the towers of westminster

July 16, 2024July 15, 2024Leave a comment

This is Westminster Cathedral. No not Westminster Abbey, this one is a little further up Victoria Street, free to go inside, and according to the priest I spoke to a few years ago they have the best bacon sandwiches in London down in their cafe. Well, I’m neither a catholic nor do I eat bacon, but this is one of my favourite buildings in London. It’s often overlooked, not as old or famous as its big Church of England brother down the road, but it’s a spectacular sight, especially on a sunshiny day like that day. Well a London cloudy sunshiny day, my favourite type of day. We had just taken my mum on an Afternoon Tea bus ride around London, one of those ones bedecked in flowers and pretty colours where you sit at little tables upstairs and enjoy tea, cakes and even some sparkling wine, while being driven around the streets of the capital. The staff were very friendly, though it wasn’t a guided tour, but they sure filled us up with tea and sandwiches, while playing the usual Abba style music over the speakers. I had an idea, there should be a bus where the theme is cockney singalongs. I would love to be the tour guide on that bus. When we got back to Victoria station, we took a walk around to Westminster Cathedral. I actually first heard of it when I was a kid and my mum went there with the local Catholic church (the Annunciation) to meet Cardinal Basil Hume. It was many years before I went inside myself, but it’s really grand inside, with some glittering mosaic tiled ceilings in the adjoining chapels. I sketched it five years ago, on a rainy day when I actually took the elevator up that tower to enjoy the view. This time I stood in a similar position on the street opposite, not rainy this time, and the colours really popped. Victoria is so much more modern and shiny than it used to be, so many new big buildings I would not recognize, but they reflect the cathedral well. It was designed by the architect John Francis Bentley in a neo-Byzantine style with no steel frame, and opened in 1903. It was Friday afternoon, I went off after this for a walk around London before meeting up with my friend to watch Scotland lose to Germany in the first game of the Euros. As I write, I’m not quite over England losing to Spain in the last game of the Euros. Football, I don’t want to talk about it.

On a completely different day, when I was still quite lagged of the jet, we took a long walk along the Thames, my favourite river. I mean, it’s not like I have a bunch of other rivers that I’m ranking, it’s only the Thames that means anything to me. The Sacramento river? Please, I have to go to Sacramento for it. The Liffey? Yeah it’s ok, for the amount of times I’ve been to Dublin in my adult life (twice!). The Sambre in Charleroi? I used to avoid it when I lived there in case monsters came out of it covered in grease. No, I only really know the Thames, and I love that river so much. On this day we walked from down beyond Tower Bridge all the way to Hungerford Bridge, and my jetlagged head was thinking it needed a nap by that point, but as we took a rest before getting on the tube, I did a quick sketch of Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament. (You have to say that in the voice that bellows “He-Man! And the Masters of the Universe…”). The South Bank is a must-do in London. Personally a big fan of it on very cold bright mornings, or misty evenings in November. Not a huge fan of that time I got stuck over there on a freezing cold snowy night in February in about 1996, when right after crossing over the river, the bridges and tube stations all got closed due to a terrorist bomb going off accidentally over in Fleet Street. Took me ages to get back over the river that night. I do remember one time coming down here when I was about 16 or 17 and drawing by the Thames, I drew pretty much this exact scene from this same place. This was long before the London Eye and all the river buses. There were a lot of homeless on the South Bank in those days, especially under Waterloo Bridge, and one guy who was from Liverpool started chatting to me while I was sketching, and we had a long conversation, he told me about how he’d ended up where he is, and that gave me a different perspective. I gave him the drawing I had done, and he was nearly in tears. I was poor as hell myself and couldn’t even afford to give 50p for a cup of tea, but he did appreciate that drawing, and the chat. I remember drawing another one (which I think I gave to my godmother) but this view does always remind me of that moment, decades ago.

Finally, another tower, this time it’s the Coliseum Theatre on St. Martin’s Lane. I drew this on the same day as Westminster Cathedral, having arrived in the busy Leicester Square area with some time before meeting my friend James. Interestingly enough, the last time I drew Westminster Cathedral, I went over and drew St. Martin’s Lane right afterwards; coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences, detective. The evening before, we had spent a wonderful evening in the Coliseum Theatre watching the current production of Spirited Away, adapted from the animated Miyazaki masterpiece. It was not a cheap, but I could not miss out on seeing it, and my son and I are both big Studio Ghibli fans. It did not disappoint! The theatre itself is an incredible place, it’s worth seeing something there just to be in the space. The puppetry, the performance, the music, the staging especially, it was all done so well, and it was all in Japanese! It’s a theatre company from Tokyo bringing the original show to London, so the actors are all Japanese. I have only ever watched Spirited Away in English (I did try to get a head start by watching it in Japanese on the flight over) but since I used to do sessions on ‘performing in a language the audience does not understand’ back when I was a drama student acting in German or French, I was interested to see how their acting and physical performance would tell the story; I wasn’t disappointed (although to be fair, I know the story). Nevertheless there were subtitles, displayed out of the way above the action as glowing words through the green foliage around the stage. I loved all the costumes too, especially of the various spirits, but like the film it really did transport me somewhere else for a while. If you get a chance, I recommend seeing it. Good theatre is well worth it.

