you better slow your mustang down

October 4, 2011October 3, 201110 Comments

We went to the Sonoma County Harvest Fair at the Santa Rosa Fairgrounds this weekend, to see the Grape Stomping (some people are very serious about that), the Pumpkin Tossing (actually I didn’t see that this time, but my son did some pumpkin bowling), make scarecrows, and of course draw old antique cars. I love drawing old cars, but don’t do it very often – last year’s Harvets Festival was in fact the first and last time. I chatted with some of the car owners, one of whom was an artist of cars and buildings himself. I started off drawing a red 1967 Ford Mustang. It reminded me of 1970s cops, on the edge. Even though this is so very American, I kept humming the theme tune to the Professionals. You really need to screech up a kerb and knock over some bins before sliding across the bonnet and taking out some crook with a couple of right hooks with a car like this, don’t you. You see all these SUVs and Hummers and trucks these days, but those are just compensating, macho nonsense; none of them say ‘tough guy’ like a car like this does. Anyway, it was fun to draw.

“i’m leavin’, on a jet ski…”

June 14, 2011June 14, 20111 Comment

This is the Robber, which came with the jet-ski as part of my son’t Playmobil Police Helicopter set. It’s great fun in the bath; that little metal thing at the bottom helps it stay upright and afloat. It’s funny how we know he’s supposed to be a robber because he is unshaven and wearing sunglasses (footballers and movie stars beware); I’m surprised Playmobil don’t make a little Hoodie, with a little toy Staff. Maybe for their ‘run-down estate street corner’ set. Maybe the title for this post should be ‘Thievin’ on a Jet-Ski’. This was drawn in Copic 0.05 multiliner in the small WH Smith sketchbook (one page until that one is finished!).

The fire-truck below however was sketched in my large ‘Urban Sketchers’ Canson sketchbook, from last year’s Portland Symposium. I realised that I’d not sketched this in a couple of years, since my son first got it at his great-grandma’s up in Oregon, and though it’s pretty beat up it’s his favourite of the fire trucks. I sketched it while watching some ‘Wolverine and the X-Men’ cartoons on tv, and wasn’t really paying attention when drawing the wheels – oops – but the rest is all where it should be.

Finally, I drew this a week ago or so, but another of the toy cars (and amazingly a toy that isn’t red). It’s the ‘muddy’ Techron car. These ones are fun to play with, and were given by his cousins. Plus every time we watch the San Francisco Giants play, they show up on a billboard at the edge of the field.

To see more toy drawings, go to my Flickr set “Toys“. Drawing toys is a really great way to remember a fun age!

take my car and drive real far, not concerned about the way we are

June 1, 2011May 31, 20113 Comments

At my wife’s nephew’s graduation party in the countryside outside Santa Rosa, there was a great old car in barn, a Volkswagen I believe, but a snazzy red sports car nonetheless. My son enjoyed playing in there (“mind your fingers, daddy!” he said as he closed the door), and I had my WH Smith sketchbook in my pocket, and could not resist a couple of quick sketches. I want to sketch more old cars. On the same day was the annual Peggy Sue vintage car even in Santa Rosa, but I missed that. Maybe next year!

you’re a racecar in the red?

March 26, 20118 Comments

Formula One starts this weekend, belatedly, and I can’t wait! Nor can my three-year-old son, who was busy playing with his playmobil racecar in anticpation today. I love watching it, even though it means either getting up really early or staying up really late (one of which i do anyway). Now I have the Speed channel, I can watch it properly; in the pre-extended-cable past, I used to watch the channel in a fuzzy black and white form with no sound but static, while watching updates on the BBC website; the real entertainment came from the closed caption subtitles, obviosuly written very quickly by someone completely unfamiliar with formula one driver’s names (eg, names like ‘kimmy right gone on’, ‘world champion jason bunton’ and my favourite, ‘knack jim’). Sometimes I put the captions on for old times’ sake. It’s a fun game, convert your name to a closed caption gaffe; mine’s ‘peat’s gully’.

Anyway, here’s to another season of safety cars and dodgy new circuits, alonso sulking, hamilton rueing some silly mistake, webber and vettel trying to convince us they’re teammates, and the great legend michael schumacher making a big deal out of coming ninth rather than tenth.

Illustration Friday this week is themed ‘toy‘, so this is my entry (thanks Shiho Nakaza for pointing it out, I hadn’t seen IF for a while!). I have a feeling I’ll draw more toys this week, since I have been lately. In fact I have put together a Flickr set of my toy sketches: “toys“.

By the way, the line that follows the title of this entry is one of the greatest in movie history…

things that go

February 21, 2011Leave a comment

I like sketching my son’s toys, as it is a good way to capture them for posterity. Here are some of his many vehicles. Above, a taxi cab – very American. I sketched it in my samll WH Smith sketchbook – I rarely use that book these days but it’s really nice, especially for sketches like this.

