here’s another sunday morning call

March 20, 2009March 21, 20094 Comments

This is my 200th post on petescully.com, thus my 800th in total since April 2005 (including the ones from the previous incarnation). That’s a lot of scullybloggery, and a lot of drawings (though not all of it was drawing, of course). And so, more from San Francisco, the efforts of last weekend: a triptych of pen drawings around SoMa, the area South of Market. On the left is Eddie Rickenbacker’s cafe/pub place, a really cool place with loads of motorbikes all hanging from the ceiling. This was the last I drew, before racing to the bus / train back home.

It was a slightly damp, grey morning, and I had aborted one drawing made post-doughnut-breakfast in North Beach (I’ve finished it since at home) due to a brief spattering of rain, so I went to the shops instead. Well, Virgin Megastore – not often these days after all that you can do that. And I found that this one too was closing down, with everything on sale. All of the others back in the UK changed to Zavvi a couple of years back, and then suddenly went bust at christmas with the downfall of Woolworths (its distributor). Great shame. when I was a young teenager, going down to that huge Virgin at the corner looking up stockton (yellow) of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street was a weekendly ritual, a place where I could find anything I could possibly want. I would spend hours there. So it was a little sad I guess going to one for the last time. Perhaps we are seeing the end of the big chain record store. The irony is that, for now at least, a lot of smaller independent record stores are still about and outliving the chains nearby, over here at least. Tower Records (actually a local store founded in Sacramento) closed down a couple of years ago; yet the independent Armadillo records across the street in Davis stayed open. In fact where Tower used to be is now a newer independent record store called Dimple. The fall of the global chains may actually benefit smaller stores.

But back to the drawings. I sat opposite Virgin on Market St and sketched the final days of the store, but hidden behind a lamp-post, while looking down Stockton to the tunnel which slices through the hill in the distance, its daylight pushing through like a magic door into another world (yes that’s the best simile I could muster up, but hey I’m tired, I’ve had a busy week). There were a lot of people out shopping, helping the economy. I wondered, if we are shopping only for the greater economic good (as we’re told we must) rather than to get a bargain for ourselves, whether we should in fact shop at places we know are closing down since it doesn’t help them much in the long run? Is that how it works? But I’m no Adam Smith, so I just bought the latest Mojo magazine at 40% discount and was well happy.

I wandered around SoMa, down to Yerba Buena gardens, and drew the SFMoMA and its tall neighbours before popping by the Cartoon Art Museum. Here’s an interesting thing: Yerba Buena was the name of San Francisco before San Francisco. It’s such a cool city, such a great place to sketch, but I was feeling anxious to get home, tired, exhausted from the hills and the pressure I put on myself to draw everything. I think it showed in the previous day’s efforts, a lot. I nearly didn’t do any more drawing at all, and considered putting away the sketchbook and pens for a fortnight or a month or so to refresh my thoughts. But I was pleased enough with these three (especially the first and last) to get me a little way out of that particular mental rut. Here they are all finished, with the wash added later on. The sketchbookery continues unabated…

how many roads must a man walk down

March 17, 2009March 17, 20093 Comments

I ambled and jaywalked into North Beach. That view down Columbus of the TransAm Pyramid, my final destination, a big triangular monolith on the horizon, calling me like a dark lord’s tower, but i would not draw it, for i was on another quest, to be as relaxed as possible about wandering up and down hills and streets and slamming in as many sketches as possible.

I feel I put too much pressure on myself sometimes. After drawing ‘Bimbo’s’ below (mainly for the powerlines, and the name, not the building), and stopping by LaRocca’s across the street to add the wash, I just had to climb Russian Hill; it was just ‘there’. At the top of Lombard I stopped and drew the view out to Coit Tower (above), doing it little justice, but after the slog of the climb it didn’t really demand penance, just adoration. Oh ok, it wasn’t really a slog as such, I just felt it later on.

The thing about Lombard Street is that they say it’s the crookedest street in the world, but surely Wall street is crookeder? The tourists didn’t care. Cable cars rattling by behind me. Weekenders standing out of their sunroofs camcording while zigzagging carefully downslopes. There’s me meanwhile, sat there using a micron 0.1 and a newly discovered micron 1, for things in the foreground. And occasionally a camera too, just to fit in with the crowd.

see me walking around

March 13, 2009March 14, 20091 Comment

Tomorrow morning, I will be off to San Francisco to do some more urban sketching. A couple of years back I videoed my sketching trip from the ferry building farmer’s market up Telegraph Hill. Here, at last, it is. Below are some of the drawings I did that day. Some are from early in my first Moleskine, others are from my as-yet-unfinished WH Smith spiral bound book, and this was also the first time I’d used Copic multiliners, funny enough.

the eleventh of march

March 11, 2009March 11, 20092 Comments

This one’s Vermeiher hall, yet another on the UC Davis campus. If you’re wondering. It’s warm and sunny now, but chilly in the morning. This particular copic pen is living out the autumn weeks of its life with thicker lines and an uncertain nib.

Oh! Saw Watchmen last night. Flipping brilliant, start to finish. Big fan of the graphic novel, and cannot wait for the dvd. Rorschach wicked, when he roars, “i’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me!”

look at the size of that thing

March 10, 2009March 10, 20093 Comments

When does a high-rise become a skyscraper? Perhaps it’s just a matter of perception. Highrises make you think of those glum 1960s housing estates, Le Corbusier nightmares in concrete, gangs of feral kids and graffiti, whereas skyscrapers make you think of shining cityscapes, New York, the pre-Depression thirties, old money.

