crossing bridges

April 6, 2011April 6, 201112 Comments

When I first moved to Davis at the end of 2005, my wife told me about this cool thing she’d read about called ‘Sketchcrawl’, and that it was happening all over the world on the same day, and that there would be one in Davis organized by some local sketchers sketching the ‘Arboretum’ (another word that entered my vocabulary). I shyly met with a group of sketchers all buried in sketchbooks at Mishka’s cafe on a chilly morning and followed them to the Arboretum, by the creek, where evryone panned out and sketched away until it was too cold to do so. It was great, and though I didn’t draw outside for several months afterwards, and didn’t join another sketchcrawl for even longer, it was my first ever sketching day in Davis – the first of a great many. So for this latest Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl I was eager to show other people what a great place the Arboretum is to draw, but also to see for myself how my sketching has changed in the past five and a half years.Below is the same scene as above, sat in almost the same spot, but with my now differing styles.

: the same scene in december 2005

And below, here I am with Moleskine #7. More sketches to come!

drawing davis on a nice spring day

April 4, 2011April 4, 20111 Comment

It was time for another ‘Let’s Draw Davis’ sketchcrawl – our fifth one – this time at the UC Davis Arboretum. There were thirteen sketchers in total, mostly from Davis, but also from Sonoma, Sacramento, Oakland and the foothills. We met at 11 outside Borders, and spent the first hour or so in the little garden right next door, the Arboretum Terrace. That is a nice spot which is often forgotten about, and was a plesant way to start a relaxing day of sketching.The weather was nice, warm, though the wind was kicking up a bit. I drew the scene to the left, with powerlines passing overhead.

Below, sketching the sketchers: this is Sandra and Barbara, with Barbara’s dog Demi. Sandra has been on some of the previous sketchcrawls in Davis, but this was Barbara’s first ever sketchcrawl. Great to see you!

Below, Helen and Scott, sketching away.

More to come!

wir sind die meister, mein freund

April 1, 2011April 1, 20111 Comment

Weihenstephaner (literally ‘Holy Steve’) is one of my preferred Bavarian beers. About six years ago my wife and I visited Bavaria and drove around (well, my wife drove, while I spoke German and made old ladies giggle), and I loved all the local Bavarian beers. Every town we visited sold it own local beer, brewed locally, with very few big commercial beers available, for which I was very grateful. I remember I had one particularly nice beer in Schliersee, with one of the nicest roast duck meals I’ve ever had. One brewery we visited was on the outskirts of Munich, calling itself the oldest brewery in the world: Weihenstephaner. It’s at an abbey, and they have been brewing beer since the 8th century, though their brewery founding date is officially in the 11th century. On that day I tried a ‘Kristallweiss’ beer, and that’s what I had last night when I sketched this.

My reasons for wanting to visit the brewery back then were linguistic: I had recently written an essay for my Master’s (one of my courses was in Germanic Philology) based largely around the competing influence of both Anglo-Saxon and Gothic on Old High German, focusing on the words for holy, ‘heilig’ and ‘weih’, the latter being from the Gothic. If you’re interested, the Anglo-Saxon influence won the day for the most part (not surprising as the German patron saint, St.Boniface, was English), but I wanted to go somewhere which still used the Gothic word. I was a big Wulfila reader back then.

Anyway, a new shop opened in Davis recently, the ‘Davis Beer Shoppe’ (quite why it needs the ‘pe’ at the end of ‘shop’ is unclear) and I was pleased to see that they had my favourite Weihenstephaner beer. I still have some Hefe glasses from Bavaria (this one in fact was given to us by a talkative lady called Hildi, the now sadly passed friend of my wife’s German grandmother, in her home town of Ingolstadt. That day, I learnt a lot about the Bavarian language!).

While drinking this beer, I noticed something. The Hefe glass reminded me very much like the World Cup, which probably explains why Germans are so accustomed to lifting it. Interestingly enough, after a few of these, one tends to come over all Klinsmann and start falling over easily…

i’m your venus

March 31, 20116 Comments

It has been so sunny and so warm that sketching outside has become extremely necessary. I cycled downtown again at lunchtime today, and sketched the very Davis cafe, the Delta of Venus. It’s not a place I go myself (not really my cup of herbal tea). As I sketched though, a man cycling by said to me, pointing at a fire hydrant, “there’s the hydrant over there, draw that!” Or words to that effect. Either way, I was officially recognized, ‘that bloke who draws fire hydrants’. But I haven’t drawn a fire hydrant in months!!

do something pretty while you can

March 30, 2011March 30, 20111 Comment

Wow, it’s warm! For what had been a very wet month, March is ending up with weather in the 80s. This is the Cross Cultural Center at UC Davis; I don’t know why it’s cross though. It is one of many buildings on campus that look a bit like this. I cycled past it the other day and thought, better sketch that some day, so at lunchtime today I did. I drew most of it there, sat beneath the shade of a tree, but the lunch bell rang and so I finished off the rest of the detailing, and the colour, later at home.

