And so onto my sketches from London. Not having any fire hydrants, it was obvious I would have to sketch soemthing even better – the post box (or pillar box) at the corner of the street where I grew up. I got up early (as jetlagged travellers do) and sketched it as Burnt Oak locals passed thinking, ‘nutter’. This dates from the reign of King George V (hence the GR cypher on the front) and is of the standard pillar box design. I drew this more than once – the second time it was covered in snow…
Happy New Year! I got back into Davis today, after two and a half weeks in snowy England. I’ve never seen a winter like it in London, but I still managed to do some sketching, though probably less than usual. The scanning and posting will be an ongoing process. Here’s a good place to start: my first and last sketches of the trip, both on BA jumbo jets, drawn in my Moleskine diary.
Here’s the thing: I hate flying. Not in a BA Baracas “fool aint gettin me in no plane sucker” way. I hate airports, the ever-decreasing baggage allowances, packing suitcases, Heathrow, overhead lockers, the toilets, the engine noise, the fact it takes me two days to get over the ear-popping thing and I hate that sleeping on a plane is practically impossible. Flying is not my favourite thing, but it’s a necessary necessity. Carbon footprint my bottom.
Below is the sketch I did while waiting to leave London yesterday, New Year’s Eve. You can sense the dread.
And so it is a new year. In fact today is 1-1-11, which must be significant. New Year’s Resolutions? I have no idea about that, but I had three doughnuts for breakfast. Perfect jetlag cure. Art goals? Just keep on going, keep on drawing everything around me.
2010 was an interesting year for sure, and very full on art-wise. Some interesting projects, some interesting travels and of course the Portland Urban Sketching Symposium in the middle of it all, spurring the creativity of the rest of the year. We held a couple of great sketchcrawls in Davis in the Fall, and a third ‘Let’s Draw Davis’ crawl will take place on January 22 to coincide with the worldwide sketchcrawl. There are more fun things happening soon as well so I’ll keep you posted.
But for now I’ll just say happy new year, I hope 2011 is filled with fun and if you haven’t yet taken up sketching as a way to record your world, why not do so now? It’s so much fun!
This little tree was the one we got for our first Christmas in Davis. It’s tradition to draw the tree. It’s tradition to draw everything…
Merry Christmas everyone! Stay well! Eat lots!
So… as you may have gathered from my non-posts this past week, I am away from rain-sodden California to lovely London, where I’ve had a week without any rain whatsoever.
Oh, but we’ve been having the worst snowy winter weather I’ve ever seen here. Many days after a sudden blizzard, the snow is still here there and everywhere, tough it hasn’t stopped me from getting out there with sketchbook. Yes, fingers freezing off and pens giving up the ghost doesn’t get in the way of this urban sketcher. Not two months ago I was sketching in hundred degree weather heat. Thing is, I grew up with snow lasting only a day or two before sodding off, and always tell people about our comparatively mild winters, but now it seems the snow comes earlier and stays longer, and the disruption is magnified. Naturally, Britain fails to cope, as the absolute madness of Heathrow attests. I’m glad I came a few days earlier than I would have. I just hope we can get back…
These are a couple of photos of what I have been out sketching though; the top one being the street where I grew up, about an hour after the biggest blizzzard I can remember here. I’m sure people thought I was a nutter sitting out there freezing, well they’re right, but urban sketchers are tough beasts. My fingers took a battering in the second one too, sat down by the River Thames, looking out at HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge. My toes were frozen too. I warmed up with a nice chicken and mushroom pie. That’s one thing Britain can always get right!
But boy, is it cold…
This is Mrak Hall, the big powerful building at the heart of UC Davis. I have drawn this view a few times before, and in December too, because the leaves on these trees turn glorious colours at this time of year. This was a lunchtime sketch, a moment of much needed calm in the busy busy time of year.
After all those fire hydrants, plus a short break from sketching, I was starting to forget what the nearly-finished Moleskine 6 looked like. I have three pages left, and intend to complete it in London, but I added a sketch yesterday lunchtime of the Christmas tree in the E Street Plaza, Davis. I drew it (as I’ve done before) from the window of Chipotle, with the clock fountain thing in the way, reminding me of how little time I have left to sketch. the trees are absolutely amazing right now, all brilliant reds and yellows and oranges, though as I speak a big storm is sweeping through the valley and blowing many of those leaves into the gutter.
