sketching shadows

July 27, 2023Leave a comment

Before posting the sketches from the recent vacation (I am still scanning them all), I’ll probably post some more recent ones. This was sketched from the living room couch, as I was up early to watch the Formula 1, the British Grand Prix. I got sick at the end of our trip, enduring a painful couple of flights home, and then when we all got sick next day it turned out to be the Covid, the first time any of us have had it. It finally got us (thanks Britain!). We’re all vaccinated, so it wasn’t a very strong case (apart form that couple of nights when it was painful to swallow), but with the travel exhaustion I was feeling pretty knocked about. On top of that, my ears from the flight took almost a week to get back to something like normal, my hearing was totally off, the longest that’s ever taken. We just sat at home, getting hot, our ancient air-conditioning system from the 1970s starting to leak (but not actually fail – it’s kept us cool for years, never broken down). We had to just run it for very short periods so it would not leak, and the weather outside, well summer in Davis in the time of Global Boiling. So we eventually bit the bullet and got the local air-conditioning experts in last weekend to replace it with a brand new system, cost a bit of dosh, but well worth it. The new system is great, much quieter, more energy efficient (we hope), and was installed on a day when it was 107 degrees Fahrenheit outside so came just in time. On the morning I sketched this though, it wasn’t so bad, it was 7am, I had the window open, and that morning light that pours over the houses we back onto looked perfect for just drawing the shadows, so I just painted this quickly. Max Verstappen won the Grand Prix, as he always does now. We had doughnuts, and despite not feeling well, it was nice to be back on our couch, watching the racing.

do something pretty while you can

July 24, 2023July 22, 2023Leave a comment

To finish off the batch of sketching that I did in Davis between my UK visits, here are a bunch of lunchtime drawings from UC Davis of places that all kind of look the same. Some of them are the same place, just different sides of the building. The one above is the Bike Barn; the one below is the other side of it. I’ve drawn all these before, nothing to add really.

Why do I sketch? I ask myself this all the time. Well not all the time, but every now and then. And I might have a different answer each time if anyone asks. The answer itself may evolve over the years, but the actual reason never does. Do I question myself, question my need to sketch all the time? Yep, absolutely. It’s why I like urban sketching symposia and sketchcrawls and those things, because it’s helpful to meet other people who sketch, learn why they do it, not feel so bad for needing to sketch all the time myself. Sketching does relax me, helps me stop and focus. It can frustrate me too, when I hit those walls of “all my sketches look the same” or “why can’t I make it feel a bit more effortless?” but sometimes when it hits exactly what you want it to and doesn’t take very long, I feel amazing afterwards and feel like I can accomplish anything. I do love drawing; I sometimes feel like I am too obsessed with it, when I get irritable because I’ve not been able to sketch, or if I have three pages left in my sketchbook but really want to fill them with something interesting, and not just of the same buildings near work or stuff around my house, or the living room. One of the reasons I draw is to capture a moment in time. “To remember, in case someday I forget” is how I have put it in the past. So with this in mind, all of these drawings from campus maybe reflect a bit of that. The ones above, look they look like several other sketches I have done of those buildings before. But what if next year they put new signs up, or replace all those flowers with bike racks? This sort of thing’s happened, and my old sketches show the area how it used to look. The one below has part of the under-construction new wing of the Chemistry building in it, already looking slightly different to how I drew it in the sketch in the previous post. It will look different again in six months. The are to the left looked different just a couple of years ago. This was also sketched on the first day of Commencement, the graduation ceremony days, and walking by in the left is a professor in their black professorial robes, you can tell what time of year it is because of that.

I do question myself though, what if I just stopped and told myself I didn’t need to sketch any more? Or not sketch as much, just sketch occasionally and not worry about filling up all these books? Spend more time thinking about other things. I do use the time during sketching to think though. I also listen to podcasts, audiobooks, music. When sketching the building below – K. Esau Science Hall, which I don’t think I’d sketched before – I was listening to the audiobook of Lockwood and Co (just finished that series, it was very good), and I finished this whole sketch in my lunchtime, and that felt pretty good. Besides, I sketch in my spare time so that I can keep my skills up, so whenever I do a drawing for money those skills just roll right back out. My style looks like me, I always try to make improvements or rather move towards how I want the drawings to look, while balancing the fact that this is how my eyes see, my hands draw, and often a drawing is reflection of how I physically and mentally am at any given moment. If I’m uncomfortable when I draw, it comes out. This world is a crazy and overwhelming place, so many issues and terrifying things vying for my attention, politically things seems to be dragging towards horrible again (or the horrible lot would have us believe), and I know there is good in the world, it’s just that I need to go into my sketchbook sometimes to focus my mind on what’s right in front of me.

