straight out of the sketchbook
I like riding the train. It aint cheap, but it’s a nice ride across the Valley and the Delta, and along the Bay. This was on Sunday morning, around 8am, as I was headed down to San Francisco for a pre-birthday sketching/shopping day in the city (mostly sketching).
London, December 2010. The rain had come like an old friend and washed away the snow; no more dreaming of White Christmases after this one, more like dreading. I took a ‘sketching day’ and got on the tube to Islington. I like Islington a lot, and would happily live there and vote New Labour and read the Guardian and go to the theatre and all the other things Islington people 
do (except support Arsenal of course). We lived for a few years not far away on the edge of the borough at Hornsey Lane (I love steep hills! so now I live in Davis). This is Camden Passage, an interesting little street just off Upper Street (not in Camden at all), full of charming antique stores and little cafes (trendy or otherwise). I sketched it while listening to people speak French (and German occasionally) all around me, which was nice.
I was on my way to Cass Arts’ flagship store (it’s very big, but has exactly the same products as the smaller store in Soho, just more of them) and I whipped my sketchbook out to draw some of the interesting things being laid out in the street in front of one such antique store (‘Decorext’ I believe it was called). They had a pair of these interesting Union Jack chairs, and I had to draw one of them, being the foreign tourist that I am. This would make a fine seat for anyone watching the Royal Wedding this April. Pass the Battenburg.
One of the other buildings I really couldn’t resist sketching was the Screen on the Green cinema. I’ve only been in there once (I think I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 there) but it’s historic and Islington. For some reason I chose to use my coloured micron pens for the neon signs. Drawing old movie theatres is fun. After this, I jumped onto a double-decker bus and went to Piccadilly.
This is Vipins, a stationery and card shop in Burnt Oak, north London. It has been there all my life, and I swear it hasn’t changed a bit. they even have the same stock as when I was a kid. I used to go in there all the time for pens, notepads, card, glitter, pritt stick, rulers, cartridge pens and so on. I still pop in there whenever I’m back, and sometimes find unexpected goodies. This time I found a mini clipboard, which has the clip along the side rather than the top, and fits into my bag. It’s perfect sketchbook size, handy for when I’m trying to hold onto my often awkward watercolour moleskine. I guess it’s used for Bingo. Anyway I decided to try it out straight away (it was Christmas Eve, still snowy, I had just got my hair cut at Syd’s barbers behind Woolworths – er, behind where Woolworths used to be, I mean), and so I stood outside Vipins in the cold and sketched for fifteen minutes, standing up. The clipboard was brilliant. It really helped whne standing to sketch, and being small it was still discreet. I popped back in to show Mr and Mrs Vipin, they were pleased with the sketch. This is a very typical Burnt Oak scene I’ve known my entire life, and I need to sketch these whenever I’m back, because the area keeps changing so much.
Incidentally, today’s my birthday. I share it with Charles Dickens (I always hated our joint birthday parties). I sketched San Francisco yesterday as a birthday present to myself (though I forgot my little clipboard). I’ll show you at some point.
And it’s time for another Davis sketchcrawl… this time on the UC Davis Campus! Join us on Saturday February 19th for a day of sketching. We will meet at 10:30am on the corner of 3rd and A Streets, just outside the Social Sciences Building (the ‘Death Star’). We’ll sketch from there all the way down to the Silo (Hutchison & California Avenues), where we’ll finish up at 3:00pm to show each other our sketchbooks.
There was a great turn-out for the the sketchcrawl in January! (see here for photos and sketches, and here for Aggie TV’s coverage of the event). Let’s spread the word and get more people out with sketchbooks!
Pete
Outside the Math Sciences Building. This February weather is nice – cold in the mornings, brisk at lunchtimes, but with lots of sun and long shadows and bare trees to sketch. This pretty much sums up the kind of light we are having, though I wish I could sketch in the early morning, or late afternoon, when the light is a rich golden syrup. This was a lunchtime sketch.
