Back to drawing – harmonics

A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon this picture of Jean Alesi and I immediately thought to copy it – first in the sense of taking that pose myself, then drawing it:

MAGNY-COURS, FRANCE: French Prost-Acer driver Jean Alesi waits in the pits of the Magny-Cours racetrack, 30 June 2001 during the second free practice session, on the eve of the French Formula One Grand Prix. (Photo credit: PIERRE VERDY/AFP via Getty Images)

There is a lot I want to say about this picture. I start with how my body instantly felt being in that pose, first as a global sensation, then perceiving each body part one after the other, especially the contact of the lower back on the surface where he is sitting, then the tension in the fingers of the right hand holding the left hand, the pull distributed along the arms and shoulders, the legs relaxed. Then I had to try to sit like him. Without thinking, my body took that exact pose and it made me laugh 🙂

For me the highest density of sensory information is in the hands. I tried to render this higher detail in perception through higher detail in the drawing. Something that the photographer can’t do (or only indirectly through the combination of focus and depth of field) is to completely remove features. I decided not to draw his face for two reasons, first because I didn’t want to risk it, second because he has a neutral/standby expression that is already shown by his whole body, so I felt that drawing the face would have moved the observer’s attention away from his hands.

What I didn’t manage to capture in progress pictures is how I started drawing. I had two possible ways. One would have been to draw the outline and incrementally add inner subdivisions, but it’s a technique I master only partially and I knew I would have made quite visible mistakes in proportions. So I went for the second way, that is both the one I practice more and the one that is based on observation skills I can -haha- blindly rely on. It works by seeing the picture as a mosaic of shapes, pick one of a medium size somehow in the center, and add the surrounding shapes one after the other. This picture is particularly suitable, as it’s easy to split it into similarly sized shapes. I very much like how this drawing phase is extremely abstract, and paradoxically brings results that are closer to the live subject.

For a short session I could not draw more, and I will not continue editing it. I may draw it anew, with some gained experience from this run. I actually like the lines stage more than the one with shaded areas, but I think I wanted to see the contrast of the blue of the racing suit, the black of the soles and hair, the white of the sleeves. I have a few ideas for a second take, maybe only with colors.

What I really cherish is how I felt when I saw the picture, and how I found my ways to render it in the drawing. I thank the accidental model and the photographer for gifting me this picture 🙂

Sunrise

These last weeks I regularly happened to wake up at sunrise or just before. It is always a magic moment to be awake that early (sunrise is around 5:30am in my location now, so it’s also before the beginning of most human activities in town) and sometimes it is also a gorgeous display of colors. The following photo is unedited and uses the basic photo app of my phone, which is not known to have particularly good lenses – if anything, you can imagine the colors a bit more on the violet side:

One morning I opened my eyes at 4am and thought it a good idea to enjoy the coldest hour of the morning (it was a terribly hot week, especially late morning until evening) so I got up and walked to a bench in the middle of the fields just outside town, and waited for the sun to rise from behind the low hill in the distance:

It was around 5am and I was the only human around. A few birds were singing, but it was overall quiet. I felt like the king of the world in front of such a magnificent show of colors, the air the most pleasantly fresh. I thought, is it a privilege to have+dedicate time to attend sunrise? It definitely didn’t feel like a chore because I had no difficulty getting up and leave the house. It was no nice addition to another task seen as the main occupation either – I specifically walked there to watch sunrise and do nothing else. I can’t group this activity together with any other. It is being 100% present and having senses available to feel like being receptive to the world around.

I wonder if Scott felt somehow like this when the sky in Antarctica draped itself of the most wonderful colors. He regularly tells that he can’t find words to describe the scenes before his eyes (but he does manage to write sublime descriptions 🙂 ) , and he seems to become intensely focused on the present, to the point of merging with the landscape in its immensity, and thus living beyond the size of his human body. Ponting (the photographer of the expedition) often expressed his total enthusiasm many times, and I imagine that his joy was both ignited and amplified by his ability to capture at least part of that magnificence with his photography devices. Somehow I think that both felt the same admiration for those landscapes, and channeled it either in words, or on film. It is intensely beautiful to get the feedback from both of them, I feel a little bit like having been in Antarctica with them.

