More from our Labor Day weekend away: the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, a hive of happy holidaymakers on a Saturday afternoon. It was warm and sunny, right by the Pacific Ocean, and we had spent the morning up on the cliffs watching surfers and out on the pier (or wharf) enjoying some very yummy ice cream and very tasty clam chowder. I do like to be beside the seaside. After the rest of the family headed back for a nap, I pottered down to the funfair on the Boardwalk and found (after some searching) a place in the shade to sketch. It was pretty busy, and that famous old rollercoaster rattled and screamed. It’s funny, staying in Santa Cruz you regularly hear the sound of girls screaming ringing through the night but in a wierdly normal (and clockwork) way, knowing it’s probably the rolloercoaster of that big thing that shoots people into the air and then drops them suddenly (why anyone would go on such an unholy contraption is beyond me). Perhaps it’s all the vampires. Below is a nice (and quickly sketched while waiting for pizza) view of the Boardwalk from the end of the street where we stayed. I liked this motel sign (that’s not where we stayed, we rented a small house).
market day
On Saturday, after a morning of ten-pin bowling, I sketched the tail end of the Farmer’s Market. Davis Farmer’s Market is a popular place on a Saturday, but it’s also held on Wednesday afternoon. There is often music playing (I once sketched a group called the Putah Creek Crawdads, and in May I sketched Jenny Lynn and her Real Gone Daddies – bands with a fatherly name are popular here!) and the playgrounds adjacent in Central Park make this a destination for Davis kids (and Davis Moms). Every time I take my own son here we bump into other kids he knows, and it’s the same for adults; the morning after I gave that book talk back in February I bumped into about five or six people here who recognized me. This really is the city’s meeting place, the Davis equivalent of the Roman Forum. I sketched this on larger paper than usual (this drawing is about 8″x10″, but annoyingly just slightly too big for my 8″x10″ frame for some reason). I did all the penwork, sat beside the Hotdogger stand, but by the time I was done the market had left and so I added colour later.
Below are some other sketches I have done at the Farmer’s Market over the years. I don’t sketch there often (what with my thing about sketching in crowds) but what a fun place to draw!
(Top left: May 2012. Top Right: August 2010)
(Top left: September 2006. Top Right: October 2009)
(Top left: October 2011. Top Right: October 2010)
(Top left: January 2012. Top Right: May 2011)
a door on the beach
On our trip to Santa Cruz, we drove down to the other end of Monterey Bay to Monterey itself, where we go every year. We spent a foggy morning at the playground, before spending a foggy morning at our little beach in Pacific Grove. Yes, the morning was foggy, but it burned off eventually. It wasn’t the only thing that burned. My feet, for one. The sunscreen went on them later than the rest of me, and it was too late. That stung later. Lesson learned. It was while I sat sketching this door, which is a sea-kayaking place. This was in the Moleskine with the uni-ball signo pen which of course runs a little when you add watercolor (I knew this and wanted it to add a bit of rough darkness to the stones), but which has amazing accuracy and control when sketching, more than any other pen I have used.
recently-burned feet just out of view
planet of the cars
Here are some of my son’s favourite toys, the Cars. I am forever tripping up on them, camouflaged against the roadmap rug in the living room, or lined up in very specific race positions on the many racetracks we draw together. The two movies, along with the Mater’s Tall Tales specials, are never far from the dvd schedule, and we all find ourself humming one of the tunes from the movies or saying ‘ker-chow’ or ‘dad-gum’ or such as like. My son has loads of these die-cast metal toys from both movies, some of them quite hard to find individually, to the point where it becomes a parent’s favourite quest to find the more obscure ones (I don’t know who Rip Clutchgoneski is in the movie but he for one is very difficult to obtain). And unlike so many toys, these get really played with, and my already multi-lingual son likes to get the Spanish one to count in Spanish, the French one in French, Francesco Bernoulli says ‘uno! due!’ tre!’ and so on. The German one is called ‘Vettel’ (actually it’s Max Schnell, but Sebastian Vettel is his favourite race-car driver, and I think he does the character’s voice in the German version of the movie, just as Lewis Hamilton guests in the original). See? I’m an expert.
Cars is a funny universe though. I read it as a Planet of the Apes type world, and would love to see Cars 3 run along those lines, whereby a human from the past arrives, does the ‘get your wheels off me you damn dirty Audi’ or something, and ends up with Mater pulling the Statue of Liberty out of Carburettor Canyon. Surely no crazier than the story of Cars 2?
I drew this in copic multiliner pen with watercolour, in the Stillman & Birn ‘Alpha’ sketchbook. I am using that sketchbook to draw a series of my son’s things. It’s great paper too.
come up to my lighthouse
Santa Cruz Lighthouse, on the cliffs overlooking Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean, as well as the city of Santa Cruz itself. this little lighthouse is home to the Museum of Surfing, dude. There is a plaque outside explaining how three very dapper looking Hawaiian princes brought the royal sport of surfing here. I didn’t have time to really look around, as I was still in agony from sunburning my feet the previous day, but wanted to sketch it; last time I drew it was on our previous trip here in 2007. This is a beautiful spot. Huge waves crash right up cliffs to the left, and surfers young and old dance about on the crests and currents, while pelicans and seagulls fly overhead. Sealions pop their heads above water too, to see what all the fuss is about, and sometimes you can spot whales in the distance.
santa cruz hydrants
Labor D
ay weekend, and we spent it in Santa Cruz, in the warm California sun. Well, quite a bit cooler than the usual super hot sun we have in Davis, so that was a nice change. I love being by the sea. Santa Cruz is a cool city, and we stayed near the Boardwalk. The hydrants here are different than in Davis so I managed to sketch a few of them. I am sure I look a right plum sketching these, but I don’t care, it’s more for the catalogue. Most are yellow (one or two were orange) but there was a greater variety in the ‘trim’, and I sketched a couple of orange ones, a red, a blue and a green. I don’t think I have drawn any of these models before either – very similar ones, but not exactly. Well maybe the blue trimmed one is similar to one I drew in Santa Rosa. Oh, I don’t know. I feel like one of those mad 19th century explorers sometimes, searching for and cataloguing new species of flora in the deep urban jungle. I really should make an effort when I find these new specimens to write down the manafacturer name, maybe the year if its legible, but it’s too late now. I’m not so methodical, I just draw the things.
