Month: June 2010

station to station

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davis train station

The mercury rose to there or thereabouts, and it felt very, very hot. I got out on my bike, my freckly celtic skin plastered in sunscreen, not sure what I wanted to draw, It’s like going to the library, you know; you think you’ve read all the books you could possibly want to read, and then you realise: hang on, I’ve not read Fahrenheit 451, I’m going to read that! So in what felt like a similar temperature, I sketched the train station. I have in fact drawn this building before though, so that analogy doesn’t really work, but it was like, 2006, and I didn’t really like it. I don’t like drawing this building, attractive and sketchable though it is. Something about the arches puts me off. However, my toddler loves trains and I knew he’d like it (see how he influences my sketching decisions now, it’s like he makes my mind up for me; well, someone has to).

Incidentally, I did read Fahrenheit 451. I didn’t like it. I got to about four pages from the end and never picked it up again, like, I couldn’t care how it finished. I felt a bit like that with the last season of Lost, too. I’m four pages to the end of moleskine #5 too… but this one I can’t wait to finish.

whoops!

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robert green: doh!

Damn those Vuvuzelas, eh! It’s been a funny World Cup so far, very colourful, ‘early doors’ but not hugely eventful. Oh, er, except for that howler. I would say, after that 1-1 draw with the US, “same old England”, but in the past England had really good goalkeepers (except in penalty shoot-outs, ahem).   

To celebrate the England – USA match, I made a nice English trifle. Kind of appropriate really, ‘cos they played like puddings. Early doors yet though! And I have been trying to sketch during matches (see Uruguay vs France below) – not easy!

uruguay v france

hang on a second

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2nd street, june 2010

Part two (of two) of the ‘downtown snapshots’ spread of my (almost completed) fifth moley; this is Second Street, Davis, night and day. That’s the cool historic Varsity Theatre there, I have drawn it before, and the Avid Reader right opposite, an independent bookstore I worked at in the first half of my years in Davis. Second Street is probably where the heart of this small college town is.

all the stage is a world

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The World Cup is finally here! After all the talk, after the training, the hype, the injuries to big names, the predictions, the greatest show on earth starts in a matter of hours in South Africa. I cannot wait. It is like Christmas Eve. Of course, the matches are all on so early that I’ll be setting my VCR. Damn you, ten hour time difference!

south africa shirt

And per tradition, that perennially poor prognostic Mystic Pete has been whispering some predictions to me lately, namely that Brazil will win but it won’t be pretty. This is because (he says) European teams don’t win it outside Europe, which realistically leaves only Brazil and Argentina. Argentina probably have the better stars, but Brazil’s manager will drill them into a better team. Mystic Pete also says, sorry guys, Spain won’t win it, because Spain always do badly at the Wolrd Cup, it’s a tradition, like Scotland never passing round one, or England losing on penalties and having their star players sent off unfairly. (Of course, Mystic Pete fans will know this probably means Spain will in fact win it). He says though, the one Euopean team that could go furthest is… Holland. Nobody is talking about the Dutch, but they have some great players, a great team, and a good manager. As for England, well we all hope of course, but Mystic Pete is saying ‘no comment’ (yeah, last time he said they’d lose the final to Germany). Which African team will do well, and be the new South Korea or Senegal? Ghana and Ivory Coast are the best bets, but it’s a shame Egypt never got there, they have a good team (oops: Mystic Pete predicted them to qualify! Doh).

And then there are the kits… I may have to tackle that in a separate post. South Africa’s new adidas shirt is pictured, and as ever this is a battle between the Adidas and Nike shirts, though Puma’s ones this time are quite nice, the African designs at least. England are the only Umbro participants, and what a beautiful couple of kits they have.

The players to watch? Rooney, Messi, Ronaldo, obviously; Kaka, Drogba (if his injury heals), Xavi for Spain; but this tournament always comes up with unexpected heroes, and villains. I’ll be keeping an eye on the Tottenham players (I hope they don’t do too well, in case someone notices them!).

Oh man, a whole month of footy; I only get this every four years. I hope I have time for sketching! Bonne Coupe du Monde! May the least cheating team win!  

PS: I will be changing the background colour of my blog each day,  to match whichever team I am supporting on that day… to keep you guessing…

all those oh-so-nears

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england 1966

Watching the World Cup warm-ups this week, I saw on the side of the North korean bus something like, “Heroes of 1966, Korea DPR will be victorious!” For those who don’t know, North Korea’s last World Cup appearance saw them beat Italy and go 3-0 up against Eusebio’s Portugal in the quarter-finals (before losing 5-3). My first reaction was, now come on North Korea, let it go. 1966 was ages ago! Get over it, move on, don’t live on past glories. England would never do that, eh!

