Had about fifteen minutes or so yesterday lunchtime to to a quick sketch, so popped by the Arboretum to use my wonderful new pen. I scribbled some paint on the paper first, the typical Davis colours, and it was a fun exercise. This is a quiet time on campus, when the students are all gone and the sun is out and strong.
A bigger, more complicated drawing for the previously mentioned amazing pen. This is Crouch End, an area of London we lived in for three years. This is the clocktower at the junction of Crouch End Broadway. This took a while. The Old Crown pub one I drew before took just under an hour, while this took several hours, spread over a couple of evenings and a lunchtime, but it’s bigger and more ridiculously detailed. I haven’t drawn a mega-tiny-detailed street scene in a while, and of course I’m playing with (and draining all the ink from) this incredible pen. It’s like the elder wand of pens, it just feels so nice to draw with that i want to keep drawing.
Drawn with uniball signo UM-151 on Canson classic cream drawing paper (first time i’ve used it since getting it at last year’s portland symposium), size is a bit shy of 8″x8″. I think I’ll do some more of these.
I found an AMAZING pen. The Uni-ball Signo UM-151, seemed harmelss enough, but when I picked it up for the first time and wrote my name it was like that scene in the wandshop in Harry Potter, “the pen chooses the artist”. I have to try this out in a drawing, I said to myself. It flowed amazingly, it stayed wonderfully black, and it was just so easy to use. Sure, it could not take a wash – that’s ok. I have a lot of pens that can. But would it work on that waxy smooth regular Moleskine paper found in their non-watercolour sketchbooks? That yellowy paper upon which I have tried and failed to find a pen I enjoyed using on it? (For my Davis Moleskine I settled on the Pitt pens, as the micron just wouldn’t work with it. The one I sketched this in is one I began back in 2006…) Oh yes, it worked alright. I spent a lunchtime drawing the Old Crown pub on Highgate Hill (above) from a photo, and just fell in love with the pen. I’ve already started planning out whole drawing projects around it, like a surprise midfield playmaker. I may even take it to London with me, to meet the family. I only hope the ink doesn’t run out before Lisbon, as these pens aren’t easy to find (I see stocking up online somewhere in my future).
Incidentally, I only ever went to that pub once, but I lived a short walk from here on Hornsey Lane for three years. I used to catch the 143 bus from just across the road every day (that mad dash in the morning, oh London commuting I miss you…), and one day I did sketch it in my old long-ago ‘blue’ sketchbook, but never drew it again. I took a photo on a trip a few years ago and am only now drawing it. It’s a cool building, in an area of cool buildings.
The pens have a new king.
Sir Fergie. He’s happy because he looks a bit like John Craven in this drawing. The football season is over, and it has been a long long time since I drew anything in the football book started last year, despite having an amazing football season to report on (namely, Spurs in the Champions League). I thought I’d make up for it with a few drawings of the faces of the season. Well, one drawing. Sir Alex Ferguson won yet another Premier League title this year, Manchester United’s 19th (a new record), and though they ultimately lost the Champions League final (once again to Barcelona), he’s without a doubt cemented his place as the best and most consistent of all managers in English (maybe even British) football history. Fair play to him. Refs hate him, Arsene Wenger doesn’t send him Christmas cards, and the FA seem to have an automatic ‘fine Fergie for something’ reminder on their Outlook calendars. I tell you what, football will be very different when he’s gone. He is the embodiment of the manager truly being the Boss, and for those who argue with him, he has a hell of a lot of silverware, and he’s not afraid to throw it at you.
This is the Robber, which came with the jet-ski as part of my son’t Playmobil Police Helicopter set. It’s great fun in the bath; that little metal thing at the bottom helps it stay upright and afloat. It’s funny how we know he’s supposed to be a robber because he is unshaven and wearing sunglasses (footballers and movie stars beware); I’m surprised Playmobil don’t make a little Hoodie, with a little toy Staff. Maybe for their ‘run-down estate street corner’ set. Maybe the title for this post should be ‘Thievin’ on a Jet-Ski’. This was drawn in Copic 0.05 multiliner in the small WH Smith sketchbook (one page until that one is finished!).
