call me bubbles, everybody does…

September 27, 20104 Comments

So anyway, to celebrate five years in America, we drank champagne, pink champagne. This has been some time coming – we have been saving this for just such an occasion (this very nice bottle having been brought over by my very excellent friend and best man Roshan for mine and my wife’s fifth anniversary last year), and we figured the fifth anniversary of our emigration was a good time to crack it open, and it was very good indeed. You can’t beat good proper champagne. The bottle was fun to draw too, and I’ve started a new brown paper sketchbook, much bigger than the last one.

tractor boys

August 25, 2010August 25, 20102 Comments

I feel like I did this ages ago. There have been so many drawings this month, so much scanning still to get on with. I’m sure I’m not the only Portland-Symposium-participant that feels that. Anyway…this is my son’s toy tractor, a metal green Tonka. Living in the agricultural world of Davis, tractors are inevitable.

Tractor Boys… that’s what they call Ipswich Town supporters, isn’t it. I have family in Norwich, so I should be all anti-Ipswich Town, but I have always quite liked them. They were great back in the days of Bobby Robson, John Wark, and, er, the other guys who were in Escape to Victory. I remember I was in Watford once when they were playing Ipswich, and all these Watford fans were giving Ipswich supporters some stick around town, calling them Tractor Boys and saying oo-arrr, and I wanted to say, Watford? Seriously?

Apologies to American readers, you won’t get any of that. I suppose it’s like people from Nebraska calling people from Oklahoma ‘farm-boys’. Or maybe it’s not. I grew up in London; everyone’s a tractor boy from my point of view. Even me, now.

This little brown sketchbook is in fact finished now. You can see the whole collection of brown sketches, minus a few I didn’t bother scanning, on my flickr site.

to the shouting sea

August 25, 2010August 25, 20101 Comment

It gets pretty foggy down at the Pacific Ocean’s edge. On our last morning in Monterey we took advantage of the cry of the sea one last time before we’d head inland to the hot Valley again. I painted the above pretty quickly; I was out of clean water for my paints so I used water from the Pacific Ocean itself to paint with. Seemed appropriate. This was still Pacific Grove, but further out, on the way to 17-Mile Drive.

My two-year-old son decided he’d like to help me with a bit of painting, so I gave him my paints and my brush, and even my nearly-complete brown sketchbook, and he painted the above. I think it’s just brilliant! He has a much better eye for colour than me. I can see us doing joint sketchbook projects in the future!

This last one is from the day before, when we had lunch at an interesting little place called Hula’s, where there was a lot to draw. And that was our short trip to Monterey. At some point soon I might start posting all the drawings I’ve done in Davis since the Symposium…

with water praying and call of seagull and rook

August 24, 2010August 25, 20102 Comments

More of Monterey, California. I could spend weeks there just drawing boats, but these quick sketches were all I managed in the time I was there. We were at Fisherman’s Wharf, having seen the sea-lions lying about the rocks, and I was trying my ‘see how fast you can sketch’ style of rapid two-minute sketching while my son chased pigeons and seagulls.

If you ever go to Monterey and you have kids, I’d recommend the Dennis the Menace playground. It’s probably the best playground I ever went to. It was founded by the creator of Dennis the Menace (no, not that Dennis the Menace, but the ones we Brits simply call ‘Dennis‘, because let’s face it he’s nowhere near as menacing as our Dennis the Menace) One of the many highlights is the large old authentic steam engine they have, which kids can climb upon. Unless you’re a menace, of course.

ease your feet off in the sea

August 19, 2010August 20, 2010Leave a comment

Though I do love to be beside the seaside, though I do love to be beside the sea, I’m not a typical beach-loving person. I don’t do well in the Sun. Fortunately, it’s usually pretty foggy in Monterey, so I can enjoy the sandy-toed experience without frying to a crisp. And, as I rediscovered, making sandcastles is great fun.

This is Lover’s Point, in Pacific Grove. While waves may lash elsewhere, the rocks and kelp mean that the tide here is gentle, relaxing. The sand is a little stony around the edges of the beach, but in the centre it is soft and mellow. Get it wet, perfect for sandcastles.

