We relaxed beneath a palm tree on the beach at Santa Monica, with an ice cream an a mango smoothie. I love it down there, by the Ocean. I’m a big fan of the Ocean Park area. I could live there.
jadis
On Main Street in Ocean Park/Santa Monica is a little place, an eccentric museum of sorts, with an interesting window display, a large fantastical flying machine (which I didn’t have time to draw). It was enough to draw me inside. I couldn’t just walk in of course – the door was barred. There was a sign saying that the entry fee was $100, with a 99% discount if you paid in cash. You also get two for one if you knock, so we did. We were greeted by an old fellow (slightly reminiscent of Catweazle) who oozed interesting tales and ripping yarns. This place was, as he told us, the personal collection of Parke Meek, who died earlier this year. There was a photo of him holding a sign saying “The Customer is Always Wrong”. I liked him straight away. He collected technological history, and created technologically themed movie props which are leased to production companies and appear in all sorts of films and commercials (like those big Frankenstein-style electric control boards, from which the bottom two sketches were made). They kindly allowed me to sketch; I had to sketch the old phone, and that item on the top there is a 1904 ediphone, a kind of turn-of-the-century dictaphone. I only sketched for a little while (we were off to the beach!).
If you’re in Ocean Park, you should pop by. This place is cool.
venetian sunday
Have you ever been to the Venice canals? I don’t mean the ones in the actual Venice in Italy, I mean the ones in Venice in California, that you sometimes see in the movies (soppy movies, admittedly). We were there on our weekend in LA (it was our anniversary; appropriate, since we got engaged in the actual Venice) (and honeymooned at the Venetian), strolling about the narrow sidewalks along the water, admiring the houses, wondering which ones we would live in if we suddenly became very rich (I’d have to sell a lot of drawings I think). It was calm, there was no noise of cars, just the tweeting of birds. If we lived there I’d want a little boat.
Speaking of waterways, we stayed just around the corner in Marina del Rey, where our hotel was a block away from the Cheesecake Factory, and our room had an amazing view over the marina itself. I sketched it quickly just before we checked out.
LA galaxy
Part two of my downtown Los Angeles sketches. I slowly went uphill. On another day when I have more time (and I said this three years ago when I last decided not to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art) I’ll go to the MOCA. On this day, I was grabbing as many sketches as I could, and stood outside it (leaning against a newspaper stand of course), and drew the space age Walt Disney Concert hall (I say ‘space age’, I mean ‘the Death Star after a fight with Magneto’), by the legendary Frank Gehry. It’s home to the LA Philharmonic.
I also drew the downtown Public Library. That’s a pretty nice building too, but I didn’t have time to go in and browse. Well, I know what I’m like with libraries, I’d be there forever. A fire hydrant just happened to poke its way into view.
And below, looking up, and looking down. Bye-bye downtown LA.
there’s a door that never closes
So…more travelling, this time down to Los Angeles, an overnighter for our anniversary. Wow, it’s been over three years since I was there. I like LA. In fact I hadn’t been to downtown LA before, and had a few hours to go sketching. I liked the look of the place above – the ‘Original Pantry’ – as we drove past in the cab: it was colourful, and there were lots of people queuing around the corner, mostly Trojans fans (the USC team, not the, you know). Most had gone when I went back to sketch. A sign on the door claims that The Original Pantry has been open for a very long time: “through a door which has no key you will enter a cafe that has NEVER BEEN CLOSED SINCE 1924“. Which is pretty amazing, if it’s true. And by not closed, I mean actually not closed, like always open. That’s what I choose to believe from their claim. This is LA! Anything’s possible!
Just a couple of hours before, I had flown over these very buildings on our way to LAX. Skyscrapers seen from an airplane above are quite magnificent; of course, I was mindful of the date as well. Flying above LA is pretty cool experience though – you really see the urban sprawl, seemingly endless, broken only by big dusty mansion-filled mountains poking through. You can see the Hollywood sign clearly from the air, and the foggy belt that hangs above the Ocean communities. The only thing – the only thing – I like about flying is the view from the window, if it’s something worth seeing, of course.