I dunno. There may come a time when my hands go, or my eyesight packs in (on our way there, lads!), or the supreme court makes it illegal to draw pictures of fire hydrants, or whatever. I have not been active in the social media sketching groups, the Facebook groups and what not, though I post on the Instagram and still occasionally on that Twitter (and I still post all my stuff on Flickr like it’s 2007), I’m not all in with the groups any more. I just write and focus here mostly, like when I started, before Urban Sketchers. I’m less visible these days I guess, and I’m ok with that, I’m just getting on with the act of being a mostly-daily but always obsessed urban sketcher, telling my little stories, written to myself.

Next up, sketches and stories from the June trip back to England, as well as eight days in Scotland. I have more stories to tell. Then there’s a load of drawings from my day out in San Francisco last weekend, avoiding the heat, searching for the last few pints of Anchor Steam in the world. I’ll probably need a rest after wall this, but as it stands I’m still a couple of pages from finishing Sketchbook #47, and I like to finish a sketchbook in good time, so I can’t rest until it’s done. I need to catch up with the scanning though…

Chemistry Building latest news

July 23, 2023July 21, 2023Leave a comment

I have this compulsion to draw the construction projects on campus – it gives me something sort-of new to draw, and I can pretend I have some sort of special purpose or something, like I’m some sort of official documenter of change on this campus, when really I’m just obsessed with filling my sketchbook and find drawing relaxing. When I get a good lunchtime sketch done I feel satisfied and it propels me to be productive for the rest of the day. That’s what I tell myself anyway, but I remember noticing that in times when I was super busy at work, I also got more sketching done in my spare time than at other times of the year. Like in some Januarys, always one of the busiest times of the year, I would be drawing these big panoramas almost daily. Anyway, this is yet another update of the Chemistry Building’s new wing. As I write, the whole thing is now covered in orange. They covered it in green, then in orange, and the end result will be white, so the Irish flag is fully involved in this one. Incidentally, when I was in Scotland I witnessed some of the Orange marches for the first time ever, both in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, that was interesting (but nothing to do with the Chemistry building). I’m not sure when this building’s construction will be fully done, but rest assured there will be a sketch of it posted on this site, because I can’t help myself can I.

You can see the rest of the in-construction sketches of the Chemistry building, and all previous ones pre-reonovation, at: https://petescully.com/tag/chemistry/.

davis world cup 2023

July 22, 2023July 21, 2023Leave a comment

I got back to the US in time to take part in the organizing committee for the 2023 Davis World Cup. We handled the gear, medals, pins, logos, website, etc. I had done most of my work (which was the design) some time ago, but while I was away the stickers, medals, pins and t-shirts had arrived. The Davis World Cup is a youth soccer tournament that has been going for many years, involving teams from regions across northern California aged from U10 to U19. I started designing the logos in 2019, having coached a team in the 2018 tournament. I do spend a lot of time trying to come up with ideas, trying to make them a bit different (so many tournaments use a pretty bog-standard vector logo these days, some variation of a shield and a ball). I wanted this year’s to be very different to the round retro Top of the Pops style logo I did for 2022 (which was just the 2020 logo re-used since 2020 was cancelled), have an actual player on it (non-gender specific, and I could change the kit – the main design had a Brazil kit), and make it look fun, make it look like an event which is for the kids. I have a new logo already thought up for next year, a different retro style, but I was really pleased with the 2023 logo and it gave me a lot to play with. The design above is the one we sued for the colourful stickers each player received. They also got metal pins; although we did not provide t-shirts this year, they could buy those from the on-site vendors.