among the stones in hampstead and highgate

July 15, 2024July 15, 2024Leave a comment

I think I sought out quieter spots on this London trip, I wasn’t really looking for the busy crowds and bustle of the city, it’s been too stressful a year for that. I found myself in Hampstead a few times, only a few stops down the Northern Line from Burnt Oak, but a world away in how it looks. It’s a bit nice round there. We went down one afternoon to walk about a bit, before I would be meeting up with a friend in the evening for dinner. I had a bit of time to myself to go and do some sketching, and I stood on Fitzjohn’s Avenue and sketched this weathered old post box (below), which bore the royal cipher of King Edward VII, so it’s quite old. I love old pillar boxes. I saw one from Queen Victoria’s reign on Hampstead High Street, although it was kept as a relic and was not in actual use (despite being opposite the post office). My brother called me up, and as I spoke to him I found myself wandering down old streets I had never been to, not really paying much attention to where I was going. I found myself at the Parish Church of St. John at Hampstead, an impressive old church with an adjacent burial ground, rows of gravestones poking out of long grass. It was quite peaceful, and I do like a graveyard. Real England is old brick and stone and greenery. Local ladies walked their small dogs about, and I sketched this scene above. I felt it had to be in pencil. If I still lived in London I would probably spend a lot more time sketching graveyards.

On a different day, I came through Hampstead to pick up some photos I had put in to Snappy Snaps on Hampstead High Street a few days before to be developed. That’s right, an actual roll of film. I haven’t developed a roll of film in nearly 20 years, and in fact I still have some rolls of undeveloped film that I brought with me when I emigrated to America, memories still waiting to jump out at me from the past. Well this roll of film was from just the past few months. A friend got me a basic film camera for Christmas, and so I bought some film (not cheap any more like the old days!) and was taking pictures on some of our recent travels. I maybe got the film wrong (it was good quality and cost me enough), but the photos turned out terrible. Like almost unanimously awful. The ones in Zion Canyon for example were just big dark masses. It wasn’t cheap to develop either, but there you go. Fun experiment, I suppose, but I’ll stick to digital, and sketching. My son was using the film camera on our Europe trip this time, so we will see how they turn out. Better than mine, I hope. Anyway, on my way back to the tube, after stopping in Cass Arts to pick up yet another sketchbook (I never seem to not need sketchbooks), I stopped in Flask Walk to draw. The sketch is below. I like Flask Walk, it’s narrow and full of interesting little shops. I like the Flask pub, I usually pop in there when I’m back in London. When my son was little, I took him ghost hunting there, because it is supposed to be one of those haunted pubs London has so many of. I like all the little antique shops, though I’m not the sort of person who shops at antique shops. I stood nearby and drew the view looking down, trying to catch some of the things people were saying to each other, like the older woman saying “bye darling! bye darling!” to her friend. I got asked by someone passing by if they could take my photo while sketching. I said of course (I get that occasionally when I’m in London, I think it must be the way I hold my sketchbook). They had a nice digital camera; I said I had tried taking photos with a film camera but just got them developed and they had turned out really bad, so I will be sticking to the sketchbook in future. I asked if they drew and they said they did but not much, and would like to do more, so I gave them the information about Urban Sketchers London, and said they should join them on their regular sketchwalks. If you are interested, check out their calendar for the rest of 2024 at the USk London website. When I was done with my sketch, it was time to head home.

