going back to aix

July 11, 20154 Comments

On my CV, it says that I spent a year in Provence. Technically, it was more like nine months, but ‘nine months in Provence’ sounds more like a gestation period than a reference to a famous book (and a dull TV series). Between the 2001 and 2002 I lived in Aix-en-Provence, the ancient Provencal capital, teaching at the university, eating poulet-frites, losing at the French language. Most importantly, it was during that year in Aix that I met my lovely wife. We visited a few more times in the following years, visiting old friends and old favourite places, but I hadn’t returned to Aix since moving to America ten years ago. So you can imagine my excitement as my navette from the airport pulled into town, Mont St. Victoire looming in the distance. This was only to be an overnighter, just a couple of days to check out the old place, see what has changed, explore shops I used to love, eat some of my favourite food – and SKETCH! One of the other things I must mention about my time in Aix: it was here that I rediscovered drawing.

The first thing I sketched was one of the old moss-covered fountains on Cours Mirabeau, above. This is the main historic thoroughfare of Aix, dividing the old town from the slightly less old but still historic Quartier Mazarin. The fountain sketched above is called the Fontaine des Neuf Canons, which dates from 1691. I stood on the less busy side of the Cours, which was actually part of an ancient road running from Arles to Italy. The fountains are important; Aix gets its name from the Latin for ‘waters’, and was founded by the Romans in 122 BC as ‘Aquae Sextiae’, after the thermal springs named for the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus. All of that information leads us into the next sketch, which was made in Cours Sextius itself. Below is the fountain at the junction of Cours Sextius and Rue Van Loo (presumably a reference to another water spring). Now, I’ll provide the map of the town when I make the final Aix-sketches post, but Cours Sextius is a busy tree-lined road that runs up the eastern edge of the old town. I stood outside what was once upon a time the Bistrot Aixois (or Bistrot d’Aix), which as I recall was one of my least favourite places for a night out in Aix when I lived there. Now, it was all boarded up, oh what a shame. This view however, this will be so typical and familiar to any of you who have spent time in Aix.

While Aix hasn’t changed much, I was impressed with what changes there were. The old closed-down Casino at the Rotonde has now made way for a beautiful and aesthetically sound new shopping district, with the tourist office relocating to a fancy building next door, while the old tourist office building has been knocked down in favour of, well, an Apple store. Little has changed in the old town itself however, and I wandered up the long and narrow Rue des Cordeliers, which is where my wife lived when I met her. This leads up to the Place de l’Hotel de Ville, Aix’s famously photogenic square, but I wasn’t going to sketch the big clock tower just yet (I did it next day). Instead I stood and sketched Chat Rêveur, a shop I always loved in Aix. It always had lots of funny cat-themed items (I remember years ago buying a wooden cat-shaped coat-hanger, I think it was for my sister). Well it didn’t seem to have so much of that now, mostly general cards and souvenir stuff, but I was so glad it was still there that I sketched it, albeit without the full colour it deserves. It’s a beautiful shop front. The cat theme is relevant though because this square was always where we would see the ‘dog people’, who would tend to gather in the square being a bit scruffy and letting their dogs run all over the place. Sometimes they would play hand-drums (the people, not the dogs). I knew one such drummer actually, Corentin, he was a lovely bloke but he wasn’t a dog person (no dog), though he did like to climb trees if I remember correctly. Well on this evening, there were no dog people, no drums, no old friends dans les arbres.

The shop closed up while I was sketching, and as the warm evening drew in I wandered through old Aix, a head full of memories. Stay tuned for more sketches, stories and aix-periences to come…

take a france on me

July 9, 2015July 8, 20154 Comments

This is the inside of a Ryanair flight to the south of France. It took off from Stansted Airport on a warm Thursday morning, bound for Marseille. It had two big wings, it flew in the sky and I don’t need to write in such an obvious style, I’m not Dan Brown. Perhaps I’m nervous because I am finally posting my sketches from my trip to France. It was a big deal to go back to France this year, because I was going back to two different cities that mean a lot to me, but both of which I hadn’t visited in over a decade. Since I moved to California, France has become significantly further away.