Here’s a Duplo policeman with his police motorcycle (or ‘motorskykle’ as my son calls it; when he first learned to talk, it was one of the first words he learned and it was always ‘kykle!’) I’ve been trying to find the police car too but no shops seem to carry it. It’s online of course but quite expensive. I’m quite into Duplo and Lego. One of the great things about becoming a father is you get to play with all these cool toys…

And here is one of his Duplo firetrucks. Firetrucks are the big thing. I coloured this one with Staedtler watercolour pencils, I don’t use them often but really like them. They especially have a cool effect when drawing toys.

Next: a fleet of helicopters…

they’ve got cars big as bars

October 9, 2010October 9, 20105 Comments

I stuck around the Harvest Fair in Santa Rosa on Sunday afternoon, sketching old cars, getting a red sunburned neck in the process. The cars belonged to members of the Antique Automobile Club of America and ranged from old 1920s Fords (the sketch of which is in the previous post) to more modern classics from the 80s. I am not a car person, not a gear-head in the slightest, but I absolutely salivate at these classic designs. Partly because for me they represent the classic America; as I said to one of the old fellows I spoke to, this is how I imagine American cars – enormous, long, sleek, magnificent, with fins and curves and power and elegance. Of course, you get here and it’s all beige Toyotas and testosterone-fuelled SUVs, and they all look the same, no matter the car-maker, a bit of a let-down. These beauties make up for that.

The blue 1936 Dodge above reminds me of Daddy Warbucks. The red 1958 Chrysler Saratoga below, of which you can only see the rear end, reminds me of Biff Tannen. That was a long, long car, and a wide one. There’s no way that would fit into a regular parking spot at Target.

I really liked this green Oldsmobile 88, from 1954. I really liked the old-fashioned license plate.

This is also my entry for this week’s Illustration Friday, the theme of which is transportation. And what transportation!

all’s fair in love and scarecrows

October 8, 2010October 8, 20102 Comments

At the weekend we were in Santa Rosa, and we went to the annual Sonoma County Harvest Fair at the fairgrounds. It’s the first time I’d been since 2005, mere days after emigrating to the US, when taking part in the pumpkin tossing contest was like a rite of passage. I didn’t toss any pumpkins this time, but I sketched one, a giant one. I had to sketch a scarecrow, which although it was scarecrow number one, it came second in the scarecrow contest. I also sketched a pygmy goat, it was a cute and tiny and had a great beard. It seemed to have a little conversation with me while I was sketching too, bleeting away. My son preferred the piglets I think, and playing in the hay-maze.

I was most drawn to the exhibition of old cars, brought there by the Antique Automobile Club of America. I don’t get the chance to practise drawing old cars often – they are so much more interesting than modern cars – so I jumped at the chance to do so. Above is a 1929 Ford Model A, and I particularly liked that it had a trunk, an actual luggage-type trunk, attached to the back of it. It has a lot of personality!

could frame thy fearful symmetry

June 6, 2010Leave a comment

Summer is here, and with it comes 90-plus degree weather and fans and sunscreen. It just suddenly arrives in Davis, acting as though it were here all the time. I was out yesterday (looking for things to sketch on Drawing Day 2010) and drew some images that struck me downtown, the colours especially. That first one, the yellow dress, is in the window of Pinkadot on E St; the last, the South African football shirt (World Cup starts in less than a week!), is in the window of Soccer & Lifestyle. That is a football (soccer) short shop and one of my favourite places in Davis (indeed it was the discovery of this shop that helped in our initial decision to give living in Davis a go). The red cars were on E and 3rd respectively, and were begging to be sketched. I wanted to give this spread a kind of comic book quality, and I was originally going to add words, I let them speak for themselves instead.

anti-antiques

July 23, 2009July 23, 20092 Comments

That’s an antiques shop across the road there, on D Street in Davis. I don’t really do antiques; I’m sure they’re very nice, but I was put off them as a kid when forced to trawl through enormous car-boot sales and watch Antiques Roadshow on those long grey Sundays (that was presented by another Scully, though unrelated). Give me another fifteen or twenty years, I say, then I might be interested. Still, I’m sure there’s a lot of cool stuff to draw in there. But going into such a store and whipping out the moleskine isn’t my thing. There’s never enough space, people always want to look at the thing you’re standing right in front of, and I’m so shy I could never ever ask the shopkeeper if it were ok; no, it’s easier to just sit across the road and sketch from a safe distance.

oregon trail

July 7, 2009July 7, 2009Leave a comment

We spent the long Independence Day weekend in Medford, Oregon, attending a large family reunion. I’ve been once before – it’s a long old journey through the northern reaches of California, up the valley and through the mountains, and Medford really does feel a world away from Davis. The heat came with us though, regularly hitting the low 100s. Right on the rural edge of town, horses, chickens, rabbits, and the sound of roosters crowing. I perched in the shade outside my wife’s grandma’s house, and drew my wife’s uncle’s Corvette, which had travelled even further than we had (in considerably more style), but stopped while adding the colours, just as a truckload of cousins-in-law pulled up. I think the ‘missing’ colours actually give the sketch a bit more strength; it is so easy to overdo it.

I did manage a drawing on the drive up too. I sat in the backseat for a little while to feed and generally entertain my 17-month old son, but he fell asleep, so I attempted some in-car sketching, which is pretty hard. You can just about see the mountainous forests whizzing by there.