illustrating journeys and urban sketching at the avid reader

June 11, 20139 Comments

Last Saturday evening I was fortunate enough to give a talk at my local bookstore The Avid Reader about travel journals, urban sketching, and Danny Gregory’s latest book ‘An Illustrated Journey‘, in which I have a chapter. I gave a talk there last year about ‘The Art of Urban Sketching‘, and I have always liked that store – it was the place I first worked, years ago, when I came to Davis. I had a little office under the stairs.

Saturday was also the hottest day of the year so far, in fact probably the hottest ever recorded on that date in Davis – 109 degrees Fahrenheit at one point we saw, and that sort of heat will drive you bonkers. So big thanks to all who braved the heat and came out to hear me talk!

An Illustrated Journey & the Art of Urban Sketching

The two books. USk spotters: see also my ‘Lapin’ pencil case and ‘Paul Wang’ Moleskine

Ramble on more like. I had a plan, not a script exactly, but you know how it is, once you start talking about this subject you go off in all directions. That’s how I travel, funnily enough. We had a good turn out, I counted about twenty people. Here is store owner (and my old employer) Alzada Knickerbocker introducing me.

I prepared a big board of sketches to show people during the talk, so I wouldn’t have to keep scouring through sketchbooks to find the example of that one bridge I sketched that one time, and so on. I enjoyed making this, but I accidentally put one image on there twice (doh!).

For each of the attendees I also made something special – a micro-sketchbook, only 3″x4″ big and eight pages long. I cut up a load of different paper, mostly Strathmore drawing paper, but also some thinner Canson paper, some watercolour paper, some squared paper, even a few grey tinted sheets. I also cut up a whole bunch of those brown Chinese envelopes I like to draw on, the ones I get at work from all the graduate applications I deal with. I stapled them together, stuck a little ‘Pete’ sketch on the front and voila, micro-sketchbooks. I made a whole bunch, and I will probably give out the rest at the next sketchcrawl, or bring them to Barcelona.

I had a lot of very good questions at the end, most of which I was able to answer without going into too much of a tangent. I hope. I wanted to get across the message that sketching is for everyone, accessible and approachable and doable, and that the important thing is to use sketching as a tool to observe and build a relationship with the place in which you exist. Location sketching, especially when travelling, is much more rewarding as documentation of your travels than drawing from a photo later on. When you sketch on location, you are in effect having a conversation with a place. When you’re not together, it’s not really much of a conversation.

I enjoyed my conversations with everyone who came on Saturday and met some interesting folk! It was nice to have a few familiar faces there too for support (including my very supportive wife, and my young son who sat quietly to the side drawing the whole time, good lad). Thanks also to Alzada and the Avid Reader for inviting me to speak again.

Keep on sketching!

an illustrated journey at the avid reader

June 3, 20136 Comments

Exciting news! This Saturday, June 8th, I will be giving a talk at the Avid Reader bookstore about keeping travel sketchbooks, and presenting Danny Gregory’s excellent book “An Illustrated Journey”, which as you will recall I contributed a chapter. The book features drawings and writing from forty traveling artists from around the globe and I was honoured to be involved and am constantly inspired by seeing the work of others. Bring your own travel journals and sketchbooks to show!

WHEN: Saturday June 8th, 2013 @7:30pm

WHERE: The Avid Reader, 617 2nd St, Davis CA

Hope to see you there!

Facebook event page

ka-chow!

June 1, 20132 Comments

Just a selection of the various variants of Lightning McQueen, my son’s favourite toy character. And of course upon finishing this, he points out which ones I did not draw, cars which to me look identical but to him have one slight variation that makes the most immense difference. Minute details are everything to that five year old. Never, ever forget: young kids are not stupid, they notice EVERYTHING, way more than adults do. It keeps me on my toes, let me tell you. I was the same, as a five year old counting the vertebrae on the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, oh I was the same. This was drawn in the excellent Stillman and Birn ‘Alpha’ book I’ve reserved for pictures of the boy’s things. I like Lightning McQueen as well, “Cars” is fun.

end of the season

June 1, 2013June 1, 2013Leave a comment

Last week my son had his final t-ball game of the season. T-ball for those who don’t know (and I didn’t, until I was in this world) is baseball for four-five year olds, the lowest level of the Davis Little League system. Little League is played by just about all of the six hundred million kids in Davis, and the games of t-ball (so called because for the first few weeks they use a tee to hit the ball from, until they are used to live pitching) are played on the fields at Community Park. The bigger kids play at the Little League field across the street. Parents have to volunteer for a bunch of stuff, and I did a morning shift recently working at the Snack Shack, which was fun. Anyway, my son’s last game for the Diamondbacks was against the Reds, which means you might not be able to tell the teams apart in the sketch above (in the watercolour Moleskine), which doesn’t matter much since I sketched pretty randomly. Also, there is no scoring in t-ball – all the kids get to hit, and run, and field. Playing first base is the best thing because the kids always have something to do. See when a kid hits, it just gets thrown to first base, and then back to the pitcher. After the game, we had a pizza party for the kids, and they all got little trophies (there it si below sketched in the Stillman & Birn Alpha book). Next year he’ll move up to the next level (‘farm’) where they use a pitching machine. But first, the All-Star Game…

moment of brief cool

May 29, 20133 Comments

Memorial Day was Monday, and for once we had some cooler weather. Yea, even a drop of rain. Not much though. I went out and drew a building that I have sketched before, in more leafless times, coincidentally on another public holiday. On US national holidays, the flags come out in downtown Davis. Cooper House on 4th St is a lovely historic building, and I stood sketching while listening to podcasts about football and about history and about language (right there are my main interests). Sketched in Micron Pigma 01 on Canson paper. I enjoyed this brief moment of cool air; this weekend we are back to the hot weather. We’ll be hitting the hundreds. Ouch, Davis.

