My son’s “Van’s” shoes, blue, white toe, and very cool. Too small for him now though; I would love a pair myself. I actually drew this shoe once before as part of the Miscellaneous Details drawing I did a couple of months ago, and enjoyed drawing it so much I turned it into a series. Above is the left shoe, below is the right.
Black copic 01 in moleskine cahier.
#20 in a series of 30. The cobalt copic fineliner pens are still holding out!
So this one is very appropriate, because right now Spurs are sitting at the top of the English Premier League, albeit after only two games. This new season has been very unusual – so far we have had no draws at all, and all of the London teams have been winning. But Spurs are top, and I’ll enjoy it while it lasts (that’ll be Saturday, then). It’s a nice change after last year, when we had to wait nine matches for our first win – and had to sack the manager to get it. Interestingly enough, the last time we won our first two matches was in 1994, when of all people Ossie Ardiles was manager! And he was sacked by November. Well, that’s Tottenham Hotspur for you.
Or “Tottingham” as Ossie used to call it. I was dumbstruck when I met him, outside the old Spurs training ground in Mill Hill, shortly before those two victories in ’94. I had met Klinsmann too of course, who had just arrived at the club, plus Sheringham, Anderton, Barmby, Mabbutt, all of those guys. After getting their autographs on a Spurs shirt (which I still have) and a few polaroids, I sat on the hood of a car to pack up my bag. And then Osvaldo CésarArdiles comes up and opens the car door! He was really nice, posed for a photo, said hello to my little sister, shook my shaking hand, and we left. He drove past as we walked down Bunn’s Lane, and actually waved. I know, it is incredible that a World-Cup winning footballer can actually say a few civil words and wave from a moving vehicle, but when you were the kid who wanted to actually be Ossie Ardiles, that is in fact a big deal. My knees were even trembly.
I finished the Villefranche-sur-Mer picture by adding a minimal amount of colour. I think I like it minimal, any more may have taken away from it. If you’re wondering where the Mer is in Villefranche, well it is behind me in this shot. I may draw the other side as well, because that was a lovely view downhill to the harbour.
When I was last in Villefranche-sur-Mer, the beautiful old Mediterranean port nestled between Nice and Monaco, I took this photo of Rue Eglise (having just eaten at that cafe and sketched the sea) and told myself I’d draw a picture of it when I got home. That was over six years ago. Yesterday I finally got the photo out and started drawing, because I was playing with perspective in my messy sketchbook (see the quick watercolour sketch below) and wanted something nice to draw.
One thing I recall is that Villefranche was where they set that film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. That’s a good movie. I especially like that Emperor Palpatine plays Michael Caine’s butler. I stopped off here on my way back to London from Aix-en-Provence, having been out here to visit some old friends and watch their play. I was flying from
a quick watercolour sketch
Nice that evening, and so I whiled away a few hours by the sea at Villefranche. The old town is especially nice. I’d love to go back there to draw.
Well, I will have to make do with my old photos for now, I’m too far away. I did a watercolour study, primarily to work out how the perspective lines worked. It’s messy and quick but I quite like it, and sometimes wish I did more of my sketch work like that, if only so I could get better at the technique. But I love drawing in pen too much! The version at the top is not the ultimately finished version – I will add some watercolour, if only just to tint it. But I like how it looks anyhow. I think it’s quite nice.
And so the football season begins, at last! I hate odd years, those long footy-less summers. But then, as a Spurs fan, the new season always brings a mixture of ridiculous over-expectation and glum resignation to what will likely be yet another transition season (surely a successful season for us would be a transitional season). But I don’t care, because football is finally here. Still the summer brings its own excitements, namely the wild transfer market, and (for me at least) the constant flow of new kit releases; I’ll talk about those in another post. This summer has seen world record transfer deals, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka going to spend more time with Real Madrid’s endless chequebook, and Manchester City’s Mark Hughes spending his Arab bosses’ huge stockpiles of cash safe in the knowledge that he’ll probably be sacked by Christmas so he may as well enjoy it before he moves on to a poor (and more realistic) club. Most of it has been spent at Arsenal’s Big Summer Sale. And then possibly the biggest transfer surprise was Michael Owen going to Manchester United, on a free. That will either be the best move of his life or the worst. No, no way could it be worse than his move to Newcastle. I think it was pretty shrewd of Sir Alex to pick him up; he may just coax those goals out if him. After all, they have a shared interest in racehorses.
