she’s not quite right and she don’t fit in with the small town

September 21, 201112 Comments

This one was a bit of a bugger. This phonebox (and I know I’ve drawn phoneboxes more than once lately) is on D street, it’s the ‘other’ Davis one. Authentically British (no phone, no glass in the windows), the Giles Gilbert Scott masterpiece and distant cousin of Waterloo Bridge adds to Davis’s quirky and vaguely Britophile character (there’s the phoneboxes, the old London double-decker buses, and that handsome red-head guy who draws the fire hydrants). Shes just decoration, really. My son and I pretend she’s a rocket ship. She’s a space oddity, standing outside the Mustard Seed. Anyway, last week I went downtown, sat down here to draw her, got everything ready and then realized I had left my pencil case in my office. D’oh. So I went and got a couple of new microns at the Paint Chip, and decided to draw something else, but for some unknown reason I couldn’t, I was feeling derailed. So I came back next day, and sat and drew as much as possible, in this very detailed spot. I finished off the remaining details and colours at home, but for some reason I’ll always have an awkward feeling about this one, like I was never comfortable, took too long, maybe irritated by drawing another phone box. But here she is, a little piece of the homeland relocated to Davis. I would say I know how she feels, but I’m not a phonebox, I’m a person.

my little green friend

September 21, 20116 Comments

Toad Hollow, Davis, an amphibian ghetto near the post office, by the Pole Line Road flyover.It is the entrance to a tunnel which allows toads (and frogs, no discrimination here) (but not newts, coming over here, nicking our jobs and our lilypads). This is a much beloved spot in Davis, one of our quirkier details, the story of which I’ve written about before here. The flags are up, I think they were for September 11 but am not sure. Notice how they have little solar panels, very eco-friendly, it is easy being green in this town. You never see a toad driving an SUV. You see people who look like toads driving SUVs, maybe. If Davis toads could drive, I can just imagine their bumper stickers. “Hop springs eternal”, “Stop the Wart”, “The only Romney I like is a Marsh”, etc etc

the last days of summer

September 18, 20112 Comments

This hydrant is by Wright Hall, UC Davis, and I drew it at the end of yesterday’s sketchcrawl. Well I drew most of it there, and then finished it off at home, adding colour too. I drew it on a 8×10 piece of Strathmore hot press paper in uniball vision micro, so it’s bigger than what goes in my sketchbook. I have had my eye on this fire hydrant for a while, sitting among the long leaves, with the colourful theatre dept building and the Eggheads outside the Art building behind it. It’s so calm, but tomorrow the new academic year will begin, and so will the craziness…

another day spent sketching uc davis

September 17, 2011September 18, 20111 Comment

Another “Let’s Draw Davis!” sketchcrawl, this time on the UC Davis, an eerily quiet UC Davis, the calm before the very big storm of new students. We were a smaller group this time, but no less determined to sketch, and there was a lot to draw on campus. We met at the Memorial Union bus station, by the red phone box, and fanned out to sketch the campus.

Above is North Hall, a building I’ve attempted before, the one with the fun-to-draw staircase. Below, Alan and Alison, long-time Davis sketchers, sketching at the MU bus terminal.

The next one will be on October 15th. Stay tuned for details!

saucony shoe

September 16, 2011September 15, 20112 Comments

After a gap, back to the series in which I am drawing every one of my son Luke’s shoes. I still have a way to go to catch up, but I will get there. They are all being drawn in a single small Moleskine cahier in the same black pen style. this one is number 17, I think (the 16th was number 18, while the 17th was number 16, so this is the 18th drawn, but 17 in chronological order in which they were worn…does not compute, does not compute… ah Luke won’t care in years to come). These trainers, made by Saucony (that’s what it says, don’t ask me), are cool, dark blue and silver with some orange trims, and they are special because they are the first shoes that he actually chose himself. The baby-shoe book is becoming the little-boy-shoe book. I think I’m gonna need a bigger book.

the o.c.

September 15, 2011September 15, 20112 Comments

I decided it was about time I drew this, the entranceway to Orange Court off E Street in Davis. It’s a little courtyard of restaurants and cafes and small businesses (I drew inside here once last year). I’m interested in these off-strip places in Davis, the interstitial spaces, the alleys and courtyard, and in fact the October sketchcrawl will largely focus on those places, I think. There are some interesting spaces behind the main buildings. Further up E Street, there are some cool little shops and cafes hidden away between the Pence Gallery and Bizarro Comics. For this drawing, which again is on slightly larger Strathmore hot press paper as part of my latest Davis series, I stood by my bike in a little bit of shade on Tuesday lunchtime and drew most of it, finishing off details and the colour when I got home.

shakespeare’s in the alley

September 14, 2011September 14, 2011Leave a comment

This is actually on the other side of the funky looking ‘Secretariat’ building on G Street that I drew last week. I’ve wanted to draw this alley, just off 4th, for a long time but always forget about it. That balcony area is so unusual; hardly Romeo and Juliet, unless Romeo was an old tomcat or something. I kept in the graffiti. Never understood the whole tagging thing – unless the graffiti artists are old tomcats or something – why do they have to be so illegible? It’s a bit like when you first learn to do a signature, it makes you feel all grown-up, writing your name in a barely legible way.

