For a while I've been reading Travels in Siberia, Ian Frazier's 471-page Siberia-sized, immensely enjoyable record of his trips to that region. I would recommend it to anyone interested in Russia or travel writing--I now prefer him to Bill Bryson or Paul Theroux. Every now and then Frazier drops in one of his pen sketches into the text, like this one on the cover of the book:
That one was colorized for the cover. Most are unadorned line sketches. Parts of the book were serialized in the New Yorker, whose website has an excellent slideshow of some of Frazier's best sketches. (I hope you can see that without being a subscriber.)
Upon landing on a Russian island not far from Alaska, a woman in the customs office begins to tell Frazier about the island's complicated rules for taking photographs and pulls out paperwork for him.
"I took my sketchbook from my pack and showed it to her and said I preferred to draw. At that she mentally slipped me into the harmless-nut category and sent me on my way." (165)
Another time, upon losing his notebook and sketchbook, he remarks that losing these essential journalists's tools is to him "a shooting offense, like an infantryman losing his rifle." I was inspired by Frazier's sketching habit, among many other things. It is, I think, more than an interest in anachronisms and lost causes, of a wistfulness for the past days when nearly everyone had a sketchbook and had a basic proficiency in sketching, though I certainly have no problem with that kind of nostalgia. As much as I like having pictures as a record of a trip, there is something shallow and unsatisfying about picture-taking for me, similar to clicking the "like" button for a friend's post on Facebook. When I see a landscape that impresses me, that has a strong "inscape," to use Gerard Manley Hopkin's term, pulling out my camera and clicking the button feels almost farcical to the way that the scene has made me feel, like checking a box: Been here. Was good. Perhaps photos are easier for communicating to others what I liked about the view, but for me, I didn't do the work of understanding the features of the landscape, as a sketch allows me to do.
In addition, I have a wish to someday make illustrations for a written work of mine. This desire approaches Wagner's mania for the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art, in its magnitude.
With this in mind, I went to Shaw Nature Reserve, south and west of St. Louis in Grays Summit, with both a sketchbook and a camera. Typically at a place like that I might take 100 or more pictures. This time I decided to try Frazier-style pen sketches, only taking a few pictures. However, using pen on the first try felt too risky for me, an out-of-practice former art student, so I roughed out things with a pencil first and then cleaned and emphasized with the pen after that.
The nature reserve, which is run by the Botanical Garden, reminded me a lot of the large estates in Russia that formerly belonged to nobles but were turned into museums and parks. Which is essentially what Shaw Nature Reserve and the Botanical Garden are: Henry Shaw, a wealthy, slave-owning St. Louis man, created the Garden from his lands in the Tower Grove neighborhood, and the nature reserve on St. Louis's outskirts includes the estate of Joseph Bascom and his large country house.
Shaw is notable for its large replicated prairie habitat, maintained by BG staff with controlled burns and reseeding with prairie plants. It is particularly impressive in late summer and fall, when the grasses are as tall as the true prairie and the wildflowers are blooming. In 2005 the park built a pioneer-style sod house on top of a hill near the prairie area.
I'm fascinated by slapdash dwellings in unlikely, unsheltered places, such as sod houses, bird nests, bird houses, badger holes, prairie dog burrows, and other such nooks. This sod house is now fully integrated into the environment, its roof sprouting tall grasses, and I saw bees, ants, and other insects coming and going from holes between the sod bricks. When I was about done working on this sketch, a mouse burst out of the bottom of the wall in front of me and scrambled around the corner.
I was happy with what I ended up with, but I could also tell that it would take a while to be able to start right off with permanent pen like Frazier does, and an even longer time to achieve his minimalist, calligraphic strokes, charged with information, with no unnecessary details. My sketches are, well, sketchy--messy, full of squiggles trying to work out the true lines. It also took what felt like a long time, earning me a sunburn on my neck. But I felt like I had really encountered that place in a solid way. However messy, the picture belonged to me, not Fujifilm.
I went down the hill and wanted to sketch the sod house from a distance--it looked so wayward and daring on top of the hill with massive thunderstorm clouds overhead. I tried to start with pen this time, only using pencil for the clouds, which were a jumbled, quick-moving mess.
But after a couple sketches I was starting to recall some of my lessons from drawing and watercolor classes in high school, and this sketch of a columbine flower came off pretty quickly.
The downside to sketching is that it is colorless. Sometimes I make notes to myself on the colors and shading in case I want to add watercolor someday, as above.
I don't know when I'll get to next, but it was a lot of fun rediscovering an interest that I haven't had time for during the school year. One of college's pressures is to specialize, to step away from hobbies and become serious at what you're good at. I would never be a successful artist, however much I tried, but I don't think that should stop me from using sketching as a way to understand the world around me. Or making plans for an eventual Gesamtkunstwerk.
