The White Squirrel

The White Squirrel showed up in our yard right around the time we installed a new fence.  The squirrel had a very unusual, almost white or cream colored coat that was very close the color of the new fence.  Further research revealed that he is probably a leucistic white squirrel, and not a true albino squirrel.  Leucistic squirrels have white or creamy fur and typically brown or black eyes.   True albino squirrels are much whiter with red eyes.  Scientists believe that leucisim is based on DNA, but environmental factors may result in epigenetic changes to gene expression. The white squirrel and the new fence happened around same time that a pair of red-tailed hawks also showed up on our property.  Changing colors to match the fence would seem to give a white squirrel a bit of extra protection from the hawks.

I sketched this with my automatic HB pencil, based on a picture of our backyard.  I used two Conte a Paris Pencils, Pastel 008 (bright spring green) and Pastel 030 (deep forest green).  I laid down a base of light green, and filled in the more shady spots with a layer of dark green.  These pencils are interesting because they have a soft, powdery texture, almost like charcoal.  To achieve a sun-dappled effect, I used a kneadable eraser to lift some highlights which I then filled in with a Faber-Castell light yellow ochre watercolor pencil.

For the squirrel, I used a a Prismacolor burnt ochre pencil for light touches of brown which I blended with a soft white charcoal pencil.  Then I added light touches of yellow ochre until it looked about right. I used my HB pencil to strengthen the outline with a few restatements. 

The fence was similar, except that I used a metallic silver colored pencil for additional highlights.

Winnie in Repose

I drew this based on the principles of Keys to Drawing, by Bert Dodson. His method is to draw lines based on what you see, and then enrich with textures and detail. I also used Chat GPT to help plan it out and to provide guidance for refining it. I sketched the initial outline with an automatic HB pencil.  Then I used darker graphite pencils from my drawing kit to create the different zones of shading. I also used a pen-style mechanical vinyl eraser stick to lift highlights for additional contrast.   The texture is created with small, short, curving or straight lines flowing in the direction of Winnie's fur. The initial draft had good texture, but the graphite was too light and not the best representation of Winnie's black fur.  So I went over it again with charcoal pencils. Soft charcoal for the darker areas, medium charcoal for the lighter areas, using the same short curved and/or straight strokes.  I noticed that the graphite base was hard to draw on and didn't absorb the charcoal as well as I expected.  But I just used more pressure and turned the pencil a bit when I needed to, and then I was able to complete the darker charcoal layer.    I actually had several drafts of Winnie in Repose.  I was pretty happy with the lines and the shape, but I needed several tries to get the texture right. I used an artist's light pad to trace a new, clean version of my initial outline so that I could easily start over and just focus on the texture.

 

The crime fiction of Jim Thompson

Jim Thompson (1906-77) was a very innovative writer whose life and career took him from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma all the way to Hollywood. Mostly known for his crime fiction, Thompson was not well particularly well regarded during his own lifetime, but he has received a great deal of critical appreciation since his death in 1977. Writers such as Ed Brubaker and James Ellroy have acknowledged his influence, and the movie industry continues to mine his work for screen ideas.

Before he turned to fiction, Thompson had a very versatile career as a newspaper writer and true crime author. This experience gave him a lot of insight into the criminal mind, and he had the ability (and the courage) to really get into the head of psychopathic killers. He was ahead of his time in this respect.

His best known work is probably The Killer Inside Me (1952). The narrator, Lou Ford, is a small-town sheriff who appears to be slightly dull-minded. Yet, in reality Sheriff Ford is very intelligent and experiences a nearly-constant urge to act violently; Ford describes his urge as the sickness (always italicised). Ford is a stereotypical serial killer, created by Thompson before that term even existed.

Other key works include The Getaway, which was adapted for the 1970 movie starring Steve McQueen and directed by Sam Peckinpah. Thompson wrote a script based on his novel, but McQueen rejected it as too reliant on dialogue with not enough action. The script was rewritten, and Thompson eventually sought, but lost, a Writers Guild arbitration to get script credit for the film. There is no question that the original story was greatly altered, but there is also no question that the original book would have been difficult or impossible to film.

Also noteworthy is The Grifters (1963). The narrator is Roy Dillon, master of the "short con", who has a romantic entanglement with another expert grifter, Moira Langtry, who sells sexual favors to her landlord in return for the rent money. Roy's mother, also a grifter, is in the picture as well. Together, the three characters get caught up in a crime spree which culminates in betrayal, infamy and murder. The Grifters was made into a movie in 1990, and this time there were very few changes to Thompson's original story.

Thompson's stories are usually first-person narratives which reveal a nihilistic world-view and a frighteningly deep understanding of the warped criminal mind. There are no good guys in Thompson's literature — most everyone is abusive, opportunistic, or simply waiting for the opportunity to pull a fast one.

Although Thompson was a prolific and generally successful writer, he was always broke and could never really get on his feet financially or otherwise. He acquired a drinking habit from the time in his youth when he worked as a bellboy in a rough Texas hotel, and later as a roughneck in the Oklahoma oilfields. He died from alcohol-related illnesses in 1977 at the age of 71.

Donald Westlake's Parker

Donald Westlake's Parker is a hardened professional thief who appeared in a string of crime novels published in the 1960's and 70's and written under the pen name of Richard Stark. Parker has been the inspiration for several movies, most recently Mel Gibson's Payback (1999), based on the first Parker novel The Hunter. Darwyn Cooke is working on a graphic novel which is also based The Hunter, soon to be published by IDW. If you like Ed Brubaker's Criminal series, you will definitely want to pick this up. Brubaker has acknowledged that his work is in many ways inspired by Westlake's Parker.

Perfectly capable of murder, Parker has almost no redeeming qualities, aside from his professionalism and the fact that he is an honest crook. In The Hunter, Parker chases his ex-partners and his ex-wife, who have betrayed him in a heist and left him for dead. He survives, but is arrested by the police. Slowly, methodically, one by one, Parker kills his betrayers, ultimately taking on the mob in the process.

Parker is a loner, in many ways indistinguishable from the unnamed protagonist of Clint Eastwood's Dollars trilogy. He operates in an amoral world where everybody is a criminal of some sort. In this world crime pays, there is no good or evil, but simply different styles of crime. Crime is a business, and all business is a form of criminal activity. In fact, Parker is an entrepreneur of sorts, competing with the syndicate and fending off assorted psychotics, amateurs and losers. Of course, there is no law, so Parker cannot be caught and punished. He can only be injured or delayed. He has no connection to society, and seeks only to acquire money in order to remove himself to comfortable isolation.

But what makes Parker so archetypal and enduring is that he speaks to something very deep in our collective psyches. We envy Parker's lack of shame, or guilt, or any type of sentimental feeling whatsoever. Although he is hunted constantly, he is totally unselfconscious, totally focused on his purpose. Parker is a very remarkable, enduring anti-hero.