But I have a couple of other sketches to show from the area. On a different day, we all came back down to Hampstead to look around before taking a walk across Hampstead Heath. I love Hampstead Heath, it;s easy to get lost along its tree covered paths. I have a photo of my holding my son by the ponds when he was only four months old, he’s sixteen now, so we took the same one, though I wasn’t carrying him this time. As we rested on top of the Heath, looking towards Highgate Village, I did a quick small paint sketch, below. It’s hard to imagine, we lived over there before moving out to California. It was a bit of a walk, but we’d sometimes come over this way on a Sunday, enjoying the peaceful English day. We lived on Hornsey Lane, and I still love that area. We went over there on of our first days back, it had been so many years. In another universe, if we had not moved to the US, we might be over there still, my son might have grown up there. We joked about that; the truth is, working for universities which don’t pay much in England, and with the extortionate cost of living in London, there’s no way we could have afforded a bigger place in Highgate unless we got very lucky, and would probably have moved our further, or back up to Burnt Oak, or just moved to California anyway. You can’t see the multiverse. There are a lot more hills here than in Davis. We did explore Crouch End again though, I miss that neighbourhood so much, and Highate Village, and Waterlow Park. We walked down our old street and took a photo outside the house where we rented a flat, those horrible old windows were unmistakable (except they were mistakable, because we were stood outside the wrong house; our old one was a couple of doors down, so we took a photo outside that one instead).

After the walk across the Heath, the final destination beckoned: Highgate Cemetery. That is the literal final destination for many people, from your Karl Marxes, your Douglas Adamses, your Jeremy Beadles, even your Eric Hobsbawns, your Malcolm McLarens. We only walked about the East side; I’ve never been to the West side, some day I will, but I notice that David Devant (the magician after whom one of my favourite bands is named) is buried there, as is Prof. Lisa Jardine, who I actually knew from my days as a drama student at Queen Mary, and Michael Faraday, one of my favourite scientists. George Michael is in the West side too; he was a local lad from near where I grew up, and he also lived in Hampstead in his later years, and speaking of the Snappy Snaps on Hampstead High Street, that was, er, the place where he crashed his car back in 2010. Anyway, we just looked around the East side, found the big Karl Marx, found a few other names I was looking for, talked about vampires, and then went down to the village at Parliament Hill for an overpriced pub lunch. Anyway, some nice times spent in Hampstead and Highgate, still some of my favourite parts of London.

another wander up the watling

July 13, 2024Leave a comment

While we are currently sweltering under this impossible Central Valley heat, it’s a good time to fly back to Burnt Oak. It’s always nice to go back home, for as long as I can still call it home. When I was a small kid going to Goldbeaters School, I don’t think I ever wondered what I’d be doing when I was in my late forties, and whether that would also involve flying back from America and doing drawings of Watling Avenue. (No, when I was six years old I just wanted to be Ossie Ardiles when I grew up). It has been a very busy past year, I say ad infinitum, but it really has. It felt like a long gap between trips back. I’ve wanted to come back for family reasons during this time, but I just hadn’t had the opportunity. I didn’t have time to mentally prepare, as if it was just never going to really happen, I wanted it so much. So, when I finally got back and walked around the old area, I felt a pretty big wave of emotion and even relief. Yes, a huge wave of relief to be home. It has changed so much, no doubt, but the Watling Estate is still old and recognizable. Communities have changed and evolved, but it still, in its way, belongs to me. That won’t last forever, so I draw it while it is still there. I’ve done a lot of Burnt Oak sketches on my trips back over the years – probably not enough. There are places that have now long disappeared that I wish I had drawn. There are places that disappeared many years before I left Burnt Oak that I wish I had drawn. The main thoroughfare of Burnt Oak is still Watling Avenue, although the shopping up here is not as good as it used to be. It was still possible to do all your shopping on the high street when I was young, rather than all in the supermarket, although we did have a Tesco up on the Broadway, a smaller one that annoyingly closed recently (Burnt Oak was the first place in the UK to have a Tesco, here on Watling Avenue in fact). At least there are still shops though. In many places I’ve been, the old shops sit empty, not deemed profitable enough by the property owners to serve a local community. Places evolve, but the Watling is still alive. Communities change, but I can tell there is still a sense of love for the area among the locals. It’s not always a safe area, for sure. Yet I do get the sense of the community feeling like the place is worth it. I love the colourful ‘Burnt Oak’ mural opposite the station. What really surprised me though is the new colourful ‘Welcome to Burnt Oak’ mural painted on the corner of Barnfield Road and Watling Avenue. It’s amazing, and features very Burnt Oak elements inside the big letters. (I will add a photo of it below). So that’s what I decided to sketch. I didn’t get as far as adding the colours, or even really finishing the scene, but I quite liked it like that. That corner, there used to be a fruit and veg stall there, I remember a guy I knew from scouts (Dillon? I just remember he was a QPR fan) worked there. Opposite where it says ‘Aksu Food’, there was another fruit and veg shop that my brother Johnny used to work at for quite a while. I do remember being sent down there regularly by my mum to pick up potatoes, five pound of spuds was fine, I hated being sent down for ten pound of spuds. Long walk back up Orange Hill with those. Next door to that there was a fishmonger, I still remember the guy’s face, I would go in there for crabsticks, they were cheap, tasted nothing like crab. Looks like there’s a fishmonger still, but further up. There was a hairdressers too just up Barnfield where the mural is, and I would be taken there as a kid, but as soon as I was old enough to get my haircut on my own I went to the barbers, not the hairdressers, and would go to the little one at the top of Market Lane (one of two small streets that run behind the Watling, the other being Back Lane, and neither being places you want to spend much time), and then later to Syd’s, in the alley behind Woolworths (now gone), where I would get my hair cut well into adulthood, the last time I went in was about ten years ago, right before a funeral. Ah, I wish I had drawn Syd’s.

