“Jabba, this is your last chance. Free us, or die”

January 20, 20176 Comments

That is my favourite scene from Return of the Jedi, possibly all of Star Wars. Possibly all of everything. I compare everything to that scene. That was a fun conversation, I think whenever I meet someone new. But did R2-D2 throw me a green lightsabre that I start swinging around against a bunch of space pirates that tried to feed me to a giant toothy pit in the desert? No, I didn’t think so. Ok maybe that one time. Yes, more Star Wars Lego sketching, and it’s a great way to pass the time, and keep the old mind off of current affairs, or “raisins liaisons” as I call them. There’s Luke above facing off against Boba Fett on the sand skiff, I remember so clearly watching that aged 7 at the cinema with my big brother and just gasping at the brilliant green of the lightsabre, which I had never seen before (I had no idea they could be green! Big revelation). I had a toy lightsabre, it was a cheap plastic one that glowed white, but I loved it. Prior to that, my big sister used to make me lightsabres out of cardboard, old toilet rolls really, with coloured paper on them. I remember getting in trouble with the security guards at Brent Cross Shopping Centre for duelling with my cousin Daniel with our cardboard sabres, I was only six or seven at the time. I mention that, like as if I wouldn’t do the same now. Anyway that one that lit up, it stopped working after I decided that it needed to be green. I painted the bulb green with poster paint, you know the little coloured tubs you used to get, and that did it in basically, stopped working. I’m still sad about that now. Everyone says how when they were in the playground, they always wanted to be Han Solo, Han was the coolest, he always got the girl. Well I remember being seven and Luke Skywalker was so the coolest, because he had the LIGHTSABRE, and what’s so good about ‘getting the girl’? I was seven, dude. Luke’s always been my favourite. And Vader of course, but one of my other friends liked to be Vader.

More Luke, much earlier Luke. This is his landspeeder from Star Wars (that’s “A New Hope” to you). I guess those stormtroopers bought those droids then. There’s Ben KEnobi, now here’s the thing. I love Ben Kenobi, Obi-Wan is probably my second favourite character after Luke (solo movie PLEASE), but come on. In the scene where he mind-tricks the troopers, he does also ask if they want to buy the droids. Ok, mind-tricks are one thing, but seriously. You get pulled over by a cop, they’re like, this a stolen car bro? Kinda looks like a stolen car bro. And you’re like, nah is cool, had this for three or four seasons, but like, you wanna buy it off me? That is some mind-trick, Ben, because that is some seriously shady dealing. And then later, in the cantina, after chopping a guy’s arm off (fair play, dangerous town), he ‘negotiates’ with Han Solo. He says, “Just myself, the boy, two droids…and no questions asked.” Again, trying not to sound shady. So then Han Solo does just that and asks a question. Does Ben raise his eyebrows and say, “Dude, I just said no questions asked, do you need me to write it down?” No, he answers the question, with an even more shady answer, to which Han increases the price. Ben however has played this weird game of Go For Broke before (remember that board game?) and says, 10k? Nah man, I give you 17k. Remember a couple of decades before when Grievous calls him “The Negotiator”? Yeah that. This is Ben playing with other people’s cash. Good job Luke was able to sell his out-of-demand speeder for that 2k. If he hadn’t, well perhaps they should have gone back to those troopers and tried to sell them C-3PO. Threepio wasn’t carrying any Death Star plans after all, and he doesn’t exactly walk very fast.

“You’re all clear kid now let’s blow this thing and go home!”

Now I’m not saying Han isn’t cool. He definitely is, because he flies the Millennium Falcon. The one above is of course the micro-fighter version. I do have the bigger one but that takes a longer time to draw. I love the Falcon. What a piece of junk. She may not look like much but she’s got it where it counts kid. Now, I know it’s just a saying, I know it comes at the coolest bit of the movie (Seriously, get a chance to watch Star Wars on the big screen again some day and the moment where the Falcon flies back in, Vader goes “what?” and Han cheers “yahoo!” well I defy you not to fist-bump the air and cheer in the movie theatre). However, “and go home”? Really? He knows Luke’s home got burned down and his family killed like just a couple of days before? Leia would have been listening too, “all go home”? He knows her home planet was blown up? And as for Han himself, where does he live? He lives on the Falcon right? I don’t care. Even thinking about that moment in the film brings shivers down my spine.

