In fact I am. A state of non-sleep (that’ll be ‘awake’) means I am up addingmore miscellaneous details. The act of drawing everything in my apartment (saving the world, it was called last year) brings me closer to another fine mess. Nearly done. You can make a jigsaw out of it. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.
I am drawing lots of small objects at the moment, miscellaneous extraneous details if you will, onto a larger peice of paper than I normally work on. This, therefore, takes longer. I was hoping to have it finished this coming week (I may be entering it for something if I like it) but who knows?
Anyway here a couple of details.I am drawing it so that when it is finished, it will be square, and not obvious which way it should be hung. I always think that when I see some abstract piece in a modern art gallery. Perhaps the artist had one way of hanging it in mind (presumably the way he or she painted it) but when he or she gave it to a gallery they hung it sideways, or upside down (or backwards even, you never know). And then that way stuck, and the artist never let on, because he thought it was funny. And then some rich wannabe buff buys it and hangs it in his mansion, and selected art-savvy hangers-on sycophants come by and smirk because he doesn’t realise he’s hanging it sideways, and they laugh at thim while he’s in the toilet, and then the artist walks in and says it’s not sideways, it’s upside down, and they don’t know whether to smirk or cry, but nobody tells the buff in the bog. It has probably never happened, but it would be funny (in a bad predictable sitcom kind of way).
Anyway… here’s how I am doing. I love my noodles.
Sunday morning, San Diego, sat outside in the garden sketching the flowers. This I believe is the furthest south I’ve ever been. The Mexican border is nearby. Later that day, we flew home to Davis. Perfick.
After all the modern US corporate architecture in La Jolla’s conference district it was actually a bit of a surprise to come face to face with magnificent decorated buildings from the mid 1600s no less right in the heart of San Diego. Well, it is pretty much where California began (and still begins). We didn’t spend very long at Balboa Park, but long enough to see what an increcible place it is – I could spend all day there, drawing, it’s a sketcher’s dream. I stopped outside the Museum of Man, with its ornate down and ridiculously Churrigueresque entrance and tower, aka the California Tower. To coin a phrase, phebleedingnominal. However, 
it turns out that this building isn’t as old as the other one I saw (which actually was from the 1600s according to its sign), but this building was finished in the early 20th century for some world fair. Still, well worth a sketch. Two in fact; I did the one above in copic 01, while the thumb on the right was done in brown micron.
It’s funny, you know. You think of Southern California and all those people who get facelifts and plastic surgery and so on to look younger; the buildings on the other hand want to look older. Maybe that’s what the Beach Boys were singing about.
I didn’t get much other drawing done in San Diego. We did drive through the cool-looking Gaslamp District and visited the Seaport Village, which was nice; some other time perhaps. San Diego looks well worth another visit. Next time, when our boy’s older, we’ll go to the zoo.
I went to a conference in Southern California, as people often do. It was in La Jolla, the wealthy northern part of the San Diego sprawl. I am told it has a wonderful coastline; I barely saw it. I did spend a lot of time in the big tall hotel and big wide road district though. I didn’t stay in the hotel where the conference took place, but in another equally large and corporate one, a short walking distance away (or so it seemed from Google Street View). What you don’t take into account are the massive wide roads, and how America really is not designed for pedestrians; La Jolla more than most. The roads have about five hundred lanes, and you have to wait several months for the red hand to become a white man, which it does for the briefest of moments before flashing back again, ‘hurry up, come on, there’s cars want to get moving here you inconvenient pedestrian’. That’s if there even is a crosswalk; on a couple of occasions there was nothing but a sign telling the weary walker to turn back several leagues and cross via the overhead walkway, which sounds nice until you discover there is no way onto the walkway from the street, no steps, just a grass verge and some sort of swanky polished mall or shiny bank office. Tactics were necessary in order to simply cross the road. This short walk was becoming a mensa puzzle. I finally arrived at the conference with tired feet, but a much sharper mind. And yet in the only moment I could grab to sketch, all I could draw was a bland hotel courtyard hidden by part of a palm tree.
Big mirrors behind the bar always make you think about the Bar at the Folies Bergeres (get to the Courtauld, man, or just listen to Mr Solo), but also maybe of the bar at the good mixer in camden, which doesn’t have a mirror but has two sides; it took me years to realise there was a second side and that was why my reflection was invisible. I’d always imagined it was a vampire thing; it is Camden after all. More like a beer thing.
