tis the season

December 23, 20243 Comments

Before I post all my London drawings, here are a couple of festive sketches from downtown Davis. There is always a bit of a contest for the best dressed window in the downtown shops and I think the one above, at Bella Luna on F St, might be the best one. It’s not really just a window, it spills out into the street and around the tree outside as well, it’s quite a jolly sight as you approach it. I had to stand just off the sidewalk and in between two cars to sketch it, well the outline anyway, I am not standing in between two cars to sketch for too long. I went back on the sidewalk to keep drawing, and then added the colour later on because it was getting a bit cold, and it was my lunchtime. Anyway, Christmas is nearly here, all the shopping both downtown and online has been done, the mince pies are already being eaten and all the Christmas tv and movies are being watched. Spurs are being very generous with all the goals we are giving away (and scoring too), but I hope Santa can bring us some fit players down the chimney. The weather is gloomy and damp, and that’s totally fine, this time of year. I have made cranberry sauce for the first time in my life and it’s on the fridge, but I’m too scared to actually eat any of it in case it’s really bad, so we have a can of it ready to go. We usually have our roast turkey dinner on Christmas Eve, since my wife’s family usually have crab on Christmas Day. I am even going to try to make Yorkshire Puddings this year, never made them before, let’s see what happens there. And I’ve somehow done my back in, which has been fun today. It’s raining outside, and Christmas episodes of Friends are on TV now. Below, a quick sketch I did of the tree in E Street Plaza, I was going to make it all colourful but you know, it was cold and I decided I couldn’t be bothered to colour it in. Not seen in the foreground were those Hump Bikes, parked with various Uber Eats or whatever delivery drivers milling about waiting for orders so they can zoom off silently on the sidewalk and in the bike lanes. The clock was giving the wrong time, it was late afternoon on Friday, we’d closed up early and I was doing a bit more late shopping before heading home. I’ve drawn the festive tree before in other years, and I don’t know, I don’t enjoy drawing Christmas trees if I’m honest. Love Christmas, hate drawing the trees if I can avoid it. Yet I like drawing trees. Well ok I don’t mind drawing Christmas trees. I guess I’ve drawn a lot of trees this year, and what I enjoy most is usually the trunk. Anyway, back to the mince pies and the bad back…

christmas eve in front of the telly

January 4, 2024Leave a comment

We all have our holiday routines. For us, Christmas Eve has become our family day. Since on Christmas Day we will typically get up and go over to Santa Rosa for the day with my wife’s family, where we will eat crab for dinner, it’s Christmas Eve where it’s just us and we will have the traditional turkey and roast potatoes dinner, with ‘picky bits’ during the day. We will spend the day watching all our favourite Christmas shows and movies, though we always spend the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas watching all the old faves. Home Alone is the classic, though we always save Muppets Christmas Carol (my personal favourite Christmas movie and Michael Caine’s best role). A Christmas Story is great (and the new sequel that came out last year was surprisingly very good fun). Love Actually is the cheese but we love it; it always reminds us of the London that existed when we left it, and we saw that at the cinema in Muswell Hill when we lived on Hornsey Lane. We even watched Die Hard this year, which I’d not actually seen since the early 90s, because it used to be on tv a lot as a generic action film before people realized it was set at Christmas so we have to argue if it’s a Christmas movie (I think you can say it definitely is, I don’t buy people saying it’s their favourite one, but each to their own); it was fun and I realized the big blond hulking terrorist who wanted to avenge his brother’s death reminded us a lot of Erling Haaland at the end of that Spurs-Man City game. We love Iron Man 3, a total Christmas action movie. We also watched the Creature Comforts Christmas this year, which I’d not seen before, and we always watch the Christmas episodes of the Simpsons, and the festive Father Ted Christmas special, the one with the Golden Cleric Award (“and now we move on to liars…”). This Christmas Eve, we started by putting on a bunch of Christmas episodes of Friends, followed by the other favourite, Charlie Brown’s Christmas. It always reminds me of when we took our son to see a kids stage production of it in Folsom when he was about three or four, in some tiny little venue, very simply produced yet amazing and memorable. Then it was time for the Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, which we know word for word and absolutely love, especially the bit where Beadle’s portly lads sing “piggy-wiggy-wiggy-wiggy-woo” which I used to sing to my son when he was a baby. Then it’s time for The Snowman, a proper gentle piece of festive animation; this was one from my own childhood, I was about six or so when it came out and remember watching it on TV, and being excited that the kid had red hair like me. Then it’s time for The Muppets Christmas Carol. I have it on an old DVD so it’s the full version, and I love how straight Caine plays it. It’s pretty close to my other favourite version, Scrooge (with Albert Finney), which I haven’t watched in a while. There are so many versions; I never really liked Scrooged, and don’t get me started on that TV version that Ross Kemp did, but nothing beats the Muppets. This year we followed that with a film that will always feel like Christmas to us, The Force Awakens. It does have snow in it, but it’s because it came out right before Christmas that it feels right, and we loved that one. Actually that year was the last one where we spent Christmas in London; hard to believe we’ve not spent Christmas with my London family in so long, I do really miss them at Christmas. By this time we’re already getting ready for dinner, and so there might be a bit of music or maybe a nap, but after dinner is done and the last bit of wrapping gets underway, it’s always time for It’s A Wonderful Life, which is a Christmas classic without really being that much of a Christmas movie itself, just that bit at the end. I love it though. There are other films that come on Christmas Day when we visit family (Gremlins played this year, and Elf usually comes on) but this is pretty much our usual tradition, just spending the whole day at home, and it’s a fun one. I hope you all had a lovely time this year. It’s already 2024 now and slowly back to work, but we did get a lovely tropical holiday in for New Years; sketches coming soon. Happy New Year!

