Tools for Making Part 2!
2013 Honda Fit, Winsor Newton #7 Round, Grandma Pollard's Drawing Table
Hank’s new car entertainment is to count Teslas. One weekend day, while we were doing errands, he counted 80 (that’s his record). Yesterday, he counted 56. It’s annoying, but I am doing the thing where I act like his Tesla spotting IS NOT annoying in hopes that he will eventually shift his focus to something else. I am such a smart parent.
We are not a Tesla family. We are a Honda Fit Family. When we first moved to Portland years ago, Clifton would fly back a few times a year to work a few weeks at The Rural Studio (where he was their graphic designer), and they had a fleet of Fits that he would use as his Alabama transportation. When our 1998 Rav 4 died on the street in front of our apartment, he suggested that we check out getting a Honda Fit. This was in 2010; we have been a Fit Family ever since.
Hank was a solid car napper from birth until a few weeks after his 5th birthday. What first seemed like a prison (being trapped in my Honda Fit while Hank napped) quickly turned into two to three hours of getting things done and some of the most productive times of my week. I started calling my Honda my Car Office™, and I found myself heading to my Car Office™ to get things done even when Hank wasn’t napping. Everyone needs a space for thinking, writing, and making, and my silver fit was the zone for me. One of the things that I stress with my students is to find a space that they can call their own. A reliable area where they can feel productive, focus, and get in the zone. I didn’t anticipate that my car would be one of my favorite spaces for making. But it has it all: a comfy chair, limited distractions, the white noise of off-street parking, and if Hank is napping in the back, I have a time constraint that forces me to finish my to-do list. Now that Hank isn’t napping (though I get the occasional surprise nap), I carry over the blessing of a self-imposed time constraint. I am doing it now with this newsletter (three hours) and with my daily drawings (20 minutes). Constraints are a beautiful thing.
My grandma Nan Pollard was an illustrator from 19 until she lost her central vision in her mid-70s and was the hand behind thousands of coloring books, paper doll books, and more. I want to use this space to document more of her work and life because there is a ton to say and see, but for now, I want to share one of the tools that she lived and died by: her Winsor & Newton Series 7, #7 Round Paintbrush. I also wrap my brushes with tape (washi vs. masking) for a better grip.
Growing up, her basement studio is a core memory for me. I can still smell the spray fixative (maybe not the best thing that first comes to mind, but here we are), and she always had her TV on, and it was always fairly dark. Her prime hours of working were nighttime. She raised four kids during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and her waking hours were spent managing the family and her husband (also an illustrator), and her prime time for working was when everyone was asleep. Even though my memories of her studio are from the 1980s, after my mom and my uncles were grown, she still kept her night shift hours.
Growing up, I had zero interest in drawing, so the time I spent in her studio was not spent asking her questions about her craft but more about being around her and spending time with her while she worked. I would get cozy on her couch and watch late-night TV with her while she sat hunched over at her drawing table with her gouache paints, tracing paper, and Winsor and Newton brushes. She had stopped drawing once I started working in earnest as an illustrator, and this was when I would ask her questions. My main one was how she maintained such a flawless line when painting and her response was, “You just do it.” This wasn’t said dismissively, and my main takeaway is that if you do something a LOT, you get good at it. She also told me that the #7 was the best general-purpose brush.
When I started working as a graphic designer after college in 2000, she unloaded all of her art supplies on me: tubes of gouache, her #7s, stencils, French curves, rulers, and many other analog tools that I didn’t have much interest in because I was a freshly minted college grad with a graphic design degree and thought my new G4 iMac was the coolest. Like most folks who pick a creative day job, I quickly got burned out from staring at my screen from 9 to 5 and retreated to analog during the night. Grandma was in the early stages of macular degeneration in the year 2000, and as her career was ending, mine was beginning. And now, in 2024, I paint at night like she painted at night. We both get the most done when everyone is asleep, and the glow of the TV (well, iPad for me) keeps us company. I also have adopted the “learning by doing” mode of making, and I am sure that my students sometimes get frustrated when I state that to figure things out, you have to make piles, and then things will start to make sense.
I love my Car Office™ and my washi tape-wrapped-handled paintbrushes (only a few are Winsor & Newtons because those babies are $$$), and I adore my very heavy drawing table. Speaking of cars, my grandma rocked a 1977 AMC yellow station wagon pacer, and if someone were to offer this up to me, my Honda Fit loyalty would quickly shift to this beauty. Just saying!
DAILY DRAWING TIME! Here is a recent batch of Daily Drawings for September 5th through September 12th. I just finished up a sketchbook last night and realized it encompassed the entire summer for me (June 6th through September 22nd). Welcome, FALL! This grouping of drawings shares some images from the last trip before school started (egg sandwiches, travel diet cokes, and the Pepto that I needed to recover), a new parking permit for school, and a brand new rubber stamp for our newly named art school. Our building is officially being built, and we will be moving in the fall of 2026!
I have LOVED using Substack these last few months, and I am seriously tempted to move the weekly newsletter that I write for the Portland State Graphic Design program over to Substack. The thought of opening up Mail Chimp in a few days to assemble the week in PSUGD events makes me want to lay face down on the floor—sorry, Mail Chimp. I don’t like you very much at all. Substack, I am totally into you, baby.
See you all next week, and thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting! It means the world!
I love my Fit! Gutted they don’t make them anymore. My husband will periodically say something about trading it in for a CRV or giving it to my son and I’m like they don’t make these anymore! Imma drive her until she straight dies! 😄
I love everything about this; the car talk, the magic of (personal) space and (self-imposed) restraints, but most of all ... meeting your Grandma. Such talent! And as a kid of the 70s-80s, I would so enjoy seeing more of her work! Thanks for sharing.