When I was a kid, there was always a bucket and spade (they call it ‘shovel and pail’ here, which sounds like an unfunny comedy duo) (like Hale and Pace, though nobody could be that unfunny), sticks of rock, amusement arcades, bingo, deck chairs, maybe donkeys. None of that here. Except for the bucket and spade, obviously.

i know what you're thinking, those are rubbish sandcastles, but i don't care

“in viaggio col taccuino”

August 13, 2010August 9, 20182 Comments

I was pretty amazed and inspired by Simonetta Capecchi’s lecture about collaborative sketchbook projects in the city of Naples, Italy, where she lives and works. I had a pen-pal from Naples when I was a kid, and the city has always seemed so far away and unusual to me, yet still in my native Europe, so I was fascinated by her stories. Simo’s work and ideas promoted a real sense of a community expressing itself through art. It reminded me not only of other sketchbook projects that I’ve seen or been involved in, and also what we do in every worldwide sketchcrawl or even this symposium, the art of representing a city through different voices and personal styles, but it also reminded me of place-specific projects that I have had experience of back when I studied and practised interactive theatre. Local people expressing their locale, telling its story, its ‘everyday’. Here my mind exploded with ideas. I want to get Davis drawing! I also liked the project she promoted whereby a sketcher would take an old book about their city, and sketch scenes from their city inside it cover to cover, across the text. As I discussed with her afterwards, that would be a wonderful thing to do somewhere like London, I think, thought maybe not so much Davis (only because Davis-centric literature is slightly thin on the ground). It was inspiring stuff, and a reminder that there are so many angles from which you can approach art, and urban sketching.

As did other people, I sketched the lecture room around me. There’s Liz from Australia, and Gerard from Belgium. I sat next to Suzanne from North Carolina, sketching the same subjects. Amazing how the internet has enabled us urban sketchers from around the world to come together and learn from each other. Simo showed me a sketch she made of Mount Shasta from the window of her plane, as she flew north from San Francisco, and I showed her my similar sketch of the same mountain from the window of the car as we drove south from Oregon last month. That was pretty cool.

Continuing the Italian theme, for lunch before the lecture I drank a bottle of San Pellegrino orange soda from Italy; (you may recall I sketched a can of this recently). I didn’t know they came in Orangina bottles! While eating lunch, we noticed that there was a wedding party arriving, and the bride and groom themselves sat behind us at a tiny table eating over-the-counter pizza. It was a funny sight, but the quick sketch I did did it no justice, so all you’re getting is the bottle.

sketching as the sun sets

August 10, 2010April 30, 20204 Comments

Oh, the sketching stops for no one. Day One of the Symposium was not over yet. Still, I had a chance to relax in the hotel with some noodles and a cup of tea. I looked out of the window and drew part of the view opposite while talking on the phone. Then, as the evening came, I copied the sunset onto some brown paper and pottered off to Powell’s Books. Wow! What a place! I didn’t sketch there, I was too busy looking at books. That place is huge, a bookshop lover’s dream. A little while before, I had visited Reading Frenzy, to catch up on some of Portland’s well-known zine culture. I bought one local zine, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve considered (because it’s been suggested) that I turn some of my series into zines, and that is on the table in the foreseeable future, so it was good to see what other people are doing out there.

And so on to Portland’s famous beer culture. I stopped into Deschutes Brewery, where several other Urban Sketchers were already camped out, and caught up on some great conversation and a few more attempts at people-sketching. Below are Lapin, Don Colley from Chicago, and Frank Ching.

Don and I went on to Jake’s Crawfish for a beer and a last sketch of the day. It was an interesting looking place and we both sketched the same scene. His work is great, very dramatic and full of life, and he sketches in a huge old book filled with incredible drawings. It was a pleasure to watch him sketch and learn from him.

Exhausted, i got back to the hotel and posted a photo of the day one sketchbook. Phew! And there were still two more days of full-on sketching to come…

Symposium blog: http://pdx2010.urbansketchers.org/

drawing in the dark

August 10, 2010August 9, 2018Leave a comment

It was almost complete darkness when I was drawing these. The only light was from the projector, illustrating Matthew Brehm’s excellent lecture on the history of sketching as a social activity, and from the laptop of the guy changing the slides. Well, it wasn’t going to stop me from getting another couple of sketches in, and what a fun exercise. I had no idea what they actually looked like until I got outside into the light; I’m pleased with the results!!

