how does your garden grow

February 14, 2011February 14, 2011Leave a comment

On Friday lunchtime, I sketched inside the Robert Mondavi Institute for food and wine and other stuff, because I needed to get out and sketch and it’s a couple of minutes from where I work. I have drawn inside here before, from a different angle, and they have an incredible garden full of all kinds of plants and herbs and lemons and what not. There’s a nice smell as you sit and sketch. It’s called the Good Life Garden. I’m not making it up; I was expecting Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall to turn up, or at the very least, Neil from the Young Ones.

I used a white gel pen to emphasize the bare trees. This sunny February weather is amazing! I want to do a long sketch of the building from the new vinyards at some point, but I think time of day is importnat. Lunchtime sketching can be a little frustrating – even though the light is still great, it’s better in the early mornings and late afternoons. At least I have this sunlight. Some places are grey and cloudy and drizzly at this time of year.

this is your leffe

February 12, 20112 Comments

Back to sketching in the brown sketchbook, and this is Leffe blonde. It reminds me of living in Belgium, going to Brussels on the weekend. I do like a Belgian beer. I have many Belgian beer glasses which I got while in Belgium, and now have in the US. My favourite Belgian beers are 1. Charles Quint (Keizer Karel), 2. Fruit Defendu (Verboden Vrucht), 3. Kwak, 4. Leffe Blonde, 5. Westmalle Triple. You know, in case you happen to see me in the pub in Belgium (which admittedly isn’t likely, but if you do, it’ll be the Cuve a Biere in Charleroi).

up hill, down hill

February 12, 2011February 11, 20111 Comment

The cable car from Fisherman’s Wharf up to Nob hill cost me five bucks. Five dollars! (You don’t put bourbon in it or nothing?) So I turned the ticket into a piece of art. Well, I sketched on it. Not easy when you don’t have Pritt Stick on you to glue it down. I held it to the paper with my thumb as I sketched (harder than you might think, given it was a really windy day on top of a pretty windy hill), but I liked the image of the cable car so it became part of the sketch. this is the view down California, from Powell. I have sketched this spot before a few years ago in another odd fashion (I don’t seem to ever draw this view normally).

Down the hill we go, to Chinatown. It was Chinese New Year and there were lots of dragons and parades and celebrations going on down there. That was hours before I went, though, so it was much quieter while I sketched. I don’t come to Chinatown often (you go there lots when you’re new to San Francisco, but now I see it as a bit too touristy and cramped – hah, that’s rich after sketching at Pier 39). I like all the colours though, and there is always something to draw. Plus it’s historic, and you can’t beat historic. (Actually ‘cool’ sometimes beats ‘historic’, but this isn’t Top Trumps). This is my favourite spot, on the corner of California and Grant, by the Old St. Mary’s Cathedral.

And so I went shopping, and went home on the train, and had a nice cold beer while waiting to turn 35.

amazing grace, how sweet the sound

February 11, 2011February 11, 20114 Comments

At the top of Nob Hill in San Francisco sits Grace Cathedral. Nob Hill is an interesting neighbourhood – full of big grand hotels and spectacular views, many years ago this windswept hill was too steep for regular San Franciscans to bother reaching, a place for hermits and rich mansion builders to live away from the rabble of the Barbary Coast. The cable car made it more easily accessible and it was by cable car that I made it up hill to sketch Grace Cathedral. I like this big cathedral. It has a labyrinth inside (it’s just drawn on the floor though, not with hedges or minotaurs, and the answers are at the back). That’s right – a Maze in Grace…

I then sat in Huntington Park, in front of the cathedral, and noticed other people out drawing in sketchbooks. The weather was amazing, warm, golden sunlight everywhere, and people were out taking advantage. I sketched a smallish house which I found quite interesting looking.

sitting here resting my bones

February 10, 2011February 10, 20114 Comments

Sunday morning in San Francisco, and the weather was amazing. Twain said that the coldest winter he ever had was summer in San Francisco. That of course has absolutely nothing to do with this post but I thought I’d throw that in there anyhow. Well, winter you see is not hugely different from summer in the bay area, in many ways, except there is a bit less fog in the winter. It was t-shirt weather last Sunday (and I’m talking to you, man I saw with no shirt, only shorts). I wore a t-shirt (under my jumper of course). Anyway it was bright and sunny, and thnakfully not too busy at Pier 39, where I got off the Amtrak bus. I don’t like Pier 39 too much, and the rest of Fisherman’s Wharf even less, but mostly because of the masses of people. It’s so much better when it’s less crowded. I can look at Alcatraz mugs and cable-car magnets to my heart’s content.

What I had come to draw were boats, and not any old boats, but two in particular I had wanted to sketch on a previous trip but didn’t (because of the wintery rain and fog). The USS Pampanito is a big submarine moored at Pier 45, outside the Musee Mecanique, at San Francisco Maritime National Park. It was too long for me to (be bothered to) sketch so I focused on the turret thing. There’s a broom on top which apparently indicates a ‘clean sweep’ of an area. Useful thing to know, when looking at a submarine. Not to be confused with the sign that means they’ve had a ‘brush with the enemy’.