As kids at school we learnt that the Battle of Hastings was 1066, the Great Fire of London was 1666, and England won the World Cup in 1966. History did apparently happen on other non-66 years, but the England football team winning major tournaments alas did not. Years of Keegan, Lineker, Gazza, Beckham… all those oh-so-nears wear you down. Thirty years of hurt became fourty-four, and I can’t see that we have improved so much that we will be able to get past another inevitable penalty shoot-out, probably against the Germans. (Incidentally, England has won the World Cup more times than Germany. ‘West Germany’ however won it three times…) Still we like to hope, and we have Wayne Rooney.

England open their 2010 World Cup against the USA on Saturday. Hopefully it won’t turn out like the first time they played each other in a World Cup, in 1950. On that occasion, when England first deigned to take part in this silly cup of inferior nations, the seasoned US beat the England of Mortenson, Finney and Wright 1-0. The US team still talks about it even now; come on now, 1950 was ages ago, etc etc…

could frame thy fearful symmetry

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downtown davis colours

Summer is here, and with it comes 90-plus degree weather and fans and sunscreen. It just suddenly arrives in Davis, acting as though it were here all the time. I was out yesterday (looking for things to sketch on Drawing Day 2010) and drew some images that struck me downtown, the colours especially. That first one, the yellow dress, is in the window of Pinkadot on E St; the last, the South African football shirt (World Cup starts in less than a week!), is in the window of Soccer & Lifestyle. That is a football (soccer) short shop and one of my favourite places in Davis (indeed it was the discovery of this shop that helped in our initial decision to give living in Davis a go). The red cars were on E and 3rd respectively, and were begging to be sketched. I wanted to give this spread a kind of comic book quality, and I was originally going to add words, I let them speak for themselves instead.

like mercury rising

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interesting building at 4th & G

Saturday was Drawing Day 2010, so I used it as an excuse to do another drawing (even though every day I find some excuse to draw something). I have wanted to sketch this interesting looking building on the corner of 4th and G Streets in Davis for some time now. It’s right next to Little Prague. There are i think several busineses are located in this building, one being the Davis driving academy or something, another being the gingerbread real estate co, or maybe I just imagined that last one. I sat in the shade opposite (90 degree weather has finally returned to this part of the world; 90 and rising).

knock on wood

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cottonwood cottage

It has been muggy, the weather. It doesn’t feel quite like a Davis June, more like a London June. Still, summer is on the way; I even played some football at our annual picnic, but got tired quick; I felt so old! (Fortunately, old in a Stanley Matthews way). I did some drawing too; I got out today at lunchtime and sketched a building near my work, Cottonwood Cottage, at the HQ of the UC Davis Arboretum. I decided not to add colour, as I like it the way it was. You can guess the colours anyway. Print it out and use crayons. I like these wooden buildings on campus. There are so many of them; they look similar but have a lot of character.

the greatest

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pele

Who was the greatest footballer of all time? And is that the same thing as the best footballer of all time? For most people the default answer is Pele. Even for those who never saw him play, except for a few inventive long shots, a header saved by Gordon Banks and that scene with the tactics board in Escape to Victory, he is the greatest footballer of all time. We trust what they all say; those who watched him know what they’re on about. He did score more than a thousand goals for his club, Santos. He did win World Cups in super stylish fashion, surrounded by a super stylish team, at the time when the TV age was bringing the World Cup to many more millions than ever before. I’m just saying. True, Pele never tested himself in the big European leagues, preferring to stay at Santos where the goal just opened up for him, but he also didn’t live in an age where the multi-million dollar transfer to Real Madrid was absolutely inevitable; unlike so many ‘new Peles’ after him, Santos were able to ‘match his ambitions’. He did live in the age where you went off to the United States for a bagload of cash though (yes Beckham, it has been done before), finishing off his career at New York Cosmos in the NASL, before helping the Allies (along with Sylvester Stallone and half the Ipswich team) defeat Nazi Germany. Can’t get greater than that.

However, I was a kid in the 1980s, so for me Maradona is king, hands down. It’s all subjective. Puskas might have been the best. Stanley Matthews even. If Rivelino, Gerson, Carlos Alberto et al had all been born Ulstermen, George Best may have lifted the Jules Rimet in 1970 in the green of Northern Ireland, and we’d probably all be saying he was the greatest of all time. I’m just saying.

I’m sketching World Cup greats in my football sketchbook in anticipation of the World Cup, which begins next week.