engines of old sacramento

December 23, 2023December 25, 2023Leave a comment

Last Saturday I was feeling bored of Davis, but not motivated enough to go down to San Francisco for a day of sketching. Then I remembered that it might be interesting to go to old Sacramento and look at the trains. I hadn’t been to the Railroad Museum in a long time (not since my son was very young). I took the train there from Davis; I didn’t actually go to the Museum itself, because there were engines enough outside to sketch, and it was a bright sunny December day. Families were gathering in their pyjamas to ride the Polar Express, the annual holiday fun train ride that recreates the film/book. We rode it a couple of times years ago, that feels like a long time ago now. Anyway, I found a bit of shade and decided to draw the big red engine with ‘Santa Fe’ on the front that is parked permanently out in the open, with a big Christmas tree next to it (presumably less permanent). I love this engine. It reminds me of Chuggington, the kids TV show engine. We had this board game when my son was a kid called ‘Chuggington: Ride the Rails’. I coloured it all there. It was a good sketch to start the day, though already my legs were telling me I’d need to sit down occasionally on this sketching day. Still I wanted to draw more trains.

I went over to the front of the train that hosts the Polar Express. I know there’s an old steam train that runs through here, or at least used to, but it looks like they use this Western Pacific engine to pull the Polar Express carriages now. I could see they were getting ready to board everyone, so I drew as quickly as I could, but it pulled away before I could draw many details, only outlines, so this was a finish off later job. It’s another ‘Chuggington’ style engine, but with more of a Chelsea 1995 away kit paint job. Nearby there was a voice on a loudspeaker announcing fish and chip orders that were ready. That sounded good; I had that for lunch. I only ate half of it though, it was a little bit gross, and was making me feel a bit Tom and Dick. I threw it in the bin and went to sketch the big old steam engine that was now parked up on the rails. I liked the little spots of colour provided by the trees. I drew the whole outline and a bunch of the shapes and details with a mix of pen and pencil before the sun was getting in my eyes a bit, and my legs were asking for a break, so I said ‘I’ve done enough’ and went somewhere else, finishing off the remaining details later. I do love a steam engine, and a nice bit of machinery.