Spurs meanwhile have picked up Peter Crouch, who, at thirteen foot six, is the tallest humanoid in the galaxy. I remember when he was a trainee at Spurs, back when he was a little lad of six foot ten. That meant Darren Bent was shown the door (though he actually missed three times before he managed to walk through it). I felt a bit sorry for Bent. He was actually our top scorer last year. He never shook off the big price tag, and going to a club like Spurs which collects strikers like Michael Owen collects betting slips, and has a ‘Have I Got News For You’ guest-presenter policy on managers (perfected by Newcastle, who can barely get through a match without changing coach), the odds were against him. Well, he’ll be at Sunderland now, where he may not find that managerial stability, but at least he’ll get a game of a Saturday.
Possibly the most bizarre move of the summer was managerial – oops, I mean director of football, or whatever the term is these days. Sven, back from his unsuccessful jaunt as Mexico boss, has made the inexplicable move to Notts County, in the English League Two. That’s the old Fourth Division; that’s three divisions below the Premier League. That is one giant downward leap for Svenkind. Well, it’s easier explained by the presence of new Arab cash (in English football, Arab cash, like Russian cash, is far more valuable and easy to spend than regular cash. But when people know you have it in your wallet, they jack up the prices). Greavsie was right. Football really is a funny old game.
I painted the ladies again. Well I drew them first. San Francisco’s famous old houses, sloping down Alamo Square, with the City in the background.
The last drawing I did of the Painted Ladies was in sepia. I added colour this time. They are supposed to be colourful after all. This will very likely be for sale on my long-time-coming Etsy shop which is of course not yet ready. Keep your ears peeled.
I do love these buildings, but now when I see them I think of that awful Sleep Train Mattress Center commercial on TV (“a ticket to a better night’s sleep”), which uses them (or near approximations). the thing about those commercials is they always do these special holiday greetings for events throughout the year. They use the standard American commercial ‘Happy Holidays’ line at Christmas, fair enough. For Easter, however, they used the over-generic “Happy Spring”, Easter being a bit religious for them (though I can go into how the word and the bunny and egg-hunting have absolutely nothing to do with Christian religion). And yet, throughout March, they constantly wish you a Happy St.Patrick’s Day. Which is wierd, because that is a religious, Christian event (or at least it is in Ireland); it’s named for a saint. Sure, it’s an event for the Irish – though as we know, everyone wants to be Irish on March 17, so they can pretend to be an Irish sterotype and pretend they like Guinness (I’m London Irish, and I can’t stand Guinness). It’s just funny how ‘Christmas’ and ‘Easter’ are seen to offend on religious grounds in the eyes of commercial-makers, yet the saint’s day of a very Catholic country is not. Just an interesting observation. Anyway that’s what crosses my mind when I think of those adverts, and now, by association, these buildings. But I still love them, whatever holiday it is.
I’ve mentioned the Davis frat houses before, and I will mention them again, because I drew another one (or rather, a different part of one I’ve drawn before). There are lots of them, lining the streets just outside campus. they are currently pretty quiet, but give it a month or two and these places will be rocking out to the new academic year. Rushes, hazing, all of that fun stuff that comes with these strange greek-lettered clubs. Some frats are old, really old, while others cater to certain fields, such as law, or ethnic groups. The one below, Theta Xi, is presumably the frat-house of apprentice cab-drivers. However I still can’t find the house of the boating fraternity (Rho Rho Rho)…
If I had gone to university in America, I would not have been a frat boy. I would have gone to the parties though, for sure. I can’t help wondering if those greek letters are just an old form of textspeak, like Omicron Mu Gamma, Beta Phi Phi, or, from the society of proctologist comedians, Lamda Mu Alpha Omicron.