I drew both of these while leaning on those flat-topped newspaper boxes you see everywhere in American cities. As I’ve mentioned before, they are perfect for urban sketchers to lean against.
roll out the map, and mark it with a pin
This drawing of the Silo at UC Davis, done yesterday lunchtime. I’m trying something out. This is drawn in dark brown Pitt pen, in a regular moleskine sketchbook – the same one I started exactly four years ago and abandoned due to my dislike of the paper (my micron pens couldn’t get the hang of it, and it absolutely hates watercolour). But I have a new project, a Davis drawing project, that I want to put into my Urban Sketchers moleskine, the one I got at the Symposium in Portland. It will be a series in the same format as the above, more or less. Should be fun!
on october 16, let’s all draw davis!
Here’s an announcement: next month, on October 16th, I am planning a Sketchcrawl in Davis as part of the 29th Worldwide sketchcrawl. We will begin at 10:30am at Central Park (by the Carousel, near the Farmer’s Market), go around Davis sketching things all day, and then reconvene at 4:30pm at the starting point in Central Park to share each other’s sketches. For those who have never sketchcrawled, it’s a fun event which is open to all regardless of age or ability, where you can explore and draw our town in your own personal way, and meet others who also love to draw. All this in the knowledge that hundreds perhaps thousands of people all over the world are doing exactly the same.
Even if you don’t draw, but fancy giving it a go, please come along! Everybody is welcome.
If you are in or near Davis and would like to come sketching with me and others, please join us on October 16. You can contact me for more information, leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you. I’d really like to encourage location sketching around Davis, not just because it’s great fun, but also because a city or town or village is richer for having more artists. So let’s all draw Davis!
opposite ends of the day
Now this is an actual sunset. I love watching the Sun go down behind Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, as i often do when waiting for the Amtrak bus to take me back to Emeryville, and from there back to Davis. I say often, I really only go to SF three or four times a year, but I feel like I know it pretty well now. I like catching the early train to the Bay Area, when the Sun casts long shadows across the Delta and the grass is golden and the hills are brown. Actually I really like it when the Delta is covered in thick early morning fog, but it’s harder to draw things when it’s like that. Anyway, the sketch below (the now common sketch of the Pepsi Max can and train window) was done on the way there, the sketch above was done on the way back.
sunset doesn’t last all evening
More from the Inner Sunset, San Francisco. Following the ZineFest I did some sketching first in Golden Gate Park and then around 9th and Irvine Streets. I’m really grateful for those newspaper boxes you get in big cities in America, because it’s something to stand against and lean upon, as I did when sketching the middle image of this tryptich. 
That store, Tutti Frutti, was too colourful not to sketch. They sell lots of interesting little bits and bobs, cards, t-shirts, miscellany. I like drawing in these little segments, running them together, but it’s fun to see how they look on their own as well, so I’ve cropped the middle piece.
Apparently (I’m told by my wife) I have been around here before, when we stopped by for a doughnnut almost five years ago, days after moving to America. That five-years-since-emigration date is approaching fast; I should celebrate. Half a decade in the US… wow. Anyway, if I recall it was a nice doughnut.
I sketched Sutro Tower from the Park in glorious sunshine. It’s such an odd structure, like an invading insectoid alien stuck on a hill. I can imagine lazers popping from his eyes and zapping everyone in the Mission or the Sunset, before being laughed at. This might be a good zine, if anyone wants to write it (I don’t).
The last image was from The Mucky Duck pub on 9th. I liked it in there, it was a good pub to sit and draw things, especially the way the light came in through that slanted window. The only problem wa there were some people playing that annoying dice game people sometimes play in pubs here, do you know the one, where they slam the dice (or whatever) down onto the bar or table making a loud slamming noise every thirty seconds or so, so loud that you can’t concentrate on your drawing, your conversation, your beer, anything. They should really tell them, oi, no! Go and play ‘penny-up’ in the street or something.
So I only stayed for one, before grabbing some food, sprinting down the street to catch the N-Judah, and trekking back to Davis. I have some more sketches from that day to show though, so stay tuned… (hint: it includes fire hydrants)
inner sunset
“Inner Sunset”… i like that phrase, like a good way to describe slowly turning to the dark side, or perhaps a piece of you inside of you that is always calm and golden and peaceful. Actually, it’s just a neighbourhood of San Francisco, but an interesting one that I’d never really been to before (and one which has a park side). I was there for the Zine Fest so I took the time to draw some of the area. The above was drawn in the morning, while the Farmer’s Market went on nearby, and a woman played three different tunes on a violin, over and over and over again. When I was done, I went and bought a load of zines.
petescully 