wrapped up in books

June 17, 2009Leave a comment

Cycled to the Davis library on sunday, took back those books I didn’t read. I then got books out I’ve already read, well this one anyhow. I sketched the biography section in brown pen. I’ve always been a library-dweller, since I was a kid. I used to bury my nose in books about language, scouring libraries across the borough (preferably for those that said “warning: contains obscure language”). Sometimes I would read fiction, sometimes – quite often – I would read travel books. And I used to spend a lot of time in the music library, taking out records, any scratches marked clearly on the vinyl by the librarian with that yellow crayon. I would get back on the bus with a can of Lilt and a Mars bar, and read up on philology, all the way home.

the usual suspects

June 15, 20094 Comments

Each pen was drawn by itself. These are some of the contents of my pencil case.

your tasty beverage

June 15, 2009June 14, 2009Leave a comment

Getting quiet on campus. I had Taco Bell for lunch on Friday, at the Silo, and drew the cup and the scene beyond it. The fountain soda cup (not the Big Gulp, mind) should be the on the seal of the United States, forget the eagle. this is pretty much the national symbol. Back in Europe the cups are all so small. Small means small. Here, ‘regular’ can mean ‘small’ in one place (roughly twice the size of European small), but ‘medium’ in another. ‘Medium’ on the other hand doesn’t mean ‘medium’ but ‘actually that’s quite big’, in most places. I know one thing, enough of these and ‘medium’ and ‘small’ soon cease to be in your vocabulary.

This is UC Davis, drawn again in purple micron 01.

pete folds none

June 14, 2009June 25, 20099 Comments

#10 of 30. Folding clothes is really really difficult. Look, I’m not setting out to write the message that ‘anything is possible if you put your mind to it’, I’m sure that’s true and I can vouch for it, in some areas. Don’t tell me that practise makes perfect. But folding clothes is flipping near impossible to get right, at least for me. It’s like magic, I mean I am always constantly amazed at it, the spectacle never wears off, to the point where I don’t want to know how they do it. I don’t go to the theatre, I just go down to the Gap and watch them fold t-shirts.

I don’t really. But you know what I mean. Maybe.

i’ll meet you on a bus at dawn

June 13, 2009June 25, 2009Leave a comment

I’ve talked before about my summers as a tour-guide above the streets of London. It was a very physical job. And highly enjoyable. Like sketching, you learn to look. On each tour I’d notice something new, a face in the masonry, a pub with an interesting past, an actual Han Solo in carbonite movie prop in a video store window (it’s in Gloucester Road), and take note, and use it to illustrate my next tour. Useful if stuck in traffic (a frequent occurence) to know lots of little facts. I can probably still remember most of them. You don’t want to know them.

Still, there would occasionally be that one person who knew it all, and would interrupt with the one nugget you left out while whipping down Fleet Street, or correct you at every turn if you weren’t quoting sources like footnotes at every red light. One person in particular (a British man with a very embarrassed looking daughter) did this incessantly on one tour, pissing off several other people, some of whom even kindly offered to throw him into the Thames. I generally ignored him, but as we passed into Parliament Square, I announced (as per our training) that the English Parliament, which dates back to about 1250 (“or ten to one”, which always got a giggle), is known as the “Mother of Parliaments”. Well, it is. The interruptive guy frowned and raised an eyebrow. “The Mother of Parliaments? What about the Icelandic Althing?”

“No, that’s the Father of Parliaments,” I shot back. “But you always know who your mother is.”

This is number 9 in a series of 30.

the sweetest thing

June 13, 2009June 12, 2009Leave a comment

The last one from Monterey. I sketched this fabulous building from the 1880s, the Thomas Kinkade National Archive, in the Harry A. Greene Mansion. Or Willy Wonka’s Summer House, as I prefer to call it.

I sat across the road on Sunday morning sketching this venerable candy stick, wondering if there might be an old witch stuck in an oven inside. Why would someone put a giant toffee apple on their roof? Perhaps it attracts the flies and mosquitoes, they stick to it, nobody gets bitten, they’re laughing. Makes sense, really. I might try it. Better than spraying insecticide everywhere to prevent West Nile. Stick a load of half-sucked sticks of rock or candy canes out in your garden. Maybe that’s where the Christmas tradition came from, you don’t know.