I didn’t sketch much at the tournament (I was all sketched out from the London trip), but I did draw a quick one at a game we went to check out at Nugget Field. I didn’t watch many games this time at all in fact, and my own son’s team wasn’t taking part. Still it is always great helping to make this fun tournament happen every year, and I’m glad to have been able to create a look for it that I think was pretty popular. Here are the two main versions used on the t-shirts, one of which has a Mexico style kit:

Learn more about the Davis World cup at: https://www.davisworldcup.org/. We’ll be back in 2024!

temperature’s rising

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023Leave a comment

This is a big motorcycle in front of the Varsity Theatre in Davis, drawn in the period between trips to the UK. I was pretty busy in those interstitial weeks, work-wise, but I got some sketching done. Got to fill those sketchbooks. This was early June. Now it is mid-July and the temperatures are all up in the 107s, which is really oppressive. We are having our air-conditioning system replaced tomorrow, on one of the hottest days of the year, because our current one has been leaking. Not a lot, but enough to be a worry. It’s really old (it’s from the 1970s apparently, one of the oldest left in the units in our neighbourhood) but has worked well for so long, previous occupants never needed to replace it. It’s overdue though, and the new one will hopefully be a lot more energy efficient. Very expensive to replace though; the fun of homeownership. You cannot live without air-conditioning in Davis, or anywhere in the California central valley. This place gets super hot. I remember my first summer here, 2006, it was the hottest I had ever been. I was working in the evenings at the Avid Reader bookshop on 2nd Street, very close to where this was drawn, and there were power outages in parts of town so people were going out in the evenings to wherever had cool air-conditioning. So our little bookshop was packed. It was a community event, almost. I don’t remember if we sold a lot of books on those evenings but I spoke to a lot of locals. Now the building across the way, the historic Varsity Theatre, that has the distinction of being the first building in Davis open to the public that had air-conditioning. We have been freezing our butts off in cinemas ever since. Speaking of cinemas, or movie theaters as they prefer to say here, one of the other two in Davis closed recently. Those other two are Regal cinemas, often showed the same films, and were just a couple of blocks away from each other. It was the one I liked to go to that closed, unfortunately, the one with better stadium seating, and hardly ever anyone there. I’ve definitely been to see films there where I have been the only person, which is great for me, but not really solid business. No wonder their sodas are so expensive, it’s the only way they can stay afloat.

flying back home again

July 21, 2023July 19, 2023Leave a comment

Here is yet another in-flight sketch. You’d think I’d be bored of them by now (I am, actually) but drawing on a long journey does help me to relax. I’m so sick of flying and airports, but it’s the quickest way to get to the place 5000 miles away that I need to get to, since teleportation doesn’t exist. As on the flight over, I had the whole row to myself and the legroom was alright (very unlike my more recent flights to/from the UK). I was able to add more detail to or finish off some of the many sketches I’d done on this trip, and it was pretty smooth all in all. I drew this in the small Fabriano Venezia book, I love using pencil in that book and will try to use pencil a bit more, to do something different to the pen thing the whole time. It was a productive trip, I went back to places I had not been in many many years, put them in my sketchbook, saw people I’d not seen in years, but at the end of it I really wanted to get back home. I love going home to London, but I really love coming home again to California. I’m really lucky I ended up here.

Afternoon at the Nags

July 19, 2023July 19, 20232 Comments

After spending the day in South Ken and Knightsbridge, I sought out another place I have not been to in over two decades. The Nags Head, in a quiet back road behind the busy Knightsbridge, was an old favourite place of mine in the late 90s, where I would go with my friends Rob (a mate from university), and Nick (an old schoolfriend of Rob, whose family lived in an apartment steps away from the pub). It’s an old place, stock full with interesting decoration, like a step into another world. And it had not changed in all this time. The landlord Kevin Moran was there; I remember him from all those years ago, and I had a nice chat with him while sat inside the pub, cooling off from the very hot weather outside. He was telling me of his various travels. When I first came by, I actually started to do a sketch outside, with the intention of finishing that and coming in to cool off, but I was already so warm that I did only the outline outside, stood in the narrow street in the sunshine. There was a group of South African lads outside (not pictured in the sketch); when I was waiting to order a pint I heard one say to Mr Moran, while pointing out a sketch of the pub that was hanging on the wall, that he saw another artist outside doing a drawing a bit like this. There were about two or three different sketches of the pub on the walls, inside and outside. I said, “Yeah that was me!” and showed them what I’d done already. The music was nice in there, very relaxing, and Mr. Moran chatted with his customers, and would ask how people were doing, sometimes popping out for a chat with the South African lads. I sketched the inside as I drank my cold beer, sat in a little corner I have a photo of me sitting in back in about 1999. I remember spending new year’s eve 2001-2002 in here, one of the last times I visited, and a Canadian friend Ben (who I lived with for a short while in France; I was back visiting from Aix at the time) was with me and entertaining people with card tricks, being a magician. No cellphones allowed in here still; back in those days only a few of us had them, and I never liked using them much anyway, but still funny to see the same sign. I chatted for a while with another old regular called David, a well-travelled man who loves London but was reassuring that I’d done the right thing by moving to California, because California is pretty great (and I agree). I showed Mr. Moran the sketch afterwards and he liked it, and later on I finished off the outside drawing as well. It was really nice to find this place again; without the modern GPS on my phone, I think I may have struggled to remember where it was.