Here are some photos of the big public artwork in Burnt Oak now. I love them, brightening the old place up. I couldn’t find the name of the artists, but they were delivered by Accent London, and there’s some information about them on the Borough of Barnet website. I did notice that the big ‘Welcome to Burnt Oak’ mural on the corner of Barnfield is painted over some concrete which has some old carved graffiti on it. I remember seeing those names carved into the wall a couple of years ago when something was removed from the wall revealing it, those names must have been hidden for years. Lots of ‘Bill’, a few ‘Jackie’, and even a ‘John’…are these my uncle and older siblings? This is where they grew up, went to Barnfield School, played Space Invaders in the chip shop nearby. I like to think it was them, back in the early 80s. Either way, I love that these names of young Burnt Oakers from the past, whoever they were, are preserved behind this new mural.

Above is Silkstream Parade, or one side of it, the little section between the station. There is another barber shop at the end of this row now, where years ago there was a little second hand bookshop packed to the gills with interesting old books (I would go in looking for old Roy of the Rovers annuals). It closed when I was a kid. Where the Afro Cosmetics shop now is, that was Alfred’s, where people got their school uniforms. It’s probably funny to Americans that British kids wear school uniforms, but that’s what we did. These days though I notice that most junior schools have uniforms too, which might have been true years ago as well (my little sister’s junior school did) but wasn’t the case at my old school Goldbeaters. I got my first school uniform at 11 at Edgware, though we got it from the school, not from Alfred’s. I think all the kids who went to St. James’s probably got their uniforms at Alfred’s. Who knows, it’s long gone now. There used to be a launderette along here too, until just a few years ago. I might even have a photo of it, I’ll try to draw it from that one day. And at the end there, a phone box. Remember I drew an old phone box that is now gone? This one is still there. I would have to go and use that one sometimes, there would often be a gang of kids sat outside the library yelling abuse across the street. I sat outside the same library to sketch this view. The sky was dramatic that first week I was back home, threatening a little bit of everything; a bit like London itself.

Finally, at the nearby junction with Orange Hill, a quick sketch of the entrance to Watling Park. I drew in burgundy coloured pen. The entrance to the park has always been sketchy, but I did love this park growing up. However I still avoid going down the left hand path beside the stream, because that’s where the gluesniffers used to lurk. You definitely still get wrong’uns hanging about there, and worse than the old glueys. Underneath the entrance is The Tunnel, a small, dark and foreboding portal which follows the Silkstream into the sewers, underneath the shops in total darkness until coming out some way up the Watling towards Silkstream Park. I never ventured far into The Tunnel as a kid, we were always a bit too scared, and never brought a torch (we did have the bright idea that you could float polo mints which glowed in the dark (!) and follow them down the stream) though I know my older brother and sister and my uncle Bill did venture deep into the tunnel to a place called The Witch’s Cave. Too many rats down there for me. Growing up in Burnt Oak though, Watling Park was the heart of the area for us kids, and it was at the end of my road so I spent a lot of my childhood down there. We knew all the hiding spots. It was a country unto itself in our imaginations, one that has never dislodged itself from the subconscious, and still appears in dreams just as it did when I was 8. Anyway. I do have a few more Burnt Oak sketches from this trip, but let’s get off one bloody memory lane and go down others. Incidentally, if you want to hear that episode of the Robert Elms show that I appeared in briefly talking about this little stretch of Burnt Oak, it’s still available still on BBC Sounds, for another 8 days. I have plenty more London sketches to share, and quite a few from the South of France as well, so check back soon…

“galliformia dreaming”

July 3, 2024July 2, 2024Leave a comment

I got up early the day I was flying to London, and went for a walk on the north Davis green belt. I had my sketchbook with me, so I drew this sculpture I have always liked, a dog laughing at a small turkey standing on a rock. It’s called “Galliformia Dreaming” by Jean Van Keuren, 2005, same year we moved to Davis. As I sketched, someone said to me, “you’re that sketching guy”, which I am. I should have been running on the green belt really, but I have been lazy with my running. I like living close on the north Davis green belt though. I went home and did some housework, repacking, and relaxed a bit before panicking about travelling, before flying down to LA and then on to London. I’m still scanning my sketches but I enjoyed working in this new format, rather than the usual panoramic.