Here are a couple of quick sketches from the train going into Sacramento from Davis, in my little Fabriano sketchbook.

we wish you a Messi Christmas

March 7, 2023Leave a comment

I guess it’s time to talk about the 2022 World Cup. It seems so long ago already. After all the years of build-up and controversy, we ended up getting a Christmas World Cup, and on the football pitch, it was pretty enjoyable. And yet, as often happens when there is so much football, I feel like I’ve already forgotten most of it. England went out to France, didn’t we? Kane missed a penalty in the game? Wales played in it, didn’t they? It all seems a bit like a dream. It happened at the wrong time of year, it should have been in summer. I had all the World Cup flags up at the same time as the Christmas decorations, it was like having Christmas in Australia or somewhere. Sure, I felt conflicted, like a lot of us did. This Qatar World Cup was a talking point alright, and I won’t go into all the reasons why here, suffice to say I didn’t think it should be there. One of the less controversial reasons, for me, was holding a World Cup in such a tiny space, when these days it seems like two countries is barely enough for a major competition. But it turned out this made it a lot easier for the FIFA President Lex Luthor to get to every game in time for the TV cameras to tarry on him in the stands. I wasn’t hyped for this World Cup, being held mid-season with almost zero build-up, and we’ve had so much football the past couple of years since returning from the lockdown break .There was no way I was waking up at stupid-o-clock to watch South Korea vs Ghana (spoiler alert, I was totally waking up at stupid-o-clock to watch South Korea vs Ghana). This was a World Cup during the academic year, so work would be busier than in the usually-quiet summer. And yet, once it kicked off, I couldn’t help myself, and just got carried away as usual. There were twists, turns, surprises, shocks, and it all ended in one of the best cup finals I have ever seen, with Argentina beating France on penalties in a super dramatic match, and Messi finally winning that one thing he’s always wanted (and I don’t mean Cristiano Ronaldo being forced to be his butler for a month). I drew several of the games on my iPad as I watched them, the last one being the final itself (above), and I wrote down the commentary as it was being said. This was drawn in our very festive living room, and when I drew Messi tearing it away on screen, Argentina were still 2-0 up and cruising, before the Mbappe-inspitred French fightback. What an amazing final, and my favourite moment was the goalkeeper Martinez posing with the Golden Glove award afterwards.

We put the games on the big screen at work, in our study lounge. We are a World Cup enthusiastic department, with many of our faculty and students getting right into it. I put up a big wallchart that people could check every day. When I sketched this it was not very busy, but during some of the final group games and knockout stages we got quite a few people in there. We could only get the games in Spanish for some reason, but that was fun because they not only say “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL” as they do, but they also write “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL” in closed-captions on the screen. We did watch the 2018 World Cup in here as well, I remember watching England beat Colombia on penalties – rather, I remember hiding in the kitchen area, unable to actually watch. On this day, I watched France vs Australia (France won 4-1).

This wasn’t just a Christmas World Cup, this was also a Thanksgiving World Cup. Above, the sketch I made on Thanksgiving Day at my mother-in-law’s house in Santa Rosa, while watching Brazil beat Serbia, with Richarlison scoring an amazing overhead kick. I wish he would score some of those for Tottenham, or any goal at all, that would be nice. The USA played England the next day, and our transatlantic family sat around to watch it (a far cry from when Black Fridays were for going early-morning shopping). It was a pretty turgid 0-0 game, a better result for the Americans than for the English, but not one to convince people what all the fuss is about with this World Cup thing.

Back home for this next one, and our decorations have started going up. We put our Christmas decorations up after Thanksgiving is over, they like the clear delineations in the holidays here. For example, if you go to big stores like Target, Valentine’s Day starts on December 26th, St. Patrick’s Day starts on February 15th, and Easter starts on March 18th. Personally I wish it could be Christmas every day, and I think that would make a really good idea for a song. Speaking of Christmas songs, the biggest surprise this year was when we discovered that Baddiel and Skinner and the Lightning Seeds had written an updated version of Three Lions, especially for this Christmas World Cup. My initial reaction was that it must surely be cheesier than a bag of Wotsits, with that chorus getting a little bit too much airtime the past few years, but was surprised to find I bloody loved it. It was very fresh back in ’96, and now it’s one of my favourite Christmas songs. “Santa says let’s play the Christmas Tree formation” Hanging up behind the tree you can see my 2006 USA (sorry, “USMNT”) shirt, coupled with my 2010 England away shirt, the only England shirt I own. I’ve owned a USA football shirt longer than I’ve owned an England one. The game on TV was France vs Poland, and the commentator was just gushing about Kylian Mbappé, the French superstar. They called him a “cheat code” and a “superhuman”, they said he’s “a postman; he delivers”, they called him not only “different calibre” but “different gravy”, confusingly, and they referred to him as “a Ferrari, but a Formula One Ferrari”, which presumably means he will have engine failure halfway through a game and throw away a lead. They also said it would be “his tournament”. It nearly was.

