I had a dream this morning in which I was back in my primary school library. Oh, the hours I spend there as a kid, poring over the huge hard-bound collections of “Peanuts” comics. I wanted so badly to be able to draw like Charles M. Schultz.

I wrote to Schultz once, asking for a pencil sketch — because that would have to be an original. I got a nice letter back from an assistant with some copies enclosed. It wasn’t quite what I wanted, but I still cherished it.

Fast-forward to today, where I can find a piece of work that I like and buy it, and before I’ve even read it I’m already exchanging quips on Twitter with the author. The future is a very cool place to live in some respects, and that breaking down of the wall between creative people and readers is definitely one of them.

The last few days I’ve been conversing with someone about Gregg Shorthand (sparing my beloved from having to hear remarks like “Sorry, I habitually put hatches through those parentheses because in shorthand they would mean something else if I didn’t”). Looking up some resources, I stumbled across these again — examples of Schultz’s familiarity with Gregg.

Woodstock was always my favourite character, and I tried over and over to draw him in Schultz’s unique, wiggly hand. Funny to think now of Woodstock acting as Snoopy’s transcriptionist, writing in Gregg:

In that strip, he wrote what Snoopy said verbatim. Schultz uses a few “officey” brief forms I tend to forget about (abbreviations like J-M for “gentlemen”), but his outlines aren’t very precise: the length of certain letters is too short, so “dog” is really “doc”, and “bad” is “bat”.

Here’s another:

Linus opens by saying “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night”. (Merry Crms to all nd to all a g nit.)

Since Schultz writes “all” out in full, I can do a little forensics work and deduce that he probably learned Simplified or a later form (Diamond Jubilee, Centennial, or Series 90). These later variations were easier to learn because they contained fewer abbreviation principles, but as a result require you to spell out more words in full, cutting short the speed gains the earlier forms make possible.

Linus transcribes:

Dr Santa: Ow V-U B? (“X” is a question-mark.)

D u pls brng me a pru[sic] setr nd a jmp rp?

G cref[sic].

I got the new replacement tips for my stylus today, so I figured I’d have another go at digital drawing.

I hate it.

There’s a great thick-thin some people can produce (see my previous post on this), and lots of examples of masterful painting techniques that are possible on digital devices, but I just can’t do it. It feels like trying to draw with a vibrating tube of lipstick.

So here’s an example: I decided to draw a dog to demonstrate. Here it is sketched out in non-photo blue pencil (which shows up in pictures and scans, but I’ve still taken to it as a way to pre-visualise shapes).

Then I inked it in with a fine Platinum Carbon Desk Pen filled with waterproof Carbon ink (loving both of these).

Oops: I used regular writing paper, so the results from here on out are bleedy — not the ideal to show the power of paper, but I can’t be arsed drawing it all over again. And when I draw something the first time, I often capture a certain spirit or feeling about it that I can’t simply reproduce. So this is this dog; another would be another dog.

I then went over the outside lines with my regular pen (a Kaweco with its nib swapped out for a Tombow Extra-Fine nib, also filled with Carbon ink).

Now, the real pros will ink with a dip-pen fitted with a G nib. I used to draw my “good” drawings with a dip pen when I was little, but the ink running out meant I could never get a consistent line. Still, the G is a very flexible nib which allows for that thick and thin variation that I try to fake by going over the outside line with a thicker nib. It’s not ideal and sometimes messy, so I’m working on that.

Then I erase the pencil (or not, if it’s in my sketchbook). I didn’t wait long enough, so the dog got a bit smudged. (Again, bad paper, combined with impatience, as I was just doing this for an exercise.)

Finally, I paint it with water-brushes. With this cheap cartridge paper, that’s where it all really goes to hell.

Still, as mushy and uneven as this is, trying to do this on the tablet was worse.

I blued in a rough on one layer…

…Then went over the lines on another layer. To get that line variation, I have to vary the pressure and speed of the stroke, which makes the lines haphazard. Even going slowly, though, the lines have a wibbly wiggliness to them. What I intend is not what shows up.

Then the “watercolour” paint:

Ugh! It’s baby poo.

Yesterday I drew this fella, who I imagined was the Ambassador for the Free State of the Subconscious. This is exactly what I had in mind, and that’s exactly who showed up through my hand:

So, yeah, I’m giving up on digital drawing — yet again. Perhaps I could buy a Wacom Cintiq for £2,000 and sit connected to a desktop, but I’d rather stick to my pens and paper for now.

Technology should serve us, not the other way around.

Aww, D.R. Simpson is closing. The newsagent/bookshop was one of the last hold-outs in Wick, but apparently the costs and the competition from chains stores on the outskirts of town have finally done them in.

Funny that the shop-owners we spoke to in Stromness responded with pity when we said we were visiting from Wick. Stromness is hardly a big place, but it and Kirkwall (the two main towns on the Orkney Islands) have a self-generated spirit and culture about them that Wick, well, doesn’t.

I’m determined to learn how to paint on-screen. The tools are finally here for me to do it — a pressure-sensitive stylus and a tablet I can use like a piece of paper. With digital, it’s possible to get really even tones that will reproduce well, but also to play virtually with media that I wouldn’t dare use in the real world. (Hello big, messy textures and multiple levels of “undo”!)

The painting part is fine — way more controllable than watercolour, though admittedly also absent the ‘aliveness’ of it. The real challenge is that I’m accustomed to having such tight control over the lines I produce with a pen. I don’t want a big, fat, rounded digital magic marker, I want variability — which is available to a certain degree, but it’s a different feeling than I’m accustomed to. I would love to be capable of doing this:

In other news, I drove every day last week and was feeling all ready to take my practical driving test. Then I had my lesson on Monday and made a right hash of it. Every manoeuvre was awful, and the car was very jumpy under my control.

Of course, my instructor’s car is a peppy little diesel number, while our car is a petrol-powered refrigerator, so this is a bit like learning to play the clarinet and the saxophone at the same time.

After the lesson, I had to take a bus crammed with high school students to Latheron to pick up my artwork. I had no idea if I’d sold anything, and was struggling to lighten up and not get moody about everything: “I suck at driving. I just had to pay £255 for ten more lessons. My art didn’t sell. I don’t know what I’m doing.” *proceeds to eat worms*

It turned out that two of the paintings sold — I’m officially an artist! — and the two I was taking home happened to be the ones I kind of wanted for myself, at least for now.

Craig, my wonderful paramour and greatest supporter, arrived in Latheron with the car and made me drive home. The trip was smooth, fast, easy, and fun.

Dan at Strategic Coach says, “Progress, not perfection.” It’s so hard not to have impossible standards for myself. Even after fifteen years of working with the company, writing material for very successful entrepreneurs, I still feel like somehow I’m different, I’m an exception.

Over the past several months, I’ve achieved the impossible: I learned how to drive. I still have things to learn, but I’ve got to keep a sense of humour about that and not let my ideal take away my sense of progress.

I was feeling a bit lost yesterday (and wrote a letter to a new friend in that state of mind, so I probably came across as a loon), so I sat down, doodled, and talked myself through it — the best thing I could have done! Why are we not taught and encouraged to do this?

…is a regular patron of the resto-pub where I like to work.

He has a really strong Wick accent — imagine a light, bouncy Irish that has essentially no audible consonants — so the only word I can make out is that one. I’m not easily offended, especially by words, but he just makes it sound so, so filthy, and he has no compunctions about spewing it loudly in the presence of all the other patrons.

This seems to be my number one bugbear with life in public: people who intrude on my auditory boundaries (see also: mobile phone as stereo-for-everyone, one-sided phone calls, football songs…)