Number 16 in the ongoing series of my son’s shoes, in chronological order. these are the blue sandals, BabyGap. They were worn a long time for most of last year (only now getting around to drawing them). Copic multiliner 0.1 in a moleskine cahier.
the answer my friend is blowing in the wind
I had to draw today. Being afraid of the outside world is getting me down. How come allergy season is lasting so long?? Wrap it up, folks, please. Anyway I braved it, itchy eyes and runny nose, and did pretty well sketching this frat house, Sigma Phi Epsilon. I had to do the colour later on though, because just to annoy me, a pair of leafblowers came along to blow all the leaves about and make things worse. I abandonded ship, but I had done enough and I might even go back and do another, to match it.
oh wow, the whole earth? that’s like, so heavy, man
Hippies and Davis go together like Strawberries and Wimbledon, and every year all the hippies come together for the annual Whole Earth Festival on the UC Davis campus. Day two is happening as I sit at home writing; I popped by the Quad yesterday lunchtime to check out what was going on. I didn’t fancy an eggplant and lentil wrap or organic lemonade, so grabbed a turkey sandwich at the MU and sat and watched the band that was playing. They were very jam-band/acid-jazz-ish, or at least what I consider to be such things (I’m not very good at categories), had several saxophones and one female back-up vocalist who kept singing “Yo-ho-ho-ho”, but I don’t think the song was about pirates. I tried to keep up with the main singer’s lyrics, it wasn’t exactly The Streets but I did make out the words “teeny-tiny tidy-whitie”, which I think is some sort of underpant. Perhaps it was tie-die whitie. There were a lot of tie-die t-shirts around, and a fair few sandals. No sign of Neil from the Young Ones, but I bet he was around somewhere.
lunch on
Another lunch-place sketch. Every day this week I have sketched a different place I’ve been eating lunch (all with a fountain diet coke in the foreground). This is in the Silo. I had Taco Bell. I don’t usually sit downstairs on the big long tables with the other people. Ok, it’s because of the overheard conversations. I left out the chattering folk in this one. Thankfully Silent Bob was at the end of the table. Or is it Silo Bob? Where will my lunchtime adventures take me tomorrow..?
curry on at the coho
I sometimes have a dilemma – go to the Coffee House (CoHo) at the Memorial Union on campus and have their delicious Thai Green Curry soup, or sketch at lunchtime. I rarely have time to do both, as eating that very tasty (and very big) soup is a big deal that must be savoured. Yesterday I chose to do both. I’ve been meaning to sketch the new CoHo for a while. It was rebuilt and reopened last Summer (after I spent over a year without my lovely soup) and is quite an impressive place now. Not necessarily any easier getting a seat, but there are comfier options at least.
Sketched in uniball vision micro pen.
goodbye piccadilly, farewell leicester square
You’ve got to love the old London pub. Sure, most pubs these days aren’t that old-fashioned, appealing to a younger crowd who need somewhere to spend the weekday hours from 5:30 to 11:00, while high beer prices are making the tradiitonal fans stay at home and watch pubs on the telly. There are still those that look the part, however, and here are a couple that I like. The Tipperary, above, is not somewhere I ever went particualrly often, but I appreciate its history – over three centuries ago it was London’s first Irish pub, and the first place outside Ireland to serve Guinness. It’s on Fleet Street, not far from the Cheshire Cheese. Below, The Ship, a proper Soho pub, one I used to go to many many times. It’s on Wardour Street, near the now-closed (and now reopened as a burger joint, I hear) Intrepid Fox, another beloved former haunt.
And you know what folks, these two drawings are available for you to buy on my Etsy store…and these pubs would look very nice side by side on your wall!
in our natural habitat
Osama Bin Laden was killed yesterday, shot in the eyes, his body taken and dumped in the sea (who was in charge of the operation, Luca Brasi?), and today American airport staff are on high alert (that’s now “elevated”, rather than “orange alert”) for joke after joke after tiring joke about taking their sodas and nail-clippers through security (hey, I got mine out of the way last night). Today, to celebrate, I had lunch at The Habit, a burger chain in Davis which does absolutely amazing chicken burgers. Of course, I was only celebrating the fact that it was lunchtime, and I usually celebrate that by eating food and having a fountain soda, but it’s May, a month which will probably now be renamed Can. The staff in here are friendly, though I was cheerily asked if I wanted my tray of food taken away while only halfway through actually eating it. Let me finish nibbling my fries! If it takes me all lunchtime, I’ll stay the course! I’ll leave no fry un-nibbled.
ding dong, the witch is dead…
Wow, it’s great to be actually paying attention at the moment a Big News night suddenly happens. I just happened to notice on Twitter that the President was about to give a live speech, nobody knows what it’s going to be about, and so we turn on the TV, and they say “Bin Laden is dead”, which is one of those headlines we had expected for years but had started looking unlikely. Eagerly anticipating Obama’s speech, I got out not one but two sketchbooks (my little ‘people’ moley and my small wh smith sketchbook).
Wow, what News that is. People are out on the streets of America waving their flags, and it’s not even a Royal Wedding. I wonder if Trump and all them will need to see the death certificate? (That joke is already old) It appears Bin Laden wasn’t in a cave, but a big mansion, and nobody knew; did it have a name? ‘Dunterrorisin’? And more importantly…does this mean we drink cans of Pepsi Max on airplanes now?
right up your street
This is a drawing of the house of a colleague, Jean, which I did last month. Back then, the leaves were not on the trees and long wintery shadows crept across Davis; now the leaves are back, the pollen is in the air and my nose is practising for marathons.
Anyway, I thought it a good time to tell you again that if you fancy a drawing of your house, or apartment, or shop, etc, let me know! I generally draw at about 5″x7″, ink and watercolour (but I prefer not to draw people). Let’s talk!
I still have some original drawings on my Etsy store, and will be adding more in the coming weeks. I am raising money to go to the 2nd Worldwide Urban Sketching Symposium in Lisbon this summer by selling drawings, and every bit helps! I can even draw trees with leaves on…
smiling beguiling
The Big Day is Here. Actually it’s not Here, it’s Over There, where you all get to Wave Flags (if you so desire) and get a Day Off (which I’m sure you won’t say no to). I however will need to be up at some unroyal hour to watch it all on telly, and then go to work wondering how many street parties will end in flashing blue sirens. Hopefully not too many. As I can’t get out onto the British streets to draw all the Union Jack bunting (that sounds like a boxer, doesn’t it), I decided to draw Will and Kate in my Moleskine diary. Will has rather a long face in this, but that’s ok. One day he’ll be literally on the money, and money has to stretch (seriously, that’s the best ‘long face’ joke I could come up with?). Kate Middleclass will be joining the Royals and a life of tabloid front pages, and I wish her all the best. I wish both of them all the best, actually; I’m quite sentimental about this royal wedding lark.
I still remember that big one thirty years ago (who was that for again?). We had a street party in my small Burnt Oak street, and I still recall the little plastic union jacks we waved furiously all day, sat on long tables in the street with my neighbours the Glennons, the Smiths, the Daniels, the Jamesons. There were lots of kids in my street back then. I was only a scruffy-haired five-year-old, eating cake and drinking cherryade. I remember that the grown-ups played games in the street, such as the race that my dad won against the other dads, with me on piggyback. It was fun, simple non-cynical fun, and I hope that everyone having street parties today keeps those same memories thirty years from now. Or of course you can drink yourself silly, and that’s fun too.
petescully 