first tee-ball game!

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first tee-ball game!
Yesterday my son played his first ever tee-ball game, and has now entered the big world of baseball. His team, the Orioles, played the Pirates on a lovely March early evening; my Luke, wearing the number 1 (how cool!), made a couple of nice hits and while fielding made a great throw to get someone at first base. Sport at this age is so cute. They don’t keep score in tee-ball, and nobody is really out, everyone gets a chance to run the bases and hit the ball, and it’s all a lot of fun for them. Both teams therefore win (they won’t ever call it a draw!), and they all get snow-cones afterwards. My boy’s growing up; we’re very proud parents!

first tee-ball game!
first tee-ball game!

glove is all you need

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my son's first baseball glove

This was fun to draw: my son’s baseball glove (or is it a mitt? I already drew one Mitt in this sketchbook). The baseball glove is such an archetypal piece of Americana, and naturally it is completely alien to me. My four year old son had his first baseball game today – tee-ball, to be precise, and it was great, good job mate! – and while he is much more comfortable with the old baseball than a learner such as I, he did take to wearing it on his head for periods while out fielding. That is what I would do too, probably. 

Drawn with micron pigma 03 in the gamma series Stillman & Birn book.

super troopers

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clone trooper shoe
My son has the coolest shoes. I always knew this of course, because I have drawn a picture of every single one of them in a single book, chronologically, in black pen. These new ones however are my favourite yet. Based on the Clone Troopers from Star Wars (the forefathers of the Stormtroopers), they even flash blue. And I totally want some myself!! Except I don’t think adults can realistically wear such footwear in public. Perhaps Boba Fett ones? I liked them so much I drew this shoe twice. The one from the ‘official’ series is below, copic pen in a moleskine cahier. The second one I drew was on the first page of my brand new Stillman & Birn ‘Alpha’ series sketchbook (thanks Stillman & Birn for sending me that!), and it took me a couple of hours, mostly in copic multiliner (size 0.1) but with a little bit of uniball vision micro, and watercolours to colour it in. I’m pleased with the result, and the paper is nice to draw on, not as smooth as the Moleskine Cahier or Volant, smoother than the Moleskine watercolour though and it takes a watercolour wash pretty well.
21: clone trooper shoe

They are cool shoes. But, alas, if I wore them I would be constantly worried that one day, they would turn on me, Order 66 style.

scattered showers

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rainy silo

I must admit I am really happy it is raining in Davis. We need it, for sure, but i just like the feel of the rain. It feels comforting, feels like home. Oh, it can bugger off again soon enough for sure (I didn’t move to California to get rained on, I can do that in north London) but it’s nice while it’s here. I did a qucik rainy sketch from the window of the Silo at lunchtime yesterday.

black place shoe

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18: black place shoe

Continuing the long series of sketching all of my son’s shoes in chronological order (though there is some overlap which I’m uncertain about), this is the black ‘Place’ shoe (Place is the name of the brand; no, I don’t know them either). I don’t know how often he ever wears these, because they competed for time with the Lightning McQueen shoes (as a three-four year old which would you choose?) and so are in pretty good shape.

You can see all of his shoes in this one series here. Feet just keep getting bigger…

let’s draw the arboretum!

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bridge in the arboretum
Yesterday was our latest “Let’s Draw Davis!” sketchcrawl, this time at the UC Davis Arboretum. Eleven of us met at Wyatt Deck, which turned out to be a great place to meet for a sketchcrawl. I think I chatted more than I sketched, so I was slow starting (pretty typical on Davis sketchcrawls for me), but it was good sketching conversation, and I learned a lot from speaking with others. I sketched in my Stillman and Birn (gamma) sketchbook).
wyatt deck
davis sketchersarboretum thumbnails

redbuds

And the redbuds are blooming right now, so whole stretches of the Arboretum are bathed in deep pink. This is different from the pink blossom on many trees (though my sketch doesn’t really show that distinction!). The last sketch I did was the one at the top. I enjoyed that one the most.

The next Let’s Draw Davis will be on April 14th (a week before the Worldwide Sketchcrawl, which is the same day as Picnic Day), and will be on G Street. More ‘urban’ than here! But I must say I always enjoy the Arboretum Sketchcrawls, it is such a pleasant spot to sketch.

will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

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pierce hall (being demolished)
These student housing halls over by Tercero on the UC Davis campus, Pierce Halls, are currently being demolished. I was kindly informed about this last week so raced over this week to capture them before they vanished. I found a quiet spot up a stairwell outside the demolition zone, and listened to the “football weekly extra” podcast (who seemed convinced that Spurs season was also under demolition). I’m glad the big digger stayed still for me, parked like a big mechanical yellow dinosaur awaiting its prey. I can imagine all the student tales from all the years that students lived here. When I was at university I didn’t live in the halls, and while one part of me felt I was missing out, I’m glad I didn’t. I did spend a year living in the student halls while teaching in Charleroi (la Vigie), which was noisy to say the least. I have no idea about American halls though, other than in the movies. Anyway, whatever the hidden histories, they’re all being knocked down now and buried in the rubble.

ce n’est pas facile d’être bleu

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chimay bleu
Chimay Bleu, a very popular Trappist beer in Belgium. When I spent a year there I  only had it the once, it wasn’t really my thing, very dark, but the Charleroi locals loved it, king of the Trappists. I like the glass, and brought my Chimay glass with me to America, it’s nice to eat ice cream or trifle out of. Anyway, my wife got me one recently so I had it tonight while watching the telly, and of course I had to draw it in the brown paper beer book.

it’s not easy being blue

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andre villas-boas

You have to laugh at Chelsea. It would be easy to say their managerial office has a revolving door, but it’s more like a revolving cashpoint. It reminds me of the Crystal Maze, that bit at the end where you are in that air cupboard and have a minute to grab as many bits of rapidly flying silvery paper as possible before your time is up. Actually it’s not like that in the slightest but I like the image. Longer serving managers like Ferguson, Wenger, Moyes (that’s it, by the way) must look at Chelsea in the same way that oak trees look at human beings, with their fleeting brief lifespans, but still strong enough to cut them down from time to time. The fabulous wealth that their Russian owner brought them means that instant success is an absolute (which basically means winning every trophy in your first couple of weeks or you’re fired). Even Ancelotti, who won them their second double, was booted out less than a year later. The double used to be really really hard to win, and double-winning managers were revered for decades later (Nicholson, Mee, Dalglish). Now it’s like, well you couldn’t even win the Champion’s League too? You’re useless! All of which hiring and firing becomes very expensive for Chelsea. This is Andres Villas-Boas, who lasted about two thirds of a season. He’s only 34, look at him. He was a manager for one year before coming to Chelsea, winning a load of stuff at Porto before shifting to the Bridge for a ton of Siberian cash. Now he’s out the door also with a ton of cash, and while part of me feels bad for the guy – he’s young, still learning, and needed to be given time to change that aging cliquey team around – but really I think he’s not been harmed too much by this whole affair, he has full pockets now, and when even top-drawer managers with very successful careers can get axed at Chelsea (Ancelotti, Mourinho, Scolari) it doesn’t hurt his reputation as much as you’d think. Andre, I hope you to either a smaller club, or even back to Portugal, and spend a few years really working on a project, making it successful, building up a bank of respect and a catalogue of trophies, and then when Chelsea, many more managers and revolving doors and millions of pounds and failed players down the line, will look back up at you and shout “save us!” you will whisper, “no…”