Future to the back

The main sign after …

The signs were ahead of their time. Which wasn't good.

So the Delta King asked me to yank them back into the 19th Century where they belonged. Which was good for me and a fun challenge.

Directional sign before …

Here's how the signs looked (right):

The Delta King is a 285-foot sternwheel steamboat, permanently moored to the Old Sacramento embarcadero as a floating hotel, restaurant and theater.

It was built in 1924 and with its sister the Delta Queen served passengers from Sacramento to San Francisco, and even up the San Joaquin River aways.

Painted battleship gray and renamed USS Delta King during World War II to transport naval reservists, it next showed up on the Hudson River before becoming a floating bunkhouse for aluminum plant workers in British Columbia.

The current owners found it nearly 30 years ago, sunk but reparable in Richmond in the San Francisco Bay; they towed it to Sacramento and renovated it.

The Delta Queen went on to ply the Mississippi River and now also serves as a floating hotel, moored on the Tennessee River at Chattanooga.

Serviceable and easy to read, the Delta King's signs nonetheless ran afoul of code restrictions in Old Sacramento, requiring signs to befit the decidedly lower technology of the Gold Rush era in which the city began. Out went the painterly background and the photograph of the trademark red paddlewheel. Out went the collection of 20th Century typefaces — Brush Script Pro for "The Pilothouse," Trajan Pro for "Delta Bar & Grill" and Univers 57 for most of the rest (thanks to my designer son Liam for his keen eye). Even the lively logo for Suspects dinner theater had to go — a 20th Century creation.

The biggest challenge was rebuilding the paddlewheel to resemble an engraving. The wheel has a lot of parts; the illustration of the wheel many more.

The sign went through several iterations, from showcard every-typeface-at-your-disposal dizziness to the result, legible simplicity and muted colors.


The new typeface, Rosewood, is not strictly 18th or 19th Century, but a digital evocation of slab serif types, cousin to Clarendon, an early 19th Century face cut in England. Rosewood is designed with an elaborately decorative alternative (right):

Not everyone likes Rosewood; someone would likely call me out as a fraud. It has the clunky chunky inelegance the project needed.

The URL at the bottom of the main sign, jarringly 21st Century, is set in Clarendon bold.

Directional sign after …

Woodcut dingbats for balance, typographic elements for flourish, et voilà!

Though I work just a block away part-time as a tour guide for the Sacramento Underground, I hadn't been over to the Delta King during the signs' makeover.

I was working instead from the client's proportional dimensions of the existing signs, and in my mind the sign was never bigger than my computer screen.

My stomach tripped and fell when I finally saw the immensity of the main sign, some six feet wide. My ego couldn't wait for the new sign to go up, and after consideration by the commission on antiquarian signage in Old Sacramento, the sign is up for the tourist season.

Someone has already put a dent in the directional sign. Signs live a hard life in Old Sacramento, as my other signs in the neighborhood can attest.

Come on out and look, if you fancy a notion.

The main sign at work, alongside 19th Century signs typical of the era.

The Delta King, forever churning up a lazy river …

All hopped up

Any day I get to     
turn a bud of brewing hops     
into a sentient being …

… boldly if resignedly     
infusing a new     
beer batch …

… sacrificing its     
essential oils for queen     
and country and     
quaffing connoisseur …

… that, let me tell you,   
is an excellent day.   

Second best use of a dollar

How to build a dog a la Lorence Bjorklund.
Looks easy. 'Tain't.

Lorence Bjorklund and I go way back, more than 40 years. Pity I hadn't bothered to learn his name until last week.

Doubtful he'd have minded. I've been far more interested in his illustrations, which fill the book "The Art of Drawing Animals" my mom bought me for a dollar when I was seven or eight.

Copyright 1965 from The Grumbacher Library, one of a myriad how-to books you'd find in a Woolworth's or Sprouse-Reitz or Rexall, in towns lacking art supply stores.

"Drawing Animals" is the faithful companion to all my artistic endeavors. It's always in reach, somehow easily rediscovered despite the tectonic shifts of my workspace.

Though well-loved and used, it's in good shape, a keepsake for my children to fight over. Weird, what we'd pass down the generations.

Within its pages are dozens of Bjorklund's drawings — of horses in every possible pose and mood, and cats (tabbies and tigers and mountain lions) and dogs and elephants and zebras and monkeys and bears and cows and a warthog.

All pencil or brush-and-ink or fountain pen or charcoal. All lively and made with a knowing hand.

And all wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!

Or so I thought.

The way to draw — and I knew, because I was eight, the Age of Perfection! — was to start your pencil in one place, then draw around the outside of all the curves and squiggles of whatever you were looking at, until your pencil came 'round again to the start.

