Making Haiku[photo]comic Daily Create #tdc5397

Even with the frenzy panic of PHP running the web site and the mostly departure of folks who bother to make their own digital art, the DS106 Daily Create still marches on every single day, non-stop since 2012. Open on the web. No paywalls. No tracking do-hickeys. No ads.

I still do them fairly regularly and also try to pop a few into the mix (you can too). I have to give a big tail wagging hat tip to Kevin Hodgson aka @dogtrax who is not only one of like the 4 remaining participants, but who has been keeping October going with a series of TDCs supporting Write Out 2026.

It’s been a while since I did a “making of” post for a TDC, today is a good day to blog.

Today for Daily Create 5397 the task was to make a haikomic or a haiku in the form of a 3 panel comic. I went for the easy reach to use photos but I decided to try illustrating one of the old haikus still findable out there on the web. Here’s what I made:

Haiku illustrated with three photos. 1- snow in a field under trees. 2- snow melted with grass showing. 3- water droplets on grass. — My response for TDC5397

So yes I found a collection of Thirteen Haikus by Yosa Buson (poet and painter, 1716 to 1784) from the Upaya Zen Center. Many of course lend themselves to ullustrating with my own photos (as I do tend to take a few outdoor photos) and the one about melting snow felt… right.

初雪や消ればぞ又草の露
hatsuyuki ya kiyureba zo mata kusa no tsuyu
Haiku by Yosa Buson

It lists the literal translation

The first snow falls
then it melts
into dew on the grass

and then I am guessing a version put into English 5-7-5 hiaku form by one Leon M. Zolbrod

It’s the first snowfall —
When it melts again we’ll see
Dewdrops on the grass.
Leon M. Zolbrod, Reluctant Genius: The Life and Work of Buson, a Japanese Master of Haiku and Painting—Second Installment, Modern Haiku 23:3 (fall 1992)

Well that works, speaking to me on the cycles of nature, that snow melts and nurtures grass (maybe us?) and how we can be a aprt of it, by observing. Or just being present.

I was able in some quick flickr searches to find 3 photos that worked to illustrated, pretty literally (yes thats the easy route)

Over Yonder flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Thar Be Green Grass flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Rain as Precious Gifts flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

The image was assembled in PhotoShop. I know how out of fashion I am not to ask some LLM to maken an image, but I find doing it by hand much more reflexive and enjoyable. I took the comic template shared in the dasily create, deleted the text, and then simply used the wand selection tool to choose each frame to make as a mask after each photo was uploaded. I found a scrript font for the text, using the layer styles to add a stroke of black and a semi-transparent puter glow, and then added the title text (the Japanese version of the haiku).

Eating in photoshop showing the different layers for text, plus each photo i a frame defined by a layer mask. — Layering in things in Photoshop, nary a breath of LLMs here.

It was maybe 25 minutes over breakfast to do.

I gotta say the very ongoing presence and web beat of the DS106 Daily Create, whether it so low on the visibility in the noise of social media, is a refuge, a place of peace, freedom. You can step in any day.

Here’s a bit of history for those who just wander in here (I’m thinking of those LLM spam comment bots who so cleverly glibwrite two sentences referencing my content before injecting an unwanted URL, I will both wave hello and raise a middle finger at you).