Buttnekkiddoodles

 
David is a very good spirit who works in the grocery store in my neighborhood. He and the staff have done a good job resupplying the store during the pandemic despite some binge buying. And David and crew have kept a Upbeat and helpful attitude when many customers became frustrated or contentious. Finally, if you come into the store you must mask up which helps protect these workers and their families.

  
Tools used: Faber-Castell Essentio Black Leather fountain pen, DeAtramentis Document Black Ink, Pitt Artist Pens on Clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook. #fabercastellusa #clairefontaine

 
Got  in a weekend at Rachel & Bob’s beach house in Michigan. Chicago has been really going thru it and it was necessary to take a break. Between the demonstrations which have seen the torching of police cars and property damage, shootings, the pandemic, loss of employment, the restrictions on public gatherings, the closing of so many restaurants, and the general anxiety increased by truly depressing news cycles, Giamila & I hunkered down in Sawyer for a few days. If you’re going to feel isolated and cut off, you might as well be in a gorgeous environment where you can take off the masks, swim on the clean side of the lake, and go pick blueberries.
 

Drawn on #clairefontaine Stillman & Birn Nova Series Beige and Goldline Watercolour sketchbook with #fabercastell Essentio broad nib fountain pen and Pitt Artist Pens.

 
Took a calming break from the city and parked my arse in my friend’s beach house near Sawyer, Michigan. Top image is Bob’s babe magnet Jeep under a tarp.
 
Sitting at the top of the staircase that used to lead down through a short span of woods to the beach. No longer in use in order to protect the dunes that were planted with sea grass. Due to a rise in lake level and because erosion has been so bad that 20 yards of beach, those dunes bearing the sea grass are also being undermined.

Drawings made using a broad nib Faber-Castell Essentio Black Leather fountain pen, DeAtramentis Document Black Ink, Pitt Artist Pens, Albrecht Dürer Watercolour Markers on Clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook (top) and Stillman & Birn Gamma Series sketchbook.

Jacksonville, Florida takes down Confederate monument after 122 years.

In October of 2017 I traveled to Jacksonville, Florida to give some demonstrations. On a day off I needed to mail a package and headed downtown to a shipping service just off Hemming Park. Downtown was pretty quiet and since I was unfamiliar with Jacksonville I decided to nose around. I noticed a tall monument in the center of Hemming Park which appeared to have a soldier atop the pedestal. As I stood on the Southern edge of the park I saw an historic marker and upon reading it discovered that behind me had stood the Woolworth building which had been the site of Civil Rights demonstrations in the early 1960’s. In 1963 African American students and a white professor had sat at the counter looking to be served and were met with no service and humiliating treatment. Drinks were poured on the student and professor.
In 1960 the demonstrations led to violent clashes between whites and blacks which became known as Ax Handle Saturday. I had known of the lunch counter demonstrations but did not realize they had been in Jacksonville nor did I know of the severity of the attacks on demonstrators on the day which became known as Ax Handle Saturday. I was stunned to be standing on the site of such momentous events in this country’s struggle for Civil and Human Rights.
I then walked over to what expected might be another monument to Confederate soldiers erected in the Jim Crow era that followed the post Civil War Reconstruction period. I had just come from New Orleans where the statue of Gen. Robt. E. Lee had just been removed. As I suspected, it was a Memorial to the Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. On the monument we’re the words, “Our Heroes” and “God Bless Our Country”. The date of commemoration was 1898, solidly in the Jim Crow Era.
As I was drawing the statue, [as I have drawn and documented other monuments to the Civil War, in particular the monuments erected to commemorate the secessionist movement that waged war against the United States of America in order to defend the institution of slavery, and the racist White Supremacy legacy], an African American gentleman who had been walking around the park, passed close by me and muttered lowly but sufficiently for me to hear, comments about a “white mutherfucker” that I felt were very likely directed at the dude wearing a Texas Longhorn baseball cap and sketching the vestige of the Lost Cause. The city of Jacksonville had been locked in a dispute over the removal of these monuments as had/have the other cities and states still exhibiting them. If I was in fact the gentleman’s intended person of disgust, and if it was in regards to an apparent interest in the symbol of the savage oppression and ongoing injustice to African Americans, he could little know that I, who was a child of southern parents, no longer romanticized the history of the old south nor the Confederacy, am a firm unionist and applaud the removal of these monuments. We have still a lot of reckoning and healing over a truly grievous part of our history.

Drawn with a Graf von Faber Chevron fountain pen and Pitt Artist Pens.

 
Stopped by my framer’s shop and drew Avram masked-up and in the midst of a project. Owners Ross and Darren have done an excellent job under truly challenging times to complete old orders, accommodate new orders, and help their employees thru this grueling health/economic crisis all the while observing protocol for the pandemic and keeping everyone safe.
Drawn with a Faber-Castell Basic Black Leather fountain pen and Pitt Artist Pens on a Clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook.