Trish thought the drawing looked like a “young kid, kind of chunky, maybe.” Yeah, fine; let’s say that’s what I was… you know what? I’ll just post the drawing, also added to the story by Rico Moore, next down, for your scrolling and reading pleasure.
Thanks, Rico.
It’s high painting season, and I have to, um, steal time away from something in order to do any drawings. Here are the two most recent:
I’m preparing to add some more images to the realsurfers coloring book, getting them resized, adding some lines; redrawing a few. Here are some I’ve been working on:
And here’s a backstory on the drawing of the guy on the nose. I’ve drawn it several times, had it all finished, but it didn’t seem right. I went back to the drawing I took this from, realized the surfer’s left arm is supposed to be in front of his face. Oops. And now it’s a bit darker. If I could, on occasion, sort of duplicate the silky, magic-lighting look of classic John Severson photos, I would. Maybe this is as close as I’ll get (not that I won’t keep trying).
Hey, it’s all just lines and dots. Suddenly I’m not sure if I reported on how the poetry/singing/book selling event went with “Awkward Guy” writer Franco Bertucci and I… it went well, probably better than expected. We’re not done. I’ll let you know.
I received this comment on a piece I wrote on running into and dinging the board of my (and, evidently our mutual) friend, Archie Endo. Since the odds are against you finding the original piece, and, partially because I do miss Archie, working most of the year now in Thailand (he went surfing twice when he was here last, one quickly blown out session with me, and one great session without me), I’m posting Jeremiah’s piece here:
When I get the portfolio/book thing sorted out, this might go on the plain brown cover, handy for shipping, stealing…still working on it.
The next thing I need to do is get a collection of my colored-in stuff together, get them reduced, make up a montage for the back cover, all the inside stuff black and white; like, you know, a cheap magazine. Perhaps the portfolio/envelope could be a bit larger than the inside pages so folks can stick some colored pencils inside, whip ’em out when they’re ready to colorize; on a break, at a break (that’s not breaking); out to coffee, on a train; in public or in private. COLOR! Oh, I just did some coloring on this one because, as usual, Trisha’s assessment was, “Done? I’d say overdone?” “Great.” “Is that a question?” “No.”
Because I’m dead-ass serious about getting my coloring book together, I’m searching through some of my older drawings. I redid this one to make it more… I don’t want to say professional; let’s say cleaner.
I’m doing some work for “The Printery” in Port Townsend, with the goal of trading out some of the profit to pay for a few more copies, and maybe something a little more ‘professional.’ Yeah, now I’ll say professional.
And I have more. I’m hoping to do about forty images; still figuring out some sort of portfolio arrangement, rather than a book form; open it up, pull one out, do some coloring.
If you draw on it long enough, keep adding to it, it eventually becomes gray.
This is the third version. Partway through the first version I decided to add the beams of light. Too late, too sketch-like. Partway through the second version I decided… well, there were things I liked about each of those, and my evaluator, Trish, liked the first one best. But, partially because I’m working on putting together a ‘real surfers’ coloring book, I went with something, probably a bit more, um, draftsman-like. Nah; can’t quite master that. I have this, and, when I tried to make a copy, this weird tire-tread-like line went down the right side, so, not risking the original, I may not actually color this. Yet.
Really on the coloring book. I’m just trying to figure out how I can do it at a reasonable price, and, of course, how the hell I’ll try to market it.
I did some illustrations a year or so ago for a friend of mine, Franco Bertucci. The drawings go along, sort of, with poems he wrote about raising kids out in the country (he and his wife and three kids live on a working farm), love, poetic stuff like that. Franco is a musician and song writer, heads up a professional band, Locust Street Taxi; very tight, very showy. And Franco, the most low key guy in person; on stage, is radical. AND he can leap, flat-footed, like, amazingly high.
The book is available, so far, on kindle. Jeez, let me check that. Yeah; kindle. Franco offered me (some undetermined amount of) money to do the drawings, but, very non-characteristically for someone who always takes the short money, I chose to take a (similarly non-determined) percentage of future profits.
