were doing in semi darkness and while severely sleep deprived. My marginal comments seem even more crabby and distracted than usual.
The Drawminator
What goes on when three grizzled illustrated superjournalistas go on an innocent drawing trip? A Clash of the Titans that transforms the art world (kinda). Enjoy the dramatic first installment of “The Drawminator”. Click on thumbnails for successive page.
Assignment of the day
It’s hot as a bastard and we are all recovering from four performances of Annie Get Your Gun in three days. I have spent the past two mornings in the air-conditioned apartment working on an assignment for The Morning News which is about to launch its year long redesign. Rosecrans, my editor, asked me to draw three illustrations to work as launch-pads for the serialized books that appear on the site every couple of weeks.
I had already done a couple of different icons for Peanut:
This one is meant to look like a sonogram of a peanut. It’s okay though a little gimmicky.
Then I came up with this one based on a photo of an embryo, sort of 2001-ish but not really uniquely mine.
I decided to start from scratch with more conventional ink and watercolor drawings, each about 4-5 inches square. I painted this fairly scary drawing; still it’s somehow cute in a plucked chick kind of way and I like it.
For The letters of Gary Benchley, Rock Star, I bypassed my initial thought of painting some instruments ( I have recently done three different illustration jobs requiring sketches of guitars) and decided to try to capture some rock’n'roll energy. I did this drawing fairly quickly and I like it too.
I struggled most with The Education of Elisabeth Eckleman. It seemed that every story had Elisabeth in tears at some point so I decided to tackle it this way. I was a little worried that I had been overly influenced by fantasies of Molly Ringwold and was listening to too much of the new 9 Inch Nails album and Elisabeth isn’t quite in that nexus.
I fired off an email to Sarah Hepola, Elisabeth’s creator, who wrote: “She’s a cute 18 year old girl — brown shoulder-length hair that’s a bit curly/frizzy (she likes to straighten it out), a little girlish pudge in her cheeks. Blue eyes. She’s from a small town, so she doesn’t have that natural college girl look yet — she wears a lot of makeup, probably earrings. she probably wears a lot of tank tops and shorts.”
I’m no expert on the nuances of 18-year-old girls anymore and I was a little tense as I went back to the drawing board.
This was my second and final effort. It has personality and particularity more than the first but tells less of a story and has a little too much Walter Keane in it
I’ll let Rosecrans pick.
Like father, like son
A few days ago, this drawing arrived from my stepmother, Sue. It was drawn by my father when I was about three, around the time my parents were divorced.
Many of these objects are things of my mum’s. I think she still has the copper ashtray on the lower left. Sue pointed out how similar this piece is to much of the work I have been doing and I must agree. I never really thought of him doing illustrated journaling but clearly he did.
Keir lives in Leicestershire, near Nottingham (that’s in England, folks). His three daughters (my half sisters) are all grown and he seems to spend most his time drawing daily self portraits or writing software for his own amusement. I’ve only seen my father a half dozen times since the divorce and we correspond very intermittently. I have a few of his sketchbooks from the early 1960s and I have always loved them.
Between Jack’s painting and this newly arrived drawing from Keir, I must say I am thinking quite a lot about heredity these days.
Here is some more of Keir’s work circa 1964 (he never shows his work so I hope, on the off-chance that he stumbles across this web page, that he doesn’t take offense to this little tribute exhibition). Some of it is pretty angry and hard core so please don’t yap about the language or the macabre-ness:
A Writer’s Paris
Dr. Eric Maisel is a psychotherapist who works exclusively with artists and has written many terrific books like The Creativity Book, Staying Sane in the Arts, Fearless Creating, Deep Writing, A Life in the Arts and other inspiring guides on the creative mind and process. Recently, Eric invited me to illustrate his new book, A Writer’s Paris, which will be published in a year or so.
On Wednesday afternoon, Patti and I will be skipping turkey and heading across the Atlantic; over the next four days, I’ll make as much progress as possible on the 30 full-page illustrations I’ve promised Eric for his book. I’ll be working in black, using a pen and ink wash.