The fire-truck below however was sketched in my large ‘Urban Sketchers’ Canson sketchbook, from last year’s Portland Symposium. I realised that I’d not sketched this in a couple of years, since my son first got it at his great-grandma’s up in Oregon, and though it’s pretty beat up it’s his favourite of the fire trucks. I sketched it while watching some ‘Wolverine and the X-Men’ cartoons on tv, and wasn’t really paying attention when drawing the wheels – oops – but the rest is all where it should be.
Finally, I drew this a week ago or so, but another of the toy cars (and amazingly a toy that isn’t red). It’s the ‘muddy’ Techron car. These ones are fun to play with, and were given by his cousins. Plus every time we watch the San Francisco Giants play, they show up on a billboard at the edge of the field.
To see more toy drawings, go to my Flickr set “Toys“. Drawing toys is a really great way to remember a fun age!
This is a house in Davis that I drew as a commission last month. It was an interesting house to draw, with lots of colourful foliage in the front yard, and so I tried to capture the house’s interesting character without getting lost in the greenery, and I’m quite happy with the result. The image is 7″x5″ and was done with ink and watercolour on watercolour paper.
Looking at this hortuculture again reminded me of a page I kept from my ‘Forgotten English’ calendar (by Jeffrey Kacirk – each day gives you a word no longer used in English. Today’s is “Alfridaria”, which has something to do with the supposed power that planets hold over people). The word was ‘hortyard’, meaning a garden or orchard, and it describes how that and the word ‘orchard’ originate in the Old English ‘ortgeard’, the first element being related to the Latin ‘hortus’ (‘garden’). It’s funny because I’ve been talking about gardens and yards here thinking of the way I use the word back home – when I say I’d like to have a garden, I just mean a back yard, but over here people naturally assume I mean I want to plant flowers and shrubs, and I don’t – I’m not a gardener!
If you would like an original drawing of your house, or of someone you know (would make a nice present), or even of a place in Davis or elsewhere I’d be happy to hear from you! I can draw from photos, and usually draw at 7″x5″ but can go larger. You can also find original drawings and prints to buy on my Etsy store – see the nice button I have added in the right column on this blog, or just click here: etsy.com/shop/petescully.
My son’s beloved toy ‘rescue boat’. I knew this was a winner when I got it at Toys R Us, only ten bucks. But it’s a rescue boat, definitely not a speedboat. Hey, three-year-olds know best. He always corrects me when I play with his fire trucks – “no daddy, not ‘woo-woo-woo’, it’s ‘nee-naw-nee-naw’!” Different fire engines make different siren noises in his world, but hey, he’s the expert, he should know. Jeez, before long it’ll be, “Daddy, Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language, don’t you know anything?”
Taco Bell at the UC Davis Silo. I eat here every so often (though one time they mistakenly charged me 16 times for the same item – oops!). I’ve been sketching my places-of-lunch lately, so here it is, in dark blue micron pen in my wh smith sketchbook.
Yesterday was Drawing Day 2011. I had intended to do a big complicated many-windowed much-detailed drawing, but never really made the time. I did draw my son’s toy bus though, while he was eating lunch. This is from London and he loves double-decker buses, which he calls “ducker-buckle-bus”. I love the side of the bus, “We Go Everywhere”. And apparently they do – From St.Pauls to the London Eye via Oxford Street and Madame Tussauds? That’s a roundabout route, for sure, but good for the tourists.
The inside back cover of watercolour moleskine #7, these are just some of the materials used in this sketchbook.
So, Moleskine 7 started in December in London, with the first page being drawn in a blizzard. With the last page being at the end of May in Davis you might think it went from a blizzard to a heatwave, and in any other year it may have, but right now Davis is unseasonably cold, wet and windy.
You can see the whole sketchbook, from Dec 2010 to May 2011, on the Moleskine 7 flickr set.
petescully 