We’ll see how that works out. I checked out the little sampler, and, whoa, and maybe it’s because I haven’t seen the drawings in a while… they looked awesome.
I mean, objectively speaking.
Maybe it’s because I suffered the triple skunking the other day… a trip to a spot on the Strait that should have been, according to the buoys, working, but wasn’t. At all. Then a backtrack to a backup spot that also wasn’t working; but, while in cell phone territory, I discovered the buoy readings were even better. With various theories of tidal influences, ebb, flow, playing in my head, and not wanting to miss it (never wanting to miss the small windows) I headed back out.
That’s the double; didn’t have the triple until I got a report that several surfers near where I would have been if I hadn’t driven out, got a session (as in, after the session). This probably, with nothing showing in the forecast, bothered me more than it should. It’s only surfing, after all; not like it’s critical.
So I resumed my occasional contemplation of what surfing means. Fifty plus years of some participation in this; I still don’t have it figured out.
This (below) is an edited version of something I wrote the day after I was triple-skunked.
When you finally, having, perhaps, exhausted all the cheap and easy options, admitting that being among the waves fills some void in your heart, and, possibly unaware of how brave and foolish and true this confession is; it’s impossible to do anything else but agree.
Still, this is not an empty heart; it is a heart; and as long as it’s beating, as long as the liquid flows…
I’m considering putting together a coloring book (all the rage I hear) of black and white drawings. It’s not like you can’t color them in as well as I do. I always feel like I need more colors in my quiver. Three sizes of ink pens does fine, but color, color… imagine the possibilities.
Real Surfers 
A great deal of what I know about surfing was learned through an amalgamation of my own trying and failing, reading, conversations with Frank at nxnw, and watching Archie. It would go like this: I would see Archie surfing, try to emulate and fail, go do a ton of research about what I saw and how it worked and how I failed, then talk to Frank about what I was reading and get some well-needed trimming and redirection from him. Eventually, it got to a point where it all started coming together, and Archie and I were surfing together quite a bit; and it was so incredibly beneficial. What a smart, stylish man…simultaneously capable of wise, incisive critiques and nearly limitless patience delivered with a special economy of language derived from being an already reserved man operating in a second language.
It’s not the coast, there isn’t going to be waves all the time. The straits are a place made for a surfer like Archie, a fickle, intricate, complex set of oceanography where the payoff is glassy, longboard gliders. I saw Archie ride 6″ waves all the way into the rivermouth crouched like a baseball catcher and, incredibly, 20 or 30 yards upstream into the river. It’s slow, foggy, winding, damp drives on mossy roads and cold water. I followed the Torino and the Ranchero rumbling along in my pickup at mellow speeds into town for dinner after cold sessions. It’s a skunker, a day wasting, soul crushing gas burner for those who cannot or will not put in the time and effort to figure it all out and arrive at just the right moment for the magic….it’s a natural club when you figure it out and start showing up to find the same people every time.
When my work and living situation changed, and I was forced to leave my surfing gear and move to make a living; Archie made a tiny, perfectly-shaped longboard out of driftwood from the strait; and he sent it with a small note saying that now I would always have a board. Having this arrive while I was driving trucks in the plains was so incredibly meaningful. It was perhaps one of the most thoughtful gestures anyone has ever made toward me…setting in stone my resolve to work through hard times and return myself to the sea.
Literally, today, I’m working through projects with my 79 Ford…which was bought because a surfer should have a stylish and functional rig, it was bought with memories of Archie’s Torino wagon rolling snow tires on cragers. Waves here are fickle and infrequent as well, not nearly as tricky to call but colder and more physically demanding. I carry a synthesis of Archie with me as I go, in my internal jury, carefully discerning what would be the most stylish, most efficient, most refined, most balanced way…regardless of my ability to achieve those levels, I carry the standard he set and it makes me a better person.