friday evening down at the bull and mouth

July 2, 2024July 2, 2024Leave a comment

The day before I was flying to London, I had a very long day at work, trying to get as much done before travelling as I could. I would be doing a lot of work while in London too, but those would be in the hours before everyone got up, the 4am (sometimes 3am) wake-ups when the house was quiet and the wifi might work a little better. But that Friday was long, and I was feeling a bit stressed. This was my first trip back in a year and it really felt like a long year, a long time since seeing everyone. Anyway, I stopped at a moment I felt ok with, and realized it was already 8:30pm, so I went downtown to have dinner at Chipotle (that was , and popped into Bull’n’Mouth (the former De Vere’s) for a pint and a sketch, to wind down. It’s funny, I don’t know if it de-stressed me that much really, but it’s good to sketch, focus the eyes, breathe. I like drawing all the bottle shapes, though I don’t ever drink any of the things in them, never liked spirits. The beer was ok, I find I don’t really enjoys many beers as much these days; they didn’t have the Smithwicks I’d been hoping for, I guess. I drew fast. It wasn’t very busy in there, for a Friday evening at the tail end of the quarter. I finished up and went home to bed, or rather to repack my bags yet again, which I would do again in the morning. What to bring! I feel like I’ve packed lighter over the years and tried to carry less and less, yet my bag always feels like it’s really full.

back on the couch watching the sports

July 2, 2024Leave a comment

Before we get to all the sketches from London and France, which I am still scanning, here are some from the last couple of days back here in Davis. The weather is hot, very hot, very very hot, and getting hotter. There may not be much going outside for a while, unless I start doing the early morning sketching like I do when I’m on vacation. I am still getting up early, thanks to jetlag, and I still want to just go back. But there are things to do. First though, the football. But before that, the Formula One. I was up early on Sunday to watch the Austrian Grand Prix, a ho-hum race for the first two thirds, and then a crazy exciting race for the last third (Max and Lando crashed into each other fighting for the lead, and then George Russell won it in the Mercedes; F1 is back). I sketched from the couch, my usual seat with the side-on view. Our cats are pleased we are back, I assume. I looked at the Austrian Alps in envy. I want to go everywhere, and I’d like to go back there. As I look at the long hot Davis summer stretching out ahead of me, I just want to get on another plane and explore somewhere very far away, while the world is still there to explore. Anyway, then it was time for the football. I’ve had a strange relationship with this year’s European Championships. In the past it has been one of those exciting times of year, but I’ve struggled to get as interested this time. The kits are okay, I suppose, but I haven’t wanted to get one this time. I think in the run up, I was so busy and stressed out that I didn’t think about it, and then it started while we were in London. This meant watching it at unusual times for us, that is, the afternoon and evening, as opposed to the typical very early morning that we have gotten used to (or that 3am start for the Women’s World Cup). I saw the opening game Germany vs Scotland with a friend of mine in an old Dutch pub, De Hems, in central London, Scotland got battered like a piece of cod. Some of the games have been interesting, Austria look good, Spain look frightening, but let’s face it – England have been dull as dishwater. If I had spent hundreds, thousands of quid to go and watch them chug about the field against teams they know they should beat, barely taking a shot or connecting a pass, I’d be furious. The group stage was so boring, football at its worst. But everyone’s tired! they say. So are we all, mate, so are we all. The knockout stages should be better. I’ll be back home, watching them in the mornings from the couch (or my desk if I’m at the office), and they are must-win. England v Slovakia was, predictably, turgid. Slovakia played well, England did not. I sketched during the game, above. The commentators, in the closing minutes of the game with England 1-0 down, were putting the game very firmly in the England Hall of Shame, with the leading men Kane, Bellingham and Foden having done absolutely zero. I was telling my friends back home, it’s bad news for the English game. They aren’t creative enough, they are positive enough, they’ll go on getting bad results, getting bad results, getting bad results. Everyone seemed to know the score, we’ve seen it all before. And then, in the 95th or 96th minute whatever it was, Jude Bellingham, the young Real Madrid superstar, decided to do a bicycle kick to plant the ball in the bottom corner, breaking Slovakia’s hearts, as the cliche says. Full-time, 1-1; extra-time, and Kane makes it 2-1 instantly. Suddenly the, er, narrative changes. It doesn’t wipe out the previous 96 minutes of dull porridge, but England are in the next round now, just as England topped the group, and like in 1990, nobody will care how boring they were because of a brief moment where it went right. That’s how football works I guess. As I look towards the long hot summer in Davis with nothing but work and imposing heat on the menu, I think about the trip we have planned right at the end of summer before Fall begins, and maybe that’s the Bellingham and Kane moment that will make Summer 2024 worth it. I dunno. We had a pretty nice trip just now, I’m just in the post-vacation blues. England are in the next round against the Swiss, who look really good after knocking out a dreary Italy.