The sketch crawl will be good preparation. I’m going from the 10K of the Met to the marathon of the sketchcrawl to the Iron Man triathlon of Paris. I’ll be dealing with possible snow flurries, temperatures in the 40s and jet lag but it will be a great adventure.
We had a terrific visit to Paris over Thanksgiving. We arrived (via Frankfurt) on Thursday morning and spent the day in a bit of a jet-lagged fog (I can’t sleep on planes) but did quite a lot of drawing. We had Thanksgiving dinner of escargots, foie gras, biftek, and lashings of bordeaux at a bistro in the Latin Quarter.
We started Friday at the Musée D’Orsay. I’ve only been there briefly before but this time we made a bee-line for the Van Goghs and Gaugins and then I spent an hour drawing the beautiful old clock in the main room. A wonderful museum.
I had a check list of more than thirty things to draw and, by Sunday morning, Patti had checked off about 80% of them. I had taken reference photos of the remaining subjects and will finish the project at home.
We were very lucky with the weather. One day of blue skies, two overcast, and the first raindrops fell on our cab’s windscreen as we got in to travel to the airport. The mercury hovered in the mid 40s most of the time so it was quite comfortable sitting outside most of the time. We would duck into cafés or shops for periodic refreshment.
This sort of three-day drawing trip has a lot to recommend it. We were on the go all day, saw every corner of the City, really studied the sights, and came home with a wonderful souvenir without spending much money. Though the dollar is weak, you can do a trip like this for just over a thousand bucks per person and you will remember it forever.
I drew on heavy bond either with a Rapidoliner (.25 and .50) or an Art (fountain) Pen . I then pulled out a Niji waterbrush loaded with black Dr. Martin’s transparent water colors . I colored in the darkest bits and then, while the color was still wet, I used a Niji filled with clean water to slosh things around, mixing various shades of grey right on the page or on the knee of my jeans or on the nearest surface (park bench, Rodin sculpture, whatever) using the clean brush to dilute it and then my Welsh pub towel to clean things up.
When I got home, I made photocopies of the drawings and FedExed the originals. The images I’ve posted are scans of the copies.
My aim, and I think I fell far short of it, was to emulate Ronald Searle’s 1950 Paris Sketchbook.
This book is now available on Amazon
Sketchcrawl survivor
Tom Kane and I met up just after 8 am at the L train station and traveled into WiIliamsburg, Brooklyn. The day was cold and intermittently rainy but we were fairly well provisioned though Tom was much impressed by my folding stool (too bad I didn’t bring it to the Met last weekend) and vowed to get his own.
We spend most of the day in industrialized parts of the neighborhood and occasionally ducked into coffee shops or bars to shelter from the elements and fortify ourselves. I decided to work just in black and white and to intensify my cross-hatching. Tom is a master of detailed shading and I followed his lead.
All in all, it was a very satisfying experience, though utterly depleting. We were both completely wiped out after nine hours of drawing outdoors and felt old and stiff from the wet ground and the grey skies. Can’t wait to try it again, hopefully in warmer weather.
***
Tom Kane just sent me his lovely drawings from our odyssey. As you can see, he fills every inch of the page and is a committed cross hatcher (R.Crumb said, ” drawing is just an excuse to crosshatch”). He draws with a fairly ordinary roller ball pen and his work has a lot of energy and life and humor. I like the way he vignettes his drawings like old photos. A very talented fellow, old Tom.
Like ‘em? Tell Tom.
Death Row Diaries
My favorite online magazine, the Morning News, ran some of my Death Row drawings today. They’re as grim as watercolors get. Check it.
And there’s more here.
Fishing in Manhattan
It’s late and I’m exhausted from a long day which culminated in something a little tedious but exciting: revising a new piece I’ve done for the Op-Ed page of the NY Times. It’ll run this Sunday.
Pony girls
WARNING: These drawings contain sexual content. Oooh. Yeah, baby.
A few months ago, I went to Berlin and my illustrated journal from that trip is in the July/August issue of Print magazine. It was about Venus, the European sex trade show.
