eight-eight-eight

August 9, 2008Leave a comment

Drew this at lunchtime yesterday. Watched the Opening Ceremony lats night. Wasn’t it spectacular? Amazing choreography and visuals. I was very impressed. And the parade of nations was interesting in that there was no alphabetical order, the countries were introduced by how many strokes it takes to write their character name in Chinese. A nice touch, that. After all the politics and protests (and rightly so) I was very impressed with everything, including that amazing stadium. Bush was there, I loved it when they zoomed in on him looking a bit bored and checking his watch. Most of the time he was looking through his binoculars (which he probably pronounces ‘binoclears’). He gave the Iraqi team a big round of applause, and then sat back and gave his Bush smirk. I had to laugh. They didn’t show him applauding the Iranians. But just a few seats away was Putin, giving his glum anti-smirk. Georgia was on his mind.

Because on the day the Olympics begins in China, and the world is looking elsewhere, Russia invades South Ossetia, the troubled breakaway region of Georgia, and now all hell is breaking loose. This is a serious and difficult situation, and a very worrying development. Georgia wants US help in this crisis. Georgia sent troops to Iraq to help Bush’s cause. They will expect something in return – and will we honestly be able to deliver? And face off against Russia?

“Interesting Times”.

with my famous purple heart on

August 6, 2008August 6, 20082 Comments

It was one of those lunchtimes that merited the purple micron’s reappearance – I don’t use him nearly enough. Everything looks more sunny with the purple. These are random doors on campus (guess where folks!) with no significance at all other than they were there and i had not yet drawn them. There are lots of things here I’ve not yet drawn, but it all looks the same at the end of the day anyway. Don’t ask about the border. There were ants crawling all around me and threatening to get into my paintbox, and I was listening to the lost world of david devant. You should too. Two days to the Olympics folks! One World, One Dream (One-party state…)

But even better: two weeks until the footy, oh man, summer’s long…

out along the bay

August 4, 20085 Comments

SF weekend, part 6: the journey home. Looking at my sketchbook there were some very green UC Davis drawings, followed by some very blue and yellow delta region from the train sketches, followed by some colourful bright blue, yellow, red, green ones from day one in the city.

Then there were the muted, foggy ones, in browns and greys and dull greens. the journey home saw a slight bit of fog clearing, giving us the colour schemes of above. I never noticed all of this until later.

There’s Coit Tower, and the Bay Bridge, sketched as I waited for the amtrak bus to emeryville (I wonder how many google searches for that bus will now end up here?), plus san pablo bay, and some guy reading on the train. and the business card to the previously mentioned awesome zine shop in the mission I stopped in.

To illustrate those very differently coloured days, here are a couple of photos of my sketchbook:

extraneous details you can’t live without

August 2, 2008August 2, 20082 Comments

SF trip, part 5: I got off the bus at the Castro, the city’s gay quarter, and pottered around bookstores and past sidewalk cafes, before placing stool on kerb and drawing, of all things, this rusty truck above. “You drew a car?” my wife exclaimed later when she saw it. It’s true, I do avoid drawing vehicles, but this one was so interesting, and I was inspired by other vehicular drawings I’d seen online. Time was pressing, so I had a (fairly unsatisfying) late lunch at the Bagdad Cafe before walking down 16th and finally back to the Mission. Last (and only) time I’d been was November, and I wanted to go back, if anything for a burrito, but mostly to sketch.

I sat myself on the slopes of Mission Dolores Park, listening to loud latino radio blasted across the fields where local lads played football (not a jumper for a goalpost in site, though), and art students nursed hangovers with beer, being all social and shit. The fog hung low over the city behind, obscuring many of the tall buildings downtown. A guy sat to my left tapped away furiously on his mac book while his dog asked passing strangers to play with him; further back, another group of people looked equally dangerous and uninterested; not far off, a bearded hippy wrote something negative about yoga. And I got my paint set out and sketched on the slope.

I wandered about on Valencia, looking in more bookstores and record boutiques, as well as the odd gallery, before a trip down Mission and into Central America, ending up at last at Needles and Pens to look through their vast array of indie zines (and purchase one or two). By this point I was ridiculously tired, and I had neglected to write down the train time back to Davis, so I forewent the burrito and hopped on the 14 bus.

I did draw the picture below, on a postcard, which I have subsequently mailed to a friend in the UK, who I think would have enjoyed going out sketching in San Francisco. I always do.

the number of the beast

August 2, 20082 Comments

This is post 666. Well, 66 of the new site, plus the 600 from the old site, et voila. That’s a lot of postage.

This week in evil: our Governor signed an executive order (“Execute Order 66”, a famous Sith once declared) ordering state workers to reduce their pay from whatever it is they are earning, down to federal minimum wage, currently $6.55 (ooh! only eleven cents lower than that magic number), because state legistators haven’t yet come up with a budget for our increasingly broke state. Oh, he apologized while he did it, he was almost in leathery Austrian tears over it, but he still did it. Thousands of temporary workers were forced out of their jobs (Terminated, you might say), thousands of families suddenly had a massively reduced income. Oh, they will probably – maybe – get their salaries back once the budget is finally announced, but in the meantime state workers are the pawns. I overheard some pretty angry comments on the way home on Thursday afternoon.

Another Arnie film springs to mind at this time: Total Recall. But in truth, it’s King George’s adminstraitors that have been mismanaging the US economy for eight years that are ultimately to blame. We can’t get a new President in fast enough.

all on a misty morning

August 1, 2008August 1, 2008Leave a comment

SF trip, part 4: After a fairly good sleep, I got up on sunday morning and found the nearest place on Polk that sold enormously sticky custard-filled pastries, and came across a little shop called “You Say Tomato”, which specializes in British (and Irish) foods. And to my delight, they had a can of Lilt!