I have more Lego sketches to share, but it’s late and I’m going to bed, thinking about Star Wars, because thinking about Star Wars is a helluva lot better than not thinking about Star Wars. As Ben Kenobi once said, “who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?”

“Right now I feel I could take on the whole Empire myself”

January 17, 2017January 17, 20174 Comments

Since the year turned into 2017 I have done a lot of drawing, but most of it has been of Star Wars Lego. I love Star Wars, I love Lego. We have a lot of it around the house. Now you saw my aT-AT recently, well above is the Snowspeeder. I love the AT-AT, I love the Falcon, but I always had a very special for the Snowspeeder. It’s the shape; I remember holding it as a kid, flying it around the legs of the Imperial Walker in the snow. More even than the X-Wing, it’s my favourite small flying fighter.

I can draw Lego that faces in a different direction, you know. The two above though are “micro-fighters”, a very very small Star Destroyer and a TIE-Interceptor. The Lego micro-fighters are fun little mini-versions of starships and vehicles, easy to build and easy to play with. The TIE-Interceptor was a version of the TIE-Fighter that appeared in Return of the JEdi. There usually has to be a new type of TIE in every Star wars film (except the prequels, which were set in the pre-TIE-era). Here though are a couple of bigger Lego ships which in their way were predecessors of the TIEs (the window specifically, and the little wings, plus the pilot of the yellow one was a famous TIE-Fighter pilot in his own right. I give you Anakin Skywalker, who would (spoiler alert) become Darth Vader, flying in his favourite yellow, and his mentor and friend, Obi-Wan Kenobi in the red. These were seen in the opening to Revenge of the Sith, that long single shot through the battle above Coruscant.

I love the Jedi starfighters from ‘Sith’, better than the triangular paper-airplane ships from ‘Clones’. The cockpits actually look like a hybrid of the B-Wing and the Tie-Fighter. I think though that the shape is slightly reminiscent of the Snowspeeder, when you are holding it, flying it around. I was gutted when these got trashed (spoiler alert) in the hold of Grievous’s ship (though Obi-Wan did get another one in blue and Anakin/Vader flew a green one to Mustafar, for some reason. I guess he didn’t have time to paint it Imperial Grey what with murdering all the Jedi and the Younglings, spoiler alert. Think about that though, Anakin/Vader’s gone down to the part of the Jedi Temple where all the starships are kept, and he chooses a green one? He’s killed all the Jedi, nobody is going to be hogging all the other colours, and of all the ones left he chooses green? Is Anakin/Vader trying to tell us something with that choice? Note how the Emperor left that one on on Mustafar; maybe Vader still has it in his, spoiler alert, Mustafar castle). Yes, I think about Star Wars a lot more than you do.

And finally here is another Snowspeeder, the baby brother of the first one, the micro-fighter version. And look, it’s flying in a different direction. The micro-fighter version is only single-pilot but just as much fun, and with a bit more orange. I love the Rebels, they were great. Listen, I’ve got more of these. I’ve been sketching like crazy lately, but I’ll post them over two or three blog posts, to spread them out.

academic surge

January 15, 20171 Comment

We have had loads and loads of rain, honestly. Not on the day I sketched this, though. It is the Academic Surge Building at UC Davis, right next to the building where I spend every day working. I did sketch from the inside stairwell of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Building opposite. It is home to, among other things, the Bohart Museum of Entomology (http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/), an awesome museum dedicated to insects. Yes, I know you knew already what Entomology was. I did too, though back when I first came to UC Davis I had an interview with the Enology Department, and I got it wrong, because Enology is wine science. So remember: Entomology = insects, Enology = wine. Drawn in the Stillman and Birn Beta Landscape book, which has a soft blue cover. It’s very nice.

