Paipo, Sunset Landmark, Ukulele Poser

Here is Port Townsend’s newest landmark. Stephen Davis, back from a trip down to Baja, back up again, with stops (to visit friends, some surfing) along the way, is giving the celebratory high sign for the sunset I painted on “Shortboard” Aaron’s house.  It’s high enough and visible enough that I (humbly) suggest it is the newest landmark in Port Townsend.

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It wasn’t super easy. I started with the yellow and the dark red, painted one half of the entire thing; then Aaron came home, asked, “Are you happy with it?” “Well, um…” The intermediate/transition colors did look, I had to agree, a little like makeup foundation. SO, I got a quart of dead-ass orange, rearranged the ladders, and… Yeah, now I am quite (humbly) happy with it.

HERE’S a shot of Stephen’s friend (one of his friends), Stig, in Hawaii, showing off his modern version of the classic PAIPO BOARD, the precursor to the boogie board.

stigpaipo

NOW, according to Steve, Stig, who I have yet to meet, insists on surfing in speedos (aka bunhuggers), so, kind of okay with this shot.  No, he would wear a wetsuit in the northwest; pretty sure.

FINALLY, here’s a shot of some poser posing (as poser’s do) with Stephen’s ukulele. YEAH, it’s like Geppetto saying, “Look, Pinocchio, I can wail!”

ukelele poser

YES, it is sideways.  I’ll fix it.  MAYBE.

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SO, just to kind of even out the poser scale, here’s my son, James, actually wailing on guitar, with me (not posing, I’ve been playing for about fifty years and have many dead harmonicas to prove it) on harmonica.

JAMES DOES WAIL!  And, yeah, honest, there’s a harmonica behind that Geppetto hand.

MEANWHILE, even the coast is looking dismally flat.  Hope you’re getting some waves.

Two-fer

It’s a two-fer because I have a laptop and a tablet, and I can edit things on the tablet, but, for some reason, can’t seem to figure out how to do it on this thing, the one where I can put new scans.  I decided, just after I posted the previous piece, that, since I now have a red and white version of the next-to-the-last illustration, I should also offer a side-by side comparison of that drawing.

Now, I did spend too much time trying to transfer some photos from my phone to my site, or, at least, to my email account; to no avail.  Later.

Anyway, hopefully, you will be willing to check out this and the previous posting.  OR, maybe I’ll just put both versions of both illustrations and you can skip the previous verbiage.  No, check it out anyway.  Thanks.

 

 

Ghost Moon illustration(s)

Okay, so, as promised, I have attempted to duplicate the photo I saw of a ghost moon next to a setting sun.  Because the print shop in Sequim made the mistake of changing the black areas to red, I attempted to duplicate that effect when I took this drawing to the Printery in Port Townsend.

Unfortunately, Liz, who always did my work for me there in the past, though not with that ‘customer is always right’ kind of attitude, quit a week or so ago, and I was left with two newbies, one who just out and out said she doesn’t know diddley about the various machines and the processes that turn a white and black drawing into a black and white one, or, even, a red and black version, much less turning a 11 by 17 into something that fits onto 8 1/2 by eleven.

The other newbie was willing, but… oh, yeah, Liz did complain about the copier I needed for my tasks, and did say it would probably take two people to replace her, and, whoa; new copier, two replacements… we did get the results, mostly, that I wanted, AND, when another customer came in, the second woman told him he had to wait for my tasks to be completed.  SO, great.

BUT, while the Sequim newbies had a variety of colors available, the new PT woman and I only found the option of doing the drawing in red, AND, though our daughter, Dru, loved the magenta/red version of the last drawing, Trish says the new one looks better in black, though maybe blue might be okay.  Not an option at this time.

Make up your own mind.

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Meanwhile…

 

Ghost of a Moon in the afternoon

James McMurtry, “Too Long in the Wasteland,” just to give credit to the singer/writer; someone in Port Angeles, or thereabouts, not to give proper credit to the photographer.

