let’s sketchcrawl davis!

January 8, 20111 Comment

Saturday January 22 is the 30th Worldwide Sketchcrawl, in which sketchers in cities around the globe will take to the streets and sketch away, as we do. Here in Davis, we’ll be doing the same, so why not join us? We’ll meet at 11:00 by the clock fountain on the E St Plaza (between 2nd and 3rd Sts, opposite Chipotle) and sketch about the downtown until around 3:30pm, when we’ll meet up at the clock fountain again (or in Peet’s Coffee across the road if it’s too cold) to look at each other’s sketchbooks.

Sketchcrawls are fun ways to get out and look at your cities in a new way, and meet other people who like going round drawing stuff. And I love drawing stuff!

If you need any more info, please send me a message, or go to:

All you need is something to draw with and something to draw on! Oh and maybe a scarf. Let’s draw Davis!

snow is falling, all around us…

January 7, 2011Leave a comment

This is Norwich Walk, the street where I grew up. On this very block in fact; my old bedroom window is on the third house from the right. I’ve never seen so much snow in London, as fell on my recent trip. It was on the Saturday morning a week before Christmas, and despite a little fall of snow the day before, we decided to take the short trip to Colindale to visit the RAF Museum. I wanted to draw old planes. In Burnt Oak, carol singers stood outside the station singing Christmas songs as snow fluttered down like a picturesque postcard (without the picturesque of course; it was Burnt Oak tube station, not one of London’s nicer spots). Then our bus stopped due to ice on the road, and we got out and walked across the estate. As we did, an absolutely massive amount of snow pounded down upon us. We were walking snowmen by the time we finally snowy pillar box reached the musuem, which had just decided (wisely) to close. The buses then stopped, as did the tube, and cars were quickly becoming buried beneath feet of snow. Thankfully my dad managed to dig his car out and came to rescue us, though the roads were treacherous, and we had to crawl along. Snow was coming down in ice cubes. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see those little paper umbrellas too. We got home, and warmed up, and then I went straight back outside with my little sketching stool to fill the last page of moleskine sketchbook #6 and freeze my fingers off. The snow had just stopped falling, and I had to capture this before it all vanished (little did I know it wouldn’t vanish for another week and a half).

Passing locals must have thought I was a nutter (those that have known me all my life knew it for a fact…). I quickly sketched the pillar box I’d drawn two days before, and then drew the street panorama. I gave up halfway through, my fingers freezing off, but then decided to soldier on, finish the block, and I’m glad I did. My micron pen didn’t give up so neither would I. Thankfully snow isn’t hard to draw. I added the paint when I got home.

So this is the last page of this sketchbook, which was started on a very hot day in southern Oregon on the fourth of July, and finished in freezing cold London in December. I did a good bit of travelling in this book, and you can see the whole journey on my flickr site: Moleskine #6

here be dragons

January 6, 2011January 6, 20112 Comments

The City of London – the square mile, the original city founded by the Romans as Londinium Augusta and re-established a few centuries later by Alfred the Great’s Saxons, the separate city governed by the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of London with its own police force, local laws and customs, and pubs which never open at weekends – is a realm guarded by magical beings. Of course it is. The silver heraldic dragons (often erroneously called – as I did above – ‘griffins’, because as you know silver hybrids save you money on the congestion charge) which stand at the major entrances to the City serve to remind us of this ancient boundary. The Queen for example cannot cross this boundary without invitation from the Lord Mayor. Pretty annoying for her when she has to take the tube from Westminster to Tower Hill. “Oh bugger, one has forgawten to bring one’s invitation with one, one will have to get orf the tube at Temple and walk along the South Bank instead.” Sorry guv, it’s the rules, yer majesty.

The dragon holds the shield of the City, which is the cross of St. George (which I’m sure would offend dragons these days) and a little red dagger, which is widely believed to represent the dagger that was used to stab Wat Tyler at Smithfield, ending the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, but may just as well represent the sword of St.Paul, patron saint of London. Or it could represent the London media’s obsession with knife crime.

I sketched this after a nice afternoon with the family in London, when I was on my way to see the house of Dr. Johnson. A nice festive dusting of snow had just fallen, and everything looked pleasant. Next day a massive blizzard came.

from pillar to post

January 3, 20112 Comments

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…

leavin’ on a jet plane

January 2, 20115 Comments

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!

rockin’ around…

December 24, 20102 Comments

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!

oh, the weather outside is frightful

December 22, 20105 Comments

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…

of mists and mellow fruitfulness

December 12, 20101 Comment

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.

it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas

December 8, 2010December 8, 20105 Comments

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)