More from our Labor Day weekend away: the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, a hive of happy holidaymakers on a Saturday afternoon. It was warm and sunny, right by the Pacific Ocean, and we had spent the morning up on the cliffs watching surfers and out on the pier (or wharf) enjoying some very yummy ice cream and very tasty clam chowder. I do like to be beside the seaside. After the rest of the family headed back for a nap, I pottered down to the funfair on the Boardwalk and found (after some searching) a place in the shade to sketch. It was pretty busy, and that famous old rollercoaster rattled and screamed. It’s funny, staying in Santa Cruz you regularly hear the sound of girls screaming ringing through the night but in a wierdly normal (and clockwork) way, knowing it’s probably the rolloercoaster of that big thing that shoots people into the air and then drops them suddenly (why anyone would go on such an unholy contraption is beyond me). Perhaps it’s all the vampires. Below is a nice (and quickly sketched while waiting for pizza) view of the Boardwalk from the end of the street where we stayed. I liked this motel sign (that’s not where we stayed, we rented a small house).
Month: September 2012
market day
On Saturday, after a morning of ten-pin bowling, I sketched the tail end of the Farmer’s Market. Davis Farmer’s Market is a popular place on a Saturday, but it’s also held on Wednesday afternoon. There is often music playing (I once sketched a group called the Putah Creek Crawdads, and in May I sketched Jenny Lynn and her Real Gone Daddies – bands with a fatherly name are popular here!) and the playgrounds adjacent in Central Park make this a destination for Davis kids (and Davis Moms). Every time I take my own son here we bump into other kids he knows, and it’s the same for adults; the morning after I gave that book talk back in February I bumped into about five or six people here who recognized me. This really is the city’s meeting place, the Davis equivalent of the Roman Forum. I sketched this on larger paper than usual (this drawing is about 8″x10″, but annoyingly just slightly too big for my 8″x10″ frame for some reason). I did all the penwork, sat beside the Hotdogger stand, but by the time I was done the market had left and so I added colour later.
Below are some other sketches I have done at the Farmer’s Market over the years. I don’t sketch there often (what with my thing about sketching in crowds) but what a fun place to draw!
(Top left: May 2012. Top Right: August 2010)
(Top left: September 2006. Top Right: October 2009)
(Top left: October 2011. Top Right: October 2010)
(Top left: January 2012. Top Right: May 2011)
a door on the beach
On our trip to Santa Cruz, we drove down to the other end of Monterey Bay to Monterey itself, where we go every year. We spent a foggy morning at the playground, before spending a foggy morning at our little beach in Pacific Grove. Yes, the morning was foggy, but it burned off eventually. It wasn’t the only thing that burned. My feet, for one. The sunscreen went on them later than the rest of me, and it was too late. That stung later. Lesson learned. It was while I sat sketching this door, which is a sea-kayaking place. This was in the Moleskine with the uni-ball signo pen which of course runs a little when you add watercolor (I knew this and wanted it to add a bit of rough darkness to the stones), but which has amazing accuracy and control when sketching, more than any other pen I have used.
recently-burned feet just out of view
planet of the cars
Here are some of my son’s favourite toys, the Cars. I am forever tripping up on them, camouflaged against the roadmap rug in the living room, or lined up in very specific race positions on the many racetracks we draw together. The two movies, along with the Mater’s Tall Tales specials, are never far from the dvd schedule, and we all find ourself humming one of the tunes from the movies or saying ‘ker-chow’ or ‘dad-gum’ or such as like. My son has loads of these die-cast metal toys from both movies, some of them quite hard to find individually, to the point where it becomes a parent’s favourite quest to find the more obscure ones (I don’t know who Rip Clutchgoneski is in the movie but he for one is very difficult to obtain). And unlike so many toys, these get really played with, and my already multi-lingual son likes to get the Spanish one to count in Spanish, the French one in French, Francesco Bernoulli says ‘uno! due!’ tre!’ and so on. The German one is called ‘Vettel’ (actually it’s Max Schnell, but Sebastian Vettel is his favourite race-car driver, and I think he does the character’s voice in the German version of the movie, just as Lewis Hamilton guests in the original). See? I’m an expert.
Cars is a funny universe though. I read it as a Planet of the Apes type world, and would love to see Cars 3 run along those lines, whereby a human from the past arrives, does the ‘get your wheels off me you damn dirty Audi’ or something, and ends up with Mater pulling the Statue of Liberty out of Carburettor Canyon. Surely no crazier than the story of Cars 2?
I drew this in copic multiliner pen with watercolour, in the Stillman & Birn ‘Alpha’ sketchbook. I am using that sketchbook to draw a series of my son’s things. It’s great paper too.
come up to my lighthouse
Santa Cruz Lighthouse, on the cliffs overlooking Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean, as well as the city of Santa Cruz itself. this little lighthouse is home to the Museum of Surfing, dude. There is a plaque outside explaining how three very dapper looking Hawaiian princes brought the royal sport of surfing here. I didn’t have time to really look around, as I was still in agony from sunburning my feet the previous day, but wanted to sketch it; last time I drew it was on our previous trip here in 2007. This is a beautiful spot. Huge waves crash right up cliffs to the left, and surfers young and old dance about on the crests and currents, while pelicans and seagulls fly overhead. Sealions pop their heads above water too, to see what all the fuss is about, and sometimes you can spot whales in the distance.
santa cruz hydrants
Labor D
ay weekend, and we spent it in Santa Cruz, in the warm California sun. Well, quite a bit cooler than the usual super hot sun we have in Davis, so that was a nice change. I love being by the sea. Santa Cruz is a cool city, and we stayed near the Boardwalk. The hydrants here are different than in Davis so I managed to sketch a few of them. I am sure I look a right plum sketching these, but I don’t care, it’s more for the catalogue. Most are yellow (one or two were orange) but there was a greater variety in the ‘trim’, and I sketched a couple of orange ones, a red, a blue and a green. I don’t think I have drawn any of these models before either – very similar ones, but not exactly. Well maybe the blue trimmed one is similar to one I drew in Santa Rosa. Oh, I don’t know. I feel like one of those mad 19th century explorers sometimes, searching for and cataloguing new species of flora in the deep urban jungle. I really should make an effort when I find these new specimens to write down the manafacturer name, maybe the year if its legible, but it’s too late now. I’m not so methodical, I just draw the things.
Incidentally these were all drawn in my watercolour moleskine (moley #10) in uniball vision micro pen with watercolour. All were done on location, sat crouching in the street hoping I don’t get run over or weed on by a dog. If you want to see a whole load of fire hydrants (and other metal pipes that come out of the ground), then here is my Flickr set, “Hydrants and Pipes“. Or perhaps you thinks it’s a bit barmy. But hey, as they say – “Keep Santa Cruz Weird”, right?
petescully 