Tomorrow morning, I will be off to San Francisco to do some more urban sketching. A couple of years back I videoed my sketching trip from the ferry building farmer’s market up Telegraph Hill. Here, at last, it is. Below are some of the drawings I did that day. Some are from early in my first Moleskine, others are from my as-yet-unfinished WH Smith spiral bound book, and this was also the first time I’d used Copic multiliners, funny enough.
This one’s Vermeiher hall, yet another on the UC Davis campus. If you’re wondering. It’s warm and sunny now, but chilly in the morning. This particular copic pen is living out the autumn weeks of its life with thicker lines and an uncertain nib.
Oh! Saw Watchmen last night. Flipping brilliant, start to finish. Big fan of the graphic novel, and cannot wait for the dvd. Rorschach wicked, when he roars, “i’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me!”
When does a high-rise become a skyscraper? Perhaps it’s just a matter of perception. Highrises make you think of those glum 1960s housing estates, Le Corbusier nightmares in concrete, gangs of feral kids and graffiti, whereas skyscrapers make you think of shining cityscapes, New York, the pre-Depression thirties, old money.
This is La Vigie, Charleroi’s skyscraper/high-rise (filled with UT students, not feral but music is sometimes played loud). I lived on floor 13 years ago. Apparently there is an official definition given by the Emporis Standards Committee that a high-rise must be over twelve storeys high (La Vigie checks in at fifteen). The same Wikipedia article that gave me that useless tidbit of information tells me that skyscrapers carry a connotation of pride, of achievement. Les Vigistes would often go on about being proud (oh, anyone can be proud, it’s easy), and I daresay they sometimes acheive things (making it through nine months without a hot shower is an amazing achievement). So what if it’s not a skyscraper? It’s still the tallest building in the city, and has stunning views over the old slag-heaps and factories, when the cokey fog clears. A skyscraper is just a big substitute phallus anyway.
Drew this in cobalt blue copic, with a grey wash. The blue looks bluer than it does on the page, and it makes the grey look silver. That’s the scanner for you.
What is it? It’s an odd sculpture, living on the UC Davis campus. It may well be a doorway, a portal into another dimension; I’m not going to walk through it, in case I can’t get home again. It might be pi’s physical manifestation, or the place where Aslan rose again. It could be the winning goal. I drew it at lunchtime, in today’s lovely weather. It feels like Spring is in the air.
RAIN! Much needed. And it gave me a chance to draw a big puddle.
Oh, time to comment on the weekend’s match. Football. The Carling Cup Final. I didn’t really expect Spurs to win, but we won it last year, and you never know. So to lose it on penalties was pretty hard to bear. I didn’t see it; it was all just text updates online, early in the morning. Even so, I hid in the kitchen, unable to watch, as is normal for penalty shoot-outs. This of course means no European football for Tottenham next year. I’m so glad Redknapp decided that playing in the UEFA cup wasn’t worth it. He sacrificed it this year for the slim chance of getting in next year. He has bowed out of the UEFA Cup twice this season now, with two clubs. That’s the spirit! That’s real ambition! Well, at least we have the relegation battle to look forward to.
Meanwhile, in Davis, I am drawing puddles.
I’ve always wanted to draw this building, the Cooper House, on the corner of 4th and F in Davis, so today I finally did. Now I don’t have to ever again.
In that article this week I was quoted saying that Davis looked like America and that I was drawing it to show people back home; I said something about it being all picket fences. I think to date I’ve drawn one picket fence, two years ago. Well, there was a mini one here, and I guess this ragged collection of sticks is a technical picket fence (and I drew it a second time to be sure), but they are still notable in their absence. There are actually fewer pickets than, um, er, help me out here, something about strikes. The point I’m making is, um, Davis really isn’t a picket fence type of town. Actually there are more two-level apartment complexes than anything else, housing students and scholars and all the other folk. Perhaps they don’t like pickets here. Perhaps they cause a fence (oh please, come on). Anyway, I think even without the fence, this drawing says ‘America’ to some degree. Don’t ask me, I’m British.
Earlier this month I officially became a published illustrator, and this week I finally received my copy of London Walks – London Stories! I was excited to receive it, and it’s quite the book; a shame I’m not in London, to walk around with it and learn a few new things. As a devout though exiled 
Londoner, and a former tour guide and London historian myself, to be asked to illustrate a book about my home city written by the guides to whom I always revered (the blue-badge London Walks folk), well an absolute honour to say the least.
One of the funny things, my name appears on the inside title page just above Rick Steves, the celebrated PBS travel guy, who wrote the foreword. Surreal! The book will be out here in the US on April 28 (I found out on amazon). The drawings have already been appearing on the London Walks leaflets you get in all the tourist places in London, in minute form, but here is how they look now:
I haven’t read it all yet, so I’m off to do so.
Bit of a misnomer that title, this being actually a sunny lunchtime sketch (and being about Davis and not London), but it’s from the Waste Land and it’s therefore cool, and sprang to mind when I was finished.
And it is winter, or at least what they call winter here. This is the tall UC Davis Water Tower (and environs).
Speaking of which, today is Pancake Day, but this year I didn’t make any pancakes. My little plastic lemon squeezer thing (yes, just like the old jif lemons but not called as such here) is out of date, by a month (bit stupid, I bought it for last year’s pancakes and then it goes and expires in less than a year, it’s like when you buy mince pies that end up expiring on December 24th, yes you know what I’m talking about, marks and spencer). It put me off.
Also posted at urban sketchers. That extraordinary site is growing and growing…
That’s me there, on the front page of the local paper. That’s my double-jointed thumb, too.
The Davis Enterprise published a feature about me and my local sketches today in their new online edition (you probably won’t be able to read that after today, unless you subscribe to the paper), saying that i ‘save the world every day’ (referring to that ‘how to save the world’ thing I did). Quite funny, really. I’ve no idea what I was going on about; I said Davis was flat as a pancake (well, it is). There’s something about Levi Leipheimer and Lance Armstrong to the left there. And look beneath: rain! It really does rain in Davis!
Looking down at the interior of the Silo (the place where I most often eat and sketch at lunchtimes) yesterday, with a micron 05 blue/black pen. It’s the other side of a drawing I did well over a year ago from the same spot, also in blue, but that time was cobalt copic 0.1; see it on the right there. That was back in Moleskine #1! Wow. I’m on #4 now.
I gotta say, you overhear some boring conversations at lunchtime. Not that I listen, but sometimes you can’t miss them. So-and-so did this, so-and-so did that, blah blah blah. Must remember my bigger headphones.
petescully 