It’s funny; normally, I would draw in a lecture or meeting if I was bored, but this is the Urban Sketcher’s Symposium, and the rules are on their head. Matthew’s lecture was very, very interesting. As an architectural teacher he takes students to Rome every year, and compared his own experiences alongside the grand tours of a couple of centuries ago, as well as looking at old drawing clubs and how the newer phenomenon of blogging and posting your art on flickr and such sites has created a new global community of artists, which has in turn given birth to Urban Sketchers and the Symposium itself. (Which he described as the ‘Woodstock of Sketching’) What I enjoyed was his focus on the connections that drawing has forged between us, not just right now but also to the sketchers of the past – those people walking around cities drawing things, just as we are now, having those same thought processes that compel them to do so. That’s what I was thinking about, anyhow, as I drew these people in the dark.

Symposium blog: http://pdx2010.urbansketchers.org/

fly away, pete

August 4, 2010August 9, 20188 Comments

It’s going to take me some time to add all the pictures and tell all the stories about the 1st International Sketching Symposium in Portland. I am still ringing with excitement about all the things I learned and all the people I met, rubbing shoulders with 80 other people who ‘get it’, and all the creative ideas that started to explode from my head as soon as got on the plane back to Sacramento. I’ve not been this excited aboout creativity in many years, and am eager to charge headlong into exploring more ideas. However, it’s time to start scanning those drawings and documenting for those of you who weren’t able to be there. Matthew Brehm, in his excellent lecture on the history of sketching as a social activity, called it the “Woodstock of Sketching”, and I agree, it probably was (apart from the drugs, sex and nakedness aspect of course).

Anyway, in linear fashion, I’m going to start at the beginning, Sacramento Airport.

I’m not a huge fan of airports, or flying in general. I was when I was younger, but nowadays I struggle a bit with them. Have you seen that film ‘Up in the Air’? Yeah, that guy’s not me. (Apart from the good looks of course; only joking).

On the plane, I sat by the window for the obligatory ‘view from the plane’ sketch. The stewardess brought round sodas and juices to the passengers. I forgot to ask for one without ice (they come in plastic cups rather than little cans, like on Virgin and other flights). When my diet coke came, fully iced, and i asked if it were possible to have it without ice, the stewardess gave me a look like i had asked her to tell the pilot to fly the plane upside down. Still, five minutes later she brought me a diet coke without ice.

“Where are you from?” the older guy next to me said suddenly, his wife looking on.
“Britain,” I said.
“People in Britain like their drinks warm?”
“No,” I sighed, “it’s because when I’m done with this drink I don’t want a cup of ice just sitting there.” Well, I don’t, I have nowhere to put it, and I really don’t like swallowing the ice. There’s no drain on the plane. It could get knocked over, onto my sketchbook, or my laptop. No explanation needed.

Apparently there was. “Well, in America,” he announced, his wife nodding, “people drink their sodas with ice in it.”
“No, mate,” I said, “it’s nothing to do with that. I don’t like ice.”
The man and his wife raised their eyebrows. I imagined they would be talking about this over dinner later with their friends, all drinking fully iced sodas, that crazy British guy who just doesn’t understand American customs.

I brought my own bottle of diet coke on the flight back. Some things are just too complicated to explain.

Symposium blog: http://pdx2010.urbansketchers.org/

brown is the colour

July 27, 2010July 27, 2010Leave a comment

I got this small brown paper sketchbook from the campus bookstore for only 89 cents, and it’s a real find. It has a corrugated cardboard cover and is handbound with a piece of string. These past few days it has become my favourite thing (funny how that happens) and I’ve been scribbling in it whenever I can (starting with the sketches at the Railroad Museum). I tend to sketch more quickly in this book; a drawing will take about ten minutes. Here are some of the things I’ve drawn (all in uniball vision micro pen, for the fellow pen geeks out there).

This is Sudwerk Märzen, a local Davis beer I like. It’s an amber beer, and the Sudwerk brewpub was the first place we visited when we decided to move to Davis. Funny what we may have decided if I hadn’t liked the beer.

This is my son’s toy digger, or rather, one of them (a boy can never have too many construction trucks).

This is Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and part-time firefighter. This is actually my toy. I love Star Wars.

A quick profile sketch of my wonderful wife. I really am trying to draw more faces on the spot and I think this turned out well.

Finally, a quick lunchtime sketch at the corner of A and 3rd streets, Davis. I’ll take this little sketchbook with me to Portland Urban Sketching Symposium I think. I’ve already packed my bag and chosen my materials, I just need a couple more pens (and maybe a new brush) and I am all set.