space oddity

February 24, 20131 Comment

During the busy days it is even more important not to stop sketching regularly. It helps to focus and normalize your thoughts, if only for a short while. I must admit, despite being ridiculously busy in 2013 I am feeling quite sketchbook prolific, fitting them in when I can. The nice weather and wintery trees have helped enormously. I took two thirds of a lunchtime to sketch one more slice of 2nd St (continuing the block I have been sketching this month), with this picture of Odd Fellows Hall. This is a, well, um, they hold gigs here occasionally, I know that. I’ve never been in here, perhaps I’m not an odd enough fellow, though that is up for debate. I stood and sketched quickly, and added the colour later on at home. Anyway, like a Monopoly player I am busily ‘collecting’ my Davis street blocks, and this side is pretty much done, yeah just the end of this building but you get the idea. Here then is the (near) complete block:

I should draw the other side some time…

wie vater, so sohn

February 24, 20132 Comments

We were eating lunch, and watching old Batman episodes on YouTube. My son turns to me and says, “can we go and ride our bikes somewhere and do some sketching?” Er, yeah of course! Don’t need to ask me twice. We didn’t ride far, and he drew batmobiles, and there was a chilly breeze so our hoods stayed on. I think this is what he thinks I do when I go out sketching, and he’s not wrong!

the head that wears the crown

February 24, 20131 Comment

I just realized that when I posted the drawing of the Antiques Plus building on D St the other day I went on about it being Presidents Day, when in fact it was just Sunday. Presidents Day was on the 18th, and on that day I cycled over to the other side of the park near where I live and drew St.James’s Parish Church. This modern building has been on my “oh yeah I forgot about that place, I should draw it some time” list for quite a while. Well, not without good reason, it’s interesting enough but a lot wider than I expected. I sat in the sun and scowled at the wind but now I have marked it off. There are a few more churches and religious buildings to draw in Davis, though not of particular architectural significance. This one, while not exactly the Sagrada Familia, at least has an unusual spire, almost like a modernized chess piece. It almost looks like Burnt Oak Library has been given a new crown (admittedly that will only really make sense if you are from Burnt Oak, which while some of you are, most of you are not, but as Alan Partridge might say, you get the general idea). This was sketched in brown uni-ball signo um-151 pen with Cotman watercolours in a watercolour Moleskine, one which is very nearly finished.

an illustrated journey

February 22, 2013February 22, 20138 Comments

EXCITING NEWS! And believe me, this is pretty exciting. Many of you will have heard of Danny Gregory, renowned sketcher and author of books such as A Creative License, Every Day Matters and An Illustrated Life. Well his newest book “An Illustrated Journey”, a sequel of sorts to An Illustrated Life, was just published, featuring the travel sketchbooks of about forty artists of, well, like to travel. And I’m one of them! I haven’t received the book yet but I’ve had a peek online, and it looks like an incredible read. I loved ‘An Illustrated Life’ when I got that a few years ago, so I was hoping for a sequel. Many of the featured artists I am familiar with (such as through Urban Sketchers or Flickr) and friends with / big fans of, others I’d heard of and am eager to learn more about, and many more I didn’t know so I’m looking forward to finding out about.

I am very honoured to be included among such illustrious company. One of my sketches – of Vipin’s in Burnt Oak, of all places, the shop where I used to buy my pens and pencils when I was a little kid, a shop completely unchanged in three decades – is on the front cover. (I can’t wait to go and show Mr and Mrs Vipin!) I’ll probably write a bit more about it once I get my copy, but why not order yours now at your local bookstore, or online at places like, you know, amazon. Also, head over to Danny Gregory’s blog, were he talks a bit more about the book and has been posting video interviews with some of the artists already (very enlightening!): http://dannygregory.wordpress.com/

Thanks Danny for putting me in your book!!