Mind inertial navigation

I have been documenting myself about inertial navigation systems, used among others by aircraft to estimate their position. Surprisingly to me, planes didn’t switch to GPS-based (or GPS-only less so) navigation, even if GPS data are used to correct errors in the INS. The surprise is maybe based on my (as pedestrian/driver) default tools. This only makes me understand that the engineering history and present of (atmospheric) flight comes from another set of traditions.

Anyway, today’s musing is not about the system in itself, even if it would fully deserve it and I may well write more about it in the future 🙂

For the scope of this post, it is enough to know that a commercial airplane gets informed (before takeoff) about the coordinates of a sequence of waypoints that build up the whole flight route, each pair of waypoints being connected by a segment of straight flight. Takeoff is performed manually, then the plane can basically manage itself along the whole route until the waypoint before descent, when the pilots take over and deal with the landing phase.

It is about a parallel I noticed with my time management. I am able to focus and manage my energy extremely well when I listen to music, but only in a specific format, that is actually very close to the list of waypoints of a flight route. I have listened to a small number of CDs often enough that I know what song comes after the other, especially the one or two before the last. Most of them are one hour long, with 3min- to 5min-songs, and are of similar tempos. Some exceptions are a few classical music concerts whose movements are up to 20mins long, but the internal structure makes it possible to identify a few mental waypoints within the movement. I also have two longer medleys (a 2-hour one, and a 2:30h one) and a couple of 30mins playlists. Shorter playlists can be improvised by taking the last N songs of a CD. The important points are the preparation of the descent and a rough estimate of how long the focused activity will take. If I finish earlier, I can use the rest of the mental flight for some maintenance stuff, but will keep listening until the end of the sequence. Then flaps out, landing gear down, flare, and careful touchdown.

Undercarriage of a Boeing 747 (source: Wikimedia Commons)

The important point is that I replay these sequences of songs always the same way, because the first two songs are to get to focus/cruising altitude, all the intermediate songs as markers of how much time has passed, and the last two to gradually get out of autopilot and mentally descend in a manageable way. Playing the same CD in random order is pure chaos, especially when the second-last song is not the second last of the randomised playlist – to the point that I must stop listening right after it, whatever comes afterwards 🙂 Not to mention that when I listen to new music I can only focus on it, I can’t use unknown music for unrelated focused work. And when I listen to vocals, it has to be in a different language than the one of the focused activity – both can be known, but can’t be the same. That applies also to conversations around me.

I write about this for a bunch of reasons: first, because I finally found out why it works so well for me and why an apparently similar setup is totally dysfunctional – second, because someone else may find out that it works for them as well, or find a variation of it that works well for them – and third, because I know it is the way to make myself free from the internal cost of manually flying the whole route (both the immediate cost in terms of attention, and the long-term effects in terms of exhaustion). I am in a phase where I’m discovering the absolute joy of finally flying in a straight line and this has become my non-negotiable reference.

“The King’s Speech” – seeing, being seen

Today I rewatched the final scenes of “The King’s Speech” in the public library from its streaming service. I was knitting and didn’t want to put on my headphones, so I watched without sound. I remembered the overall direction of the dialogue, and in any case what I was looking (haha) for were the visuals.

I cherish this movie first of all for the photography. I feel very cozy in the pastel colors and the soft tones of the most significant scenes.

Watching the movie without sound is an interesting experience. The story is about the (future) king’s stutter and how he manages to overcome it, despite the rising pressure of responsibilities and geopolitical issues. He is helped by a speech therapist who addresses not only the practical part of stuttering, but creates a bubble of trust. It is a story about being heard and then become able to speak – for cinematographic rules, this is rendered through the audio track, but more strongly through the video track, to the point that the audio becomes optional – it turns into a story about seeing and being seen. I can see all this in Colin Firth’s expressions, and every time I rewatch the movie I see more details, and I resonate with his emotions more and more.