I sketched a couple more games yesterday, writing down the commentary as I went. France v Belgium (ended 1-0 to France, a goal they classed as an own goal by my man Jan Vertonghen), France otherwise just don’t know how to score properly. This was followed by Portugal 0-0 with Slovenia, Cristiano Ronaldo who is playing his 112th tournament trying as hard as he might to score goals and failing, much to the eternal patience of his team-mates who would like a go please. Ronny, you don’t need to take every free kick, your record of those for Portugal is actually rubbish. Of course he had a penalty saved by Oblak, ending in tears and more looks towards the heaven (and the big screens). He hasn’t scored in eight tournament games and wants to pile on more for his own personal record, team-mates be damned. And then it ended in a draw, and a penalty shoot-out. Portugal’s goalie made three saves in a row, and Ronny scored his penalty this time, but mate, that don’t count as a goal. Portugal v France in the quarter finals, along with Germany v Spain on Friday. The Euros are back. Meanwhile, the Copa America is on, hosted by the US. I finally watched a game last night, USA vs Uruguay… and the USA lost, and are out in the group stage. Oh well. As American politics gets charging towards the ugly election in November, I remembered, oh yes, there’s a British general election on Thursday, right in the middle of the Euros. It would have been strange for England to be knocked out right before it. They fight on for another weekend. I ain’t going anywhere.

through the gateway

June 30, 2024June 30, 2024Leave a comment

I started a new sketchbook, another watercolour Moleskine, but this time in portrait mode rather than landscape format. That’s a change for me; I’ve used so many landscape format sketchbooks, indeed in the ‘official’ numbering, I’ve had 50 which I use as my main sketchbook. I’ve used other portrait sketchbooks outside of the numbering, oh it gets complicated. But I have decided that this book will officially be number ’51’ in the list as my main sketchbook, and I will use portrait formats from now on, at least until I get bored and go back to landscape. None of this is even slightly important to you. But I like to categorize my books, and if you want to see them all listed in one place, go to the Sketchbooks page. Anyway, I wanted to start this one in Davis rather than on my London trip, so I sketched this sculpture on the UC Davis campus, the one on Mrak Lawn called “Shamash” (Guy Dill, 1982). It was bloody hot out, but nothing compared to how hot it’s going to be here this week. Oh I’m back in Davis, here comes the very long and very very hot summer. I need to go somewhere else now. I’ve sketched this gateway before. I have never walked through it, I don’t think I have the courage. That’s the Arts building in the background. The library is nearby. This is a gateway into a new sketchbook; having already nearly finished the book (I sketch a lot when I’m travelling, and when I’m not), it’s a gateway to a new format that I’m enjoying. It’s good to do something a little bit different.

let’s draw davis at the farmer’s market, again

June 30, 2024June 29, 2024Leave a comment

The weekend before our London trip, I held a small sketchcrawl in Central Park Davis. It was a hot morning already, and the Farmer’s Market was in full swing. I sketched the bustling scene above, with the accordionist standing on a box playing Studio Ghibli tunes and other songs to the shopping masses. Markets are good places to sketch.

I drew the four lads above all seated in the shade while another musician played her guitar nearby (below), four Dortmund fans waiting for the Champions League final against Real Madrid which was starting at midday, I would be dashing off at the end to catch it. Well, two of them had Dortmund shirts, the other two wore a Brazil shirt in yellow and an F1 Mercedes shirt in black, close enough. Spoiler alert, Dortmund lost, Real Madrid always win. The last sketch I did was with the brown fountain pen stood in what shade I could find in the Central Park Gardens. We all met up at the end by the US Bicycling Hall of Fame, there were only about five of us, but we’d done some good sketching. I needed to get some done, I was a week away from my trip for which I felt woefully unprepared, and had a mountain of work to do before I left (and after too; I’ve barely scratched the catch-up yet, after going back in yesterday) so was feeling pretty stressed out, and needed some relaxing sketching time. Not sure when the next one will be scheduled but hopefully not too long.

And finally, something different. I came back a couple of days later armed with a set of gouache paints, as I’ve never used those while out urban sketching before. I sat by the Central Park Gardens and sketched the bench, tree and flowers; bit of a struggle to be honest, not quite what I expected, but I’m determined to play with the gouache at some point, just try something else out for a change.

