a thousand little pieces

April 9, 2010April 9, 201013 Comments

And so… today is petescully.com’s second birthday! If it feels like it’s been longer, well it has. My old 20six blog went for precisely three years before this one, so this is in fact my fifth blogiversary. And if that weren’t enough…

This is my 1000th post. That is, post #400 in two years, following exactly 600 posts in the previous three years (just so you know, I also hit 800 posts on the same date, April 9th, last year – 200 posts a year, I am consistent at least!). Wow, one thousand posts. I had better stop counting. I have had it in mind to move over many (if not all) posts from my old blog to this, but that would be a long, slow process. A lot of the old blog is non-sketchbloggery, the tale of my last months in England, and my first years in the land of the Amer’cans.

A thousand posts. I should have a competition or something! Nah.

I though about making a list of some of my personal favourite posts from the thousand, but that seemed like a lot of work. One I did like though, from the old site, was: “My Newborn Son, Luke”: the first sketch of my son, January 2008. And you might want to see my first blog post from April 9, 2005, “Jellied Els”, wherein I was making silly jokes about the golf (I intend to continue this tradition this weekend during the Master’s). Oh, and here’s a drawing I still really like:

See: “Graffiti About Slash Street Affairs” October 2008

So where now? I will probably upload images to Zazzle to buy as postcards or something, since I hear that is a fun thing to do, and also finally get around to selling some originals on Etsy. I want to do this to help fund my trip to Portland for the Urban Sketching Symposium. Of course, this requires me to be organized.

The one thing I will say though, sketching regularly and posting online has allowed me to greatly improve everything about how I draw, and I can se a clear path between where I was and where I am through the work I have online. That is exciting; I wonder where I’ll end up? For all I know, in five years time I may have tired of sketching and moleskines and micron pens altogether and be making little models out of lego and play-doh (um, I’m already doing that). But seeing other people’s work online continues to inspire me and helps me mould my own voice.

So my message remains the same, to all of you, pick up a pen, get some paper, and start drawing stuff around you, doesn’t matter what, doesn’t matter if it’s any ‘good’, it’s a record of who you are and where you are, and in years to come you will look at it and maybe even remember the thoughts that were going through your head as you drew. That is saving the world.

see you in portland

April 8, 2010April 7, 20103 Comments

Exciting times in the world of those people who go outside with a pen and sit down and draw things. The first Urban Sketching Symposium will be held at the end of July in Portland, Oregon, a global event drawing urban sketchers from, er, across the globe. Hosted by the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) and Urban Sketchers (USk), it will be quite the event.

Click on the poster to go to the event’s web site. This will hopefully be the first of many such global get-togethers, and a great opportunity to learn from and be inspired by some great illustrators. The third day of the symposium will coincide with the 28th Worldwide Sketchcrawl on July 31.

I’ve never been to Portland, Oregon, though my wife has family there. I’ve been told I’d really like it. I’ve never been to Portland in Dorset either, and I’ve always wanted to, mostly because of that old kids TV show “Portland Bill“, but also because the people of Portland, Dorset, have a famous fear of the word ‘rabbit‘, apparently. I like that.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I am going. I’m quite excited! I’ll see you there.

a learning curve

April 7, 2010May 27, 20101 Comment

I had a pen in my bag I’d bought in London, a uni-pin fineliner I got in the big Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road, and wanted to run it down. I have wanted to draw the Shields Library on campus for a while but never found myself a good angle. I have also wanted to mess about with curvilinear perspectives for quite some time but have not done so. Until now; I sat at lunchtime in the shade among the bicycles opposite the library and started drawing. I’ve made it look like a baseball stadium or something. It is a very big library, and very well stocked. It was my destination of choice when I first moved here, way before I started working on campus, when I was just coming off from my Master’s back in the UK, where I had gotten quite used to spending hours locked away in the polished silence of the Maughan Library on Chancery Lane, or the high-up dustiness of Senate House. As a medievalist and germanic philologist I enjoyed the privelige of being in those quiet parts of the library that nobody went to, because usually nobody else was studying what I was studying (similarly I had little problem with borrowing books). I’ve not dusted off those books in some time.