Then, like a primitive cartographer, you'd fill in the details by triangulating the odd knobs and jags of your outline, until you'd put an eye or stripe or button — or whatever — in approximately the right place. Sometimes — OK, rarely — the result matched your wishes.

But all these circles and ovals and lines draw within the shape, the way Bjorklund drew?! Just nonsense! And eight-year-olds are nothing if not drawing perfectionists. Circles and lines and squares would just make your perfect drawing a perfect mess. And messes lead to discouragement, which leads to "I quit!"

This is the attitude and approach I carried into adulthood, having skipped art classes because I was focused on college prep and art was foolish.

Of course, adulthood made me realize the simple wisdom of Bjorklund's — and really, all illustrators' — approach, and this is how I draw now.

No more cattywhampus guessing! No mere copying! With the sketchy skeleton of circles and squares and strategically placed lines, an illustrator can build just about anything, and modify on the fly.

This is also how I try to teach kids to draw; of course, they politely comply until I leave their class, when they return to the safety and clean perfection of primitive outlining.

To think of all the time lost, the ground I could have gained, if I had taken heed of Bjorklund's advice from the start. Art school may not have seemed such folly.

What? A kite? And now … a coffin?! And somehow you get a horse outta that? Neighhhhh …

Born in Minnesota in 1913, "Larry" Bjorklund — the Internet archives his legacy — attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, on a commercial art scholarship and made his career as a pulps artist — a denigrating description for a career of creating copious beautiful illustrations that graced the cornucopia of American magazines in the golden age of print.

I love that Bjorklund's  technique still applied
to the cartoon styles I loved.

Bjorklund made tools in a defense plant during World War II, then settled in upstate New York to resume his career in illustration, in a time when many could, and comfortably.

Mr. Arnold, my high school physics teacher, often said I was born too late. Kindly impish Mr. Arnold didn't mean I didn't fit into the time being — not entirely, anyway — but that I loved and was lost in eras gone by. Drowning as I do now in this sea of social media underpins Mr. Arnold's observation.

What a world that would have been, to draw and draw and draw for magazines — if not this one, then that one, or that one over there, all of them hiring — and raise a family on that.

Yeah, I'm probably romanticizing. Not to mention dismissing the dedication, and hard work toward illustration mastery, and self-promotion. Plentiful as I imagined them to be, these jobs just didn't fall into ink-smudged laps.

Bjorklund's drawings take me to that time that maybe never was. They're magic tricks, executed in slow, deliberate sweeps, and I'd be in his Western memorabilia-strewn studio, big drawing pad in my lap — maybe I could call him Larry — practicing the magic sparking from his pencil.

All that, for a dollar.

Apropos of nothing

  
Just 'cause …

The batsman cometh

Distantly, the ice shudders and cracks. The heavy clouds, purple as iceberg bottoms, lift just a shade. Days and days and days without sun, under chilly bone-scraping fog, seem at an end. Could winter be over?

Who'm I kidding? Winter never came to Northern California. The warmth and sun are creeping me out.

The only demarcation of spring is the chipper call of  Jon Miller, your friend and mine, welcoming everyone to another season of San Francisco Giants baseball on the radio, and the first day the Giants defend their 2012 World Series title.

That happened Saturday, the first broadcast from spring training in Scottsdale, Ariz., the Giants beating the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (real name!) 4-1. Pitchers are getting their arms back, hitters their bats, broadcasters their voices, and I my ears. As keen as I was to catch the first game, I found it hard to jam it into my winter routine, and multiple innings went by before I remembered to listen.
 
Don't worry. Like the players and broadcasters, I'll be ready for the season opener.

I don't need much preparation. This is how I'll look (above), in fact. A picture of contentment for the next eight months.

Look, The Giants have won two World Series championships in three years. They're bringing back almost all the players from last year's roster, and strengthening here and there in the bullpen. They retrieved from New York's purgatory one of the truly good guys, Andres Torres, who will vie for left field with Gregor Blanco. In Saturday's first game, second baseman Marco Scutaro did exactly what he did to help win the World Series — hit the ball exactly where he wanted to, just when he needed to, scooting a runner into scoring position.

One day Scutaro will be scrutinized for some kind of drug that makes him the ideal, unreal, baseball player.

This is how I'll look, amused but unfazed by Marty Lurie's relentless hours-long pestering and tweaking on KNBR. When baseball comes, KNBR's format is three hours of baseball play-by-play, bracketed by 21 hours of Marty Lurie analyzing it.

Lurie exhibits mid-season form. He baits us, the unwashed and uninformed, to tell him on the air our meaningless answers to his meaningless questions: Which prospect has the best chance to make the club? Which Giant do you want to introduce the World Series pennant to fans on Opening Day? Will Manager Bruce Bochy go with four lefthanders in the bullpen? Catsup on your hot dog — OK, or abomination? What are the Giants' chances to become the only National Leaguers to win three world titles in four years?