I told you that the local UC Davis student media production studio, Aggie TV, were at our last Let’s Draw Davis / Worldwide Sketchcrawl in January, reporting on our day of sketching… well here it is! The report is by Kate Calderazzo, filmed and edited by Todd Kaiser. It’s a really nice piece, two and a half minutes long, that really captured the relaxing feel of the event. Click on the image below to see it (this links to the report on Aggie TV’s facebook page)!
I did my best not to appear like Father Dougal
This is the Shard, a brand new skyscraper under construction in London, near London Bridge. It’s called the Shard because the architect is a big fan of The Dark Crystal. It will be the tallest building in Britain when completed, and London’s skyline will be changed forever (or, until the next tall unusual building is finished, and there are more on the way in). Eventually it will look like a huge glass spike pointing at the clouds. I sketched it stood near London Bridge station after a morning out by the river with family, really cold but not as freezing as before. I had to draw quickly because I was off to meet my friend up near Tottenham Court Road station (and I was about to discover just how different London looks now, and how much of central London is like a building site – much of Oxford Street appears to be gone! But there is a Chipotle on Charing Cross Road, which made me happy). I like to draw in-progress sketches of buildings, because once they are finished and iconic it’s fun to remember how they looked going up.
With this very busy January, I’d almost forgotten I still have loads of sketches from London yet to scan and post! So to warm your winter cockles (what is a cockle? is it a muscle?)* here is a sketch I did on Boxing Day at my mum’s house in Burnt Oak, north London. Boxing Day (for those who are unaware) is the day after Christmas. On the TV there is Alec Guinness playing Fagin in Oliver Twist. That’s a great version, that, and the guy who played Bill Sykes was truly villainous. Plus it has the dog from the Target adverts in it. Alec Guinness as you know went on to train Luke Skywalker in the art of picking a pocket or two.
*before you correct me, I do know what a cockle is. It’s a type of male chicken.
Not a brilliant Sunday morning, sports fans. I was tired, after staying up far too late (and falling asleep on the couch) watching Andy Murray turn up and get humiliated in the Australian Open final (I’m not a tennis watcher, but as a Brit it’s my duty to tune in and get my hopes up before having them cruelly dashed by someone from the old Yugoslavia, and there’s still six months until Wimbledon!). Then I woke up to watch my beloved Tottenham (almost an anagram of Tim Henman…) get roundly turned over by Fulham, all over by half-time at four-nil. This hurt; it’s the FA Cup, the oldest football competition in the world, and this year ends in a ‘1’ – Spurs are supposed to win it this year! Perhaps this was a ruse, to make AC Milan think we’ll be a pushover in the Champion’s League in a few weeks. If so it was a bloody convincing ruse, I must say. Anyway, enough disappointment, I got out my moleskine diary and started sketching the living room as I watched (I would have been hanging my head anyway). Soon my son and then my wife joined in, all drawing pictures together with my little paint set, which was fun. You can see the streamers are till up from my son’s birthday party, all around the room; our apartment currently resembles an airmail envelope. Back in the match, Spurs didn’t even score a consolation goal.
After last week’s sunshine, we have had thick, soupy fog in Davis this week, hovering quietly about and bringing an ethereal gloom to our usually sunny town. It’s also brought the cold back – I sat outside at lunchtime yesterday and sketched the Bike Barn, and my fingers were almost falling off. Ok, maybe an exaggeration, but it was a lot colder than on last week’s sketchcrawl.
I’ve sketched this building before several times – it just begs to be sketched – but in the fog I took notice of it’s slightly dilapidated and weather-worn feel, and realised that I should sketch it before they go and do something about that. It’s the peeling paint around the window-frames that does it for me.
I’m considering campus for the next sketchcrawl, and this would be an interesting place to finish the crawl, mostly because I’d love to see other people’s interpretations of this very sketchable building.
petescully 