Incidentally these were all drawn in my watercolour moleskine (moley #10) in uniball vision micro pen with watercolour. All were done on location, sat crouching in the street hoping I don’t get run over or weed on by a dog. If you want to see a whole load of fire hydrants (and other metal pipes that come out of the ground), then here is my Flickr set, “Hydrants and Pipes“. Or perhaps you thinks it’s a bit barmy. But hey, as they say – “Keep Santa Cruz Weird”, right?
keep on truckin’
Yesterday lunchtime I was looking for something inspiring to draw. Up by 3rd and University Streets, just off campus, workmen are doing some important work on the road, so there was a lot of machinery about. I was drawn to a big yellow truck, and this being lunchtime it was just parked there under a tree. I drew it for about fifteen or twenty minutes before the driver came back and drove it away (actually on a bit further up the street, but I had enough of a sketch to be happy with). Decided I preferred it unfinished anyway, and left it colourless too. Machinery is fun to draw. After this, I popped into Ali Baba’s on 3rd for a falafel gyro – nice, but not a fan of the peanut sauce.
by the california northern railroad
Beneath the Covell overpass in north Davis, behind the Little League fields, train engines – diesel switchers, I believe though I’m no ‘spotter – lie in wait. They are very colourful. Freight trains pass this way going north to Oregon, Washington, Canada, the North Pole for all I know. The Eastbound trains travel on the other track, nearby our old apartment. The first night I spent in Davis, almost seven years ago now, I was kept awake by the mile-long freight train rumbling through at one in the morning. I got used to that pretty quickly. It wasn’t that loud, but even at a distance I could feel the ground shaking a little. We have our freeways and our bike paths and watch airplanes cruise overhead, but something about the railway makes us feel connected to the wider continent at large. I may never get the time to do a big train journey across America – to paraphrase Cars, these days travel is about making good time, not having a good time (I blame the shorter vacations you get here) – so it’s quicker and easier (and occasionally cheaper) to fly. I like sketching train engines though. Maybe that makes me a trainspotter? Anorak on standby.
slip inside the eye of your mind
At the end of a busy and interesting week, a Friday night trip downtown was in order. The hundred degree weather has cooled into low 90s and mid 80s, a sigh of relief from me for one. Davis is too hot in the summertime, you just don’t want to be outside doing anything. Summer makes for nice evenings though, so I biked downtown after dinner and walked about. Popped into Newsbeat, the Avid Reader, Bizarro Comics, and then went to De Vere’s Irish pub to spend the rest of the night drawing the bar and drinking the beer. It was as super-crowded as on previous visits, though it got busier later. I read the comic I bought (one of the new DC ‘Before Watchmen’ prequels, this one based on the Comedian; it really wasn’t all that, to be honest) and got out the sketchbook to draw this bar one more time. I have often thought about organizing a ‘Drink and Draw’ group in Davis, perhaps going to different Davis pubs each time; I think it’d be a good idea, though I have had little time to work on it. So I occasionally get out to draw the bars myself; it’s good practise, all those bottles and shapes and light, and you get to sample the local beers. I intended to do the whole thing in dark brown but I had picked up the purple instead, only realising after drawing the beer pumps. The light wasn’t bad, but it was hard to tell between brown and purple. Once I realised, I decided on a two-colour scheme which I really liked. Purple and brown reminds me of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk too. It took a while to draw this, about 3.5 beers (someone did ask me how long it had taken but I couldn’t remember what time I came in, I had been in Bizarro Comics next door for quite a while). You might be able to spot my reflection in there somewhere. The level of detail tails off a bit towards the end, on the right, because of the larger movement of people, the darker light, and the effects of the Sudwerk Aggie ale (not my favourite Sudwerk beer by quite a long shot, but it’s nice enough and only $4 a pint). I chatted to some people at the bar while I sketched, watched the Giants win at the baseball, and made the long walk home through dark Old North Davis (they don’t like streetlights there; apparently they want you to be able to see the stars. Be quite nice to see the street as well though, I would have thought). Passed the bats that live under the bridge at Covell too, squeaking and flapping about. Summer is nearly done, and Fall is coming in, but the warm weather and balmy nights will be with us for quite a bit of time yet, and it’s nice to get out every so often.
(Click on the image to go to a bigger version)
PS: here are my previous sketches in De Vere’s Davis:
shine until tomorrow, let it be
Some quick lunchtime sketches from downtown Davis recently. Above, by the way, is Froggie’s, on the corner of 2nd and G. My sketching was pretty sparse lately, with these being typical efforts. Felt uninspired, disinterested even. Sometimes we earthlings let the weight of the world get to us. Feel a bit better now and expect to sketch a bit more furiously from now! The summer is cooling down a bit, and drawing closer to its end. But there is still a bit more summer to come.
petescully 