Don't know. Don't care.

Don't care if the Giants win another World Series. They proved they can. This time I'm just going to lie back and enjoy this season, let the broadcasters' buttery voices wash over my ears, let them tell me the stories of players scrapping, competing, going hard against a strengthening National League West. Win or lose, I don't care.

Who'm I kidding?

Sucking on a toothache

Most editorial cartoonists in the United States forget how good they've got it.

As cartoonists elsewhere face firing, beating and even death for their vivid opinions, cartoonists here, in full-throated freedom, too often cough up hairballs.

Yet each day I follow their phlegmy siren song, made easier by Internet aggregation, hoping this day — maybe this day! — I'll find something worthwhile. Usually, though: Crash …

I know the current excuse; I just don't accept it: Editorial cartoonists are the newspaper environment's indicator species, signaling by their attrition the continuing demise of print. Keeping a job is hard enough, let alone profferring a controversial opinion in the process.

All the more reason, I say, for them to go down swinging. But just like always, too many cartoonists fancy themselves the Jay Lenos or Jimmy Fallons of family newspapers, Johnny-Carson-on-the-spot with a current-events joke.

Syndication enables this milquetoast behavior, allowing editors to treat cartoons as a visual break. They're just little candy kisses for your supposedly having read all the heavy gray erudite stolid —serious! — opinion surrounding the 'toons. Good reader! Here's a joke.

At best, newspapers use syndicated cartoons as window dressing for syndicated opinion columns. Fit tab A liberal cartoon into slot B liberal column on the same topic, and so on.

At worst, many cartoonists become the poster painters for their political affiliation, simply illustrating party talking points, without an opinion of their own.

Cartoonists should work without fear or favor, without deference to any political flag. Their credo should be "When our leaders do us wrong, waste our money, act out of hypocrisy, no matter who they are, I will shame them and bring them down."

Cartoonists should do all in their power to effect change — to correct the shamed, or compel readers to vote or criticize their leaders. With their immense power of visual immediacy, they should do this, every time.

They should also educate us, bringing to light issues we may not be aware of, and daring us to form opinions.

Their work should stand alone on the opinion pages, without tether to the newspapers. Editors should leave them alone, let them be accountable for their own opinions.

Some cartoonists do this. Most don't. Here's a sampling: 

• The Good

I've waxed enough about Pat Oliphant, my favorite, so I'll move on.

Matt Bors

Like Ted Rall, Bors comes out of the independent weekly newspaper ranks, with the look and ethos of independent comics, and has garnered wider recognition through syndication. Like Rall, Bors trends liberal but doesn't hesitate to attack people and issues from what might be considered his own camp.

He's tenacious, for example, about the U.S. use of remotely operated aircraft, or drones, and particularly President Obama's predilection for them, and what they mean for our right to privacy and protection from our government.

Sometimes The Sacramento Bee, my hometown newspaper with a liberal muckraker leaning, will run Bors' 'toons. But not often.

Jeff Danziger

He's old school, a Vietnam veteran who has never lost his anger or power to offend with a jab and a smile.

Here he exposes the hypocrisy of Senators attempting to block the confirmation of Sen. Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary.

Sens. Graham and McCain dismissed pointed investigation into the fabricated causes of the Iraq War, but have held up Hagel's hearing until they get answers about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Danziger wanted to point that out, just in case you're voting next election.

• The Bad 

Steve Breen

Breen is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and I don't know why.

His work the first time 'round, 1998, was sharper than the work he did 11 years later for his second prize. But that's not saying much.

This example shows the devolution of his work. It's a comment on a former San Diego mayor alleged to have won and lost $1 billion gambling her husband's foundation money.

So … what are we to do about it? What action? The sum is outrageous, the gambling sad, but other than that … I think he flashed on voting booth levers and jackpot levers (they're similar!) and bim-bam-boom, cartoon done, now off to work on his syndicated comic strip "Grand Avenue," where the one-note punchlines come lamely from a mile away. Where is the justice?

Michael Ramirez

Nobody approaches Ramirez for technical mastery; his drawing skills are a wonder, his use of color painterly.

But the same opinion, always from the far right, always some variation on whatever-Obama-does-is-wrong.

Case in point, this recent cartoon. Caduceus, Year of the Snake — clever juxtaposition — to bang the same drum: Obamacare BAD! No particular reason, no nuance, no call to action, just Obamacare BAD!

This cartoon, as most of Ramirez' work, brought to you by Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell.

