bring it on down

December 6, 20124 Comments

Back to the old Boiler Building, and the machines are really tearing it down now. The whole east side has been turned to rubble, leaving a sad, draughty, haunted shell. A small crowd of people with young, construction-machine-loving-aged children (you know the age, parents!) to see the mighty mechanical dinosaurs at work, and to wave goodbye to a historic part of UC Davis. Back at work, I spoke about this sad demise of a much-loved campus sight to some of the professors who have taught there for the past few decades. “Where’s this, then?” they said. “Boiler Building? Is that downtown somewhere? Don’t know that one.” Well, I’ll miss it. Even if I too had no idea what it was for until recently.

go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on

December 3, 201210 Comments

This is a true story about when I blew up the kettle (accidentally) when I was nine. Probably long forgotten by everyone else, but something I remember every time I plug the kettle in. I drew this, my kettle and tea-making equipment, here in my kitchen in Davis, and it is part of the Pence Gallery’s ‘Teapot’ show, being displayed until the end of December upstairs at the Pence (D st, Davis: visit www.pencegallery.org for details). I do love a good cuppa tea. I don’t use a teapot (no point unless there’s a few of you) and I don’t do none of your fancy nonsense, just a working class cup of tea, thank you, lovely. Fortunately I can get my normal teabags here in America, so I can have my typical four or five cups a day. I would not have lasted long here otherwise. I remember being nonplussed when my American mother-in-law first came to England and remarked at how cute our little ‘tea station’ was (it was the kettle and jar of teabags), now I live here I know it’s not actually typical to have an electric kettle in every single household- in Britain and Ireland it’s so essential, we get a kettle before we get a bed or a roof or anything. A cuppa tea back home is a language we all understand. I won’t drink anyone else’s tea here in California either, not even in cafes, I only drink my own tea, made at home, perfect and unbeatable in every way. And when I discovered you can get chocolate Hobnobs here in Davis, well my cuppa tea experience moved a little closer to perfection. Now I’m just waiting for my son to get old enough, and that’ll be his job, just as it was mine. Hopefully, of course, he won’t blow up the kettle.

at the holiday sale

December 1, 20121 Comment

This weekend is the Davis Art Center’s annual Holiday Sale, a big and popular event at the DAC featuring art, crafts, jewelry and many other lovely hand-made products. They are also selling cards with a selection of my Davis sketches on them, which look great! I came by this afternoon during a lull in the stormy weather (having spent the morning getting very muddy chopping down a Christmas tree), and after watching Beckham’s last game for LA Galaxy (they won the MLS Cup). After perusing the stalls, I whipped out the sketchbook and drew a scene in the main atrium. It was bustling with people, a friendly family atmosphere. If you are in Davis, tomorrow (Sunday Dec 2) is the last day of the Holiday Sale, so why not pop by and check it out? The Davis Art Center is on the corner of F St and Covell, by Community Park.

Davis Art Center

nanodrawmo 2012 – part 5

December 1, 201210 Comments

I finally finished the NaNoDrawMo challenge, with time to spare. Here are the final posts, with nice drawings and rather inconsistent / incoherent writing exercises beside them.

Phew! Here are all 50 drawings, altogether in one place…

Well done to everybody else who took the NaNoDrawMo challenge this year (I think you’ll particularly enjoy my cousin Dawn’s inspirational drawings of fishing gear). There is some great stuff out there! You can check out the rest of the NaNoDrawMo Flickr group at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/nanodrawmo/

the way we used to be

November 29, 2012November 30, 20124 Comments

While I’ll be posting the remaining set of NaNoDrawMo pieces altogether shortly, I thought you might like to see #50, the final one. It’s a self-portrait, although admittedly a few years have passed between the photo being taken and the drawing being drawn. I have had a haircut since then, and wear glasses, and I’m sure those dungarees don’t fit any more. No this is me aged about three, demonstrating why I keep my hair short (so as not to look like a diagram of the Atlantic Summer Hurricane Season). Hair is a bright red, eyes a bright blue, cheeks a bright pink; nothing’s changed there! I’m still as sweet. I still remember this face though, having to stand on the chair to see it in the mirror. This face makes me think of the Mr.Men theme music, by far my favourite show when I was a little one. Drawn in uniball signo um-151 pen (two sizes, 0.28 and 0.38) in a big Moleskine.