Here’s the obligatory action shot.

put the book back on the shelf

June 12, 2009June 25, 20098 Comments

#8 in a series of 30. The way I’ve put it makes it sound like a fetish or something. I’m just lazy. I have good intentions, but instead of reading them I stay up and draw the edge of the table, or whatever. Still, it’s the hope of reading them that counts, and hope is the main buzzword in this brave new world, isn’t it? Perhaps I hope they’ll read themselves to me.

Still no name for this deeply personal autobiographical series.

all along the rocky shore

June 11, 2009June 10, 20091 Comment

The Monterey Peninsula is some of the most incredible coastline I’ve ever been to, and it’s teeming with wildlife. And massive expensive houses. We drove the 17-Mile Drive, getting out every so often to take pictures, paddle in the rockpools, spot whales (and we did! out in the distance), and I even managed to scribble a few quickies before hopping back into the car. There’s me sketching quickly by the rocks. The last time I’d been, the fog rolled in and out like an army of ghosts, but this time it was warm and sunny. pete sketches monterey

We visited the Point Pinos lighthouse, which was very interesting. It dates back to the 19th century, and is pretty well preserved. You’re not even allowed to use the toilet, it’s so well preserved. When I was a kid I used to want to live in a lighthouse (so many of them in north London). I think it was because of that show Round the Twist, where they all lived in a lighthouse, or it might have been because of Fraggle Rock. Let’s face it, it was the latter. My son enjoyed ringing the huge bell downstairs, but we weren’t allowed to go up to the lamp. During World War II, in fact only days after Pearl Harbor was bombed, Japanese planes flew by Monterey Bay, and this lighthouse was used as part of the coastal defences.

After 17-Mile Drive we lunched in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Clint Eastwood was once mayor. I popped into a little candy store that sold British chocolates, at a price. $2.95 for a Curly-Wurly!!! Can you believe it? They used to be 15p. There was a Lamborghini parked outside. Curly-Wurlies are surely not luxury items. I imagine this rich movie star now, supermodel girlfriend, Lamborghini zooming down the coast, chomping on a Curly-Wurly. Didn’t stop there. $3.95 for a Fruit-n-Nut! Four bucks for a Walnut Whip, sod that mate, I’ll go without. I didn’t even check how much the box of Maynards Wine Gums were. We drove on to Carmel Mission, which is an absolutely gorgeous building on the edge of Big Sur, which looks like a trip back into the Mexican West. Another quick study, this time in wine red copic, and then off again.

as long as i gaze on

June 10, 2009June 9, 20092 Comments

Monterey, sunset. Micron pen and watercolour, in a watercolour moleskine, and pretty much all but done in the dark. That’s ocean fog hanging out there in the distance.

a poem, a stink, a grating noise

June 9, 2009June 9, 20093 Comments

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”

– John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

We were in Monterey at the weekend. Down at Cannery Row (motto: “Yes, We Can”), where they pack souvenir shops in like, um, sardines, I sat and sketched since that day was also Drawing Day 2009. This gave me a contractual obligation to draw. Cannery Row (not in fact named after the actor Sean Cannery) was made particularly famous by John Steinbeck’s book about the place, that people pretend to know well when they go there even if it’s the first time they’ve ever heard of it (and to be fair, since bits of it are mentioned somewhere every few yards you feel like you’ve read the book, seen the movie and bought the fridge magnet). It’s funny how if a writer is associated with somewhere then they make sure to drum on about it as much as possible, like those pubs where Dickens/Twain/Kerouac etc drank (Dickens for one drank in every single pub in London, I’m surprised he was ever sober enough to actually get any writing done). Writers hold a special appeal to tourist boards. You never get areas devoted to, say, Joe Bloggs the stockbroker or someone.
The drawing to the right is of the beer garden of the Captain Bullwhacker’s pub (I think that was the name), which was heavily pirate galleon/British pub themed, and undoubtedly where Steinbeck once popped in to use the loo, maybe.