i think i know, but i don’t know why

May 5, 20089 Comments

My illustration friday entry for this week, theme: SEED

and so, a load of pens, what’s that got to do with seed? Geoffrey of Monmouth and Baugh & cable; seed? I tell you it has, and you know the answer. It’s quite a lame connection, to be honest.

This was, incidentally (for pen fetishists) drawn in copic multiliner 0.05.

By the way, I like the difference between ‘A History’ and ‘The History’. I think you should always trust ‘A’ over ‘The’ (especially a Galfridian ‘The’).

(yes, Galfridian is one of my favourite words – actually, it is my favourite word – and I always look for an excuse to use it).

stop dreaming of the quiet life

May 3, 2008May 3, 2008Leave a comment

What a great week for british football, what a bad week for the labour party, what a terrible week for London. Now let’s see how many election promises boris can break (banning bendy buses? you are, as they say, avinalarf, intya). My own week started off badly; After a sad rescue attempt, I finally abandoned the bike, being unable to move the back wheel at all. I felt very sad, like I was shooting my horse or something. None of my tools could fix it (yes, I have the odd tool). Then a bird pooed on my new trousers and favourite shirt. I’ve also been off drawing, just haven’t been able to do it, partly just bored with the same trees at lunchtime, partly head interior all fuzzy. Hey, it’s May; funny how that happened so quickly.

This is the back of my building at work, lunchtime today, from a bench. I will draw in colour again, I promise.

london please! don’t vote for johnson

May 1, 2008May 1, 2008Leave a comment

A famous Johnson once compared being tired of London to being tired of life.

For those Americans who may not have heard, it’s the London Mayoral Election, May 1st – though April 1st might have been more appropriate, because there is a good chance a complete bloody fool will get elected. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka ‘Boris’, aka that posh bloke with the mad blond hair who’s always on the telly making more gaffes than Beazer Homes, wants to leave his cosy safe Henley seat for City Hall, where he promises to improve public transport, and get rid of bendy buses (which despite making all those headlines in the anti-Ken Evening Standard, actually make London buses far more accessible than the old routemasters, and carry more people than regular double-deckers; they’ve also worked fine for years in many other big European cities). Boris Eton/Henley/Oxford Johnson, who I doubt has ever taken a bus except for a publicity shoot, in charge of public transport?

My fellow Londoners (though I am now absent), I implore you, do not give the mayoral job to Boris Upper Class Twit of the Year Johnson. If you want a cartoon buffoon with few social skills and a history of slagging off other cities for not being as upper class and Henley as him, if you want a right-wing mayor who has no interest in London, if you want Zippy out of Rainbow with Worzel Gummidge’s hair whose campaign rests on bloody bendy buses, vote for him by all means, but I think London deserves better. Whether you like Ken or not he has done a great job as our first mayor, from increasing the number of buses to the improvement of public spaces (Trafalgar Square is actually a place worth visiting now); having a clown like Johnson in office will make a mockery of what is still a very new post. Even if you don’t vote for Ken, please, for London’s sake, don’t vote for Johnson.

After all, when Johnson tires of London, he can just swan off back to Henley.

tombé en panne

April 26, 2008April 27, 20084 Comments

Today was very hot in Davis; not good for allergies, not good if you hate bugs, not good for redheads like pete. After spending the morning playing guitar to the baby I decided to get out on the bike to draw. My bike, however, did not think so. After twenty minutes, on the bike path, it just died; the back wheel refused to spin. I wrestled with it in the heat for an hour, getting filthy, before taking it to a bike shop, where they apparently fixed it by turning a nut with a wrench. Ok, thanks, yes I tried that with my bare hands, that might have been the problem. I cleaned up, and finally got to draw something, choosing a particularly nondescript corner, in fairly nondescript sepia, because I was in a mood.

I then got on my bike to go home. And after ten minutes, the chain went, and then five minutes later the back wheel stopped again, stopped like a french worker in striking season (that’s about this time of year, usually). I had to abandon it, I had no phone with me, there were no payphones, and so I walked home defeated in the heavy heat.

I think the phrase is ‘Bugger’.

no colours any more

April 25, 2008April 25, 2008Leave a comment

The silo, yet again, at lunchtime, encore une fois, in sepia, for a change, today. Hey. it’s at a slightly different angle. I sat on my little stool beneath a tree (it was a lovely sunny day). The last time I drew it though (a month ago, in sepia) the tower was bare, now it is full of leaves and a luscious summery green (um, as you can see in this very brown picture).

