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.

blue t-rex

July 12, 2023July 11, 2023Leave a comment

As Lapin once said to me, every sketchbook needs an old car and a dinosaur. Well, in that Fabriano sketchbook I had the old car, but I wasn’t sure if I would get a dinosaur in there (I did go to South Kensington at the end of the book, spoiler alert, but I drew in the V&A rather than the NHM, so no dinosaurs but I did draw a suit of armour). However, I have these Lego dinosaurs skeletons, so I thought I’d draw the T-Rex. I was messing about with the sketchbook and wanted to lay down some gouache, and draw over it with white gel pen to see the effect. Yea, it looks nice enough. It was not as easy to draw as I thought, the pen needed a bit of work, I was scratching away at it. It might have looked nice in white acrylic paint with a very thin brush, but it would also have taken me ages, and I was just trying something out. Upshot, I probably won’t be using this technique for any on-location sketches. But I have a dinosaur in that book now.

current bag

July 12, 2023July 11, 20232 Comments

Slight break from posting London sketches, here is a drawing of my shoulder bag. Getting the right shoulder bag is essential, it needs to fit my 8″x5″ sketchbook, pencil case, paints, sunglasses, my iPad mini, and have room maybe for a drink and another mini sketchbook. This one fits all that easily. It still feels a little big sometimes but it has enough small pockets without being overloaded with them. I also love the colours. I’m really into yellow and grey, or yellow and black, especially a warm yellow like this one has. It’s Timbuk2, which means it just folds over and doesn’t have a zip (I do prefer a zip) but it’s lined well so it keeps things dry. The strap is very comfortable too. Trusted companion.

as long as I gaze on, i am in paradise

July 11, 2023July 10, 2023Leave a comment

Before heading over to Mile End, I got out at Embankment station and onto Hungerford Bridge. Sorry, I mean the Golden Jubilee Bridge (Hungerford Bridge is just the rail bridge in the middle now, but I still remember the shaky old walkway on the side from years ago, it’s much nicer now). I wanted to start my day with a little bit of my favourite river, and draw this view towards Waterloo Bridge once again. I had intended to add in the blue and white sky, the brownish tinged Thames, but I got too hot standing on the bridge. I went and sat on a bench on the embankment beneath a tree to add it all in, but by that time the moment had passed, and my perspective changed all the colours, (that can happen with reflective objects like a river), and so I went to Mile End instead. But I’m glad I got this sketch done, as it’s been a while. Below are two other panoramic sketches from a similar location (not exactly precise, but same half of the bridge). The colour one is from 2016, the other is from 2012. Well, you can see the difference in the skyline. Obviosuly the bottom one includes the Shard but I didn’t go that far in the other two, but in the City itself, the buildings are all change. When I left London, it was just Tower 42 (the old Nat West Tower) and the Gherkin (Swiss Re as it was called, but it was always the Erotic Gherkin), just to the right of St. Paul’s. Now those are all but invisible from this view. There will probably be more coming, unless the economic downturn means fewer novelty skyscraping, but next time I draw this in about four or five years, we will see. I’ll need better glasses then, my eyes ain’t getting any younger.

Click on any of these sketches for a slightly bigger view, that will save you just moving your face closer to the screen.

mile end afternoon

July 10, 2023July 9, 2023Leave a comment

I was done pretty early with exploring Queen Mary University of London on my first day back in Mile End in over 20 years. I walked round the corner to Burdett Road, and decided to draw this old building that was mostly boarded up, I do remember using the post office back in the late 90s. I didn’t live in Mile End while I was at university, I stayed back home in Burnt Oak, so I would commute in on the tube. I knew quite a few people who did decide to live locally, or a bit further out, and there would always be parties in those days. I took a lot of Night Buses as well, the old N25. Fall asleep on that, it bounces you back from Trafalgar Square right out into like Essex or somewhere. I stood by Mile End Park to draw this, but only got as far as the outline, because I was getting hot, so I drew most of it later on. I had another part of Mile End to look for.

A couple of years ago my wife (who is American) and I were looking at this impressive family tree document that her great aunt had put together many years before, and I noticed that there was a ‘Sir’ on there, Sir William Morgan, Earl of Tredegar. It was exciting to discover, and it turns out the Morgans are a pretty storied family, both from their Welsh aristocracy days, through the British Civil Wars and subsequently those that emigrated to the US and became big names in the fledgling country (founding the city of Springfield MA for one thing). In short, it turned out my wife had some pretty interesting ancestors, the Earls of Tredegar, and then all of a sudden I started seeing that name everywhere (we even chanced upon William Morgan of Tredegar’s memorial in Westminster Abbey last month). Pretty much the same day we were looking all of this up, my friend Simon (an actor and and former QMUL alumnus) told me about a film he’d just appeared in, Once Upon A Time in London, so I watched that, looking out for him. One of big scenes involved being beaten up in a pub, anyway right afterwards the gangsters involved walked out of the pub and it was called “The Lord Tredegar”, of course. I had to look up the pub – and it was in Mile End, very close to “Tredegar Square” and “Morgan Street”. Presumably the family had owned land round here. Well I found the pub – it’s in quite a nice part of Mile End, some impressive old houses around here – though it was closed, so I drew the outside, although I didn’t bother finishing all the colour later. A block away, there was a lovely post-box dating from Queen Victoria’s reign, which I drew with the Morgan Street sign in the background. This was right by Tredegar Square.

I was done with exploring Mile End, and decided to head back into central London, but I saved one last very quick sketch for Mile End tube station. This is where I’d come in and out every day while at university, after an hour-long packed tube ride from Burnt Oak. Another tube station sketch for the collection, I think I expected more stories to come flooding out of this one, but not really. I do remember one thing, it’s opposite the Territorial Army (TA) centre. Back when I was doing Richard III in early 1998, I was charged with arranging for props for the production, and asked for a bunch of army materials, including an army table. How I thought I could do that given that I had no car or means of transporting it, I do not know, but I was resourceful enough. There’s a big TA centre in Burnt Oak near where I lived, so I went there and kindly asked to borrow some equipment. To my surprise they said yeah sure, just bring it back. I got lots of army cups and hats and things like that, and a table, a big heavy green wooden table. Like, really heavy, like impossible to actually carry heavy. Carry it I did, halfway down Deansbrook Road, like an idiot. I would have called my dad, if we lived in the era of the mobile phone, but we did not just yet. I think I ended up leaving it, coming home, and then having one of my parents come and help me get it in the car. And I was going to bring this to Mile End to use in a play? What, on the tube? That wasn’t happening. I felt a bit stupid, but I had the other props, Richard III was just going to have to make do with a regular table to plan his battle with Richmond. Anyway the next day I came to Mile End station, walked out and immediately saw the TA Centre across the street, which I had hitherto never noticed. I didn’t bother going to ask them if I could use a table, I’d give myself a bad back carrying that, I’d end up looking more like Richard III myself. So, I do think of that when I think of Mile End station.