Yes, Lilt, the pineapple and grapefruit fizzy drink, you can’t get it over here and it’s the perfect sunday morning (when you think you might get a hangover) beverage. They had other stuff, Tizer, Irn-Bru, and I purposely didn’t take too much of a look around in case I was waylaid by loads of cadbury’s chocolates, but I saw a man carrying five or six cans of Heinz Baked Beans: pretty obvious he was British. I found an interesting corner and drew the picture above while drinking my Lilt, carefully removing all of the cars to give the impression that SF has more parking than it really does.

Unlike the day before, Sunday was pretty cool and very foggy, which was a welcome change. I got on the bus and was changing at fillmore, in the bit with all the cute little shops and cafes, when I saw this movie theatre below, and decided to draw that too, in extremely muted sepia tinted colours. And I never did get that hangover.

just like wigan casino

July 30, 2008Leave a comment

dancing. i didn't, by the way.

SF trip, part 3: the evening. I ate at Squat and Gobble (the one on Chestnut, not Haight) before going back to the hotel for a rest. I was thinking of going down to Norh Beach, as I like it round there, or perhaps to the toronado in Haight, where they have a lot of interesting beers. I ended up doing neither, just sticking around near the hotel, up Polk Gulch / Tenderloin. I popped into a small place called Vertigo for a cocktail – for some unknown reason, I fancied one, something fruity. I got one called Polk Punch, which turned out to be the foulest thing I have ever drunk. It had something like grape vodka in it, some nasty shite. so I just went to the Edinburgh Castle on Geary – been there before, know it has good beer, sorted. I was wearing my favourite “northern soul” top, and as luck would have it, it turned out to be a northern soul night! Pretty happy accident. All of the music was utterly amazing. I drew the above at the bar, in blue staedtler triplus fineliner, and then scribbled some dancing, in brown.

A note on the dancing: years ago, I used to go to a tiny club in London, and there was this one guy who I think lived only to dance to northern soul, phenomenally active, dressed the part, hair just so. Anyway there was one guy dancing on Saturday who was almost exactly the same person, you could just tell that was basically what he did, it was his thing every bit as much as crouching over a sketchbook is my thing. Respect, I thought; until I saw he had pulled off his shirt and was dancing only in his tie. Respect lost, I thought again.

Anyway, that was my night out; don’t get them any more, so I’m glad it was set to good music.

“i am a lady and i like to do ladies’ things”

July 29, 2008July 29, 20081 Comment

Part 2 of my SF weekend: I wanted to go and draw things in San Francisco that I hadn’t drawn before, and I’d never been to Alamo Square, but had seen it on so many postcards.

I spent a while up there, enjoying the incredible view and finally drawing some of the painted ladies, those big, um, (victorian, edwardian, i don’t know) houses. I’d taken a bus over to Fillmore, stopping by Japantown on the way, and walking down through the historic jazz part of town to get there. As it was my second drawing there I decided to add colour later, so the black and white version is below. Incredible sunshine, but (even with reapplying sunscreen and travelling in shadows as much as possible) I got a bit burnt. Bugger; always seems to happen to me in San Francisco, but never in oven-hot Davis. Took the 22 out to sketch the bridge after this (go back to part 1).

These are the unpainted ladies.

two from the top and four small ones please

July 29, 20081 Comment

You might think the title should be “little green bag”, but since the bag is blue in real life, I’ve gone for a vorderman reference.

This is my my trusty blue shoulder bag, in which i carry my sketchbook and pencil case, along with something else to write in or perhaps read, everywhere i go. It’s from eddie bauer and has a million pockets; it’s the perfect size. I keep my little waterbottle in one of the side pockets, several other useful items like clips and tissue and business cards and bus schedules to sacramento litter the other pockets. I’ve had such bags before (all bought from one store in Aix-en-Provence), all sketchbook sized and convenient, but never with this many pockets. Drawn in olive green copic 0.1.

And Americans may not know what I’m talking about in this one, so let me explain. Robbie Keane, my favourite footballer (that’s soccerer to you), has left my club Spurs and joined Liverpool, who he supported as a boy. I am gutted, gutted, but I don’t blame Keane, I’m pleased for him; if I played for Liverpool and Spurs came in for me, I’d go yesterday. It’s just, we Spurs fans, all we really wanted was a team of Robbie Keanes. We sold Defoe, the ‘too many strikers’ excuse. Berbatov will go anyway. We’re left with Darren Bent.

And Vorderman leaving Countdown!!! (I wonder how many google searches of ‘vorderman’ and ‘countdown’ will end up here now? I had bloody ‘ars*nal sketchbook’ direct here last week, i’m not happy about that) It’s a world gone mental. I don’t know how to correctly write those last few beats of the countdown music, but imagine them in your head now for vorderman:

dun-uh, dun-uh, dun-uh-nuh-nuh.

no fears, no worries, just a golden country

July 28, 20083 Comments

I spent the weekend in San Francisco, joining the dots, travelling on buses, walking through to my soles and drawing. I noticed that time travels extremely fast when you cannot decide where to go; this was my first SF sketching trip of 2008 and I wanted to make the most of it, while covering some new ground, making discoveries. I discovered that the Nob Hill hotel is staffed by nobs, for one thing. Above: a very famous bridge. This time I walked beneath it and around to the rocky Pacific coastline, what an incredible sight. Below: first drawings of the day, courtesy of the amtrak train. There’s my muni bus transfer, there; a kind driver gave me one that lasted all day. I travelled by bus everywhere in the city for less than a quid. Ever had that in London? Didn’t think so. More to come.