I showed this to my two-year-old, and he was immediately impressed that I’d drawn a picture of a bicycle. He’s one for the small details (bit like me).

best in snow

April 3, 2010April 3, 20106 Comments

A few weeks ago we drove up to the snow, which is found in the Sierra Nevadas about an hour and a half east of Davis. when I say th snow, I’m not talking about a sprinkling of white, I’m talking about SNOW. It must have been nine feet deep! Much of it was only a day old, fresh and powdery. We stopped at a rest stop just outside Truckee. It was my two-year-old son’s first experience of snow, so that was a lot of fun. Trying to build a snowman wasn’t easy, so I built a snow sith lord instead.

These were drawn in a journal that I’m keeping for my son.

droit au but

March 30, 2010March 30, 20102 Comments

Target, in Davis. A controversial place in this town. It has only been open for about six months, but a few years ago it required a very narrow win in a city-wide vote for building to be approved. Target played hard-sell, appealing to the underwear buying public, college students and suburban moms alike, as well as sugaring the pill for Davis’s famed environmentalists by building the greenest Target building ever built (or something), but they faced some fierce opposition – Davis, with it’s anti-big-box tendencies, is not a town to mess about with. Downtown independent businesses banded together and fought the proposal, fearing (justifiably, given the story in so many other American towns) that the arrival of large big-box stores on the edge of town would destroy this small city’s downtown, and with it, its character. There were arguments, oh boy there were arguments, bitter bloody spit-in-the-street-and-call-you-elitists arguments. The underwear argument for one. The fact that there was already a new Target opening up the road in Woodland so another one was unnecessary. The whole creating new jobs thing (with the counter-argument that if it forced other stores out of business it would take away jobs too, and then the town is dependent on its big box store for employment, and if said store goes the way of Woolworths…) And then it was back to the underwear argument again (just where can you buy socks in Davis?).

But in the end, Target prevailed; with their national wealth behind them they had been able to spend sixteen times what the downtown stores had been able to muster up. And so here in 2010, here it is, green Target. And despite my love of and support for independent stores, I do go there when I have to, because it’s there. But personally, I don’t buy socks. I wait for Christmas.

sand between the toes

March 27, 2010Leave a comment

The Sonoma coastline of California is utterly spectactular. Today was a lovely warm sunny March day. This naturally equals going to the beach for a fun family day out, and it was fun. We went to Goat Rock Beach, at the mouth of the Russian River, where harbor seal pups were enjoying the balmy weather. We had sand in the hair and sand between the toes; soft, warm sand, a gentle breeze, perfect sun. The waves were loud and dangerous. We skimmed flat stones on the river. I sat on a log and drew some of the rocky coastline, before turning about on the same log to draw the Russian River snaking towards the Pacific Ocean. I thought how so very different this is to the seasides I grew up with, the windy English seasides with pebbles and candy floss and buckets-and-spades, and those amusement arcades with the bingo machines (“maggie’s den, number ten”). Not that there’s anything wrong with that (far from it, I love those places!), it’s just that this spot is so spectacular, so incredibly breathtaking that I can’t believe it’s real.

the sky’s the limit

March 23, 2010March 22, 20103 Comments

This is Maurice J. Gallagher Hall, one of the newest shiniest new shiny buildings at UC Davis. It’s home to the Graduate School of Management.