I decided a while ago that I was done with the in-flight sketch, that no longer held an interest for me, but since I was off to France to sketch and sketch and sketch, I wanted to keep my pens sharp. The cities I was headed for, by the way, were Aix-en-Provence and Strasbourg. Aix was where I was going first, the ancient capital of Provence in the deep French south. I spent a year there between 2001 and 2002 which ultimately turned out to be a pretty pivotal period (spoiler alert, I met my future wife there, and ended up in America). On the other hand Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, where many people still speak a German-related language called Alsacian, was a trip much further back in time. I first went to Strasbourg twenty years ago in 1995 on an exchange trip between my college and a Lycee there, and totally fell in love with the city (I was a teenager, it was a good looking city). Besides, the 3rd Urban Sketchers France National Meeting was taking place there, and I really wanted to rub shoulders with the French sketching community, and test just how low the depths of my French language skills have sunk this past decade or so (spoiler alert, pretty low). This was a solo trip, a sketching trip, and I was pretty excited. Allez les Bleus!

jacksonville on the fourth of july

July 8, 20156 Comments

Jacksonville, Oregon. Click on the picture to embiggen it. Over the Seventh of April weekend (sorry, Fourth of July, I always get date-confused) we went up to southern Oregon to visit family, and on the 7th itself (sorry, the 4th) I was able to take a couple of hours in the baking hot afternoon to visit the historic town of Jacksonville, about five minutes away from Medford. I really love Jacksonville, and have sketched it before on several occasions (usually around Independence Day, which is particularly nice because all the flags are up). On this occasion I was desperate to draw a panorama, and so I did. I would love to draw this entire street, building by building by building. On the right there you can see a sketch I did exactly five years before (on 7/4/10), which was in black ink so noticeably darker values. In the panorama above I used dark brown ink. I did the penwork on site (except for some of the more repetitive brickwork), and did some of the colour too, to get the right shade for the hills and trees, but coloured the rest in a couple of days later.

Jacksonville was founded after the discovery of gold nearby, and retains many of its old 19th century buildings. One of the main pioneers was a man called Peter Britt. I am also Pete, a Brit. That’s a really good joke, huh, I do a lot of really good jokes like that. Anyway, Jacksonville was the cultural and commercial hub of southern Oregon for a long time, according to their website, until the railroad was built in 1884 in neighbouring Medford, “when Jacksonville’s prestige began to wane” (anyone who visits Medford will see that Medford is clearly the more prestigious). Jacksonville still had cultural relevance though. Did you know for example that Goofy comes from here? Well not Goofy himself, but the guy who did his voice, Pinto Colvig, he was from Jacksonville. Gawsh! I met the real Goofy once at Disneyland, he signed my sketchbook. Evil Dead actor Bruce Campbell also comes from Jacksonville. Anyway, these days Jacksonville has somewhere under 3,000 residents, and the surrounding countryside with its vineyards and rolling hills is most pleasant.

After sketching, I popped into the Jville Tavern to cool off before heading back to the family get-together. The temperature was about 104 degrees (Fahrenheit, not Celsius).

building the pitzer, part one

July 7, 20155 Comments

More construction on the UC Davis campus, while I slowly scan (and finish in some cases) my French sketches. Long-memoried observers of my UC Davis sketch adventures (really, that sentence) will recall that I spent a lot of time a couple of years ago or so sketching the demise of the old Boiler Building. You can see those posts at petescully.com/tag/boiler-building. The space was assigned as the location of the brand new Music Recital Hall, which (thanks to a generous donation by the late alumna Ann Pitzer) will officially be called the Ann E. Pitzer Center. When complete, it will be a 399 seat concert venue (why 399? Definitely no room for 400? Bet there’s a bureaucracy reason, oh I love the bureaucracy. No, I actually do). It will also be a classroom space, which will have course schedulers gleefully rubbing their hands with their 400-capacity classes (ah, I see why it’s 399 seats now…). Anyway, I got back from Europe and saw that construction had finally begun, with the first concrete panels going up (top sketch). A week later (yesterday) the large concrete box was already sealed. I don’ know what the vertical lines around the edges signify, but they add a touch of interest into what currently looks like some sort of military installation. It won’t always look like that. Once the shiny glass and steel are added this will be one of the most attractive buildings on campus, and one of the first you see when you enter on Shields Avenue, in what will be known as the campus ‘Arts District’.

On the right, you can see how this spot used to look, in 2011. I miss the old Boiler Building, with its rusty pipes and sun-burnt tiles. You can find out more about the Pitzer Center here at arts.ucdavis.edu/pitzercenter. Here is how it will eventually look (pictures from the Davis Enterprise). I’ll be sketching its progress, so watch this space…

constructing the shrem, part two

July 1, 2015July 7, 20152 Comments

We interrupt the London sketches (actually I am off to France in the next batch) to bring you an update on the construction of the new Shrem Art Museum at UC Davis. But first, the weather. It is bloody hot. A hundred and six they say today, but it’ll be more, knowing Davis. July in the Central Valley. The Shrem Art Museum has been under construction for a few months now and I first did a sketch of its progress back in February. I did a couple more sketches in April from the side, and this week did an updated sketch while standing in the shade of the Mondavi Center on a hundred degree day. In short, it is coming along nicely. It reminded me that I need to get over to the former location of the Boiler Building, where at last construction has begun on the new Music Recital Hall. If this heat calms down a bit I might get over there next week. The sketches below were done in the Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook #2, while the one above was done in the Stillman and Birn Alpha landscape book #2.