This last sketch below was drawn very close by on Knightsbridge, the top of the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel. It’s a pretty glorious building, though I was getting tired of drawing and left it at the roof and the speckled May sky. I’m fairly sure I’ve been into the bar there before with Rob and his pals, back in those late 90s. Hyde Park Corner has some of the most expensive hotels in London. I did pop into Harrods nearby for a little bit, to take a look around the Food Court, but I didn’t stay long as I needed to get to my sister’s place by Grahame Park, Colindale, for dinner, and then back home for a late night Zoom meeting with California (that finished at 1am my time…). I was pretty tired after a day of sketching and stepping back in time, but it was well worth it.

man city v madrid at the mixer

July 15, 2023July 13, 2023Leave a comment

While in London I was doing a fair bit of remote work, which was usually done in the late afternoon and into the evening (and occasionally into the wee hours after midnight, since California time is eight hour behind London time). On one day I worked throughout the afternoon and had an early evening meeting which happened to finish around the same time as the Champions League semi-final was beginning. Back in California I might have (a) cycled home to watch it over some lunch, (b) sneekily put it on my iPad and watched in the meeting, or (c) not really cared that much since it’s not Tottenham playing. On this evening I fell more into the third category, since the meeting ran into the game time and I couldn’t bring it up on my mum’s TV anyway, but I had a feeling it might be an interesting game – Real Madrid vs Manchester City – so after the Zoom meeting ended I decided to go out and watch at least the second half at a pub if I could. I wasn’t sure where; I don’t know which pubs show football any more, and I didn’t really want to go to any pubs in Burnt Oak. I jumped on the tube, thought about Hendon, I remembered watching a football match in a big pub there (wait that was in 1996), considered Golders Green, again wasn’t sure, so I just headed to Camden. I knew the Earl of Camden showed football, so I headed there. Thing is, I don’t really like that pub much, it’s always a bit uncomfortable and packed. And it was too – nowhere to sit, screens in awkward places, there was a guy in a 1998 Real Madrid away shirt which was cool but other than that, I didn’t fancy it. The first half was just ending so I thought, look for somewhere else. I didn’t expect the Good Mixer would be showing it, but I passed by on my way to the High Street and sure enough, they had it on in there, and it wasn’t full of big football lads. I like the Mixer, it was always one of my favourite places to hang out in the 90s and early 2000s, me and Terry used to go an play pool there (well, he would play pool, I would lose once and then sit there watching him beat everyone for a couple of hours). I found a seat with a good view and watched City completely demolish Madrid in a “please make them stop!” sort of way. It was a bit like watching Terry play people at pool. (I remember one night, I think it was at the King’s Head in Crouch End, this cocky guy challenged him to a game of pool, the guy had a special expensive pool cue in a hard case, he got it out and was polishing it and chalking it, and gestured to Terry as a joke if he wanted to borrow his cue; Terry declined and picked up probably the shittest pub cue from the rack, and proceeded to wipe the floor with him, the guy didn’t pot a single ball. He then beat him a few more times in clinical fashion, I just remember the guy standing there furiously chalking his cue waiting for a go.) Real Madrid were taken apart, although in this case City have the most expensive cues and the hard cases. I sketched the pub in my little Stillman and Birn Alpha mini book, just a quick one in Pigma Graphic pen and what waetrcolours I brought with me (a small set of about five colours in a tiny stormtrooper-helmet tin, fits into my pocket easily). It’s one of my favourite bar sketches though, it captures the mood well. The game ended, some people celebrated (it’s an English team getting to a major European final, albeit one funded by a rich nation state), I remembered my old friend Rob who supported Man City back in the 90s when they were pretty crap (though they had amazing Kappa kits), and how this is for those fans who put up with all that back then. I went to the little chip shop next to the tube station where I’d always get my chips on the way home, and headed back to bed.

