small steps, giant leaps

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rocket shoe
Right now at the Pence Gallery in Davis is a great show called ‘If The Shoe Fits’, which is all about Shoes. I was invited to display some of my shoe drawings, and as some of you may remember I have been drawing every one of my son’s shoes since he started wearing them, all in one book. So I redrew some, this time with colour, on Stillman and Birn Gamma paper. Above is the first shoe he ever wore, at age zero, the Robeez rocket shoe.
van's shoe
Next one, the blue Van’s shoe. I liked these ones. This is from age one. By then of course he was walking and running.
age three shoe
Finally, a shoe from age three, in fact the first shoes he ever chose himself. He has good taste. These got a lot of wear, before the feet outgrew them.

All were drawn on that S&B Gamma paper in either copic multiliner or micron pigma pen, with watercolour added. If you want to see (or buy) these, and a lot of other great shoe art from some amazing artists, go down to the Pence Gallery on D Street in Davis.

Those feet just keep getting bigger and bigger…

bad weather for ducks

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arboretum bridge
It is too hot. I’m sorry Davis, but you have to sort out these summers. Hundreds, and getting hotter, so KCRA3 Weather Plus Chief Meteorologist Mark Finan says (you have to use his full title or he makes it get even hotter). This lunchtime, I went down to Putah Creek and stood beneath the shade of a big bridge and drew it. There are all these little wooden barriers, dams even, up and down the Creek at the moment. A whole crowd of ducks pulled up at one point, stared at the wooden board quietly, looked around at each other, and then started quacking furiously. I could translate what they were saying as WTF?!?! (Or QQQ?!?! in duck-txtspk) It was like in Donald Duck, you know when he gets angry and goes red and steam comes out of his nostrils and he boils up into a rage, it was like that but with about twenty-five ducks. Actually it kind of reminded me of a bunch of commuters. Now they would have to get out of the Creek and walk, oh QQQ, it’s hundred quacking degrees and I have to quacking waddle?  For duck’s drake. Actually, being the Olympics I’m wondering whether it’s not some sort of dressage or hurdles thing, perhaps they are expecting the ducks to jump over them. Not quacking likely.

in the middle of our street

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varsity theatre, davis
On Sunday I had to get out to draw. I cycled downtown and stood on a bench (yes, stood, so I could see over the large vehicle in the way) on 2nd Street and drew a famiiar scene, but this time as a double-page spread in that lovely brown pen I have. I do like drawing these panoramas. This took about two hours, maybe less, stood in the shade on that bench. The funny thing about standing so high is that people don’t look over your shoulder quite so much. One other thing about sketching these panoramas is you have to scan them in two sections, stitch them together, and then they are so hard to post. If you want to see a bigger version, click on the image above. Below, you can see how big it is in real life. And the thing is, I intend to redraw this as a bigger and more colourful drawing.
sketching 2nd street

Here is a close up of the middle section, for those who can read the tiny writing and are interested in the movie times…

still standing

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behind the boiler building
Another one from the boiler building, which is still standing. I sketched from the back today, this big old window, full of texture and detail. I don’t know when this building is finally going under the sledgehammer, but apparently it is soon. Still standing…

little giants

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SF Giants Bobbleheads
My wife and I went on a date night to see the San Francisco Giants last week, playing against the New York Mets. It was a long and interesting game, going into extra innings (unfortunately! We had a long drive back to Davis but stayed until the end, unlike many others). The Giants ended up losing 8-7, which was a disappointment, but it was a back-and-forth game. I quite like the Mets; they’re that New York team that isn’t the Yankees, and I always think of them fondly, as a bit like Manchester City (before they got all that money and won the league). I did try to chant “You’re just a small town in France!” but nobody seemed to get that one. We were sat in club level, and enjoyed garlic fries and beer and ice cream, and a great view. In club level they have an amazing display of Giants memorabilia, including the 2010 World Series trophy, along with historic bats and baseballs (I sketched one of the game balls from Matt Cain’s perfect game), and an intriguing series of ‘bobbleheads’, those odd reproductions of famous players which often get given away on special game days. I sketched a few from the World series year of some of the well-known players from then (all still prominent Giants). Those bobbleheads never really resemble the players they’re supposed to be – that one of Buster Posey is just well off-base, for one. It was a lot of fun looking at all that stuff, and I could have sketched all night, but there was a game to watch, and garlic fries to eat.
AT&T Park

when the sun shines, they slip into the shade

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lake spafford
Lake Spafford, in the Arboretum area of UC Davis, sketched on a lunchtime, a not very interesting lunchtime, one in which I head out on my bike and go, so what am I going to draw? There’s nothing I want to draw today. No, not that, done that, no not that, too much greenery. Actually, no, I will sketch that, I know I ‘only just sketched’ that but that was actually 2007; god I feel like I’ve been in Davis a long time, and these long hot summers are really getting to me. Seriously – you go to San Francisco, less than an hour and a half away, and pass through some sort of invisible force field where it suddenly gets thirty to forty degrees cooler. They should make it illegal, this heat. Oh, it’s just the Sun exercising his right to free speech, the Sun is people too, the Sun has a right to bear UV Rays. Where I’m from we only let the Sun out three or four times a year and even then it has to behave itself. Actually where I am from the Sun listens in on your phone conversations and goes through your bins. So anyway, I sat in the shade, like this fellow here, and sketched away. I’m freckly, I have red hair. I am not anti-Sun, I just believe in traditional weather…

el cerrito has a del norte?