the pubs of st. martin’s

June 29, 2015June 29, 20158 Comments

Another London scene, another London pub. I sketched this on the same day as the last post but am posting it separately because that was about Soho, and this being a few blocks away on the other side of Charing Cross Road is really not. Plus I got to draw a different map (in a sketchier style, though in retrospect the colour scheme, the splatters and the near-total illegibility makes it looks like it was raining, when as you can see it really wasn’t) (I don’t care, I like it). So here we are in St.Martin’s Lane, which winds down from Long Acre to William IV Street, looking towards the church of St. Martin in the Fields. Roughly in between Charing Cross Road and Covent Garden. This above is The Salisbury, located on the corner of St. Martin’s Court. Now several years ago (2008 as it happens) I did sketch on this corner before. On that day it was raining, and hard. Nothing pleased me more; we had been in the middle of a very dry period in Davis, so any London rain put a huge smile on my face (going through the current historic Californian drought, I now look upon that period in Davis as the wet one). I stood beneath the shelter of the theatre opposite and sketched this pub on the corner, the Angel and Crown (see right), I’m glad I did; it was closed this time. It wasn’t clear if it was closed for good, but it was all boarded up, and when I walked past a week later it had even more boards up around it, and seemed as if it might be given a different name. So i am glad I sketched it then. This time I stood outside the Angle and Crown (right where that lady with the umbrella is standing in the older sketch) and drew the more ornate black and gold exterior of the Salisbury. This pub dates from 1898 (actually it’s much older, and was previously called the Coach and Horses, in a nice callback to my last post). The name refers to the Earls / Marquises of Salisbury, landowners in this manor, the first of whom was Robert Cecil (Cecil Court is around the corner) who was a political bigwig in Elizabethan times. Right, enough history. This pub is in the heart of Theatreland, and has long been associated with actors, though theatre-going tourists flock here too for its authentic interior. After doing the inkwork and some of the wash, I popped in for a pint and to add a little bit more paint. I chatted to an old Irish builder nursing his Guinness while I painted, while groups of tourists perused their maps. I wrote a note in my sketchbook, “£4.60 for a pint!” and exasperated at the price of beer in modern London. This, I told myself wisely, is why so many London pubs are closing, nobody can afford to drink out any more. After visiting a couple more pubs in London, where a pint of beer tended to be above a fiver, £4.60 seemed like a golden age (comparison, when I left London £3 a pint was considered expensive). Alas, with London rents and property values skyrocketing, a lot of pubs can’t afford to exist (especially when developers see more value in luxury flats than places of historic community value), so it’s nice to see the old ones that still do and if the price of beer has to go up to enjoy them, well so be it, I suppose. This was never one of my usual stops in London, but I appreciate the hell out of it now.

down in old soho

June 28, 20159 Comments

I would love to draw the whole of Soho, if that’s possible. Like every single block. And I kind of want to do it immediately because it’s changing, year after year, but then it always has done. Centuries ago this was a hunting ground (“So-ho!” was a hunting cry, like “Tally-ho!”), its borders marked with blue posts (hence the two pubs called ‘The Blue Posts’, and when I was a guide on the open-top buses I used to wheel out the old chestnuts about it “still being a hunting ground, know wot I mean”, but I’m not even sure wot I mean now. In my 500-miles-away-ness in California, I’ve been concerned about pubs and other famous London landmarks closing down or disappearing, and I’ve been eager to record these narrow streets while they are still here. Above, Greek Street, at the junction with Romilly Street. Greek Street was so named because of a Greek church nearby, and former residents include the very same Giacomo Casanova. On the far left, past the Prince’s Theatre on Old Compton Street, is a Michelin-starred restaurant called L’Escargot, where a long time ago a friend of mine worked for a week before quitting. I recall it being a much funnier story at the time. The timber-framed pub is the Three Greyhounds, another name reminiscent of the royal hunting ground days, while the patisserie in blue is the Maison Bertaux, which has served tea and cakes since 1871. On the corner is the Coach and Horses pub, also known as ‘Norman’s’ (after the infamous long-standing landlord Norman Balon, who claimed to be the rudest landlord in London). This pub has a good claim to being Soho’s most famous, a haunt of well known writers and actors such as Peter O’Toole, Jeffrey Barnard (he of ‘Unwell’ fame), it’s about as Proper an old Soho Drinker as it’s possible to get. Further down on the right Romilly Street leads to Cambridge Circus, at the junction of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue.