Another bigger one on Strathmore hot-press paper, latest in the series. Yep, it’s a series, just not in a sketchbook.

if there’s a bright centre to the universe…

September 13, 2011September 15, 2011Leave a comment

Last weekend, we went on a family trip to the ballgame. It was both mine and my son’s first San Francisco Giants game, though my wife and her mom (big Giants fans) had been earlier in the season, when things had been going a little better for the Giants. This game however was crucial – playing the Arizona Diamondbacks, who were leading in the division, and being several games behind we really needed to win. But that didn’t matter – it was Star Wars day, and the Force would be with us!

Which side of the force was less clear. Stormtroopers escorted the umpires out, mascot Lou Seal dressed as a jedi and waved about a lightsabre, and the opening crawl on the big screen set the scene, hoping that the Giants would beat Arizona and ‘restore freedom to the galaxy’. I love Star Wars, so I loved all this. And maxibig-da-force – the first pitch to the Giants resulted in a home run straight away from Cody Ross, and the ballpark went wild. AT&T Park is a great place. Set right by San Francisco Bay, it’s one of the great stadia of the world. Behind the seat, in the ‘breezeway’ (I think I have my terminology correct, my reference is a Curious George book) are rows and rows of beverage stands and souvenir shops and beer and garlic fries and t-shirts and TVs showing the action.

"imperial troops have entered the base! imperial troops have ---"

My three year old son is a big baseball fan, though we’re on about the same page in our understanding of all the terms. It’s a simple enough game, someone throws the ball and you hit it and run, complicated by all the subtleties and statistics and terms. There’s a lot of standing around and not-much-happening, but to the baseball fan it’s tense stuff, and while there’s ample time to get up and walk around and get your garlic fries, you really don’t want to miss that three-run-homer or that spectacular catch. It’s typical to compare a big sport to the big sport you follow, but baseball is a completely different type of game to football (and I know little enough about cricket, though I kept calling the pitcher the ‘bowler’, and shouting ‘howzat!’ every time someone caught the ball). No comparison there may be to footy, but being a Giants fan is a lot like being a Spurs fan. Last year we were World Series champions/beating both Inter and AC Milan, this year we’re losing by baseball scores. It’s a frustrating life, made more so by success.

There’s my son Luke above left, and my brother in law Kris on the right, the biggest Giants fan I know. He in fact took me to my only other baseball game, at the Oakland A’s, back in 2002, the first time I came to America and the first time I tasted garlic fries. I wore a Spurs shirt that day, but here I wore a Giants top. I did however spot a guy in an Arsenal shirt (he stood out a bit); after the previous week’s 8-2 drubbing by Man United, baseball scores probably felt a little light to him. Hey, you can’t let an 8-2 Arsenal defeat go without comment, can you? (And after Spurs lost 5-1 to Man City, it was pretty much the only thing that could cheer me up!)

first page of moleskine #9 under way... top of the ninth, you might say

Decorating the breezeway walls were framed examples of old Giants kits. As a football kit fan I’m hugely excited by baseball jerseys, since they are so classic, and (usually) so unchanging. This one is from the early 60s, and the differences to today’s tops are very subtle. This aspect of the sport adds to its classic Americana feel. Baseball loves its heritage, and the Giants especially, with statues of its great players dotted around the area. Below is Willie McCovey, beside McCovey Cove, where many home runs do splash (it’s not like Henman Hill). I can’t pretend to know much about these guys, but I will say this – what an amazing view, with the Bay Bridge in the background, and baseball players really do look like lightsabre-wielding Jedi, don’t they?

The Force alas was not with us. The Arizona D-Backs (seriously, the fans sing that?) won the game, and will probably win the division. As Vader might say, “NOOOOOO!!!!!” (and don’t EVEN get me started there…) But we had a great day out, and Luke ran the bases after the game, and I got some nice sketching in, and it was a great family day out, so in a way we did win, from a certain point of view.

delta skelter

September 10, 20115 Comments

I have drawn this place before recently, the Delta of Venus in Davis, but this time I drew it bigger and with a fire hydrant in front of it. I sat behind said hydrant across the street in the shade. Another in my series of slightly larger Davis scenes on loose watercolour sheets.

let’s draw uc davis

September 10, 20111 Comment

Next week, it’s time for another sketchcrawl in Davis! This time on the UC Davis campus, which will be starting to bustle with the incoming new students.

START: 10:30am, Memorial Union bus terminal (by the red phonebox)

FINISH: 3:00pm, at the Eggheads near the Art Building

As always, this is free and everyone is welcome, all ages/levels. All you need is something to draw with and something to draw on!

For more info leave a comment below or visit our Facebook event page.

See you there!

petescully

postcards of the hanging