Now calm down, folks, I did say the S word but let’s not get overly excited. Take that twitching finger away from the ‘comments’ button and let me continue. The piece I did is, I must say quite a nice example of my watercoloring and of my calligraphy, but it is also, how shall I put it — horribly and shockingly vulgar. Although I count Sara Midda and Ernest H. Shepherd among my influences, I am also a big fan of R.Crumb and Tomi Ungerer and, as an anatomically correct adult male, I have, in my day, looked at nekkid women and not just in life-drawing class. So my piece, which as I said is really rather well drawn and contains some pretty damned funny writing, also contains references to Crisco, to bondage, to underwater fellatio, and to the demise of Eastern European raincoat manufacturing.
So, consider yourself well forewarned and don’t flame me with all sorts of huffy emails and posts. In fact, this issue of Print contains a plain brown belly band that reads “Graphic content” (it’s “America’s Graphic Design magazine”, get it? Graphic content? Heh, heh. Oh, never mind.). If I could wrap a such a belly band around this page and maybe even my skull, I’d do it too.
Alright, enough apologies and caveats. I urge you to go and buy the magazine from your newsstand because it’s full of all sorts of great articles but meantime here’s a preview of the four pages I drew.
Offended? You’re not alone.
Jerusalem Journal
I have just returned from a few days in Jerusalem.
Before you read my journal and are moved to write all sorts of inflamed comments, bear in mind that my POV is very subjective and distorted by the 70+ years my mother’s family has spend in Israel and the on and off relationship I have had with that tortured little patch of sand.
I have come here pretty reluctantly, cajoled by mother who comes twice a year to check on my grandfather. My last visit was twelve years ago, to attend my grandmother’s funeral. I remember the gentle nudge of her ankle against my hand, its dead weight through her shroud as I bore her pall. Then we slid her body into a dusty hole on a hillside, planting her like the flowers she loved. I’ve not had much appetite to return but my mum has been increasingly insistent.
I have never liked this country much. I abhor its politics, its arrogance and its disproportionate impact on the global community. But my maternal ancestors were German and Polish jews, most of whom settled in this desert in the 1930s. The rest settled into the crematoria of Eastern Europe.
Only my grandparents took a different course: first studying medicine in Mussolini’s Rome, then fleeing to British India to purse my grandfather’s second cousin who owed him money. The cousin turned up in Africa a decade later, soon after my grandparents, mother and uncle were released from an internment camp on the Kashmiri border where they had spent seven years with other enemies of the Raj, communists, Nazi sympathizers and German nationals like themselves. Undeterred by the irony of being imprisoned by the enemies of their enemies, my grandparents set up a practice in India, then Pakistan, where they remained for thirty five years. When war broke out in the early 70s they joined us in Israel where war broke out again and we left for the USA.
My grandparents remained in Jerusalem, forced to fend without their accustomed servants, cooks, and gardeners, and shrinking with age.
Although I have been to Jerusalem many times as a child, a teenager and as a young adult, I’ve never been a tourist here. I also promised Patti that I would not take busses, which she is convinced are all rolling terrorist targets.
I wear my back pack; it is filled with my Grumbacher watercolors, a box of pens, my trusty Rapidoliner and a new journal, an Arches travel journal, 6×9.5″ of 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper. I pick up scraps along the way to collage onto the covers of my book: cigarette packs, receipts, newspapers, maps, and other ephemera.
The tension in the air is unusual. The stalls along the covered streets of the Old City have been selling clobber (all of which my cynical grandfather claims is made in China these days) to pilgrims and tourists for millennia. Obviously they want to keep the atmosphere calm and inviting to maintain their livelihood. But recently principle has out weighed commerce and the Intifada had sealed the shops for long stretches. I have never felt such desperation from the shopkeepers hunkered down amidst their dusty inventory, or felt such a sense of menace in the less populated turns of the labyrinthine quarter.
I grew tired of the scratchiness of my .25 Rapidoliner nib on the bumpy cold-pressed paper of my journal and took refuge behind my Faber-Castell PITT brush pen. The results are not very pleasing, but foolish consistency is, after all, the hobgoblin of small minds.