Now I am back from London, the massive scanning project of all those travel sketches begins…

up the fillmore, down to union square

June 29, 2024June 29, 2024Leave a comment

I ended up going towards Fillmore. I was up that way last summer when I spent the weekend in the city with my family, but it’s always worth a trip. I fancied doing a sketch from on high, so I headed up the steep way to Alta Plaza Park. By this time of the day, it was really very windy. Alta Plaza Park had some nice views, not as dramatic as Dolores Park or Alamo Square, but worth the hike. I was still listening to all of Belle and Sebastian, though my back was still aching, and the wind was going right through me. I like a big observation piece when I come to the city, like the view from Coit Tower or the view from the downtown Hilton. I walked down and bought an expensive donut at a trendy donut shop, that I waved for the train ride home. I needn’t have bothered, the donut was bland and tasted of nothing, not an uncommon thing these days (as I was reminded when I went to France recently, when every pain au chocolat or escargot de raisins at the morning boulangerie tasted a million times better than anything over here). I spent a lot of time in Paper Source, a shop I used to be obsessed with when I had the idea of making my own notecards years ago (it wasn’t worth the effort), and then spent a good half hour in Browser Books, which I had drawn last year, and keep thinking is called Bowser Books. I like this little store, and really browsed a lot. I even looked through some magazines, including one which an old friend of mine works for; I haven’t seen him in many years, and there was a small picture of him in there that for some reason took me by surprise, the same guy but older and sharper. I don’t know why it surprised me so much. The years move fast, I wonder how I would look to someone who knew me only as a much younger face, thinner and less sun-blasted, and I found myself suddenly worrying about age and time. I went to the music section, and picked up a small book about Pulp, who were a band I loved in the 90s (so, not worrying about age or time any more then). I had recently bought tickets to go and see Pulp right here in San Francisco this coming September, having never been able to catch them back in the old days; I honestly can’t wait. The guy behind the counter, it turned out, was a fellow Pulp fan and asked if I was going to see them. He had seen them in SF last year when they were here. The book was about This Is Hardcore, and album I really loved, though it was the sound of a changing time for me, mid university years, a comedown from the fist-pumping mid-90s when I could stay up all night long and not even be tired the next day, and everything was possible. Were age and time were getting to me even then?

After spending some of my age and time in the shops and streets of Fillmore I took the bus down towards Union Square. My back was still hurting. When I got there, I still had a bit of time before my Amtrak bus was going to leave, but I did need to sit down. I decided to sketch Sam’s Cable Car Lounge, which I must have passed a bunch of times before and always thought was a liquor store. It looks old, and the thing about places like this is that they are disappearing, so in my mission as the recorder of places I stood opposite and drew it, as best my tired fingers could manage. I think the motivation for sketching this part of the city has waned over the years, and it shows. Many of the big shops around Union Square are closing, there were so many large empty spaces where once there had been big stores, and the number of shoppers looked a lot less than in recent years. I heard that the large Macy’s flagship store on Union Square, a place I visited on my first ever trip here (going up to the Cheesecake Factory on the top floor) was going to close, with nothing to replace it. It feels bleaker around there. I couldn’t get too far before I just had to go and sit down, so I popped in for a beer. It’s an interesting enough interior, with the front of a cable car sticking out of the wall behind the bar, and the staff kept offering me popcorn. I ordered a beer without popcorn and sat sketching. As I sketched I got the news that the Amtrak bus was cancelled, and I’d have to take the BART out to Richmond to catch my train. An annoyance but not a huge inconvenience. The bar got a little busier as I sketched, I think mostly with the pre-theatre crowd. Anyway I think the staff liked my drawing, because when I ordered a second beer they said it was on the house. I got my bill; sure the second drink was free, but the first one was pretty expensive, about $14 with tax for a beer? Even in London these days that’d be a lot. I didn’t even finish my second beer. I handed over my card to the waitress, and she came back with the bill to sign, but no card. I went up and asked where my card was, they said maybe I dropped it. I hadn’t, it was never returned. They said they would look for it; ten minutes later, still no card. I was having to go to the BART soon. Perhaps I need to call the police, has someone here pocketed it? I could see them with flashlights looking all over the bar area. Eventually, the waitress came back and handed me my card, which had ‘fallen on the floor’. Strange they had not found it more quickly. I was very suspicious of that and have been keeping an eye on the card transactions since, but I won’t be going there again, and not only because of the beer prices. Still, I’ve sketched it now. I made the long, long journey back to Davis, tired and not completely sure if the day out was worth it, but I added a few more drawings and walks to the experience box. And when I got back to Davis, I discovered my bike had a flat tyre, so I had to walk all the way back from the train station. I rested well next day. I still like San Francisco, but after so many years I’m not feeling quite the same about it as I do about, for example, London, which I always want to go to. But I’m still glad it is (sort of) nearby, and has some interesting neighbourhoods.