waiting for the moment to find me

February 21, 20133 Comments

Last Monday was Presidents Day. For those who don’t know, Presidents Day is, well, just a day off. Unlike British summer bank holidays, my experience of Presidents Day is usually nice sunshine, perfect for some urban sketching. I had it in mind to sketch bigger and slowly, take my time on the details, and after an hour and a half or so (without colouring) a big drawing of Dairy Queen, I moved on. I’ll post the DQ pic when it’s finished. What else to draw? I wasn’t sure. so much of Davis to sketch, but so much already sketched. Sometimes it is about catching a building at the right time of day. Well, I’ve drawn this a few times but never quite how I wanted to, but in this late winter afternoon sunshine the setting was just perfect. This is Antiques Plus, on D Street. I love this building, in fact most of these buildings in this little quarter of Davis are sketchworthy. I used Micron pen size 02, and the picture is larger than my usual sketchbook size, at around 8″x6″ or so, on Canson watercolour paper. Because the sun was going down, I had to do most of the colouring-in at home, with my trusty W&N Cotman set (and for me, it is ‘colouring-in’, really: I don’t consider myself a painter, I’m much more about the drawing, the linework, though I do vastly prefer the drawings to have colour as it brings them to life). On the right is the Pence Gallery, and on the left is the Mustard Seed. I’ve now drawn most of the buildings in this block too, just a few more to go…

Speaking of the Pence Gallery… exciting news, I will have a mini-show there on the wall of the stairwell this coming April. This may well be one of the pieces displayed!

the boy bale

February 18, 2013February 18, 20132 Comments

He’s been brilliant lately, hasn’t he? This is Gareth Bale, Tottenham Hotspur’s great young Welsh star, drawn on another Chinese envelope. I have him up between the drawings of Messi and Ronaldo next to my desk, and he is probably in that company. His free kicks lately have been spectacular, Spurs have barely needed a striker with Bale moving about up front. He needs to do something about his barnet though. Young people, eh.

and mark it with a pin

February 16, 2013Leave a comment

The weather is so nice these days that it’s hard not going out and sketching the whole time. I did manage some yesterday lunchtime though. I have wanted to sketch this downtown building for a while, and sketched the one next to it recently. These are the offices of Lyon Real Estates, and usually hidden behind trees, except on these nice Winter days when trees are bare. It still wasn’t easy though, with cars in the way, and I stood holding my sketchbook awkwardly trying to get it all in before the end of my all-too-brief lunch. Eventually I will have sketched all of 2nd St.

pigeon street

February 15, 2013February 16, 20131 Comment

It’s been a funny week. State of the Union address, Rebuttal by thirsty Republican, flaming Meteors crashing into Russia, the Pope resigns, North Korea detonating a nuclear weapon underground and causing an earthquake, Oscar Pistorius shooting his girlfriend, a big fight on top of a moving train in Turkey between a spy and – no hang on, that last one was the James Bond movie I saw last night, Skymall or something. It’s been a busy week for me as well. Lovely weather, but my lunchtimes have been disorganized, so little sketching. Yesterday I did pop into the building next door to where I work, for some reason, and saw their display of stuffed birds in glass cabinets. The Bohart Entomology Museum is in there, not that entomology has anything to do with birds. I was interested in the bird skeletons. This was all I had time to draw, a pigeon. Look! I am drawing birds! Not so much a rat with wings (and pigeons are certainly not rats with wings, they’re not even mammals), more the leftovers of late-night fried chicken left in a greasy box on the N5.

When I think of pigeons, sure I think of Trafalgar Square in the olden days, and do you (in the UK) remember those short TV kids movies that would sometimes be on the BBC at about 5pm on a Friday, terrible old movies they were, but they would always open with a shot of a deeply grey Trafalgar Square with deeply grey pigeons suddenly taking off? Yes you do. But when I think of pigeons I really think of Pigeon Street. Remember that? (again, thinking more of UK folks of a certain age) Pigeon Street was great. Well when I say great, it wasn’t as good as Rainbow or Emu or any of those shows, even Tickle on the Tum was better, even Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, but Pigeon Street had its charms. Fortunately I cannot remember what they were, or I would have to tell you. But I’ll bet one thing it never had was a skeleton pigeon.

where we’re going we don’t need roads

February 12, 2013February 11, 20131 Comment

More from the California Automobile Museum in Sacramento – above, a metallic blue Rolls Royce 25/30 Sport Sedanca. This Roller was enormous. It looks like something from a 1930s film noir. You had to be a pretty special type of gangster to ride in one of these, none of your “shtick em up, see, this is a frame-up, see” lingo from this motor. This is a roll up slowly, window rolls down, give you a look of disdain from beneath a silvery fedora and move on to the opera before the real thugs come and throw you in the canal. Lots of stories in a car like this, see.