As closure of the post, I pick this screenshot. His expression reminds me of Scott’s portrait:

Photography – harmonics #1

Today I wanted to post about a picture that makes me resonate/feel/remember, like Scott’s words captured in their forever shape. I hope, once more, that Scott can look at such unlikely parallels with the benevolence he’s known for 🙂

I didn’t find the source/photographer and will update the post when I find it, for once I’m disappointed that the picture has no watermark:

I would like to share my reaction to it, without giving any context except the obvious fact that it’s a Formula 1 driver negotiating a curve.

What I liked at first glance about this picture is that it’s so well framed and all lines are almost at the same inclination from the straight vertical/horizontal crosshairs. Color-wise, contrasts and light are pleasantly balanced. If I had to draw a copy of this picture, it would be quite easy thanks to the abundance of similarly-sized shapes, like a puzzle or a mosaic. I’m not sure I would, because half of the greatness of this picture comes from the colors, and I’m aware that my color skills are rubbish 🙂 so I would probably get it printed.

I gave a closer look and found two main groups of lines/directions. One is the direction where the helmet points to + where the front wheels are going, the other is the median line of the body of the car + all its parallel symmetrical shapes. These two group of lines don’t overlap in this moment of the curve, which makes me feel the peak of lateral acceleration, of the torque on the body of the car. But it’s not a tension that I feel afraid of: the car is designed to withstand these forces and stay glued to the ground, and the driver (through the engine) is the one who decides where the whole thing goes, thanks to the combined grip of all wheels on the road. If this picture were a slow motion replay of the curve, you would see the car shaking like an airplane due to the bumpy curb surface, you would get both the lightness of its frame and the power of the engine.

Formula 1 was and remains a whole lot of (related) concepts and real-world effects – an élite sport, an indecent source of noise and pollution, a very expensive circus, the pinnacle of automotive culture that is already buried as a concept – but this picture without context is just lines, shapes, energy, movement, a millisecond of grace captured from its best angle.

Knitting updates – map of Antarctica and Glossopteris pullover

Time for a couple pictures from my knitting WIPs – first, I reached open waters, namely the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea:

To alternate from this project that requires a lot of focus, I started something more straightforward (just because the overall pattern is familiar to me) in the form of a cotton-blend pullover. I picked some soft grey yarn in a local shop and started right away. The pattern is a variation of Flax pullover from Tin Can Knits, with a basket weave knot on the right sleeve, and a Glossopteris leaf on the upper left sleeve. I’m improvising quite a lot so stay tuned 🙂

Endurance (1912 ship) — La Cathédrale Engloutie

I have in mind a series of posts about the ships that sailed to the Antarctic. One of them is Endurance, Shackleton’s ship, that was crushed by sea ice and sank in the Weddell Sea.

Endurance under sail trying to break through pack ice, Weddell Sea, Antarctica, 1915, by Frank Hurley, from original Paget Plate, 1914-1915 State Library New South Wales — source: Wikimedia Commons

Frank Hurley also recorded a video of the ship’s end, the masts broken, the awful sound of her hull yielding to the pressure “as a giant would crush a match-box”. The film has been made available on YouTube, which feels odd for me, as YouTube is where I go to look for music, documentaries, or funny stuff. I only link and not embed it, it’s really hard to watch. And imagine what it has been for Shackleton and his expedition, seeing their only connection to the mainland being destroyed by ice.

Instead, I will mention Debussy’s “La Cathédrale Engloutie” (The Sunken Cathedral), a prelude published in 1910, “about an ancient Breton myth in which a cathedral, submerged underwater off the coast of the Island of Ys, rises up from the sea on clear mornings when the water is transparent. Sounds can be heard of priests chanting, bells chiming, and the organ playing, from across the sea”. The bell sounds and the eerie underwater atmosphere somehow go well together with Endurance‘s final resting place.

The wreck of Endurance was found at the bottom of the Weddell Sea in 2022.

Knitting project: map of Antarctica

In my recent focus on the southern continent, I got the inspiration to knit a map of Antarctica in polar projection. I found no knitting pattern about it, nor anything more detailed than the increase rate to knit a circular shawl. So I improvised (first time so significantly), stumbled on a large metal hoop at the Shop of Every Possible Object, then taped two A3 sheets of paper to draw the map. In my stash I had (since a long time) some cotton in two colors that matched my plan perfectly.