I don’t often draw such modernity. I was interested in giving it a go, a study in perspective, and decided that I’d leave the big blue sky blank. The sky is literally the limit. I’m not into management speak. I never give people a heads up, aka an FYI, vis a vis the big picture all on the same page. Sometimes I sketch small pictures on the same page though.

going for gold

March 21, 2010March 21, 20107 Comments

This is Goldbeaters School in Burnt Oak, where I went to school from the nursery until the age of 11. When I left the Berlin Wall was still up, Thatcher still had some years to go as PM, and Glenn Hoddle had just left Spurs for Monaco. This was drawn from a photo I took on a previous trip back home; I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. I was up early yesterday morning and needed to do a drawing. I decided to make it sepia; in a way this is how I remember it. Apart from the grass and a bit of graffiti I left out, everything else is actually the right colour, pretty much.

I was inspired to finally draw my old junior school when an old, good friend from Goldbeaters got in touch with me via Facebook, Lee Glenn. I’ve not seen him since back then, so it was a real pleasure to hear from him. Reminded me of all the fun old times we had when we were kids, playing A-Team and, er, Hammer House of Horror in the playground. I will need to dig out my old school photos on my next trip back home. He blogs too – at leeglenn.net, and he made a very nice mention of me over there – and also runs a forum about film, music, books etc called ‘the popcorn patch’. Check it out!

I have good memories of Goldbeaters. I always remember most fondly my friends from the juniors, in the days when swapping Panini football stickers was pretty much the most important thing in the world. That was like a little microcosm economy of its own, the football sticker swapping market. Couldn’t have too many Spurs badges or Maradona stickers on the market otherwise the whole thing would collapse, and every so often there’d be a bust when some silly sod would knock someone’s wad of Football 86 into the air and shout “SCRAMBLE!”, showering the playground with doubles and triples of Ian Rush and rare Hamilton Academical team stickers alike. I have always imagined that that, essentially, was what the real Stock Market is really like.

lá fhéile pádraig sona daoibh

March 17, 2010March 17, 20101 Comment

Well, it is Saint Patrick’s Day, so a drawing of an Irish landmark in green pen on green card seems appropriate. Of course St. Patrick’s colour was in fact blue (which might be easier on the eye than this particularly lime-verdant shade) but who are we to quibble. But speaking of quibbling, I wish people would stop using the four-leafed clover on St. Patrick’s Day, the symbol of Ireland is the Shamrock, which typically only has three leaves. But then again Celtic football club, whose shirt I’m wearing today, uses four leaves in its badge and you can’t argue with them. Ah, we’re Irish, we can argue with whoever.

So this is Blarney Castle, in Co. Cork. I was there when I was twelve, when I kissed the Blarney Stone (at first I kissed the wrong one), and got a little certificate that said I was henceforth given the gift of the Blarney, that is to talk a lot of nonsense from time to time – they got that right. I kept that certificate for years. I love when you kiss the Blarney Stone, they hang you upside down by your ankles at the very top of the castle, so you can see the long drop below (where kids are gathered to collect the coins that inevitably fall from your pockets). All of my family originates from Ireland, all over the place. I grew up with the Irish heritage, all the music, the Irish festivals in Southport and Willesden, the red hair and sun-shy freckly skin, and lots of cups of tea, but I don’t like Guinness. I’ve not been back over there in about thirteen years; different place now, so I hear. Ah well, it’s not going anywhere. I’ll be back one day.

My favourite chocolate bar by the way is Cadbury’s Tiffin, you can’t get it in England, but it’s common in Ireland. Tiffin and a cup of tea, my idea of heaven so it is. Just sayin’.

don’t let the sun blast your shadow

March 11, 2010March 11, 20102 Comments

I was outside Newsbeat, on Third Street, Davis. I don’t normally sketch standing up but the noisy trucks parked in front of me meant I couldn’t avoid it. I tried to lean against the wall, but I think someone had if not peed against it, then certainly left their scent there. There are smelly people in the world, I accept that. The fact I could smell it meant at least I was getting over my cold (although allergy season is apon me to re-block those nostrils). My pen didn’t like drawing at the funny angle of standing up, and protested. At least I had shade; it was sunny. But sunny is good, as it means I get to draw shadows of bare trees against cool little wooden buildings.