We always ate simple fresh food in Israel: vegetables straight off the vine, yogurt, fresh bread, very little meat. Now for the first time, I noticed lots of fast food, pre-packaged meals, and fat Israelis. Probably another decree by the endomorphic Sharon.
The new wall detours traffic and inconveniences everyone in Israel, forcing people to line up at endless checkpoints. Some say it is temporary (it is very tall, cement, and looks like the Berlin Wall which lasted thirty odd years) and others say it is just the new border (though it bifurcates towns and carves bits of them into landlocked islands).
I walked down to Abu Tor, an Arab town I’ve been to many times, and it felt sullen and dangerous, like an ancient family pet turned senile. The wall was still being built, another of Jerusalem’s endless construction sites. The parts I saw didn’t bear any graffiti so far, as if the wall’s sheer presence eliminates the need to say any more.
It makes me feel bad for everyone in Israel — right, left, Arab and Jew — that things have finally come to this.
It’s tragic that things have come to this. Sequestering the problems of Israel/Palestine behind fences. The Jews are penned between the fence and the deep blue sea; the Arabs between the fence and the River Jordan. It’s a “Go to your room” sort of solution. No lessons learned, no compromises strived for, just lock down and shut up. They don’t eat pork here and yet both parties can be quite pig-headed.
Meanwhile, we are eating a peaceful lunch in this garden restaurant on the road to Bethlehem: yogurt soup, eggplants and dumplings. There is no fence between my appetite and me.
Thanks to my mother’s generosity with her sleeping pills, I have not been a slave to jet lag on this trip. My grandfather tends to go to bed at about 7:30 pm and we tend to follow his example before 10.
Soon after I dropped off on my last night here, the phone rang (an ancient phone that has been repurposed into a wall unit; its bell is unbelievably loud to pierce the old fellow’s deafness): Patti calling from New York, fully expecting us to still be up and galavanting. I remained awake after that until almost 2:30 am.
Perhaps they’d read my journal. Or maybe my grandfather was right and my tan made me look Palestinian. When I got to the airport, the first security guy grilled me for what seemed like ten minutes (What were you doing in Israel? Do you speak Hebrew? Why? When did you live here? How many children do you have? Do they speak Hebrew?) Somehow my answers fell short for he put a yellow sticker on each of my bags and on the back of my passport. My bags went through an enormous X-ray machine and emerged with more questions attached. Several earnest young Israelis clustered about me: When did you live in Israel? What was your address? What was the name of the school you attended (miraculously it came to me: Brenner)? Why didn’t you get an Israeli passport when you lived here (slowly the whole of my peripatetic autobiography unspooled and I was forced to explain my mother’s motivation for taking us globe trotting through out our pre-pubescence)? Is your son learning Hebrew? Why not? Why haven’t you been there since your grandmother’s funeral twelve years ago? Why don’t you visit your grandfather more often…
Then they unpacked my bag and scanned all my dirty laundry for bombs and weapons, unwrapped all my gifts, even wiped down my passport to see if it had come into contact with explosives. I was questioned by six new people (the oldest was maybe 24), then emptied my pockets, extracted my fillings, unscrewed my false leg and went through a metal detector. The man running it checked every inch of my J.Crew belt to see if anything had been buried in its leather.
When I was finally released, my yellow stickers stopped me at every junction. I noticed two Levantine looking boys and they had red stickers on their bags. (Red!) In the gift shop, the duty free, the coffee shop, I was convinced that various undercover people were following and monitoring me.
Finally on the American plane (strike one) flying out of Tel Aviv (strike two) to New York (etc.), I felt safe.
Jerusalem Journal – Sidebar discussion
From: Diane
To: Danny
Hi Danny
I know you don’t want inflamed responses to your harsh take on Israel, but I just can’t help myself. Your dismissive comments cut me to the heart. If someone you admired said they thought your son was ugly and stupid would you just shrug and say “OK, everyone has an opinion.” I don’t think so – when someone or something we love is criticized we feel hurt. When you say you don’t like Israel and you abhor its politics, my hackles rise all by themselves. First of all, which politics are you talking about? No other country in the world has such a broad spectrum and Governments of Israel have encompassed everything from the far Left to the far Right – and you didn’t like ANY of them?