This however is the G Street pub in Davis. I don’t go there very often; I prefer little prague. But I stopped in on the way home for a beer primarily because i fancied sketching the long bar and mirror area. There was an ice hockey match on a big screen, reflected in said mirror, and it wasn’t busy (there was a guy who reminded me of kevin smith a little bit, or it might have been silent bob). To be honest I got a bit frustrated with it, I was trying something different, attacking the long page with microns 1 and 01, and decided to give it a wash, drink up, and go home. I was also frustrated with my eyesight trying to make out distant details, even though it wasn’t particularly dark it was still a strain. But when I scanned it in, I decided that upon reflection I quite liked it after all, especially as a thumbnail.
The cycle path alongside the arboretum has a row of cool houses that look great for drawing, but I never found the time, until yesterday afternoon on the way home from work. You may well be wondering what that mound is. Yes, obviously it is the muddy middle of a cycle-roundabout. But it looks like it could be the top of a giant’s head, buried in the earth beneath Davis, waiting for his time to come again. I wouldn’t like a city to be built on my head. I was thinking about this while cycling home, noticing the new building being done further east (possibly where the contentious Target is being built?), taking over ‘waste’ land that is home to many hares and snakes and other wildlife. Snakes need somewhere to live too you know, you can’t just build and then evict them. The city thought about this of course when building a big road bridge right through an area where lots of toads (may have been frogs, some sort of amphibian) live. They decided that to help the toads get across the road (remember the game Frogger? Very influential in urban planning) they would build a tunnel under the road, the ‘toad tunnel’. Nice idea. But then all them snakes who now don’t have anywhere to live thought, hello, they built us a nice tunnel, that was nice of them, and it has a free constant supply of toads for us to eat too. So the city thought, ok we’ll put lights in the tunnel so the toads can see if there are any snakes lurking. But the snakes just waited outside, grabbing them as they popped out. So the city decided to fool the snakes and build a little house – a post office, in fact – for the toads to go into the access the tunnel. Nice idea. Toads delighted. And then all the toads starting burning their backs on the lightbulbs in the tunnel, and the city just said, oh sod you then, we gave you a flipping post office, write and complain to your senator or something, we have better things to do than worry about a load of bloody frogs or whatever you are. Of course that lost them the amphibian vote (the tadpole-mom demographic), but, y’know, in local politics those are the risks you have to take.
Maybe I’ll draw that toady post office some day, to prove I’m not making all this up. Except for the bit about the giant.
Moo. Sorry, I mean MU; cowtown is getting in my head. This the MU (Memorial Union), a kind of equivalent to our student unions in England, but notably without any naked drunk rugby players. I don’t know what it is memorising. And this is where I get my art materials, there in the UCD bookstore. All my microns, copics, what-not. I hang about in there looking at them, they must think I obsess (well I do). When I was a kid I would go into Tonibell’s (local burnt oak sweetshop, long gone) and stand there for about half an hour, trying to decide between a Mars or a Marathon. I haven’t changed, only now it’s between a purple Micron 005 or a cobalt Copic 03 (and sometimes between a Milky Way or a Snickers).
After drawing this (in high heat) I bumped into fellow cycling sketcher Pica, who had just bought art materials at this very store. I also bumped into a fellow Spurs fan from London, which was cool. Small world.
It’s comforting to know there is a high energy nuclear lab right next door to where I work. The Crocker Lab has been around for years, flinging protons and electromagnetic particles and stuff around. Apparently there was an old hog barn here before it moved in. I wonder if they’ve ever had any superhero-type accidents, like maybe a pig got left behind and became the Incredible Hog or Dr. Hamhattan, nobody would believe it anyway, they’d think you were telling porkies. Still, looks like the sort of place it could happen. Actually no, it looks like a school sports hall or something.
It was a hot day today, mid-90s, so I went out and sketched under the shade of a tree, and imagined porcine super-villains concocting some scheme to produce atomic bangers, or something.
They call it the Death Star, but it’s too angular, and has no superlaser. It is home to some highly powerful people on campus however. I personally am not a fan of this building, Social Sciences & Humanities. Oh, it looks nice from afar, that huge angular, er, angle, which is supposed to represent the slope up to the Sierra Nevada mountains (yeah, hits it spot on, obvious really). But I have been lost many times in this gawd-forsaken labyrinth, up and down concrete passageways and open stairwells, and doors that no-through-doors. It is honestly like walking through an MC Escher painting. I find it an absolute Impossibility. Which, funny enough, is this week’s Illustration Friday topic, so this is my entry.
I sat outside at lunchtime (despite many sneezes, and the attack of lots of bugs – probably x-wing bugs) and drew this on the field in cobalt blue copic. The trees are still bright and spring-like.
petescully 