like mercury rising

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interesting building at 4th & G

Saturday was Drawing Day 2010, so I used it as an excuse to do another drawing (even though every day I find some excuse to draw something). I have wanted to sketch this interesting looking building on the corner of 4th and G Streets in Davis for some time now. It’s right next to Little Prague. There are i think several busineses are located in this building, one being the Davis driving academy or something, another being the gingerbread real estate co, or maybe I just imagined that last one. I sat in the shade opposite (90 degree weather has finally returned to this part of the world; 90 and rising).

knock on wood

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cottonwood cottage

It has been muggy, the weather. It doesn’t feel quite like a Davis June, more like a London June. Still, summer is on the way; I even played some football at our annual picnic, but got tired quick; I felt so old! (Fortunately, old in a Stanley Matthews way). I did some drawing too; I got out today at lunchtime and sketched a building near my work, Cottonwood Cottage, at the HQ of the UC Davis Arboretum. I decided not to add colour, as I like it the way it was. You can guess the colours anyway. Print it out and use crayons. I like these wooden buildings on campus. There are so many of them; they look similar but have a lot of character.

the greatest

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pele

Who was the greatest footballer of all time? And is that the same thing as the best footballer of all time? For most people the default answer is Pele. Even for those who never saw him play, except for a few inventive long shots, a header saved by Gordon Banks and that scene with the tactics board in Escape to Victory, he is the greatest footballer of all time. We trust what they all say; those who watched him know what they’re on about. He did score more than a thousand goals for his club, Santos. He did win World Cups in super stylish fashion, surrounded by a super stylish team, at the time when the TV age was bringing the World Cup to many more millions than ever before. I’m just saying. True, Pele never tested himself in the big European leagues, preferring to stay at Santos where the goal just opened up for him, but he also didn’t live in an age where the multi-million dollar transfer to Real Madrid was absolutely inevitable; unlike so many ‘new Peles’ after him, Santos were able to ‘match his ambitions’. He did live in the age where you went off to the United States for a bagload of cash though (yes Beckham, it has been done before), finishing off his career at New York Cosmos in the NASL, before helping the Allies (along with Sylvester Stallone and half the Ipswich team) defeat Nazi Germany. Can’t get greater than that.

However, I was a kid in the 1980s, so for me Maradona is king, hands down. It’s all subjective. Puskas might have been the best. Stanley Matthews even. If Rivelino, Gerson, Carlos Alberto et al had all been born Ulstermen, George Best may have lifted the Jules Rimet in 1970 in the green of Northern Ireland, and we’d probably all be saying he was the greatest of all time. I’m just saying.

I’m sketching World Cup greats in my football sketchbook in anticipation of the World Cup, which begins next week.

brief shoe

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14: the brief shoe

Last summer I started a series in a small moleskine cahier, drawing every one of my toddler son’s shoes, in order of being worn. This is number 14 (some have been drawn more than once, at different angles). It’s a blue Old Navy shoe with orange sides and three strips, and was only worn for little more than a month! He outgrew them fast. So I’m calling it the ‘brief shoe’. Ironically, he still wears shoes he had for a good while prior to this one (shoe 10/11, the USA shoe); they just grew with him. 

Drawn in Itoya finepoint 0.1, in a small moleskine cahier. Incidentally, I was in the bookstore on Saturday looking for a new watercolour moley, and could not find any; apparently (I was told) all Moleskines have been recalled in California due to some state law saying they had to state on the packaging which chemicals were used in making their covers! So I have to get it online instead. Oh well.

tanks for the memories

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hunt boyer mansion & tankhouse

The Dresbach Hunt-Boyer Mansion on 2nd Street is one of Davis’s historic old buildings, flanked on its left by an old tank-house in a little orange-tree yard – hang on, er, flanked on its right. It has been physically moved. I had heard that the local cafe Mishka’s was going to build a new space between the Mansion and the Varsity Theatre, which would mean bye-bye tank-house. Well, the tank-house has been moved, and is now plonked, literally plonked, right on the other side, looking a little awkward and not un-carbuncle-like. So while moocing downtown, I felt I had to sketch it, having forgotten to do so before. It’s not the first time it’s been moved, though; apparently it was relocated to the spot it just left some time in the 70s, from a bit further away. The magical moving tank-house. I don’t know if it will stay where it currently is.

all the world’s a stage

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mondavi center

The Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center, at UC Davis, is a huge performing arts venue. It’s a pretty spectacular looking building, but I’ve not been inside to check out any performances. One day I will. It’s on the same square at the edge of campus as this building and this building.Years ago, when I did a degree in drama at Queen Mary in London, I took an enjoyable course in places of performance (taught by Dr. Schoch, who would call me ‘Scully’), studying theatre spaces through the centuries, how they allow audiences to relate to the plays or shows, the urban semiotics of the building and how it fits in with its community. Visited at Shakespeare’s Globe, looked at Greek theatres, explored East-End music-halls; it was interesting stuff. I was personally into theatres-in-the-round, and by extension football stadia – I subsequently wrote a piece about the old (and soon to be demolished) Wembley Stadium, but from what I remember it was a fairly tired and so-last-century piece of writing. In my defence, it was the last century at the time, and I probably was tired. I did learn a lot though, reading Marvin Carlson and co, and in fact I still think of what that course taught me when I’m out sketching urban buildings here and there, because I’m always thinking about how each building is a performace unto itself, speaking to and defining its environment, and how each sketch puts that building or that scene into centre stage. Just in case you’re wondering about what goes through my head when deciding how to compose a picture.