Nobody says Israel is perfect – least of all me. But why is Israel always the only country singled out for criticism when far worse things are going on in 100 other countries and no-one says a word? Here is a tiny country struggling to build a life after the Holocaust, achieving more every year than many other
countries have in 50, struggling against a continuous threat of annihilation by its neighbours, but the knee-jerk reaction is criticism. Where in the world would you find democracy in practice the way you do in Israel?
I also take issue with your comments on “world-weariness”. I have never seen another group of people who read and study and play with as much energy as Israelis do. Perhaps it’s because they live on the edge of annihilation but I have always felt that they live every day as though it might be their last – engaged, interested and alive. “World-weary”? I think not.
Anyway, I’m glad I got all that off my chest, even if you disagree with me. I think I was surprised by your lack of compassion, considering that the circumstances of your life have forced you to re-evaluate everything you see. I hope your attitudes towards Israel will be one of the things you reconsider. Israel is a little bit in the same situation you are – it’s a hard piece of land in a hostile environment but rather than curl up and feel sorry for themselves, Israelis have gone out and achieved something pretty amazing. OK, maybe that’s a crappy metaphor but I’m sure you know what I mean.
Be well, and Shalom
Diane
——
From: Danny
To: Diane
Sorry to disappoint you, Diane.
I think one of the things that irks me the most about Israel is how
enormously polarizing it is and how intolerant its supporters are of
any negative comments about it. I don’t think you give yourself,
Israel, or me much credit by being so doctrinaire in your approach or
by personalizing the politics as you do. It’s precisely that sort of
‘my way or the highway’ attitude that has caused the situation in the
region to reach such a standstill.
Secondly, my reactions are not “knee-jerk” but the results of having
lived in Israel for years, having lots of friends and family from
there, reading the newspaper everyday, and being a student of politics,
history and religion. I graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Near
Eastern politics from Princeton University. I was a kibutznik, an Oleh
Chadash, did my time in the Noar Ha’Oved movement, and have cousins
and friends who have died in the Israeli Army. When I was twelve, my
bus stop was blown up by a bomb as we approached it at the end of the
school day. During my recent visit to Jerusalem, I spoke to Israelis
of many stripes and persuasions, to Christian Arabs, and to
Palestinians, and kept my eyes and ears pretty open. My personal
journal is the result of what I saw and felt at the time. Perhaps my
mistake was in sharing it so openly with people who would are so hasty
in judging my integrity.
And so, if I may have a turn at taking issue, I would do so with your
leaping to conclusions about my “lack of compassion” after two
installments of what is a long series of journal entries created on the
spot and in the thick of things.
And, finally, if you see Israel as purely “a tiny country struggling to
build a life after the Holocaust, achieving more every year than many
other countries have in 50,” I suggest you go over to Abu Tor or
Nazareth or Bethlehem and spend a little time behind the geder.
Some Palestinians are pathological murderers and must be stopped (if
you read the New Yorker two weeks ago, you know that some of the
Israeli settlers are equally homicidal and willing to send their
children to be suicide bombers too. I saw enough of them prowling
around the Holy City wearing side arms and walkie-talkies to be pretty
creeped out). However many others are suffering enormously because of
how the Israeli government has chosen to deal with the situation (the
parallels to the behavior of the Bush administration should at least
give you pause). The whole world knows that, as do many people in
Israel.
Israel is judged by a different standard precisely because of its past.
A people who have been oppressed for thousands of years look
particularly hypocritical when they kick down doors and bulldoze
houses. People who were forced to live in ghettoes are judged harshly
(by even themselves) when they start to build walls and divide
communities and families behind them. Circumstances not withstanding,
the world expects better of Israel.
I would like nothing more than for Israel to once again be a light unto
the nations. Currently, it is not.