to everything, turn, turn, turn

January 13, 2017January 13, 20174 Comments

And so, the fourth season. If you are ever interested in how the same scene changes over the course of four seasons, here is sketched evidence. Not that you need evidence, you can just look outside with your own eyes, but if you are a season-sceptic, if you think the seasons are all just a big con then hopefully this should paint the picture clearly. The view of the Chemistry building at UC Davis, sketched from almost exactly the same spot (except the most recent; it was a bit muddy so I stood on the driest patch of grass, in the shade of a tree-truck so as to stop glare on my book). The leafless scene. Note that I wrote “1-6-16” as the date because I am clearly a new-year-sceptic, it’s all a big con by the calendar lobby. Below, you can see the Spring blossom scene, the fiery red autumnal scene, and the leafy green summer scene.

any way the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me

January 13, 20171 Comment

Alright, 2017, let’s get you started and over with. I can feel you are gonna be one of those years, aren’t you. One of those ones with four numbers in them. 2016 was just a warm-up. Anyway, here in California we have rain, and lots of it – more than we have had in years. We need it after this drought. I remember big storms and floods in this area when I first moved here, and apart from the odd storm here and there they have never been matched, but these come close. We have had it good though; in Natomas, they had a tornado touch ground a couple of days ago. These were drawn in between those days, the top one being of the steady rain on the UC Davis campus. I stood beneath the shelter of Bainer Hall to sketch, a spot I have sketched from too many times to count now. Below, I forget the names of the buildings in the foreground, Sciences Lab and I think that’s the back of Haring, but you can see the observatory on top of, er, is that Hutchison? Am I pretending not to know, that is the question. Of course I do, I’ve been on campus for years. But look at that sky! Look how dark it is, dark and foreboding, like around the castle of the Skeksis at the start of the Dark Crystal. There was no lightning though, just dark, heavy, you might say grumpy clouds, moving toward the east. I’m not superstitious, but oooh, a big storm. I have done a lot of sketching so far in 2017, mostly of Lego Star Wars vehicles, you will see some of those soon. In the meantime, dark brooding malevolent skies. And science, surrounded by lots of good science. Also, the way the wind blows does matter to me, very much.

#2016

January 8, 2017January 10, 20177 Comments

2016 is over, 2017 is already fully in swing. I suppose at this point I should give a review of 2016. Here’s my review: #2016. Enough said, I think. Let’s just say I tend to do a lot of drawing when things in the news stress me out! And there really were a lot of celebrity deaths. To those who say, it’s statistically the same as every other year, I say “cor, you are well clever you are”. David Bowie alone was enough. You know the rest of the list; I mean even Manuel from Fawlty Towers died. It’s ridiculous. On top of that, I’ve personally known several people who passed away this year too, including my uncle, two professors from work, and of course my friend and fellow urban sketcher, Florian Afflerbach. He is greatly missed by our urban sketching community.

So, as I do every year now, above is the list of sketches I have done this year. It doesn’t include badges designed for my son’s soccer teams, nor the advent calendar I drew, and other side-projects here and there, so yes this isn’t even all of my drawing but this is what I filled my sketchbooks with.

2016 was very much #2016. But personally, it’s actually been a good and very productive year. This was the year I turned 40, which was celebrated with a trip to New York with my friends from London.

And I wrote a book! “Five-Minute Sketching People“, a book about, well, it speaks for itself. My second in a year, though this was the first written solely by me (as opposed to being the primary author, as last year’s book “Creative Sketching Workshop” was). It was a lot of work, a lot of late nights at my writing desk, but I’m proud of how it turned out and it’s going into a second printing. My first book has been translated into French as well, so that was exciting to learn.