a morning up and down the castro

June 28, 2024June 28, 2024Leave a comment

Last month I took a sketching day down in San Francisco, taking the long train ride down from Davis with the entire catalogue of Belle and Sebastian in my ears (two days after having seen them live in Oakland). It was one of those days when I just needed to get out alone with my sketchbook and my feet, I have always needed those days for my mental health, and though it feels like I need them more and more, more and more I have no particular aim for such a day, and more and more I decide to just stay at home and rest rather than expend a lot of energy in just wandering and filling my book. However I am usually glad when I do, especially if I explore a few more streets I’ve never seen. This day was aimless for sure. I got up very early, took the early train out of Davis, stepped off the connecting bus in San Francisco and went down to the BART station still with no idea where I was actually heading. North Beach? Mission? Inner Sunset? In the end, I jumped onto a MUNI metro which whisked me quickly up to the Castro. I always like sketching up there. As I got off the tram, a man seated nearby started yelling random homophobic slurs out of the door, not at me or anyone in particular, but at the platform in general because this is the Castro, and I’m sure it made him feel better about his life, even though it made everyone else remember the world is still full of homophobic wankers like him. It was a foggy day when I emerged onto Harvey Milk Plaza, so I got the sunscreen out and layered up. Yes, I’ve been burnt too many times in this city by not realizing that those rays come through that fog, even if it feels a bit chilly and a bit gloomy. The sky had a glare too, so I wore my sunglasses for a bit, which again looks a bit odd in the fog but I’m squinting otherwise. The Castro theatre was covered up, a shame as I sketched a panorama of it eleven years ago and wanted to do the ‘eleven years later’ sketch. Ten years? Where does all the time go. I also sketched it fifteen years ago on another sketchcrawl. So I looked over to where the streetcars stop outside the Twin Peaks cafe, which I have also drawn on my little wander up here two years ago, though from the other side.

I had no plan of action for exploring, so I walked a block down Castro and up 18th Street, not towards the Mission but uphill. I liked this building opposite, and the little shop ‘Five Star Truffles’, so that’s what I sketched. The old Victorian houses round here are so interesting. Further up I sketched this pink and blue house below. That’s a lot of steps to get into your door every day, after climbing a hill, a common feature on these old houses, people must be pretty fit round here. I like wandering about here though because the people and places you pass by, you do get a strong sense of local community. The area is most well known for its prominent gay community, though this does feel like an area whose residents take a lot of pride in their neighbourhood, and you see that a lot in San Francisco, even in the face of busy city streets and exorbitant pricing-out of communities. The idea of communities in large cities has always fascinated me, especially the idea of evolving communities. I’m just back from London, and you still see it there in some places, while others it feels like have no community any more. It all depends on perception I guess.

The house above was drawn quickly in pencil just because I liked the shape of it, the turret and the huge round window and the long curving stairway. I was already on my way to lunch when I drew it. The building below though was an amazing find, an enormous mansion on Douglass Street, which was a trek to walk up to, looming large over the treetops as the morning fog burned away. An impressive number of turrets and shapes, I bet this place is a world of stories. I sketched one of the little lions out front as well. To draw this I needed to be in the shade of a tree across the street, but for some reason I decided to sit and sketch, not on a stool (I pretty much never bring a stool out these days, as I always stand to sketch), but sat on the sidewalk like in the old days. Remember when I’d sit on these San Francisco streets cross legged with my paints next to me? Well this time when I got up I must have hurt my back, because it got increasingly bad throughout the rest of the day, noticeably so after I ate my lunch (which was a pasta dish at the old Spaghetti House on Castro, a place which looked interesting but I was the only customer, at lunchtime). My shoulder bag felt heavy the rest of the day and I felt like I was hobbling about. I’m sure it’s because I sat on the ground for 45 minutes, though all the urban hillwalking with my bag on my shoulder did not really help as much.

And here is a fire hydrant that was on the corner of Douglass and Caselli near that big mansion. I like these old SF hydrants with the round nobs on top. I wandered up hill and down admiring all the big old houses and little shops, and after my lunch (which was nice, albeit a little lonely) I walked (in some pain) towards Church Street, remembering there was a bookshop there that I visited once. It was gone now, and my back was hurting, I needed to sit down again, so I jumped on literally the first bus that came along, and wasn’t even sure where it was going. Wherever it was headed, that’s where I’d go next, I guess.