Winter at Great Dunes

More iron gall ink and opaque watercolor. The watercolor is a small set of 24 “Angora” pan paints, probably meant for children as the colors are nontoxic and bright. Sets come in groups of 14 colors to 36. When I was a kid, I had a set of pan paints my mother bought for me – my sister had the same – and I just loved them. The set my mother bought was transparent watercolor, but diluted enough, these are equally transparent. There is something that I always love about paints in a pan – I think it is because it is more play than serious.

I have become enamored with the Great Sand Dunes National Park – so much to see, so many seasonal variations. Here, winter and snow on the dunes with clouds dropping down between the dunes and distant mountains. The river is cold, and there is a dusting of snow in the high desert plants. Winter is at hand.

Rainy Night

I’ve always loved pen and watercolor drawings, long before urban sketching became connected with it. The ink here is some of my homemade iron gall ink, waterproof and dark once dried. On top of that, opaque pan watercolors I picked up at a little store in Decorah, Iowa, this summer. The paper is 100% cotton Bee paper – nothing great, not expensive, but fun to use and responsive to both ink and color. Illustrations like this are fun because they aren’t “serious” – I get to play, practice, explore. Not a bad way to spend some time before lunch.

The Truck at Manzanar

The Truck at Manzanar

The day we came to Manzanar on our trip, we wandered throughout. Various places, such as the barracks, were open, but the visitor’s center was closed. Nonetheless, there was a lot to be seen.

Manzanar is a barren place, lonely and remote even today, even though it is readily accessible off Hwy 395 along the Eastern Sierra in California. Imagine being sent here, pulled from your home and put into buildings without insulation, subject to wind and dust, heat and snow, without appropriate clothing. Your entire family is stuffed into a room and there is no privacy. The internment of the Japanese did this.

This picture shows – and perhaps exaggerates – the isolation of Manzanar. Today it is still lonely, but 80 years ago probably even more so.

Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 521/16, Kodak TriX 400, Epson V600 and Negative Lab Pro.

Manzanar #1

Manzanar 1

In 2021 we headed out on what was to be a 3 week long road trip. The first part was up the Eastern Sierra along Hwy. 395, stopping and staying in Independence, CA. One of the most notable places to see along this route was Manzanar National Historic Site – a not very nice part of US history. It is a Japanese internment camp which was built for imprisoning Japanese Americans, natives of this country, and therefore citizens, as well as immigrants.

I took along a digital camera, and a folding camera, the Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 521/16. Only now am I scanning the film – it took quite some time to finishing up the roll! I used Kodak TriX 400 and got twelve 6×6 images out of the roll, which is 120 film. To process the film, I took it to a local lab and then scanned it myself using the Epson V600 and Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom.

However, the trip ended when we got breakthrough Covid. We headed back home, sadly, but better safe than sorry, eh?