Apart from the usual local Davis/San Francisco/Sacramento, I went to (and sketched)…

London, England (twice)
Manchester, England
Knebworth, England
New York, NY
Disneyland, CA
Santa Barbara, CA
San Diego, CA
Legoland, CA

…and I drew a lot of people, because y’know, the book. Also the Manchester Urban Sketching Symposium, there were like 500 people there. I went on eleven plane journeys, and one long 11-hour train journey down California, as well as two much quicker train journeys to Manchester and back.

I had a big exhibit at the UC Davis Design Museum called “Conversations of the City”, a retrospective of ten years’ worth of my sketchbooks, which was a great success. I also held a smaller exhibit at the Putah Creek Winery in October. I organized a few Davis sketchcrawls (though not December – I need to put the dates in for this year), but also organized a large Wren-themed sketchcrawl in London which was a big success and great fun.

The sketchbooks I used this year (not including the peripheral hardly-ever-use ones) were…

Incidentally, if you’re interested, here are the sketches from 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012. Yes, I did sketch even more this year than usual, and here is the proof: 2016 compared with the past few years.

And 2017 is well under way. I sincerely hope you, and all of us in general, have a good year.And even if you don’t, just get your sketchbook out and do a lot of sketching!

old east davis on new year’s eve

January 6, 20175 Comments

The last sketch of 2016. What a year that was. 2017 will be a year too. On New Year’s Eve we don’t really do all the partying. When I was a kid though, my family and neighbours always had big New Years parties, either at ours or another house in the street, lots of fun memories. We had quite a few families in our street with kids of similar age so we’d all play while the grown-ups drank and danced, then Big Ben would be on the telly going “BONG BONG…” and then all singing the Auld Lang Syne song and the next morning, a lot of mess to clean up. Bit quieter these days. I do like to get out before the sun sets and get a last sketch of the year in, and so on New Year’s Eve I cycled downtown on my new bike (my other bike went the way of so many celebrities in 2016, just before Christmas), before settling on the corner of 4th and I Streets in old east downtown Davis.”I Street” is not like “I, Claudius” by the way, nor is it like the Roman for 1st Street. I thought about drawing a panorama, but I got cold. Ended up adding most of the colour once I got back indoors as well. This building is historic, it is known as the Schmeiser House, and was built in 1911 by a man called Theodore Schmeiser, who ran a company that manufactured almond hullers and brought the first water supply to Davis. Here is a page with some history about it. Apparently the chimney has a swastika built into the brickwork, added as a “good-luck charm” by the Schmeisers whose family had come from Germany, obviously in the pre-Nazi era when that symbol didn’t mean what it later meant. Still, hmm. People apparently call this the “Swastika House”. If it wasn’t mentioned in every single article about this building, it might not be noticed (I didn’t, but I will now). Interestingly, I have learnt that Davis actually had a football team until 1909 called the “Davis Swastikas”, which had big swastikas on their chest; they disbanded after a player died of a broken neck. Here is some info on Davis wiki – that uniform looks very shocking in modern context, but again, this was well before it meant what it now means. Ugh. Well, a bit of sketching and a bit of history as one year changes into another, and this is still a lovely old building I’ve wanted to sketch in ages. There’s a whole list of historic Davis buildings and monuments listed on the City of Davis website as the “Historic Pedestrian and Bike Tour” on which the Schmeiser Building is included. I should really make my way through the list, sketching each one. I have sketched 23 of the 47 (remarkably few!), so I know what my new year’s resolution will be…

AT-AT walker, step by step

January 4, 2017January 4, 20171 Comment

Look what I got for Christmas! I know, more Star Wars and Lego, but I have wanted this for ages. It’s probably my favourite vehicle in Star Wars (and, um, therefore anywhere), though the Millennium Falcon is also up there (with the Snowspeeder not far behind, I love that little thing). The AT-AT, which I do pronounce attatt (not spelling out the letters), also know as Imperial Walker, the big armoured behemoths from The Empire Strikes Back. I remember getting the toy one as a kid at Christmas, I must have been about six or seven, and I remember the big box, it was the pride of my collection. This Lego version took significantly longer to put together, and well, I love it. I sketched the steps of building it. Above, it looks more like the skeleton of a small ship that the snowtroopers have cobbled together. Below, the armour is starting to take shape, the feet are built and the neck has been screwed on.
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Then, I added the legs. I lay it on its side. It’s quite tall, and surprisingly sturdy. Lego is very technical these days.