the railway tavern

July 14, 2023July 13, 20232 Comments

Here is another sketch from my home area of north London. This is the Railway Tavern, which is up Hale Lane, which is in Edgware, or is it Mill Hill, or can we even say Burnt Oak? It’s kind of all three, and none of them. We used to call this area ‘Green Man’, people probably still do, because of the large old pub on the corner of Hale Lane and Dean’s Lane, which was the Green Man. On maps I think this area gets called ‘Hale’ or ‘The Hale’ though people rarely say that out loud (the name goes back to the 13th century). I think of it as Edgware, really. It’s near enough to the main part of Edgware, and technically Burnt Oak is Edgware too, though we all know different. My address growing up was ‘Burnt Oak, Edgware, Middlesex’, yet we were in London (Greater London, the big urbanized county, Zone 4 on the Underground) because Middlesex no longer actually existed. Our postcodes for Edgware and Burnt Oak are holdovers from the pre-Greater London era, being HA8 (confusingly the HA is for Harrow, we are in the Borough of Barnet), while nearby Colindale and the more countrified Mill Hill got London postcodes (NW9 and NW7 respectively). Never try to make sense of London postcodes by the way. You get ‘NW’ (north-west, easy), N (north), W (west), E (east) SW (south-west), SE (south-east), BUT no ‘S’ for South, and no ‘NE’ for north-east. You do get EC and WC for the cities of London and Westminster but don’t think they all correspond exactly. I remember the jingle from the old 1980s adverts, “Pass On Your Postcode, You’re Not Properly Addressed Without It!” Then there was the phone code – 01 for London, that’s what made sense, we were all in that. Then they decided no wait, let’s change that up a bit, you people on the inside can be 071, you lot around the edges can be 081. Then they phoned back a few years ago, wait wait, I’m not done yet, make that 0171 and 0181, yes that makes more sense. Then they phone back a few years later, wait wait wait, let’s make that 0207 and 0208, ok we are definitely done now. Then they said no wait, we have some more changes to make. By then everyone was like, sorry, they have invented mobile phones now, we don’t care. London eh. But this is the Railway Tavern, and where exactly is it? Well the postcode says NW7, so it’s officially in Mill Hill, that settles it. Their website however says they are in ‘the heart of Edgware town’ which is quite interesting. ‘Up Hale Lane’, that’s all that matters. Besides, there was another tavern called The Railway in Edgware near the station, which closed many years ago (the historic building is still there, being allowed to fall to pieces; I drew it eight years ago: https://petescully.com/2016/01/14/the-end-of-the-railway/). This pub however is still open, which is good to see. I actually have never been in here as an adult, but came in several times as a kid with my family. It was a good pub to bring the kids to, because there was a good garden out the back which had swings, and there were always other local kids to play with. I remember kicking one of those plastic footballs around here when I was about 11, and it kept going into a neighbouring garden, while parents drank in the pub inside. Those days always remind me of the taste of Coca-Cola in a glass bottle, not very cold, and salt and vinegar crisps. I thought about coming up to this pub in the evening while I was back to draw the inside, but didn’t get around to it. I have wanted to draw the outside for years though, I really like the shape of this building. I love a triangle.