This is La Vigie, Charleroi’s skyscraper/high-rise (filled with UT students, not feral but music is sometimes played loud). I lived on floor 13 years ago. Apparently there is an official definition given by the Emporis Standards Committee that a high-rise must be over twelve storeys high (La Vigie checks in at fifteen). The same Wikipedia article that gave me that useless tidbit of information tells me that skyscrapers carry a connotation of pride, of achievement. Les Vigistes would often go on about being proud (oh, anyone can be proud, it’s easy), and I daresay they sometimes acheive things (making it through nine months without a hot shower is an amazing achievement). So what if it’s not a skyscraper? It’s still the tallest building in the city, and has stunning views over the old slag-heaps and factories, when the cokey fog clears. A skyscraper is just a big substitute phallus anyway.

Drew this in cobalt blue copic, with a grey wash. The blue looks bluer than it does on the page, and it makes the grey look silver. That’s the scanner for you.

under the brown fog of a winter dawn

February 24, 2009February 24, 20092 Comments

Bit of a misnomer that title, this being actually a sunny lunchtime sketch (and being about Davis and not London), but it’s from the Waste Land and it’s therefore cool, and sprang to mind when I was finished.

And it is winter, or at least what they call winter here. This is the tall UC Davis Water Tower (and environs).

Speaking of which, today is Pancake Day, but this year I didn’t make any pancakes. My little plastic lemon squeezer thing (yes, just like the old jif lemons but not called as such here) is out of date, by a month (bit stupid, I bought it for last year’s pancakes and then it goes and expires in less than a year, it’s like when you buy mince pies that end up expiring on December 24th, yes you know what I’m talking about, marks and spencer). It put me off.

Also posted at urban sketchers. That extraordinary site is growing and growing…

frat luck

February 19, 20092 Comments

A frat house downtown. I’ve mentioned before about the frat houses in Davis, all running along the edge of campus. They are so sketchable, yet I rarely get around to drawing them.

Did I mention the Amgen Tour of California, kind of like the Tour de France of California (like, dur), started here in Davis (amid a massive rainstorm) on Sunday? Well I missed it, sadly (hey, I stayed warm and dry, don’t feel too bad). Huge event. Lance Armstrong. Serious stuff. Davis is the bike capital of America and didn’t want anything to go wrong, this is a showcase. Now Davis did do really well, however… Lance Armstrong’s bike got nicked. No, not in Davis, and not while he was riding in the race; it was his one-of-a-kind time trial bike which he’d used the day before in Sacramento. Someone actually half-inched it. The most famous cyclist in the world.

I hope he didn’t chain it to a bollard, like David Cameron.

the warriors of winter gave a cold triumphant shout

February 3, 2009February 3, 20094 Comments

who needs remote control

February 1, 20093 Comments

Perhaps… we spend too much time looking at the shadows, and not at the trees.

Or vice-versa, take your pick.

This is the old city hall in Davis (now part of a restaurant), sketched on Saturday afternoon on the last of january; see how warm and sunny looking it is. I hear you are having huge snowstorms in Britain. Sorry about that. I recall the arctic blast of 2003, that night I never got home to crouch end (but instead walked through the icy storm several miles to burnt oak). And then the second one a year later, when finchley central station closed because nobody had thought to grit the platform (but i made it home thanks to my boss giving me a lift, and managing not to get frozen in a slippery traffic jam on highgate hill, for which i’m very grateful). I love snow, it makes the world look so peaceful, except when it is causing utter flipping chaos.

daylight falls upon the path

January 30, 2009May 27, 2010Leave a comment

lunchtime sketch by the hog barn It feels like ages since I did drawings of Davis, I have been drawing so many other places lately. More than a month in fact. So I thought I’d make up for it. It was very sunny this week. Well, during the daytime obviously, I mean at night it was dark. It was pretty cold too but is getting progressively warmer; these Californian Januarys, eh! So I got out each lunchtime and sketched.

On Wednesday I sketched near the Silo, by the newly renovated Hog Barn (or Pig House, or whatever it is called; presumably it was renovated after the big bad wolf blew it down or something). No hogs here now though. There are cows not far from here though. Davis is well known for its cows. Scientists do experiments on them. Some of them have windows in their stomachs (please, no jokes about beef curtains, this is a family site).

I had a hole in my shoe once. I used to tell people it was a window to my sole.

On Thursday I went downtown, and drew a house I’ve drawn before, I believe it is some sort of dentist’s surgery on E Street. I drew it in sepia about a year and a half ago. Theres’ that tree look, in the foreground as usual, and it managed to keep itself within the frame this time.

Here’s the older version. I don’t mind drawing things I’ve drawn before. In a city this small it’s bound to happen.

And on Friday, to complete the triptych, I drew a frat house on First Street. Ths is right on the edge of campus. Most of the fraternity and sorority houses are.

Before I moved to an American college town I had no idea what frats were. All those greek letters, old boy’s clubs I guessed. Some frats are aparently older than the US itself. I met some American frat boys when I lived in France, I’d heard of their legendary alcoholic exploits (ah, no more than a typical night in any binge-drinking high-street town in England). They all start recruiting in the fall, having their ‘rush’ events and their ‘hazing’, and how the sororities have all these functions every night for a month whereby the wannabe entrants have to wear a different outfit each night or they are like so-out-omigod-who-does-she-think-she-is.

Yeah I’m glad we never had those sorts of things when I was at university. We had the student union bar, and some nights, oh dear, it was not pretty.

Roll on the weekend.