As any Israeli will tell you these days, things are not black and white
there and the situation is enormously complex and frankly overwhelming
and depressing to all concerned. That is what makes people world-weary,
regardless of their energetic reading, studying and playing.
I assume that I will not have changed your mind with my words as you
did not change mine with yours. Like so many people in the world these
days, let us just agree to disagree.
I apologize if I am overly blunt. I am still quite jetlagged.
Danny
—–
From: Diane
To: Danny
Hi Danny
Thank you for your detailed response to my letter. I also follow Israeli life and politics very closely and read the newspapers daily. We also watch the Israeli network daily so we’re very aware of what’s going on. My husband is a Libyan Israeli whose family was essentially forced out of Benghazi 50 years ago. Much of our family lives in Israel. Coincidentally, at the moment we are helping to host a group of disabled Israeli soldiers from Beit Halochem who are visiting Toronto for two weeks for some R and R – an amazing experience.
You and I clearly have a completely different take on the situation – a typical Left and Right dichotomy. I truly do worry that Israel will not survive the Intifada and for me that is a terrifying thought. People that I have talked to and argued with who share your point of view don’t seem to care whether a Jewish state survives or not and they don’t see anything wrong with a country called Palestine that also happens to have some Jews living in it. I don’t know whether you subscribe to this point of view or not but, to me, Israel’s survival as a Jewish homeland is of huge importance. I was born and raised in South Africa and have experienced anti-Semitism and racism in its many ugly forms and I think I know what being Jewish without the existence of Israel would be like – and I fear for the future, for my children and their children.
Criticizing Israel is fine when it’s deserved, but it’s funny how the people who criticize the bad things very seldom mention the good. And those same people never seem to have anything to say about the Sudan, or Zimbabwe or the Congo or the hideous things going on in France and other “civilized” countries. Or the U.N., which is probably the most corrupt organization on the planet and spends most of its time vilifying Israel instead of cleaning up its own mess. What is needed is some constructive criticism – some ideas that could actually improve the situation. When I ask people “What would YOU do if you were running the Israeli Government?” I usually get nothing useful.
What would you do? Although I suppose that should be modified to: What would you do if it were important to you that the Jewish state survives?
Diane
——
From: Diane
To: Danny
Hi Danny, there are things in your email I’d like to respond to directly, so I’m going to insert my responses in your email.
Diane
I think your question is a legitimate one: should a Jewish state
survive?
First of all, what is a Jewish state? is it a state populated by Jews?
I think it should be a state where any Jew is welcome to live. It was a haven for Jews fleeing the Arab countries and Europe in the 30s, 40s and 50s and is now a haven for Jews fleeing places like France where anti-Semitism is making life unbearable (such as the little girl who this week in Paris was attacked by maniacs who cut a swastika into her cheek). It should be a country where Hebrew is an official language and the Jewish holidays are official holidays. Certainly, citizenship should also be extended to others but I can tell you I have a big problem with extending citizenship rights to those whose professed goal is to destroy Israel. The world is a large place and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that a tiny portion of it belong to Jews. Look how many countries you are welcome in if you are a Muslim or a Christian but if you are a Jew you may not even enter for a visit.
Or one guided by Jewish principles? I worry that much of Israel’s
behavior violates the spirit of Judaism and rather than inspiring
people spiritually makes Judaism increasingly seem like a tight -knit
club of which you are either born a member or else can go to hell.
I hear what you’re saying, but on the other hand, that is how the rest of world sees us – maybe a little less so in the US – but certainly everywhere else. Hitler certainly had his criteria for deciding who to murder. I’m not an observant Jew and as a woman I have a major problem with the way women are treated in our religion and in Israel, but I see this as a work in progress and not relevant to this discussion. Some things take time and work to combat and will not happen overnight. You cannot underestimate the legacy of the Holocaust on Jewish identity and the need to keep a distance from those who want to eradicate us from the planet. Self-preservation is a very strong drive.