For those of you who haven’t gathered by now, I am talking about Soho in London, not the one in New York, which is a contraction of the words “South of Houston”. Our Soho as I always told people is named for “South of Hoxford Street” of course, with ‘Hoxford’ over time becoming ‘Oxford’ due to the predilection of London English speakers to drop the ‘h’. No, not really. One of the thoroughfares that really defines Soho is Old Compton Street. Old Compton is well-known for its gay community, and in centuries past it was populated by the French Huguenots; there are still several French-themed places in the area. Above we see some of Soho’s other European residents, with the Spanish tapas restaurant Cafe Espana located next to an Italian deli. ‘I Camisa & Son’. I do love an Italian Deli.

And here is the map, showing where I sketched…

drinkin’ at the mixer

June 27, 20152 Comments

This is the Good Mixer in Camden Town. I was meeting up with my friend Simon, and while he dealt with the fun that is London Transport I came down here to sketch this old pub from the outside. It was pretty chilly, which I was not displeased with (writing as I do after several 100 degree-plus days here in Davis), but I just had to capture this old Camden warhorse. One day I will draw the unchanging interior; that place has stories to tell. The Mixer is well-known in Camden, in the 90s it was the haunt of many Britpop locals, and when I used to come out in Camden this would invariably be the place where we would end up. My mate Terry and here spent many Saturday nights in here playing pool (well actually he wad the one playing pool, I would usually lose a game then watch), met many interesting characters, saw the odd ruck, drank a lot of beer and cider. I still have a nice orange scarf that was left in here one night in the early 2000s; a woman (I think she was French) who was sat next to us had left it behind, so I held onto it until she came back. When she didn’t, I handed it to the barstaff at closing time, but they said they would just throw it away, so I should keep hold of it. It was a nice scarf, and a cold night waiting for the N5. Fun place, the Mixer. For years I didn’t realize the bar had two sides, I had assumed that it was a mirror behind the bar, but a mirror that didn’t work very well reflecting people (this gives a good idea as to the time of night we would usually end up in here). Lots of fuzzy memories. Admittedly my stories are not anywhere near as colourful as some of those who pass through here, but I’m not that interesting a person. Anyway, I finished up my sketch, and popped in for a beer (by the way London, wow, how can you charge so much for pint? It’s almost double what it cost when I last lived in London!), and added the colour while waiting for my mate to arrive, and we went to the Spreadeagle.

On the banks of my own lovely Lea (or Lee)

June 26, 20153 Comments

This is Hertford, which is (conveniently) in Hertfordshire, England. Despite being only up the road from where I grew up in north London, I had never been there, and it is very nice. It sits on the river Lea (or Lee, depending on the map you read; mine always called it ‘Lea (or Lee)’), and has an old brewery there called McMullen’s, whose name is everywhere (and whose beer is very nice). We were going up to visit Knebworth House, not too far away from here, but we got all the way there and discovered that it was closed during the week. So instead, we drove down to Hertford, and walked about a little while. there is a castle, but not a big one, with a nice little park. There were, we noticed, a lot of pubs and a lot of barber shops. I really liked the orange building below, and so I sketched it, its timber frames giving me an opportunity to practice for my upcoming trip to Strasbourg. The scene above though is of the River Lea (or Lee), with a row of lovely terraced houses on its banks and an old pub called the Old Barge. I just had to stop and sketch. I added the colour when I got home. It was very peaceful. I always forget about the River Lea (or Lee), which actually runs through north London before meeting up with the Thames at Bow Creek.

Here is a map of where it is. After this, we were going to drive to the village of Ware, but we decided to drive home and relax on the couch with a cup of tea, watching Countdown. So a pretty ideal day if you ask me!

back in the ship

June 25, 20155 Comments

London! This explains my recent blog-absence, I have been travelling back to Europe. Not just to London, but to France as well, where I did a great many sketches, most of which were in Strasbourg at the 2015 “Rencontre Nationale” of Urban Sketchers France – more on that fun later. But London, it’s always a pleasure to come home, and it’s always so brief. I came back to surprise my dad for his birthday, which was fun, and we had a nice family get-together. On the second day, I went down into central London and took my mum to afternoon tea at Fortnum and Mason. It was pretty posh. Afterwards though we popped into The Ship, my favourite pub on Wardour Street, where I did this sketch above. I have sketched outside The Ship before (see left), but this was my first interior. I always liked this pub’s unchanging, yellowy, old-fashioned interior, so was surprised to find that it has been ‘done up’. Not demolished and converted into a gourmet burger restaurant or luggage store like everywhere else, in fact the interior hasn’t really changed much at all, except it has been nicely repainted and cleaned up considerably. It is still very much The Ship, just smarter. My mum took a picture of me sketching it, in case you wondered what I look like when I sketch a pub (what did you expect?). It was great to be back in London.