Still making it through the sketch backlog, here are some from the Davis Farmer’s Market in early May. (I say Farmer’s Market, but I think it might be the Farmers’ Market which actually makes more sense, as in the Market of the Farmers (plural), it’s not the market of a single farmer who owns all the stalls and controls the means of production, I’m not an economist so I couldn’t really say) (actually a quick butchers at their website shows it is simply the ‘Davis Farmers Market’ with no possessive apostrophe at all, confusing things even further, is it a place where you can go and buy various farmers? Do they all line up like the droids outside the Jawa’s Sand Crawler? “Farmer Giles, two for a pound, ger your Farmer Giles here.”) (It is a truth known to all British folk that to be a real farmer, you have to be called ‘Giles’). Anyway I went to the Farmers Market and sketched. And then bought a Farmer to put in my salad later. Not really, I don’t eat salads. This was on the hottest day of the year so far, it was a whopping 94 degrees, which is very hot for early May. It is currently early July and the weather is of a similar temperature, and I am not a fan of hot weather, but I live in the Central Valley and it’s Hot. I thought about going down to the City today because it is generally a lot cooler down there, but in the end I couldn’t be bothered. I do need to get out and sketch though. It keeps my mind off of everything. I think about apostrophes rather than catastrophes.

Let’s have a look at some of the people who were at the Farmers Market that particular Saturday. Markets are good places for quick people sketches, because they move more slowly than they do at, for example, a bus station or a 4am Black Friday stampede outside Walmart. I do tend to mix and match a bit, so you might get one person’s head and another person’s body or legs, or the t-shirt the person you have drawn was wearing replaced by that of the next passer-by with more interesting attire. (Wow that sentence was a slog wasn’t it. “You can type this sh*t George but you can’t say it.”) Then there was this couple, one of whom was definitely wearing a cape and a witch’s hat, along with a mask, and well it was more interesting than the usual khakis and baseball caps or whatever. I bet it felt hot in all that black though. Below, some more people, there’s no way that cellphone man was wearing a green t-shirt with a big white square on it, I must have seen that on someone else. I wonder what was inside the box? I can’t just make stuff up so I left it blank. These are drawn in my little Seawhite book, which is not the best for getting much bang out of the watercolour, they look a bit like dry markers. The colourfully dreessed woman at the bottom with flowers in her hat was at a stall with North African food which looked very tasty, but I have not yet tried. I was listening to a singer/guitarist next to me who was actually very good. I overheard a woman talking to him too, she was a songwriter. I like listening to people talk about song writing. It’s such a personal act of creation, and I do it myself, but I don’t share it, just my drawings. And this blog writing, which as we have determined isn’t really writing. Anyway, this also isn’t fine art drawing, just me going about with my sketchbook trying to record the real world, and this is what comes out. People passs by in the background, just a few lines and a splatter of paint, but they were real people too, now only ghosts on a page. 

And then as the Farmers Market drew to a close I drew the stall with all the baskets, next to the Market Info hut. All those people lining up to ask (a) where the apostrophe is and (b) where they can buy farmers. they sell hats and t-shirts with the Farmers Market logo on (you can add your own apostrophe if you feel you need to) you can get your market goods (not farmers) specially wrapped up into a gift basket at Christmas time, which is nice. Anyway, this was me sketching at the market, and already that was two months ago. Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana, etc. I had an overpriced chocolate croissant and went home.