nailing it down

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nails by tam, 3rd street

This place, ‘Nails by Tam’, is found on 3rd street in Davis, way down near L street (aka Linguistics Street, as per my street re-naming rules). This is the first drawing from Watercolour Moleskine #5. Actually that’s not true; this is the second, but I haven’t finished the first one yet, on page 1 (it’s of shoes, if you’re interested). But this is the first posted. I drew this yesterday on a quick cycle downtown. I had to draw some urban on Urban Sketcher’s first birthday. It was fairly warm and I had to chase the moving shade of a telegraph pole in order not to get sunburnt (haha, it’s November, folks back in England).

I have drawn this place before; it’s very sketchable.  The last time was back in 2006, when I coloured it in watercolour pencil (see below). I think it’s nice to see how my style has evolved and improved over the past three years. But I do like the effect in the old one.nails by tam

a year of urban sketching

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A year ago today, the Urban Sketchers super-blog was born, the brainchild of Spanish-born Seattle artist and journalist Gabi Campanario. Happy Birthday USk! We have grown into one of the increasingly popular destinations for those rediscovering their own artistic nature, a message that if you are disposed to record the world as little pictures in little books (as I am), you are P1010070certainly not alone. There are hundreds, thousands, maybe one day millions of us. As one of the founding members (my San Francisco sketchbook was the first banner) I’ve been very proud and humbled to appear among some of the real luminaries of the sketching world, from whom I continue to learn every day. As the USk correspondent for Davis, California, today I posted my 100th post! A nice milestone to reach.

You can follow USk on Twitter, on Facebook and of course at the Flickr group. Here is the Birthday Press Release.

But Urban Sketchers is not resting. The next step is becoming a non-profit organization, “dedicated to promoting the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing“,  and raising money to award scholarships to help artists. This is very exciting. There may be a book. There may be annual international meet-ups of urban sketching artists – I had better start saving!

So now seems the perfect time to spread my message, inspired last night by Eddie Argos of Art Brut telling everyone to go home right now and form a band (and don’t play Rock Band and Guitar Hero) , I am telling you all to get a pen (or pencil), get a sketchbook (or any paper), go outside (or inside) and just DRAW. Draw anything, anything you want. Look out of your window, draw that. It doesn’t matter if it’s any good, it comes from you and that’s the important thing. I tried to draw at the gig last night and my sketches were rubbish, no really they were bad, but I’ll always think of where I was when I did them. It’s a record of where and who you are. One day, you might forget.

So just go out and DRAW! It really is brilliant fun.

day of the jack-a-lantern

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happy hallowe'en

So, Happy Hallowe’en folks. I might be the only person in America who spells it with an apostrophe. That’s ok. This is the smaller of our two pumpkins, this is the baby one for my toddler son. He tries his best to say ‘Jack-a-Lantern’ but it comes out as ‘Gelarkajah!’ which is infinitely cuter.

So October is over. Not been my favourite October ever, but, you know. November begins tomorrow. I will not be attempting the NaNoWriMo novel writing challenge this year because it will be interrupted by a trip home to draw things in England. Shame because I have an idea for a story; maybe I’ll motivate myself to write it one day. Or maybe I’ll draw pumpkins.

circo sandal, again

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9, circo sandal (side)

#9 in the series of Luke’s Shoes. I’m back to drawing this series, which covers all of my son’s shoes since he started wearing shoes. These are the Circo blue and turquoise Sandals – I drew the other one back in August – which now at last he has stopped wearing. These were the favoured footwear all summer, had a good innings. But weather gets cooler, feet get bigger.

Drawn with Copic 0.1 and Micron 01, in a Moleskine cahier.

to market, to market

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farmers market, davis

The last page of Moleskine #4. I might draw something in the back cover though. This is the Davis Farmers Market in Central Park (not that one), a popular market, to which I rarely go. However we as a family decided to head down there yesterday, to sample fruit, eat chocolate croissant, and (in the case of my son) run about in the crunchy brown leaves. It was a lot of fun. I stuck around after my son went home for his nap, and drew the market itself.

I have the next watercolour Moley waiting patiently in the wings. Click on the pictures below to see all of the drawings from each of the four watercolour Moleys from the past two and a half years.

sketchcrawl 23 pages 1 and 2 Moleskine 4 (Feb 2009 – Oct 2009)
seeing triple Moleskine 3 (July 08 – Feb 09)
in the sunshine Moleskine 2 (Nov 2007 – July 2008)
pete's sketching kit Moleskine 1 (June 2007 – Oct 2007)

froggie’s

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froggies

Froggies, on 2nd and G in Davis. Hadn’t been here in quite some time, so came here on Thursday night for a quick beer and a long sketch. Actually I took my time drinking the beer and drew faster instead. Froggies is alright; the serving staff are friendly, and the beer is good and not expensive. They do really nice food too. But I’m generally not a regular; the acoustics are bad in here, it’s a little too sports-bar in it’s character, I don’t know; can’t quite explain it. It gets a bit packed with young students on the nights when there are DJs, and can be a bit uncomfortable. I like it a lot more than the Grad (Davis’s big sports bar), though, and even the G Street Pub (which is certainly more pub-like, but appears to have been modelled directly on the worst possible late-80s Camden Town dive, particularly in the toilets). Froggies is better than those places. I prefer Little Prague though. Ah, the bars of Davis. So anyway, I fancied popping in here to do a slightly less brown pub drawing. And look, I even drew some people. 

My oldest friend Tel, who now lives in Korea, loves this place. He last came here in 2006.

agony and eggstasy

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yin and yang

Another of Robert Arneson’s Eggheads series; it’s outside Turner Wright Hall, and is called ‘Yin and Yang’. God knows which is meant to be which though.  I’ve drawn it before in fact, a couple of years ago, from a different angle:

eggsecution 

Also posted at Urban Sketchers. By the way, that super-blog extraordinaire is nearly a year old…

keeping an eye on things

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'eye on mrak' egghead

“Eye on Mrak“, one the Egghead sculptures made by the late Robert Arneson, former UC Davis art professor. This one is outside Mrak Hall, and has a large eye that looks up at proceedings within (perhaps it has eggs-ray vision, I don’t know). Oh come on, this is petescully.com, you must have known a silly egg-based pun would come along at some point. Anyway I sketched this dude at lunchtime today.

To learn more about the UC Davis Eggheads (if you absolutely have to), please see: eggheads.ucdavis.edu.

moleys galore!

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moleskines

I was fortunate enough to be one of the five winners of Chronicle Books’ recent Moleskine: District of You competetion, for posting several of my drawings on their Flickr group. So cool! Thanks guys! I received my prize today, a set of new Moleys, from the small cahiers (the ones like I used for Save the World and Hold Pen in Unusual Way, but in red), a regular moleskine sketchbook plus a large Folio legendary sketchbook. These will be fun to fill!

silent is the house

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davis cemetery

I cycled around Davis today. It was cool outside, the autumn is upon us and I lost myself in streets and cycle paths I had never been to. I ended up at Davis Cemetery; I have never looked around it before. It isn’t very big. This surprised me, but then I suppose Davis isn’t as old as Highgate, where I used to live. It was peaceful, sad and peaceful. Maybe I’ll draw Highgate Cemetery when I’m back in London again next month. 
Completely coincidentally: I just looked on Twitter and saw an update from Davis Forever about Art in the Cemetery, an exhibition of art in Davis Cemetery that I guess was going on in that very building as I was drawing it, and I knew nothing about it. I do recall thinking that people didn’t look all that funereal coming out of there.