Oh yeah… I have changed the layout theme of my sketchblog. New header, wider space for pictures, different colours, and easier to find those categorized things (though some much-needed reorganization still to be done). I like it. It’s long overdue.

the special one

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jose mourinho

The European football season is over; Internazionale, of Milan, are European Champions for the first time since 1965 after beating Bayern Munich. Their manager, Jose Mourinho, has won it with Porto (but not with Chelsea), now with Inter, and it looks like he’s off to Real “we will do anything to win it yet again because we’re, like, obsessed” Madrid.

Drawn in my football journal, which is becoming increasingly manager-centric.

up, up and away

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airplane toy

The ‘Little People’ airplane, we all had one as kids, and my two-year-old has one. He loves airplanes, loves to read about them, even knows his Spitfires from his Messerschmidts, and loves airports; he’s been on enough flights already, he’s an old hand. This plane is full of wooden letter-blocks, which in his universe are actually suitcases, luggage, and that makes sense.

This drawing is appropriate, as this weekend is the finale of plane-crash drama/mystery series Lost, a show I’ve followed avidly ever since we moved out here. It has been a great show (particularly season 4), but last year started to get a little, um, confused, and this season has been a let down to say the least. It’s almost as if they decided all those things which they built up as important over the years – the Others, Dharma Initiative, Ben vs Widmore, even the time travel stuff introduced last year – are in fact irrelevant because they’ve changed the story. They had to resolve the Widmore character (aka Jim out of Neighbours) so they brought him back and had him shot in the cupboard like a, well, a pussy to be frank. All season they’ve been showing us this alternate timeline and wasting time with new characters who are ultimately completely unimportant (ahem, Ilana). So the long awaited finale is tomorrow, and rather than excited, I am feeling like I just want it to be over and done with. At the least, I want to feel that all those years geting involved with the show and watching it with eager anticipation were not all for nothing. I don’t get into TV shows much, so it would be nice for it to be at the least satisfactory.

on yer bike

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The Amgen Tour of California, the state’s biggest cycle race, is currently wheeling around the Golden State to much fanfare. I didn’t see any fanfare when the Tour came to Davis – starting one section here and ending in Santa Rosa – just a few TV vans left over on my way home.   

US Bicycling Hall of Fame

But as I was having dinner downtown anyway, I decided I would draw the latest national tourist attraction to appear in Davis: the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, which occupies this building on B and 3rd. I haven’t been in, but I’m sure it is enormous fun. I imagine it’s like the Guinness World of Records, with exhibits such as the Cyclist Who Could Text and Cycle for Three Whole Miles Without Getting Into an Accident (lots of people try for this record in Davis), or the Completely Invisible Stop Sign (actually most of them are, apparently), or the Severed Head of Whoever it is Who Thinks Stealing the Light off your Bike is Funny (seriously, what low-life nicks a cheap bikelight?). If I ever go in, and find out that it’s not like that, I’ll be seriously disappointed.

leave me hanging on the iPhone

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phonebox at uc davis

I have told you I’m sure that UC Davis has some old things that used to live in London; some old double-decker buses, a couple of red phone booths, and, er, me. I’m not that old, but I do remember when people actually used phone booths, ah yes them were simpler days, 10p a call, with those big heavy phonebooks and the odd, ahem, business card stuck to the window. Phoneboxes. Remember when you had to queue to use one? People just don’t any more, now they carry the latest personal holographic cyber-communication devices from apple or orange or some fruit or other. Me, yes i have a cellphone I hate using, but I haven’t joined the iPhone age yet (never understood that name, wouldn’t an earPhone be more useful?). I can’t quite bring myself to join the Church of Apple, and become a devotee in sleek white and make annual pilgrimages to Macworld and worship the word of Mr Jobs. Then there is the iPad… when I first saw it I thought it was a joke iPhone, like the ‘HELLO?’ guy Dom ‘Triggerhappy’ Joly. ‘YEAH I’M IN THE APPLE STORE IT’S RUBBISH!’ What is the small ‘i-‘ prefix all about anyway? Apparently it makes things cooler. If they got rid of the nuclear deterrent and replaced it with iBomb or iNuke, CND would be finished. Countries would only stockpile them to make other countries jealous (hang on, that’s what the Cold War was all about, wasn’t it?). But that ‘i’… it’s a bit self-centered isn’t it? There’s no ‘i’ in ‘team; ah but there is in ‘iTeam’.   

Ironically enough, this old booth (drawn at the MU bus terminal, in micron 1 pen) has no phone in it. It’s just there to look cool. Which it does.