Tag: bar

and fix upon the pattern on the wall

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lil' prague

Friday night, after the gallery event and a trip to the record shop, time to stop off at the pub, Little Prague, for some well-deserved end-of-week beer, coupled as always with even more sketching. I sketch this bar scene every few months or so; improving my bar sketches, that is my excuse anyway. For my other sketches in and of pubs and cafes, see my ‘pubs, etc’ flickr set. I wish I’d had the whole page, because I’d like to try a curvilinear sketch of this bar; I did go for a slight semi-curvilinear, but ran out of page. Up on the screen, Man City beating Sunderland, doing Spurs no favours. Below, bar staff rushing back and forth, and behind, people busy ordering drinks and socializing and dancing. You know those photos they take of city roads where you can’t see the cars, just long streaks of red and white light? That is how I should draw the bar scene. I am drawing what stands still; the rest of the world moves about around me. At this point I’m supposed to say, “oh, that’s how I feel all the time”, but it isn’t in the slightest, so I won’t. Well, perhaps occasionally, but only when I sketch.

little prague beertaps

Here are the beer pumps. Since I’ve not sketched fire hydrants since the end of November this is the next best thing. I drew this one on a small artist trading card. Useful things for pub sketches, as it turns out. Below, back to the Moleskine, but with a different colour micron pen. little prague bottles

oscars at zeffirino’s

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zeffirinos

I sketched at Zeffirino’s, a bar/restaurant at the Venetian in Las Vegas, while the Oscars were on TV. The King’s Speech did well, didn’t it? That was a good movie. I like Geoffrey Rush, ever since that movie Shine. Colin Firth was good too of course, but he’s more for the ladies (he’ll always be D’Arcy apparently). I have a British accent too – OSCAR PLEASE! Mike out of Neighbours was in it too, as Edward VI. I didn’t see many of the other films that were up for stuff, except for Toy Story 3, and was therefore utterly ignorant; good job the King’s Speech won, I’ve seen that. I’ve never been a big Oscars-watcher, though. It was always on in the middle of the night, when I lived in England; you’d get up and catch the end of it on GMTV, but it wasn’t exciting like Election Night or anything. At least in California it’s on at a more respectable hour of the day. Happy Hour!

that is you can’t you know tune in but it’s alright

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little prague tonight

I went out last night to my local pub Little Prague (I’ve sketched there once or twice before) with fellow Davis sketcher Steve Wright, to draw a German band who were playing (I’ll scan that in later) and do some more bar drawing. I decided to do some more paint-splattering on the paper first, since that effect would look good on a theme such as this. I splattered fairly subtle tones, and this made it feel like I was drawing on craft paper rather than in the moleskine, which was a nice feeling. Steve drew into his regular moleskine, and produced some amazing work using both micron pen and watercolours, both of which I had never been able to use in the regular moley – but he made it work really well! Pleasure to sketch with him. I stuck to a sepia wash, still trying to draw bottles (I seem to have some problem with sketching bottles, hence my recent practising). This is a particularly interesting bar area to sketch though, and the bar staff were very friendly and checked up on our sketching progress from time to time.

That beer in the foreground is a Krusovice dark, a very nice beer. You can spot me in the background there.

power of vito

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Second and final drawing of my short sketchcrawl yesterday, which was interspersed with getting hair cut, shopping for Christmas cards, and generally cycling round thinking, ‘oh I’ve drawn everything in Davis, I’m so uninspired’. So I stopped for lunch. A beer (New Belgium 2 Below, if you’re ordering), and a mountain of garlic fries.

uncle vito's

I made it a little over halfway through the mountain of garlic fries – I’m still suffering, next day – before going home. A big trough of garlic fries, it’s so unlike me. But I came in here – Uncle Vito’s, on the corner of E and 2nd – to draw the bar, so draw it I did. You can see me in the mirror there. There’s a bit of beermat philosophy that was going through my head as I made my way through the garlic fries surplus.

This place is fairly new, and occupies the space formerly tken by the Davis Driving School, and a little (cheap and not particularly good) chinese place called, I kid you not, Wok and Roll. They didn’t do garlic fries, but I can’t say they didn’t do stomachaches.

between a rock and a hard place

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central bar, hard rock Las Vegas

The Central Bar at the Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas. Stopped there first on my overnight trip to Sin City. Not much sinning going on, but lots of beer and some great Bavarian food at the Hofbrauhaus afterwards, and excellent company too. My idea to come here first, but then I remembered I’m actually off guitars at the moment. This bar kinda looks like the inside of the TARDIS. That pink light turned yellow from time to time, and then blue, sometimes green as well, though that may have just been through the bottom of the beer bottle. Those people there, playing video blackjack or whatever it was, at the bar. This was the only sketch I did in Vegas, I wasn’t there for long enough. Came back 24 hours later, much the wiser.