The polar projection in itself conveniently doubles as knitting pattern. In orange are the meridians that correspond to the knitted increases. BOR (beginning of round) corresponds to the prime meridian, origin of longitudes, which is the vertical upper orange segment of my chart.

Somehow by not following a pattern stitch by stitch there is a sense of making it up on the way that is metaphorical for me now. Unlike the full journey of any explorer even nowadays, I will start from the South Pole and move circularly northwards. (To be precise it will be a spiral, but it’s close enough.) The parallels at 5 degrees intervals will be marked by a row of purls, the rest is stockinette. Each of the 8 meridians marked in orange will be a column of purls. The map of the coastline/iceline will be used to switch to blue, no stitch counts, only comparing map with the knitted progress.

Got near 80°S early this morning, soon reaching the coastline. I briefly considered intarsia as flat knitting but my joining skills are terrible, so I prefer to pilot through all the bays in the round as I find them. The first color changes will come soon, right at the edge of the Great Ice Barrier (now called Ross Ice Shelf) and of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf.

Scott’s diary – fractal lives

When I resonate with something that Scott wrote, I sometimes perceive how small my life events look in comparison, and I feel like this comic:

Source: swordscomic

I hope Scott doesn’t mind me relating to his notes/story like I do, especially citing his words when I want to describe how I feel about my own stuff – but if he does, at least I hope that he finds the parallels somewhat entertaining 🙂

Bubbles #5 – man made eclipse, 1928

My Wikipedia roulette took me to the page of the Italia airship, “a semi-rigid airship belonging to the Italian Air Force. It was designed by Italian engineer and General Umberto Nobile who commanded the dirigible in his second series of flights around the North Pole. The Italia crashed in May 1928, with one confirmed fatality from the crash, one fatality from exposure while awaiting rescue, and six missing crew members who were trapped in the still-airborne envelope. At the end of the rescue operations there were a total of 17 dead (crew and rescuers) and a number of survivors.”

Takeoff from Stolp was further delayed by bad weather, but Italia set off for Norway at 03:28 on 3 May 1928; eight hours later, escorted by Swedish naval planes, she passed over Stockholm. The expedition’s meteorologist, Finn Malmgren, spotted his house from the air and the airship descended to drop a letter to his mother.

So you are telling me that an official mission, with a significant military component, made a detour, at least a vertical one, to drop a personal letter of a crew member? I mean, it’s not like some carpooling and the driver telling everyone “guys I need to stop at the supermarket for a moment, wait ten minutes for me” and the driver is the one doing all the actions. Malmgren had at least to talk to his superior, if not to Nobile directly, to get the airship to change course. I couldn’t help trying to imagine how it could have happened at all, and it kept getting more and more unbelievably hilarious. It could have gone like this:

“General, we are going to fly over my mother’s house and I would ask permission to drop a letter for her.”

(some debate about allowing this or not, and how, then Nobile gives orders to the elevator operator and the engine mechanics to let the airship fly lower. Malmgren, the package with the letter in his hand, looks out of the open window with expectation. Nobile corrects the course a few more times)

Meanwhile some locals on the ground have spotted the airship and are following her with admiration. Then they start worrying as she starts descending, slowly, getting bigger and bigger, they can see the name painted on the side, the Italian insignia, some say they have been able to see the crew inside the nacelles. The noise of the engines gets louder and louder, but it doesn’t look like an emergency. The immense shadow of the airship slowly moves on the ground like a man made eclipse, scaring a few people and animals.

(Nobile looks at the meteorologist picking the best moment to throw the package as close as possible to his house)

The Italia gets as low as it is safe to do so, then something tiny is seen falling from her. Either someone runs to the spot where the object likely landed, or found it in their garden. They read the address on the package and bring it to the meteorologist’s mother who was also outside, worried by the noise and the sight of that almost menacing low-altitude maneuver. With the utmost surprise she sees that it’s a letter from her son. She looks up to the airship, she can’t believe that the two things are connected.

(Nobile gives orders to pick up altitude, the noise of the engines changes, the Italia slowly comes back to her planned course, leaving behind a letter fallen from the sky and many years of the locals recounting the story, with variations about details and guesses.)

I’m still giggling 🙂