Oooh, the race car section was superb. As keen readers may recall I was at Disneyland Cars Land last week so race travel’s in my blood, there is nothing I can do about it. Well my five-year-old son loves them, and I’m always tripping over them on the carpet. This zippy little creation above is a 1966 Shelby Cobra, a car built by former race-car driver Carroll Shelby. I should like to learn more about race cars like this. Of course this would mean more reading and less drawing so I took a photo of the very detailed history displayed by the exhibit, and I promise I will read the rest of it some time. I don’t know if this car won any races, but it should have done. Being number 13 reminds me of a car I built once – not a real car, like, but a cardboard model with wheels made of those yellow plastic balls you get in Kinder eggs and elastic bands to make it go. I was about thirteen or so, it was for a competition in my design technology class at school. I won, by the way, I won a fun-sized Mars bar, which wasn’t all that fun. And it was not number 13, but number -13 (my favourite number, the opposite of unlucky). I retired from my automotive design career on a high.

Of course, I really wanted to design a time machine. Who wouldn’t? Back to the Future was one of my favourite films. I count it as one of the reasons I moved to California. So you can imagine my heart-thumping glee when I saw the 1981 DeLorean, a real DeLorean, DMC-12, with car doors up prancing majestically like, you know, the karate kid. The Flux Capacitor was gone and it ran on neither plutonium nor trash, but every angle of this car brought me back to being the ten year old who went to see this at the movies and fantasized about time travel ever since. I still nod approvingly at the clock when it strikes 10:04. Time was pressing on and I really had to sketch it before it was too late, because I needed to get to the bus, and get back to 2013. This was a fun trip to the Cal Auto Museum, and I think I’ll be back there soon.

http://www.calautomuseum.org/

reinvent the wheel

February 11, 2013February 11, 20133 Comments

On Saturday, a sunny but breezy February afternoon, I took the bus over to Sacramento for an afternoon of sketching. I had heard about the California Automobile Museum, but had never sought it out, until now. Not far down the river from the Tower Bridge, but still a bit of a walk for my aching feet, the Museum is set into a large warehouse building and jam-packed with amazing historical cars. As someone who likes to draw classic old cars but is frustrated by the samey-samey beige vehicles and unnecessarily testosterone-powered SUVs of the 21st Century, it’s amazing I’ve never been here before, and wow what a find. I will be coming back here again. I wanted to draw everything, so started in chronological order. I didn’t draw the absolutely oldest things on show, but drew the 1904 Ford Model B touring car, above. I say ‘car’, it is a lot bigger than it looks, with a roof straight out of a Great Plains Wagon. It’s intersting to see the evolution of automtive design – many of the touring cars there are larger than a standard SUV of today, but still resemble high-end horse-drawn carriages, where the horse is a long engine in a box at the front.

Here is a slightly smaller vehicle, but still sizeable, the 1914 Hupmobile Model 32-Touring car. I kept thinking of Mr.Toad, “poop-poop”. I loved the hand-cranks on the engines, another reminder of old movies. This was accompanied by an exhibit about the Lincoln Highway, one of the great roads that was built across the United States in the early twentieth century, the age when the motor-car allowed the idea of America’s Manifest Destiny to truly become reality. There was an exhibit about Camp Curry, Yosemite, and that big tree you could drive a car through. No need to go around trees any more, we can just go through them. With our motorcars, we are now the Masters of the Universe.

Here is a later one, the 1938 Buick Special, when cars became great design masterpieces, curves and shine and power. I sketched some more, to follow in the next post. Even by this point though, my aching feet were joined by an aching arm as my sketchbook-holding left arm was starting to feel tired from my standing posture, while I rushed to draw as many as possible. But there was so much to draw! More to come…

http://www.calautomuseum.org/