Here is the big cannon that sits on top of the Pampanito. At least I presume it’s a cannon. For all I know it’s a periscope. Still, the big long shaft kind of gives it away. Best be safe I think and stay out of the way.

And this is the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a big huge battleship moored behind (sorry, astern of) the Pampanito, and like the submarine it fought in World War II. in fact, this ship was used in the Normandy Landings on D-Day. Now that is a big ship. By the way, there is Alcatraz in the distance behind the ship.

sunday morning train

February 9, 2011February 9, 20111 Comment

I like riding the train. It aint cheap, but it’s a nice ride across the Valley and the Delta, and along the Bay. This was on Sunday morning, around 8am, as I was headed down to San Francisco for a pre-birthday sketching/shopping day in the city (mostly sketching).

sketching islington

February 8, 2011February 8, 20116 Comments

London, December 2010. The rain had come like an old friend and washed away the snow; no more dreaming of White Christmases after this one, more like dreading. I took a ‘sketching day’ and got on the tube to Islington. I like Islington a lot, and would happily live there and vote New Labour and read the Guardian and go to the theatre and all the other things Islington people do (except support Arsenal of course). We lived for a few years not far away on the edge of the borough at Hornsey Lane (I love steep hills! so now I live in Davis). This is Camden Passage, an interesting little street just off Upper Street (not in Camden at all), full of charming antique stores and little cafes (trendy or otherwise). I sketched it while listening to people speak French (and German occasionally) all around me, which was nice.

I was on my way to Cass Arts’ flagship store (it’s very big, but has exactly the same products as the smaller store in Soho, just more of them) and I whipped my sketchbook out to draw some of the interesting things being laid out in the street in front of one such antique store (‘Decorext’ I believe it was called). They had a pair of these interesting Union Jack chairs, and I had to draw one of them, being the foreign tourist that I am. This would make a fine seat for anyone watching the Royal Wedding this April. Pass the Battenburg.

One of the other buildings I really couldn’t resist sketching was the Screen on the Green cinema. I’ve only been in there once (I think I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 there) but it’s historic and Islington. For some reason I chose to use my coloured micron pens for the neon signs. Drawing old movie theatres is fun. After this, I jumped onto a double-decker bus and went to Piccadilly.

some things change, some things stay the same

February 7, 2011February 7, 201124 Comments

This is Vipins, a stationery and card shop in Burnt Oak, north London. It has been there all my life, and I swear it hasn’t changed a bit. they even have the same stock as when I was a kid. I used to go in there all the time for pens, notepads, card, glitter, pritt stick, rulers, cartridge pens and so on. I still pop in there whenever I’m back, and sometimes find unexpected goodies. This time I found a mini clipboard, which has the clip along the side rather than the top, and fits into my bag. It’s perfect sketchbook size, handy for when I’m trying to hold onto my often awkward watercolour moleskine. I guess it’s used for Bingo. Anyway I decided to try it out straight away (it was Christmas Eve, still snowy, I had just got my hair cut at Syd’s barbers behind Woolworths – er, behind where Woolworths used to be, I mean), and so I stood outside Vipins in the cold and sketched for fifteen minutes, standing up. The clipboard was brilliant. It really helped whne standing to sketch, and being small it was still discreet. I popped back in to show Mr and Mrs Vipin, they were pleased with the sketch. This is a very typical Burnt Oak scene I’ve known my entire life, and I need to sketch these whenever I’m back, because the area keeps changing so much.

Incidentally, today’s my birthday. I share it with Charles Dickens (I always hated our joint birthday parties). I sketched San Francisco yesterday as a birthday present to myself (though I forgot my little clipboard). I’ll show you at some point.

let’s draw uc davis!

February 5, 2011February 4, 2011Leave a comment

And it’s time for another Davis sketchcrawl… this time on the UC Davis Campus! Join us on Saturday February 19th for a day of sketching. We will meet at 10:30am on the corner of 3rd and A Streets, just outside the Social Sciences Building (the ‘Death Star’). We’ll sketch from there all the way down to the Silo (Hutchison & California Avenues), where we’ll finish up at 3:00pm to show each other our sketchbooks.

There was a great turn-out for the the sketchcrawl in January! (see here for photos and sketches, and here for Aggie TV’s coverage of the event). Let’s spread the word and get more people out with sketchbooks!

Pete

Let’s Draw Davis! Flickr group

Facebook event

branches of mathematics

February 4, 2011February 4, 20112 Comments

Outside the Math Sciences Building. This February weather is nice – cold in the mornings, brisk at lunchtimes, but with lots of sun and long shadows and bare trees to sketch. This pretty much sums up the kind of light we are having, though I wish I could sketch in the early morning, or late afternoon, when the light is a rich golden syrup. This was a lunchtime sketch.