Another two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

• The Ugly

Chuck Asay

I'm never quite sure of Asay's point. It's right-of-Tea-Party conservative, but that's not revealing. He's old school, too, though not like Danziger. More like a guy on his front porch, shaking his fist and screaming about the gummit dammit! I guess he's retired, but still syndicates. Here's a recent 'toon.

I think he's saying that the problem can't be solved by addressing the causes of crime, but by reading the Bible and doing as God says. Why this is pertinent specifically to black-on-black crime, if at all, I'm not sure.

The Proverbs verses referred to are, according to the King James Bible:

"These six things doth the Lord hate: Yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."

I say this, it's an opinion, all right. I think. And he did make me look it up, so there's that.

Yeah, I too noticed all my "good" examples are liberal, while all my "bad" and "ugly" examples are conservative. I don't care what way cartoonists lean, except that their side can't always be good and the other bad. Hypocrisy and evil cross all lines, and the cartoonists should say so. Thump the Bible, the Koran, what have you, but be willing to badmouth the beam in your own eye, and have the guts to say something meaningful.

To the wonderment of all

The great Willie Mays was already gone to the Mets
by the time I saw this illustration.

Behold, a serendipitous dip from my fountain of youth:

I give you — the works of Dave Beronio.

This is the stuff I promised to show way back when I wrote about my first baseball game 41 years ago.

The Giants split a doubleheader with the Cubs, and Dad, after a quiet sigh of "fer cryin' out loud," I bet, had split open his wallet for the dollar for the program.

Or yearbook, as the Giants were calling it. The Giants had won the National League West pennant the season before, and the yearbook basked in the glow, with a special logo befitting the design zeitgeist, and an out-of-focus photo of the great Willie Mays sliding into second base against what looks like the St. Louis Cardinals.

Half the fuzzy photo comprises the blue-green artificial turf that covered the field at Candlestick Park, and the year 1972 is printed in black over the green field.

The cover photo may have been prophetic, because Willie Mays was soon out of the picture, traded to the Mets in May, a month before my first ballgame. By June, the Giants had all but guaranteed they wouldn't defend their pennant.

Willie Mays was still the franchise at press time, though, and as I thumbed through the program, past the color photo essays and beer ads, I came upon Dave Beronio's drawing of Mays.

Candlestick Park and the rest of the world suddenly melted away. I sat bewitched. Somehow, with careful and yet carefree application of pencil — the same kind I pushed around a paper in maddening struggle — emerged Willie Mays, all life and light and likeness, exactly the man I had seen on TV and in photos.

Only moreso, somehow.

How did Dave Beronio mold the face just so, the shade here and light there, to make it dazzle? It was the best kind of magic. In the moment, and ever since, I have desperately wanted to draw like this.

"Sudden" Sam McDowell

The yearbook showcased Beronio's treatment of the Giants stars, including the starter acquired from the Cleveland Indians the year before, "Sudden" Sam McDowell:

Beronio was wise not to compose the lefty in a Giants hat, but to let the rockabilly hair and sideburns unfurl.

Beronio used black pencil on coquille board, a heavy paper with a pebbled surface. The pencil catches on the pebble shapes and creates a kind of dot pattern that made print reproduction easier.

Coquille board is somewhat old-school, popular in the mid 20th century among editorial cartoonists and newspaper illustrators.

Old-school would describe Dave Beronio, coming out of that fine time, before my time, when illustration daily graced the sports pages.

A closeup of the coquille board texture.

Noting Beronio's 75th birthday in 1996 from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. George Miller said the athletic reporter and editor would spar with the boxing greats of the time, interview them for stories — then have them sit for portraits.

As an editor for his hometown Vallejo Times Herald and the Vacaville Reporter, Beronio did so frequently, which is how the Giants called on him to draw for the 1972 program.

Beronio was a gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress during World War II, flying 35 missions and earning the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He was distinguished for a special commemoration on the walls of Candlestick Park, the lone writer among pro athletes. And he introduced his friend Bob St. Clair when the San Francisco 49er was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990.

Juan Marichal

And he drew me these wonderful pictures for me for a dollar.

Thumbing through the program again, I am still enthralled by Beronio's drawings. Occasionally I'll find gestural cross hatching, just a hint of looseness. For the most part Beronio showed great patience and economy of style.

He drew just enough, until the work was just right. His subjects shone as a result.

Should you stumble upon this blog and know about Dave Beronio and his work, I'd love to learn more, the man and his process. His body of work seems so far to have eluded the magnet of the Internet.

Until then, I'm grateful for the magic.

"Keystone Kids" Chris Speier at shorstop (my favorite) and Tito Fuentes at second base. Speier, in his
second season in the pros, was that day's Brandon Crawford. Speier's only sin is that he's now
the bench coach for the Cincinnati Reds.