So Spring is here, and that means Picnic Day is upon us. Being on a worldwide sketchcrawl day, April 16, I might not bother with Picnic Day this year. It’s always too crowded, and rowdy, and I always struggle to draw there. I don’t like crowds all that much. So I’ll probably go to sketchcrawl in San Francisco. They will be sketchcrawling in the Mission, I love it down there. For more details, go to the 31st Sketchcrawl Forum.

Don’t forget though, this Saturday April 2nd, sketchcrawl in the Arboretum! For more details, go to the Flickr group. See you Saturday!

circo shoe blue

March 30, 2011March 30, 20112 Comments

After a longer than expected hiatus, it’s back to Luke’s Shoes, a series detailing all of my son’s shoes in order of appearance. It doesn’t include rainboots, or snowboots, or slippers, just shoes, and sandals. This is Number 15 in the series, the blue Circo shoe. These haven’t been worn in a long time. I am slowly catching up with the shoes. Step by step.

normal service resumes

March 29, 2011Leave a comment

The Sun is back (“Spring was taking a break for a little while”, as my toddler son said), so I got out at lunchtime yesterday and sketched downtown. I am going to end up drawing every corner of downtown Davis. I think this is an estate agent’s, or ‘realtor’ as they say here. I wonder if there is such a thing as a ‘surrealtor’? That would be fun. I would watch those shows on HGTV. This by the way is the Middle of the Book, the midway point in Moleskine #7. I had thought I’d be further along by now, but I’ve been a bit lazy/scared of rain/busy, pick an excuse. Oh, and drawing toys and dictators in different sketchbooks. Well I need to get back on track, and sketch some of these lovely leafless trees before the leaves come back (which will be any minute now).

This weather comes at just the right time. This Saturday is the Let’s Draw Davis! Arboretum Sketchcrawl; meet at 11:00am outside Borders, and go down to the Arboretum to sketch ducks and bridges and trees and flowers and Putah Creek. I can’t wait!

you’re a racecar in the red?

March 26, 20118 Comments

Formula One starts this weekend, belatedly, and I can’t wait! Nor can my three-year-old son, who was busy playing with his playmobil racecar in anticpation today. I love watching it, even though it means either getting up really early or staying up really late (one of which i do anyway). Now I have the Speed channel, I can watch it properly; in the pre-extended-cable past, I used to watch the channel in a fuzzy black and white form with no sound but static, while watching updates on the BBC website; the real entertainment came from the closed caption subtitles, obviosuly written very quickly by someone completely unfamiliar with formula one driver’s names (eg, names like ‘kimmy right gone on’, ‘world champion jason bunton’ and my favourite, ‘knack jim’). Sometimes I put the captions on for old times’ sake. It’s a fun game, convert your name to a closed caption gaffe; mine’s ‘peat’s gully’.

Anyway, here’s to another season of safety cars and dodgy new circuits, alonso sulking, hamilton rueing some silly mistake, webber and vettel trying to convince us they’re teammates, and the great legend michael schumacher making a big deal out of coming ninth rather than tenth.

Illustration Friday this week is themed ‘toy‘, so this is my entry (thanks Shiho Nakaza for pointing it out, I hadn’t seen IF for a while!). I have a feeling I’ll draw more toys this week, since I have been lately. In fact I have put together a Flickr set of my toy sketches: “toys“.

By the way, the line that follows the title of this entry is one of the greatest in movie history…

step out

March 25, 20112 Comments

Been out of the shoe drawing game for a little while, so I needed to get back into it (baby steps). I’m behind by a few shoes on my project of drawing all of my son’s shoes (in order of appearance), so I grabbed a moment today (while son slept) to sketch one of my own shoes, a black adidas trainer (pronounced as Herr Dassler intended). This is a small sketch (but a giant leap…er, no wait), in my WH Smith sketchbook.

they run and hide their heads

March 23, 2011Leave a comment

It has been windy and rainy, to say the least. Oh we’ve had a day or so here where the Sun has been out with his hat on, but no sooner have we said hip-hip-hip-hooray than the storms are back. On Saturday night the wind was so loud I half expected to wake up and find munchkins dancing around outside the house. It was stormy again last night, and I expected today to be a lunchtime inside listening to the news, but I saw that the rain had stopped, and I thought, I’ll have some of that. Out I went, to sketch a cool looking building I’ve had my eye on since it was finished: Tercero South Phase II, as the complex is known (at least on the UC Davis housing website). It’s a brand new set of residence halls. It was still cold, and it was awkward sketching in that wind, and after a while the rain decided to come back and mix it up a bit, but I finished it up, and ran away.