“At the market. Corner of 3rd and C. Near the Hotdogger. By the basket shop…”

May 26, 20132 Comments

Last weekend we had another Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl at the Davis Farmers Market. It’s always a good place to sketch. Located in Central Park, it’s the centre of our town’s life on a Saturday morning, a bustling colourful meeting place where the local people come together.

As I was sketching the place above, which serves as the information centre for the market, as well as a great place to buy baskets, a woman behind me was on the phone giving very loud directions to a friend who was supposed to be meeting her there. “I’m at the Market. Corner of 3rd and C. Near the Hotdogger. By the Basket Shop. There are Musicians. Near the Indian Food Stall. At the Basket Shop. Yes Near the Entrance. By the Benches. Next to the Basket Shop.” etc. When finally she put the phone down, she had to repeat the entire exchange to her husband, who presumably had learned to zone it all out. “I told her, I said meet me at the Market. Corner of 3rd and C. Near the Hotdogger. By the Basket Shop. There are Musicians. The Basket Shop, I told her.” And so on. Finally her friend arrived, looking ever so lost despite the clear and well-drilled directions, but they were so excited to see each other, that the lady once again said, “Yes well I told you to meet me here, Corner of 3rd and C. Near the Hotdogger. By the Basket Shop. There are Musicians. And Baskets, and Indian Food,” etc etc. You see, it’s great to come to the market and take in all the sights and sounds of everyday folks’ conversation.

My last sketch was made on 4th St. It was much quieter there.

celebrate davis 2013

May 24, 20131 Comment

Last Thursday May 16 was the tenth annual “Celebrate Davis” event, held at Community Park, the big park near my house. There were food stands, live music, bouncy castles for kids, a petting zoo, a big zipline was set up, even a dunk tank where kids can throw balls at a button to send some poor volunteer splashing into a vat of water. Mostly there were stands from various different businesses from Davis, this event being organized by the Chamber of Commerce. I did a little bit of sketching: above is Cochon Volant BBQ (“Flying Pig”), which I sketched with the smell of grilled pork wafting all around. I don’t eat pork any more but I’m sure it was lovely. I also sketched an old police car which was parked nearby, the local police were letting kids get in to take photos. This looks very 70s TV cop show to me. I wonder if it ever drove through big piles of boxes on the sidewalk, like they did in the 70s, on cop shows, on TV.

Celebrate Davis 2013 ended with its usual spectacular firework display, which thnaks to out location we can see from the comfort of our bedroom window.

formula 1 on mother’s day

May 16, 2013May 16, 20131 Comment

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day in America (two months later than England). We were over in Santa Rosa, and we all had doughnuts on Sunday morning (or ‘donuts’ as they insist on spelling them over here), after which my son and I watched the Formula One, for it was the Spanish Grand Prix, which was won by Spanish driver Fernando Alonso. I sketched the living room in my Moleskine, while family milled about. Sketched with brown uni-ball signo um-151, with a spot of red paint.

Hope you mothers all had a happy mother’s day!

let’s draw the market

May 13, 20131 Comment

Join us for another sketchcrawl in Davis California! I’ve not had as much time lately to organize these as often as I would have liked, but the sun is out and the birds are singing, and so there’s no excuse not to do some urban sketching. This time we will meet at the Farmer’s Market (meet at the corner of 3rd and C) at 10:30am, and sketch the market and the are around before meeting up again at 3:00pm by the Carousel in Central Park to check out each others sketchbooks.

WHEN: Saturday May 18, 2013
START: 10:30am Farmer’s Market (3rd and C)
FINISH: 3:00pm Central Park, by Carousel

This event is free and open to anyone who likes sketching. It’s fun to meet other sketchers, and urban sketching is a great way to look at the town where we live.

Facebook Event page

some forever, not for better

May 7, 20135 Comments

At the end of 2012 I sketched a series about the final days of the old boiler building on the UC Davis campus, as it was being torn down.It has been an empty space ever since, though there are currently odd piles of dirt dotted around like giant molehills that weren’t there before. What will take this place is the Music Recital Hall. You can see if you look really closely something resembling a tiny puddle. Well, not much of one. Last night, for the first time in absolutely ages (three months maybe?), we had rain in Davis. Loud, epic, sweep away your shed rain. Any rain in Davis gets a weather warning it seems (water from the sky is just such a weird concept), this one got a flood warning too. It never rains, quite literally, but it pours. And then it is gone. And people are probably already saying, it rains so much here in spring. A couple of weeks ago with the onset of 90s weather looming I overheard someone say that “we’ve had a week of spring and then it’s summer!” as if it hadn’t been in the 60s and 70s and full of sunshine since January. I also heard someone say that we have had a really long winter this year. That was in mid-January. Seriously, dudes.

The first year I was here, though, we had some proper extreme weather. Rain like I haven’t seen since, for months, with massive floods on New Years Day. I just assumed that it was a permanent lake between here and Sacramento, it was a real surprise to me when I first saw the land part of those wetlands by the Causeway. The rains and snowmelt finally gave way to summer, and what a summer that was. We had two weeks where it didn’t fall below a hundred degrees, even at night, and while I’ve experienced hot summers since, there has been nothing quite like that summer of 2006. Here is a sketch from back then which illustrates it. This Londoner just doesn’t do such heat. Well, summer is coming.