when it’s raining, it’s raining

November 28, 201212 Comments

Big rain storms rolled into California today. Late November can be a very colourful time of year, when the trees are bright yellow, fiery orange, deep reds, and leaves flutter down on every breeze. When the storms come it blows everything around, meaning what would otherwise be a grey and dismal day was in fact a beautiful, I mean really beautiful stormy morning. I walked to a meeting mid-morning, and could have walked on all day in the rain. The ground was covered in bright leaves, like a dusting of golden snow. I don’t have a window in my office so I can’t gaze dreamily out at the rain (I have to draw a picture of it on my whiteboard), but I can hear it on the skylight, tap-tap-tap, and by lunchtime it was pounding. I couldn’t wait to get back out, find a sheltered spot, and draw the colourful storm while it lasted. I listened to a history podcast about England’s medieval conquest of Wales and drew in the Moleskine. It’s funny, whenever it rains here people are often, oh no, rain, I don’t want to get my raincoat slightly wet in the brief dash from my car to Target, whereas I’m like, oh it’s just a bit of rain, grrr. So I scribbled down this cartoon in my notepad this afternoon. Thought you might like it.

will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

November 27, 20122 Comments

I can’t get enough. I’m not obsessed or anything. Here is the UC Davis Boiler Building again, still in the same state of deconstruction as in the previous two sketches. It’s looking so sad and beaten, yet triumphant as well, as though it’s saying, come on, do your worst. Another demolition machine has lined up beside it now, like a warrior preparing for more hyperbole. I drew it from the back this time, another angle, in fact the same angle as I drew it from in August, this one here:

It was sunny today, too. I just didn’t show you the blue sky. It just didn’t seem appropriate.

pete on etsy

November 26, 2012November 26, 20122 Comments

Well, Thanksgiving is over, Black Friday is done with, and houses are starting to deck themselves out in glitz, lights and those spangly reindeer things people like putting in their yards. Christmas is a-coming in. So why not pop over to my Etsy store? I love Etsy, and it’s nice to occasionally sell some art on there myself. I have a modest selection of very nice prints and original drawings still available…

For example, you could get a lovely print of my ‘train’ drawing…

Or maybe an original drawing of Old City Hall in Davis?

Perhaps you like birds…how about a beautiful original drawing of some birdhouses?

Or decorate your wall with a spiffing colourful 10″ x 20″ panorama print of the Davis Art Center?

There’s more stuff on there, so please pop by and check it out. Pretty please.

Pete Scully on Etsy

Ok, ’nuff said, back to the sketching…

nanodrawmo 2012 – part 4

November 24, 20125 Comments

Ploughing on with the NaNoDrawMo series… I am actually almost done, but still a few more quick writing exercises to do, and of course the scanning. In this one, a spray bottle, a scrubbing brush, my sunglasses, my son’s AT-ST (aka “Star Wars Lego Garbage Truck”), a souvenir Eiffel Tower, a toy Magneto, a tin of pumpkin pie mix, aaaand… a Hoegaarden Grand Cru glass, which followed me all the way from Belgium over a decade ago. More NaNos to come…

one of our dinosaurs is missing

November 22, 20124 Comments

No, this isn’t my bedroom when I was a teenager, this is another view of the old Boiler Building on the UC Davis campus, currently under demolition. It’s the same gaping hole I drew the day before, but I wanted another angle so at lunchtime yesterday I pottered over and sketched away. Sometimes destruction can be beautiful. You can make out the silhouettes of big metal pipes inside the building still, though it looks like the scene of an escaped dinosaur disaster. I can imagine KCRA 3 news now, “Alert on the UC Davis campus as a nine ton T-Rex escaped from the old Boiler Building yesterday, police are conducting a thorough search but have been warned not to use pepper-spray,” or something. That probably is how they would report it, after the weather, and after the traffic reports, which as you know on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is all people care about, the ‘Busiest Travel Day of the Year’. “More on that escaped Tyrannosaur later, now back to Richard on I-80”, “Thanks Kelly, well the traffic has been backed up for hours here, and, oh wait is that a T-Rex? We’re getting confirmed reports from LiveCopter 3 that a big rig has been overturned on I-80 by a dinosaur, well at least traffic will start moving a bit faster…”

And back to the imagination. Happy Thanksgiving folks. I hear T-Rex tastes like turkey (a species which roams freely on the streets of Davis) so if you catch one, there’s meat for everybody.