Number 19 of 30. This is the bathroom. I do only ever take showers, and showers are very nice. Especially when it is hot, there’s nothing like the energy of a shower. But I love baths. Or, rather, used to love them, when I could actually be bothered to take them. It’s probably because I grew up with a bath, and showers were something you only saw at swimming pools. Plus, when I was a kid, I hated washing my hair, because I hated water getting in my eyes. It was the absolute worst part of the day, for all involved. I could not bear it. They may as well have been pouring hydrochloric acid, rather than warm water and shampoo. And conditioner! Hah, I never understood why I needed conditioner, I kept my hair short. They did get me one of those things that go on your head to stop the water getting in your eyes, a foam circle that made me look like the planet Saturn. Hey, it worked. But even as I got older and washed my hair myself, I developed ways to avoid the shower head. I would fill the sink with water and dunk my head into it to wash my hair. Yes I’d bang my ears on the taps from time to time, and yes I’d have to refill the sink a couple of times, and yes I’d splash water onto the floor, but I got my hair clean, and on my terms. So it may be all of this that explains why, though I’m totally fine with the shower, I’ll always be a bath person. A bath person who only ever takes showers. So I’m a bit contrary, nothing new there.
I cycled downtown last night, while the air was cool, and looked for the latest World Soccer magazine (not to be found), looked through countless books written for year-and-a-half-year-olds (didn’t end up getting one; I’ll let the one-and-a-half-year-old choose for himself, he knows best), and stopped off for a beer in the Czech-style pub, Little Prague, always an excuse of course to do a drawing. Bar-sketching is tricky for me, as there are always a lot of bottles, plus the light is never that great, and my eyesight isn’t either (I think I need a new prescription on my glasses). But this pub has lots of interesting things to draw, at least. Up there, Fox 40 News, the mouthpiece of the dreaded Murdoch (but even so they were kind enough to show one of my drawings on TV a couple of months back). I noticed that they had the closed captioning on, and that it was lagging a little behind, so they would talk about one story, eg Steven Tyler falling off stage, while the pictures would show an elderly woman and a shop fire; I did wonder at first, Tyler has really let himself go. I focused on the details. The pub’s music wasn’t very good. A couple were dancing. There was a Russian wrestler sat to my left who complimented me on my drawing.
Ten years ago this month, my friend Tel and I took a trip to Prague, Big Prague, spending almost two weeks there. Oh, there are stories alright, memories, it was a fun trip but so long ago now. I’m less hectic now. I’d love to go back to Big Prague, but I imagine the beer is more expensive there now. In Little Prague, I drank Krusovice. It’s a nice beer. I’m pleased with how this turned out. It’s the height of summer, and it’s pretty cool.
They call us Cowtown. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, and I’m only presuming they mean cows of the bovine nature, but it is apparently a nickname for Davis. Yet in all the time I’ve been drawing here, I have never once drawn a cow. Until now.
These cows live in a field not far from where I work. I suppose they are research cows. I am told that some cows here have special windows in their stomachs so you can see what is going on. Again, no jokes about the windows having beef curtains, please. Anyway, I didn’t see any belly-windows. I imagine it would be a pane anyhow. I have been meaning to draw the cows for quite some time, but have avoided it because there’s never anywhere to site (remedied by bringing a chair this time), and there’s no shade so it’s always too hot and sunny (so I wore a hat and put on sunscreen). I didn’t mind the smell, though I don’t eat red meat, but the additional insect activity annoyed me, predictably. So a half-hour sit-down later, and I had drawn the cows. they kept moving about. Some tried to get on top of other cows (not like acrobats, though that would be fun to draw), and there was a lot of mooing, though they were kind of rubbish moos, more like squeals. I like a good proper moo, myself. something like Bully the dart-playing bull used to do on Jim Bowen’s Bullseye. Let’s have a look at what you could have won. Moooo….
petescully 