but it’s still mightier than the sword

May 20, 2009June 25, 20097 Comments

I started a new series. It’s like the Save the World project, even in the same type of book, but semi-autobiographical. That doesn’t mean part-fiction, it means it’s not going to be the whole story, just some, y’know, miscellaneous details. Semi-attached. Remember those ’25 things about me’ memes that were flying about bloggiverse and facebookville a couple of months ago? Gave me an idea for a new sketchbook-long series. It might be entirely in cobalt copic, until I change my mind after three drawings and use olive green. Expect to see more little things from around the flat. I hope I didn’t draw them all last time round…

Anyway, yes, I hold my pen funny.

if you can’t take the heat

May 19, 20092 Comments

The weather over the weekend was a whopping 104 degrees. Stay inside sort of weather. People from Burnt Oak aren’t cut out for hundred degree heat.

Davisites are used to it though. Californians in general love the sunshine and the heat (I have to laugh when my wife complains that it is cold when it is 65 degrees at 8am), though Central Valley heat is not so loveable, and the heat has come early this year. So I was pleased today that the weather plummeted to a brisk 90 degrees. I braved the chilly weather and poked about downtown during my lunch hour, huddling up for long enough to draw the corner of G and 2nd Streets, in purple micron and wine copic muliliner, before cycling back.

miscellaneous details

May 14, 2009April 6, 20113 Comments

Whew! So I finished (or, more accurately, I stopped) and it is perfectly square. Forget all the ‘de-clutter your home’ books, I’m campaigning for the re-clutter movement.

I’m presenting it in this direction though really you should lay your screen flat on the desk and walk around it. Or up on the ceiling and walk beneath it. Mind nothing falls off, there are some small sharp things in there. I hope you like it. It was laborious this one, and drawn at all eccentric and nonlinear times. My favourite bit is the shoe, my baby son’s shoe. I’ve entered it for a cover design competition; it probably won’t win but it’d be nice if it does.

cross over the river, where they feel safe and sound

May 13, 2009May 27, 2010Leave a comment

A sketch by Putah Creek, in the UC Davis Arboretum. I braved the heat and the allergy-inducing winds to sit and sketch this. Putah Creek is a great place to come in Summer if you want to catch West Nile Virus, from all the mosquitoes that hang out here. Speaking of hanging out, the bridges such as this one are home (or sign the sign says) to many bats, (who eat the mosquitoes). If you fancy catching rabies, I read somewhere it’s endemic in local bats. And then there’s the black widows. Don’t get me started.

Dangerous place, is Davis. And it’s going to hit a hundred degrees this weekend.

i could keep this up all night

May 12, 2009May 27, 2010Leave a comment

In fact I am. A state of non-sleep (that’ll be ‘awake’) means I am up addingmore miscellaneous details. The act of drawing everything in my apartment (saving the world, it was called last year) brings me closer to another fine mess. Nearly done. You can make a jigsaw out of it. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.

back to front, left to right

May 9, 2009May 9, 20095 Comments

I am drawing lots of small objects at the moment, miscellaneous extraneous details if you will, onto a larger peice of paper than I normally work on. This, therefore, takes longer. I was hoping to have it finished this coming week (I may be entering it for something if I like it) but who knows?

Anyway here a couple of details.I am drawing it so that when it is finished, it will be square, and not obvious which way it should be hung. I always think that when I see some abstract piece in a modern art gallery. Perhaps the artist had one way of hanging it in mind (presumably the way he or she painted it) but when he or she gave it to a gallery they hung it sideways, or upside down (or backwards even, you never know). And then that way stuck, and the artist never let on, because he thought it was funny. And then some rich wannabe buff buys it and hangs it in his mansion, and selected art-savvy hangers-on sycophants come by and smirk because he doesn’t realise he’s hanging it sideways, and they laugh at thim while he’s in the toilet, and then the artist walks in and says it’s not sideways, it’s upside down, and they don’t know whether to smirk or cry, but nobody tells the buff in the bog. It has probably never happened, but it would be funny (in a bad predictable sitcom kind of way).

Anyway… here’s how I am doing. I love my noodles.

the darling buds of may

May 8, 2009May 8, 2009Leave a comment

Sunday morning, San Diego, sat outside in the garden sketching the flowers. This I believe is the furthest south I’ve ever been. The Mexican border is nearby. Later that day, we flew home to Davis. Perfick.

wouldn’t it be nice

May 5, 2009May 5, 20094 Comments

After all the modern US corporate architecture in La Jolla’s conference district it was actually a bit of a surprise to come face to face with magnificent decorated buildings from the mid 1600s no less right in the heart of San Diego. Well, it is pretty much where California began (and still begins). We didn’t spend very long at Balboa Park, but long enough to see what an increcible place it is – I could spend all day there, drawing, it’s a sketcher’s dream. I stopped outside the Museum of Man, with its ornate down and ridiculously Churrigueresque entrance and tower, aka the California Tower. To coin a phrase, phebleedingnominal. However, it turns out that this building isn’t as old as the other one I saw (which actually was from the 1600s according to its sign), but this building was finished in the early 20th century for some world fair. Still, well worth a sketch. Two in fact; I did the one above in copic 01, while the thumb on the right was done in brown micron.

It’s funny, you know. You think of Southern California and all those people who get facelifts and plastic surgery and so on to look younger; the buildings on the other hand want to look older. Maybe that’s what the Beach Boys were singing about.

I didn’t get much other drawing done in San Diego. We did drive through the cool-looking Gaslamp District and visited the Seaport Village, which was nice; some other time perhaps. San Diego looks well worth another visit. Next time, when our boy’s older, we’ll go to the zoo.

walk of shame

May 4, 2009May 4, 20092 Comments

I went to a conference in Southern California, as people often do. It was in La Jolla, the wealthy northern part of the San Diego sprawl. I am told it has a wonderful coastline; I barely saw it. I did spend a lot of time in the big tall hotel and big wide road district though. I didn’t stay in the hotel where the conference took place, but in another equally large and corporate one, a short walking distance away (or so it seemed from Google Street View). What you don’t take into account are the massive wide roads, and how America really is not designed for pedestrians; La Jolla more than most. The roads have about five hundred lanes, and you have to wait several months for the red hand to become a white man, which it does for the briefest of moments before flashing back again, ‘hurry up, come on, there’s cars want to get moving here you inconvenient pedestrian’. That’s if there even is a crosswalk; on a couple of occasions there was nothing but a sign telling the weary walker to turn back several leagues and cross via the overhead walkway, which sounds nice until you discover there is no way onto the walkway from the street, no steps, just a grass verge and some sort of swanky polished mall or shiny bank office. Tactics were necessary in order to simply cross the road. This short walk was becoming a mensa puzzle. I finally arrived at the conference with tired feet, but a much sharper mind. And yet in the only moment I could grab to sketch, all I could draw was a bland hotel courtyard hidden by part of a palm tree.