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sketching on the BART
Sketched on the BART last weekend. BART is the underground/subway system for the San Francisco Bay Area, and on this occasion I got the Amtrak to Richmond (at the end of the BART line) and BARTed it to San Francisco. Good idea. I also did the return trip in the evening, good idea, and I made sure I went with plenty of time to connect to my Davis train at Richmond. Except…I didn’t get off at Richmond, I got off at the station just before Richmond, El Cerrito Del Norte. I knew there was an El Cerrito after Berkeley, but assumed the station after that was my one. When literally everybody in the carriage got off, I couldn’t see the station sign from the BART train and assumed it must be the last stop. Even getting off the train, I couldn’t tell it wasn’t Richmond, and there weren’t exactly big clear signs around (like you get on the Underground). I followed the crowd down the stairs, got my ticket out and was about to go through the barrier when I realised: this looks…unfamiliar. Pretty sure this isn’t Richmond actually. So where is it? Still no sign. I walked back up to the platform, and saw the sign at last, located inconspicuously up above the platform. There was also a display that told me the next Richmond train was in 19 minutes, meaning it would get into Richmond about two minutes after my Amtrak, the last of the night, was scheduled to leave.

I believe I said the word “bugger” several times.

Faced with the prospect of spending the night in the Bay Area somehow, I just waited. I didn’t want to sketch, rather I wanted to focus my thoughts – the train will come soon, and I will not miss my connection. I don’t normally make these sorts of mistakes, believe me, it’s very unusual (except when I am asleep on the London Night Bus, but that’s different). How did I not realise El Cerrito had a Del Norte? It’s not like I don’t have a BART map, and a BART app. Evidently a lot of people live there because the train completely emptied. Think positive, use the bloody Force if I have to, wish upon a bleedin’star; after nineteen long minutes the train came. I stood by the door the whole time, preparing myself for an Olympic style dash from BART to Amtrak, hoping that I hadn’t already missed it. As the BART pulled into Richmond I could see no Amtrak on the adjacent platform, meaning, well I didn’t care I just ran. I got to the top of the stairs to the Amtrak platform…and saw the lights as the train rolled in. Massive sigh of relief, no need to brave a night in Richmond (which, I’ll have you know, is nothing like the Richmond in London). The jolly Amtrak conductor even said that the train had been delayed by a few minutes leaving San Jose, so I truly was lucky (though perhaps the Force had something to do with it).

My own silly mistake, getting off at the wrong station, but the bad signage did not help. I am used to London’s big signs, clear and visible from the train itself, along with the onboard display and of course the automated announcer. So BART, please make it more obvious which station we’re at. Paint great big letters all over the platform walls or something.

old vedanta temple

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old vedanta temple San Francisco
At the corner of Filbert and Webster in San Francisco’s Cow hollow neighbourhood is a very peculiar looking building. I noticed it on a previous trip to the city and wanted to go back and draw it. This building is the Old Vendanta Temple, topped with exotic domes and adorned with fanciful windows, yet still retaining that sense of old San Francisco. Well, this is old San Francisco – built more than a century ago, it was said to be the first Hindu temple in the Western hemisphere (according to this interesting piece on sfcityguides.org). I sat acros the street behind a telegraph pole (my only shade) and sketched from the domes down, which was fun, but by the time I was messing about with the windows I was getting a bit antsy and wanted to stop. I prefer the unfinished look of the sketch though, it tells more of a story and leaves details to be filled in by the brain. Plus it gave me time to go looking around the shops on Union Street. After the morning at the Tenderloin, Cow Hollow with its flash cars and fine heels and fancy bistros where it is brunch all day is the exact direct opposite.

while waiting for the bus

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red devil lounge SF

More from San Francisco last Saturday; after spending a good while on top of Nob Hill it was time to move elsewhere. I wanted a bit of upscale, after the intimidating grunge of the Tenderloin,  so I headed over to Union St, aka Cow Hollow. I had to get there first by bus though, and since I only had just spent one of my two dollars on a nice cold Pepsi Max, I had to walk down to Polk St to get some cash from a bank. I hadn’t been to Polk in a while, the Polk Gulch, and it’s pretty grungy down there too, though in a less ‘shuffly’ way. When it came time to catch my bus to Fillmore, I had about ten minutes or so and that was juts long enough to catch a sketch of this interesting club, ‘Red Devil Lounge’. They have live music there, and were advertising shows by Adam Ant and ‘From The Jam’, which as you may know is basically the other two non-Weller members of The Jam, well foxton at least (not sure about the drummer), and the picture featured an aging Foxton trying as he might to reincarnate himself as Weller circa 1979. Which Does Not Work. Anyway I sketched away (I added the colour later but did all the penwork in that short time), and caught the #1 bus up the hill and down the hill to Fillmore St.

jackson fillmore

I wasn’t planning on checking out all the very cool and decidedly un-grungy shops on Fillmore St, Pacific Heights (the opposite of Tenderloin), so just went to wait for the #22 bus to Union St. The helpful bus-stop display said it was going to be 11 minutes or so, which was just enough time for another sketch, of the Jackson Fillmore trattoria. I drew this very quickly in Moleskine #10 with my brown pen, and covered a lot of detail before the bus came. I later added some of the bricks on the left and some lines on the right, and splashed some sepia on for the sky, but otherwise it was all crammed into that short bus-waiting time, so it goes to show that when given a tiny crack of time you can draw quite a lot. I’d have drawn the same if I were given 30 minutes for the bus, I am sure. When the bus came, I stood, and it went up and down some steep hills, which is quite the ride.

Chestnut St view SF

After sketching down Cow Hollow (I’ll post that next), there was another bus wait, for the #30. So I got out the pink pen and the sky blue marker and quickly drew the view to the south of me, in my SF city moleskine. When the #30 came, it was jam packed, and a little stinky.