Brown…when I was a kid, I used to think Bran Flakes were actually called Brown Flakes, because they were brown, and we were from London, that’s how you say it. Bran Flakes. Similarly, whenever Americans would talk of what we know as cling-film, Saram-Wrap, I thought it was called Surround-Wrap (again, makes sense, ‘cos it saraands it), because my accent said so. Quite a surprise when I found out. Maybe my way makes more sense.

illustration friday: primitive

April 23, 2008April 25, 20089 Comments

I still have all the postcards i’ve ever been sent. I still love sending postcards myself, from all the places I visit.

These days, fewer people bother. One friend told me he doesn’t send them any more, since there’s email and texting and facebook, but that misses the point of the postcard. Another friend, on the other hand, he sends me postcards from various places he visits in the UK on his acting tours, and I love it. You don’t collect those emails in a dusty old shoebox that you come across many years later (one of the postcards in the picture was sent by my oldest friend, tel, from a holiday in devon when he was about 13 or 14, when it was the furthest he’d ever been; now he lives in korea). You can’t stick those facebook wall entries to your fridge. Writing and sending postcards does take a little effort, but it’s an enjoyable effort, and brings a little more sunshine into the world than seeing “inbox: 1”.

Here’s my illustration friday entry for this week, theme: primitive. Here’s to the more primitive forms of communication. Answers on a postcard.

the day breaks, your mind aches

April 14, 2008April 25, 20087 Comments

I’m in California, but this is Aix-en-Provence. I spent a year there from 2001 to 2002; I met my wife there, and she met me there too. I drew this last night, Micron Pen 01, and intended to add a wash, possibly in a warm sepia; I still might, but quite like it as it is.

Aix is art country. I did draw a lot while I was there, and paint, but I wish I could go back and draw and paint more, in the way I do nowadays. The light is amazing there – like in California, but possibly better. You have toi watch out for dog-poo though, and dog-people. Et les nains de jardin au parc jourdan, bien sur.

a song outside my window

April 13, 20085 Comments

I would open the window, look out towards the tall trees of the park, smell the dewy morning air, listen to the birds, watch the streetlights slowly flicker off, one by one.

modern love walks on by

April 12, 2008April 12, 20081 Comment

it got very hot today in Davis – 88, 90 degrees? felt like more – and in the afternoon I went cycling, and drew this house on B street. So hot for April, when in England I hear it’s raining. Rain? Is that the one where the water falls out of the sky?

from the pencil of young pete

April 8, 2008June 24, 2010Leave a comment

I drew this 19 years ago, when I was just thirteen. 19 years ago!! The Berlin Wall was still up! Nelson Mandela was still in prison! George Bush was the new President of the USA!

I was digging through my old drawings from when I was a kid recently and thought I should share them with you. I remember drawing this (I still use the ‘mechanical’ eraser I used in this very drawing, there’s continuity for you!); I was a huge Beatles fan, and trawled the record stores and junk shops of London for old original LPs (plus a load of old albums my uncle gave me). Note how I’ve given Macca his real first name too.

I did another version of it at 16 (below left), in 1992, with stronger values and less chin, but I prefer the first one for its innocence. I was doing my GCSE art in ’92 and several of the other pictures below are from that time; below right is a watercolour copy of Cezanne that I did at 15 or 16, from a postcard picked up at the National Gallery – I used to go down to London most weekends to go to the galleries (and the record stores).

Ten years later I ended up living in Cezanne’s town of Aix-en-Provence, which is where I met my wife (and therefore how I ended up living in the US). Funny old world.

Below is another from 16-year old Pete in 1992, an unfinished one of Jesus from some other painting I can’t remember. An interesting choice for such an atheistic lad as I, but even though I’m A NonBeliever I know aestheticism sometimes trumps atheisim; years later I did a one-person art performance piece at university about being drunk on the underground, which ended up with me on a crucifix (supposed to be King’s Cross).

The pencil one below left is a pastorly Peter Cushing (looking more like the Crow Man), also from 1992. I seemed to have an easier time with light and dark values back then than I do now. It’s from one of my horror-movie books; I was really into old Hammer Horror films (I have another sketch of Christopher Lee too), and in 1992 I wrote and performed an eight-song musical called “Dracula AD 1992” (an homage to the 1972 Hammer movie), which included such classic songs as “This Motel’s Giving Me The Willies” and “Freshly Impaled Village Maidens”. Below right: a later picture, 1995, 19 years old and obsessed with oil pastels. Doesn’t look massively like me, but you get the idea. I didn’t wear glasses very often back then.