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TWENTY seconds or so (maybe a couple of minutes) earlier, the moon was brighter, and right next to the sun.  Be-a-ut-i-ful.  Oh, wait; there was actually too much information with and in the photograph.  It was all too recognizable; another clue for those desperately looking for some sign of waves entering and moving down the Strait.

SO, NO, the photo above is not the one I’m talking about. Yeah, it’s a sunset, somewhere someone will recognize, but it’s not the one I saw, the one I’m not sharing.  This selfishness is not to further tantalize or tease.

THERE WERE NO telltale lines in the photograph, no sign of waves bending to match the shore, sideways to the sea.  Maybe I’ll draw something similar.  I fully realize I can’t actually recreate the beauty of the photograph, and it, perhaps, can’t fully capture the spirit of the moment; that ‘take a big breath’ moment; God’s full palette stretched out to… if you’ll forgive my over-sentimentalizing, forever.

Over-sentimentalizing, yes; but not exaggerating.

Still looking at the forecasts, but, lately; I start at the end of the forecast period.

YESTERDAY, about sunset, my new white t-shirt covered with red paint splatter, red dots soft-edged by sweat; I cruised into the Quilcene Village Store (the QVS, according to Adam Wipeout) to get Trish the Saturday/Sunday Peninsula Daily News; a really nice (not huge) RV, an SUP on the roof, honked as it passed, went a few hundred yards up Surf Route 101, made a four-point turn in someone’s driveway, and came back.

NOW, there have been quite a few times when seeing any rig with surfboards visible stopped anywhere in my neighborhood, I might just attack the occupants.  “Where are you going? What do you expect, wave-wise?”

That kind of thing. Once it was some friends of Cash and Tanya, up from Oregon. I heard about it the next time I ran into them.  “How did you know it was me?”  “Well…”

THIS TIME it was Concrete Pete, sort-of-recently-retired, coming up from Westport in the ‘outrageously expensive’ RV with stories of trips to Baja and… mostly Baja, but he did have to show me the layout in his RV. “You’ll have to get yourself one of these when you retire.”

“Yeah, right, Pete.”  As soon as he left, half an hour from his home, after I scared the girl inside the QVS (“It’s not my blood,” I said), I thought to myself, “Geez, I should have taken a picture.”

NEXT TIME.

 

 

Another Negative Image

FIRST, it’s not surf season along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. One must go coastal. Some friends of mine recently did; sharing an adventure that anyone who doesn’t live in the Pacific Northwest would consider the classic Pacific Northwest surf trip: Hiking with backpacks and surfboards, dropping down ropes (and climbing back up again) to possibly-never-surfed spots… exhausting.

OR, one could go to Westport, look for a parking spot, look for an empty wave.

OR, one could work. It is painting season, yes; but my wetsuit is dr-yyyy-yyy; and, yes, I’m thinking coastal.  Coastal.

MEANWHILE, I did complete a new drawing; meant to be reversed, black-for-white.  I don’t really know how this is going to work until I get to a print shop.  SO, last night, sort of hoping to run into the guy (Jay) at the Sequim Office Depot, who has a handle on such things, I, instead, ran into a person who asked another employee how to do the reversal. She wasn’t sure, either; and the first two attempts saw the image reversed but the black staying black.

“No, I kind of meant…”

ON the next attempt, what had been black was now red.  “Whoa! Didn’t know you could do that.”  “I guess we can.”

On the next attempt, we (with my input and the other Depot person’s advice) got it right.

“OH, but, um, can you do other colors?”  They looked it up.  “Red, yellow, magenta, blue, some other color.”  “One of each, please; full-sized; then a couple of eight and a half by elevens.  Please.”

NOW, suddenly, I’m a little irritated with myself that I didn’t get some smaller, as in scannable on my printer, versions of the ones in color.  Here’s the black-for-white version:

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I did lose some detail here; I’m blaming my scanner.  Now, imagine everything that is black as red, or blue, or…  and now imagine you are, quite exhausted from the hiking, out of a beach with silvery-shiny-glassy-empty-near-perfect waves.  And now imagine… whatever you want.

No, not being stuck in traffic.