Why is it called The Railway Tavern though? There is no rail line nearby (the closest being way down at Mill Hill Broadway), and it’s not by a tube station, which is a good mile away down at Edgware. Well, actually there used to be a rail line near here, passing through Dean’s Lane down the hill, going between Edgware and Mill Hill East. When we were kids it was long closed down, and the area was known as the Old Bomb, I presumed it had been bombed in the war and never rebuilt. In fact they did originally plan to have a line that ran between Mill Hill East, passing through this way and not only up to Edgware but well beyond, but it was never built. Ever wondered why there’s that bit of the Northern Line that squiggles out to Mill Hill East for some reason? Jay Foreman’s excellent Unfinished London video explains this whole thing much better than I can: https://youtu.be/jjuD288JlCs. The pub does apparently date back to the 1890s, but I think the building is later than that. This page on the London Borough of Barnet website gives a little history of the are called The Hale, and it mentions the ‘Railway Inn’. Next time I’m back, I should pop in for a pint.

Monumental

July 13, 2023July 13, 20233 Comments

I went up The Monument. “The Monument? Which Monument? I hear you ask. Aha, The Monument. That’s all Londoners call it, and it has its own tube station called simply ‘Monument’ so that’s that (it joins up with the station called ‘Bank’ which is named after The Bank of England which we never call “The Bank”). I could write a whole book on tube station names, but it’s probably been done, I would only be using it as an excuse to draw pictures. Anyway, the full name of The Monument is actually The Monument To the Great Fire of London, and yes, it is exactly that. And I went up it, for the first time since I was in my teens. I’ve not had much of a reason to go back up there in all these years, and I do muddle up my old your guide stories about it occasionally (no it is not 365 feet high and no it does not grow a foot in leap years, that is St.Paul’s as everyone knows). It was created by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke as a huge column topped with a shiny golden ball of flames and an observation deck, so people can climb up the narrow spiral stair case (all 311 steps) and look out over the rebuilt city that Wren had created. Well I wanted to go up there and draw. The City keeps on changing, and since the last time I saw that view from that angle was in the early 1990s, it was bound to have changed a bit. The first time I went up I was about 15 or 16, and I remember getting to the top, and finding myself still looking up at buildings, while also being at the top of a very narrow stone column with just some bars stopping me from plummeting. They do say that if The Monument ever fell on its side (presumably at the exactly correct angle) it would hit the spot where the Great Fire began, in Pudding Lane. Since it had never happened, there was no chance of it toppling over, but as I reached the very tight confines of the top, my knees went all “Ossie Ardiles 1981”, and I nearly bottled it. I forced myself to the top platform, and hugged the wall with my back, edging slowly around. There was a German couple up there taking loads of photos oblivious to the height, and I thought, well Pete you better get to work on this sketch. So I whipped out my Fabriano sketchbook and my HB pencil and drew the view as well as I could. The idea was that I’d add in the pen up there, and maybe colour it in later.

Another man joined us on the platform and he like me was just edging around the column slowly in a state of terror. “Me too, mate” I said reassuringly. Despite the very sturdy looking barriers, I was convinced that I would drop my pen, and it would plummet down to the streets below, probably taking out someone’s eye and impaling them in the neck, and I would have to get a different pen. So as far as I got with the penwork was drawing Tower Bridge and a couple of other details. It started getting windy, and hello, that was it for me mate. I said Auf Wiedersehen to my brave German friends still taking photos (actually they had left long before so I was basically saying goodbye in German to a pair of American tourists) and went back down that long spiral staircase, hoping that nobody passed me coming back up.

When I reached the bottom, to my surprise they gave me a certificate that certified that I had climbed all 311 steps of The Monument. That was nice. I then went to buy some new pants. Only joking. It did remind me though of that first time I climbed up here (no certificate in those days, at least not for me) and I said something about Wren being “a nutter” to the attendant, who grumbled a possible agreement, and I had this idea about doing a project where I drew and wrote about all of Wren’s buildings in the city, and it was not until the 2010s that I did something along those lines, when I organized two big Wren-themed sketchcrawls, the first one in 2014 starting at The Monument and ending at St.Paul’s, and the second one in 2016 doing the reverse, culminating in a big group photo outside The Monument after we as a group had drawn every single Wren building in the City, all in one day, an achievement so big I’ve never got around to organizing another London sketchcrawl. Read about that sketchcrawl here. I’m still into Wren though, and I’m glad I went up The Monument. I decided to finish the inking of that drawing over the top of the pencil sketch, using what photos I dared to take as reference, and that’s the complicated panorama sketch at the top of the post. I’m very pleased with that one, click on it for a closer view.