So it’s nearly Christmas, folks. I did start making an advent calendar but it looked rushed and so I’ve abandoned it. I spent too much time on fire hydrants last month. Still, people seem to like them. I love the Christmas time of year. Santa’s not happy though, his naughty/nice list was published on Wikileaks. Here’s a tip, folks: don’t get the England world cup bidding team to write your xmas list, no matter how good you are Santa’s elves will stick you in the ‘naughty’ pile. I’m looking forward to mince pies and Quality Street, etc. I didn’t go to the Davis Christmas tree lighting thing though, which they hold here every year, as it is usually crazy. One thing I do love here though are all the houses that go mad with decorations; there’s one near us in Davis who really decks his halls out every year and has hourly music and light shows, even a little train that rattles around. Many cities have whole streets of houses that compete with each other for festive garishness, ‘candy-cane lanes’, with amazingly elaborate shows and attractions that must take all year to plan, all the windows, the whole garden, the whole roof, covered with loud Christmas ornaments – that must be a heavy burden to keep that up every year. I daresay in Britain you’ll say with a grumble, “ooh, it’s getting like that here now,” but believe me nobody does Christmas like the Americans*. They’re really really good at it.
(*Except the Germans, of course – German Christmases are truly wonderful, but I won’t mention them because they beat England 4-1 in the World Cup, lest we forget)
Here are all fifty NaNoDrawMo sketches, all hydrants and metal pipes of some sort, 41 of which were in Davis. All in order.
Finally! I reached my goal of fifty drawings in November for NaNoDrawMo 2010, and here are the last four. Actually I drew more than fifty drawings this month, but I’m not counting those not in this set. I filled a whole watercolour sketchbook front to back with drawings of fire hydrants and other metal pipes that come out of the ground. The final sketch is the biggest metal pipe, the larger of UC Davis’s iconic water towers. This was a fun project, and the majority of the drawings were done on site (except for those few from photos taken in LA), as I had really wanted to use this project to explore and take a closer look at the missable stuff around us. I can now spot even subtle differences between the hydrants I see around town, so the observation exercise was successful. Everything is interesting if you take an interest in it.
And now, no more fire hydrants for a long, long time! Here’s the book they all fit in, and the pen that made it through to the end (others were chewed up like, er, I dunno, chewits).
See the other great artists who made it to 50 here.
Ever more NaNoDrawMo pipes… I stood behind the Engineering building at UC Davis to draw the one above. I like pretending that these things are actually something else, like robot spying devices, or a cyberman’s torturing device. In fact it’s rather like a big elaborate pound sign (that’s pound sterling, not the # sign – which we Brits call the hash key, not ‘pound’ as Americans do. Very confusing when using banking menu systems). Below left is an insectoid intruder, poking his head through the concrete like a metal mole. Reminds me of an underwater adventurer.
Above right is a fire hydrant I attempted to sketch in Santa Rosa. I had to abandon it because I got rained on significantly, so finished it at home from memory (didn’t even have a camera). Well, I can remember what these types look like, surely.
Below, a big white dragon from outside the police station. It has two dragon-cubs beside it but they weren’t drawn in, as I didn’t have time, and couldn’t be bothered.
Below left, Ringo Starr’s drum kit. Actually could be any drummer, Ringo just popped to mind because he is an ickle fellow. I love Ringo.
Numbers 44-46 are drawn from photos taken back in September, when I was down in Los Angeles. These are hydrants from Venice Beach and Marina Del Rey. I was getting sick of local hydrants so added a few different designs. I sketched similar ones to these while down there, but took photos of these in case I had some ridiculous excuse to draw them later on, like NaNoDrawMo. Here they are. #45 is like a big yellow clown, like c-3PO’s insane cousin from the circus. I particularly like #46.
Just four more to go… today’s the last day…
The quest for the NaNoDrawMo fifty marches on… these three were drawn on the Davis sketchcrawl. I was drawn to those very red pipes outside the cinema on F street. There was something I wanted to say about the colour red and that particular weekend… oh yes! That Team in Red 2, Spurs 3! Great way to start the weekend, that.
More to come…
petescully 