And then it was done! Took me a few days to complete, but I took my time, enjoyed it. Now battle commences. General Veers, prepare your men.

disneyland

January 3, 20178 Comments

Before Christmas we took a family trip to Disneyland, down in southern California. I managed to get a couple of sketches in, namely the Fantasyland castle, and Flo’s V8 Cafe in Cars Land, over in the California Adventure park. Christmastime in Disneyland is fun. Hey what is your favourite Disney movie? I’m not including all the ones owned by Disney like Star Wars and Marvel movies, but the cartoons, and some of the live-action ones like Mary Poppins and stuff. I suppose Pixar counts as well. Mine is probably Jungle Book, or maybe Aladdin.

These were the first sketches in my new Stillman and Birn (Beta) softbound landscape sketchbook. That’s a mouthful, so we’ll just call it the Sm&B(B)SbLsSb for short.

a farewell to dippy

January 2, 20179 Comments

Well the New Year is here and I am still posting sketches from November. I know you just can’t get enough of 2016. These are the sketches I did on our brief sojourn back to London over Thanksgiving. It was a week of family fun more than sketching outings (I did most of my UK sketching in the summer) but I managed a few. Above is a sketch from the Natural History Museum. My son really wanted to go there to see the geology exhibits (he loves rocks and minerals) and we wanted to see our beloved Dippy one last time before he is removed from the main hall and replaced with a whale skeleton. Dippy, for those who don’t know, is the giant Diplodocus skeleton in the Hintze Hall. Dippy’s been in the NHM for over a century and has been in that hall since I was a little kid, when I would go there all the time with school or my big sister; I do love the Natural History Museum. Well Dippy is leaving! This very week in fact. They are replacing Dippy with a large blue whale skeleton that will hang from the ceiling. Dippy will go on a tour of the UK (see here for details). My son and I found a seat in an alcove to sketch, but we couldn’t see the whole Dippy so sketched what we could see.

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We also visited the Harry Potter tour at the Warner Bros Studios, at Leavesden, just outside London. We are big Harry Potter fans, and my son read the books and saw the movies this year for the first time so it was an exciting visit to go and see the real sets where they were filmed. We only had time for one sketch (so much to see! We could have been there all day) so I sketched the entrance to Dumbledore’s office while he drew the big pendulum thing. I got a Gryffindor scarf. According to the Pottermore website, my son and I would both be in Gryffindor (my wife got sorted into Slytherin!). We went there with my mum, sister and nephew, and it was a really fun family day, I do recommend it.

One other place I was eager to visit was the new Switch House at the Tate Modern, the new tall extension to the gallery on the South Bank. It only opened last summer. My son kinda enjoyed the gallery (we saw both my books in the shop! But he was more excited about the tiny Slinky he bought) but was nervous about going to the tenth floor observation deck. When we were up there though he loved it, and again we sat and sketched the view. This is now my favourite spot in London and I will definitely come back with a few hours on hand to do a big detailed panorama. It was amazing there. Here is what I did sketch, of the view across the Thames to St. Paul’s Cathedral:

The scene below is of drinkers at the very intimate pub off Trafalgar Square, The Harp. I came here with my friend Roshan, as they do good beer; one day I’d like to sketch the whole bar. As it was, I sketched these happydrikers while Roshan popped to the loo. Less-than-five-minute people sketching!

And here is Burnt Oak tube station, in the area my family live (and I am from. Looking as it has ever done. I was going to finish this, but I wanted to get back and have a cup of tea, and never finished it at home.

One last sketch, which is of course the in-flight drawing on the Virgin flight coming home. It was one of the newer planes, and unlike in the summer, this time I didn’t get completely squashed up and have a bad back for several weeks afterwards. Which was handy. Farewell again then my London, until next time!

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