DryStoneGarden

I’ve been watercoloring quite a few of my evenings lately. It’s been fun; there’s improvement, though watercolor’s definitely one of those things that takes a minute to learn and a lot more than a twelve week class to master. The sketch above is from the class field trip to the Legion of Honor Museum. We were there to draw from the artwork, but I thought the building itself was impressive, as if it were waiting for Stanley Kubrick to come do one of his slow tracking shots through the enfilade. Bear with me if posting slows for a little while, the watercolor has been cutting into my blogging time.

I mentioned that posting has been slow because this is a busy time of the year for me. Besides working and moving ahead on our garden shed/office project, I’m also taking a class in watercolor, which has kept me busy in the evenings, trying to get the hang of that rather beguiling and frustrating medium. This is the best of my efforts so far, a view of the entry drive to the house where I’m working right now. The sketch below is from last fall while I was walking around, getting a feel for the property; the watercolor is from this past week when I was assigned a ‘landscape featuring trees.’ In real life the oaks are even more impressive than I managed to show on paper.

MicMac Lane from Eric Funk on Vimeo.

— Keep Drawing has been taken down from Vimeo, so I replaced it with this hand drawn animation, Mic Mac Lane by Eric Funk . Same basic comment as with Keep Drawing, that there is a lot of great drawings within the video. —

I’ve seen this video, Keep Drawing, a few times and, beyond just how cool it is to watch, I’m always impressed at the sheer number of drawings in it. It takes me diligence just to complete a single drawing, let alone an animation full of them. But I’m hoping to be good about drawing this year. I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but, if I did, keep drawing would probably be one of them.

Or my resolution could just be to complete my unfinished sketches. It usually only takes a little more drawing and a few minutes to scan them into the computer. I did these at Joshua Tree in the Hall of Horrors area. The one above is probably abandoned rather than finished; the one below I just darkened some lines and called it done.

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Fort Cronkhite, Marin Headlands

I spent this past weekend out at Fort Cronkhite in the Marin Headlands renewing my Wilderness First Responder (first aid) certification. I needed the certification while I was leading trail crews. I probably don’t need to stay certified now, but I’m afraid to let it expire. It’s not the most enjoyable class. It tends to make me relive every past illness, injury, and other bodily misfortune, but it’s good stuff to know and it was great doing it out at the Headlands. Classic foggy California landscape goodness.

Yosemite Falls

‘…a trail which was almost like a symphony, stopping, moving, looking, listening, and so on. I wanted to make this… but not to make it clear that there was a designer here… I wanted to leave it to the point that people would assume that it had always been that way.’ Lawrence Halprin

Along with the north coast, I went to Yosemite several times in the last couple months. Absolutely amazing place, as the millions of people who visit annually can all attest. I used to be bothered by the crowds, but I’ve learned to navigate the park and appreciate it without feeling bothered by them. Bringing my bicycle with me has helped immeasurably. The Valley’s a beautiful, flat place to ride around in, and a bicycle is the key to avoiding the daily traffic jams. (The park service really needs to figure out a way to get people parking outside the valley and just using bikes and shuttle buses inside. I’m skeptical it will ever happen, but I can dream, right?) Climbing has also helped me love the valley. Obviously because the climbing is so incredible, but also because I’ve ended up spending long periods of time sitting and staring at the views. And not just on the climbs. Most days I would meet up with my climbing partner at the bicycle parking at Lower Yosemite Falls, and while I waited for him, I started to really appreciate the effect that the view of the falls has for people.

Yosemite Falls

It’s the tallest falls in North America, 2,425 feet, and probably the single most viewed and photographed in the world. Lawrence Halprin redesigned the approach trail and picnic area a few years ago, and there is a lot of stonework done by the same company that did all of the stonework at Stern Grove. I don’t really remember what the approach was like before the redesign and the only ‘before photo I’ve seen is a glimpse in the video I linked above, but I remember a parking lot and a lot of crumbling asphalt. I’m pretty sure the framed view of the falls was already cleared, but possibly with the trees starting to grow back in and obscure the view again, and with a bathroom in the foreground instead of the dramatic allée. The redesign took out the parking area, made the trail into a loop, and rehabbed a lot of degraded habitat areas. It upgraded the materials and it channeled people’s movement so they would hit the key viewpoints without trampling on the vegetation or eroding the banks of the creek. And the work was done with enough subtlety and transparency that, as Halprin was hoping, most people probably don’t realize that their experience was crafted by a designer.

Yosemite Falls Approach

There’s a summary of the project here.

Yosemite Falls Approach Trail

Goat Rock State Park

As I said in my last post, I made some vacation time for myself the last month or two. Not a continuous vacation, but I made it out of town for a three day weekend almost every week, to Yosemite several times and up the coast twice. While on those trips, I made an effort to do some sketches. In the scheme of things, I’m probably more partial to photos, but sketches are good too, and I find myself doing more and more drawing for work. All of these are from the Jenner area, three in the vicinity of Goat Rock and one at Fort Ross.

Goat Rock State Beach

Fort Ross

Sunset Rocks at Goat Rock State Park