Secondly, I think it is very important to combat anti-semitism, for the
Jews in Israel, for Jews in the Diaspora, and for the general ethical
health of the entire planet. I worry that Israel’s behavior exacerbates
rather than diminishes anti-Jewish sentiment. How can Jews around the
world support Israel while making it clear that the Knesset and the
settlers imperil Jews welfare worldwide? Perhaps non-Israelis jews
could collaborate to move things to the middle.
Which is why I got upset to read your remarks about Israel on a website that is probably read by hundreds of people who aren’t Jewish and don’t know your background. If YOU say “I don’t care for Israel and abhor her politics” I think that carries a lot of weight with people who know your work and admire you and think it’s OK to parrot you without understanding what it is they are rejecting. Most people in Canada get their information from The Toronto Star or the CBC which are blatantly anti-Israel and are very ignorant about why Israel does things. In their opinion, all Israelis are devils with horns whose sole interest in life is to kill innocent Palestinian babies. I belong to various anti-bias groups in an attempt to provide more balanced information but it’s an uphill battle.
Thirdly, Israel’s survival seems to be intimately tied to the Unites
States’ need to control the region and to maintain access to oil. The
Bush administration has taken this position to enormous extremes. As
American policy goes nuts, so it seems does Israel. Neither seek
diplomatic solutions but resort to increasing levels of force every
time. The White House has no interest in forming meaningful alliances
with others and nor does Israel.
OK, here is the heart of the matter. I have come to realize that there is no-one to talk to. I have read too much about the 3rd Jihad to think that the Moslim agenda is a benign one. Their ultimate motive is a very frightening one and the West ignores it at their peril. I can think of few things more horrible that a world where everyone is forced to adopt Islam, sharia and all. (Have you read Irshad Manji’s book?) On a more particular level, as long as Arafat lives and breathes, I can’t see any progress possible.
The possibility of alliances with
others in the region, with moderate Arab leaders, has become impossible…
Who are these moderate leaders?
…and so things get increasingly out of control.
Bush believes that any sort of compromise is weakness. Smart Israelis
on both sides of the aisle know that this is completely unpragmatic and
just forces the deepening spiral of hostility. There is no middle
ground in this country and in the Middle East, and it is quite scary. I
am fundamentally optimistic and moderate in most things. I think most
people are. But somehow the state of things has been pushed to the
edges by extremists in Al-Quaeda, in the Republican Party, by social
conservatives and, yes, by Sharon’s right wing coalition. None of those
factions represent most of us and yet they have their claws on the
helm.
How do your Israeli visitors feel about this? I’m sure they have some
interesting insights.
Some of them just don’t want to talk politics at all – they’re here to sightsee and have fun. But one of the most interesting dialogues has been with one of them who is a Druze. I accompanied him and other soldiers to a couple of Jewish day schools where the children were very curious about a Muslim in the IDF and peppered him with questions about his allegiance to Israel. We concluded that being a Druze in Israel is very like being a Jew in Canada. It was quite a consciousness-raising dialogue but then the Druze(s) are not committed to destroying Israel – on the contrary they send their sons and daughters to defend her.
Meanwhile, I think as my series progresses you will see that I do more
than criticize Israel. I do not, however, blindly praise it. Blindness
ain’t my thing.
Danny
Diane
—–
From: Danny
To: Avri
Avri:
As someone who lives in Israel, perhaps you can respond to this
exchange between me and another reader.
Danny
—–
From: Avri
To: Danny
Dear Danny,
i hope I can indeed be of some assistance, though you must remember I’m only a 22 year old idealist… (I’m not very active politically, but that is due to laziness much reather then Ideals, I’m afraid).
I have to say that I agree with you on almost all your points, but my opinions are considered radicaly leftist in today’s Israel.
Diana’s opinion, is, I’m afraid, the common opinion you will find in american jews – severly right-wing, that stems from a distorted view of things.
The problem is what you find in this discussions is sort of a heightened view of reality, the kind that you don’t feel in Israel .The sentence – “Perhaps it’s because they live on the edge of annihilation but I have always felt that they live every day as though it might be their last – engaged, interested and alive” is a good example. reading this I’m thinking- what? what is she talking about. People on the streets in Israel are the same as anywhere else. here in Tel-Aviv wer’e not in a state of war. You see, for me, the most horrible thing in Israel today is the overall numbness, the way the daily life goes on while horrible crimes are executed in my country – And I mean the everyday crimes of keeping thousands of human beings imprisoned in a state of opression and poverty, thousands of people who are considered grade B citizens. The most horrible thing is that most Israelies don’t mind. They shove the palestinians and the so called “palestinian problem” to the back of their mind, hiding behind the excuse of “Security”.
The Right in Israel would have you believe that Israel is in Mortal Danger – And have convinced most of the public in this distorted view. The fact is, Israel is in mortal procrastination, trying for some reason to avoid the unavoidable day in which the palestinians get their freedom and their country.
But again, we meddle with politics a lot, but everyday life is totally ordniary – wich is exactly the problam – I live a good life. I go to the university every day and study filmmaking, go back in the evening to the appartment I live in and eat good meals, and later, If I want, go out to one of the many many pubs or clubs in the city. My life is normal, and so is the life of many others (not including those -jews and arabs – who live in extreme poverty. there is so much “Security” Issues going on, that our wonderfull goverment neglects to address the problems of the poor). THAT is the problam.
I think that one of the problems today is the coupled with America’s head clown currently residing there is no one to put any pressure on Israel. With the crimes committed by your own goverment in Iraq and my govement, I have to say thing don’t look bright to me…
I hope I helped. I know I am myself radical and get a little heated in discussions like this. But you can understand why this situation can get to me. In order answer claims the type of which diana makes you perhaps need someone a little more “level-headed”. I myself find them so infuriating I have trouble keeping my head screwd on tight… Anyway, I’ll be happy to clarify thing further if you want.
thanks,
Avri
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From: Avri
To: Danny
ooh, I forgot two very important things -
First, on the point of compassion -
though not intended, diana’s use of the word seems almost cynical to my ears. compassion? we don’t need compassion. we need the weight of the world bearing down on us to break the god damn circle of blood shed and finish the occupation and the age old struggle. It is the palestinians who deserve our compassion, the compassion not given to them by the israely crowd and the goverment.
perhaps the Israely soldiers who are sent to kill and be killed deserve our compassion. But I believe that with the amount of wrong-doing executed by the army units in the occuopied teritories, it is their moral duity to refuse to serve, even if it means going to jail (obviously 99.9% of the population don’t see eye to eye with me on the subject… My brother, who is in the reserve, refused to serve in a roadblock on his duty [ I don't know if you know how it goes around here. every citizen who was in the army gets called to 2 to 4 weeks of service a year] and went to jail for two weeks. He is a married and has three kids so it wasn’t easy, but he joined the struggle and I’m very proud of him).
the second issue is one that you mentioned, and I whole heartedly agree with you – the lack of ability to recieve comment and critisism. it has been taken a step further and turned into an art by those who cry “Antisemitism!” on any kind of critisism.
Isreal seems not to be able to cope with any kind of criticism or comment, and the act of going out to the foreign press (which some raical left movements did in order to welcome foreign pressure on the goverment), ehich was truly a cry for help, was considered by the public almost as treason.
It saddens to see what a hard-heated country Israel has become.
Avri
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From: Diane
To: Danny
Danny,
although I have enjoyed your artwork enormously until recently, I now feel far more pain than joy when I read your journal, so please remove my name from your mailing list. I’m very sad to have lost a source of artistic inspiration but the nasty, spiteful sniping about Israel and Israelis makes it an unpleasant exercise in sadness and frustration for me that I don’t need right now.
Diane
Homeless Journal
Recently, I found myself angsting about money. I decided that I should go out and talk to people who had none. I approached homeless people in my neighborhood and asked them to share their stories with me. At first it was terrifying, breaking the barrier. But I soon found that if you don’t want anything from people but their story and perspective, they are enormously forthcoming and trusting. They’ll soon forget to wonder why you’re asking.
These images and stories were published in the Morning News where my journal entires were transcribed into text.