One of the surprises of the tournament was Morocco, who made it all the way to the semi-finals. I’ve liked Morocco’s team since they did well in England’s group in the 1986 World Cup. Back in 1986 I had no idea really who was supposed to be good or not, other than Italy were the reigning World Champions, West Germany were West Germany, Brazil were super famous, and Argentina had Diego Maradona. I did know that Morocco were not supposed to be good though, because like Iraq, Canada, Algeria and the like, they got half-sized stickers in the Panini album. Even teams like Bulgaria, Northern Ireland and Paraguay got full-size stickers, so ‘Maroc’ must be crap. They were not – they topped England’s group, beating Portugal. I remember they had a player with a festive-sounding name, called Abdelkrim Merry ‘Krimau’.This time around, they also beat Portugal, this time in the quarter-finals, but before that they also dispatched their other neighbours from across the Straits of Gibraltar, Spain. I was at home that day working on my laptop, but it was quiet so I sketched the game. It was pretty exciting, and went to penalties. Morocco’s kit was reminiscent of their kit from 1998, also made by Puma. Morocco ended up losing the semi-finals to France, and finished fourth overall, a heroic historic run. I thought they might actually win it.

Messi Gvardiol

Here are a couple more things. Above, a small graphic I made of Messi in the semi-final against Croatia, teaching masked youngster Gvardiol a thing or two about turning. I loved this iconic moment. And finally, a couple of Christmas ornaments I made, one saying “We Wish You A Messi Christmas”, the other replying “And a Mbappe New Year”. And it was. I’m sold (or am I sportswashed?); I think every other men’s World Cup should now be held before Christmas, a new tradition. Sure it might mess up the European football seasons, but they are being messed up anyway. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with being a bit Messi.

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fake plastic tree

May 19, 2020May 19, 2020Leave a comment

Different times, before the Shelter-in-Place, before the downstairs flood, before a lot of things, last Christmas in the living room. Our little fake plastic Christmas tree. Drawn on the iPad which is the first time I can draw the tree and not have to leave little spaces for the lights and ornaments, I just draw them on top digitally. One of my cats looks on. The cats aren’t talking at the moment; one of them got sick last week (he actually had to go to hospital overnight, poor thing), and now the other one won’t go near him without hissing. Hopefully once the house is back in shape they can all get along nicely again. Cats eh, it’s almost like they’re a whole different species. On the wall in the background you can make out the various advent calendars I have made over the years for my son. I made another one last Christmas, this year it was Hawaii themed, because we were going to spend Christmas in Hawaii. Those sketches will be posted soon. Seems like a million years ago. Anyway, the Hawaii advent calendar is below. I drew it on the iPad while flying back from England at the start of December (so it was a couple of days late), trying to grapple with Procreate while squeezed into a narrow seat in the dark with a large man with big elbows sat to my right, while also suffering with a stinging nose. I was looking forward to Hawaii! Be nice to be there now, with a Mai Tai and my ukulele.

I wish I had an advent calendar counting down the days until the Shelter-In-Place is over. Actually I now call it the “Global Coronavirus Shared Experience”, or “GCSE”.

christmas crackers

December 28, 2018December 28, 20182 Comments

Christmas morning, we were up early, opening presents, calling England. Our morning pressie-time is about the time of my London family’s Christmas dinner-time. Then, time to go over to my wife’s family in Santa Rosa for Christmas Day. We have crab for dinner on Christmas Day in Santa Rosa, and I’m always the world’s worst eater of crab, it tastes great but I am such an amateur with the crackers. I did pretty well this year but I live for the broth, I love dipping the bread into that. We have brought the tradition of Christmas Crackers with us from England, along with the hilarious Christmas Cracker jokes. I say hilarious, I mean terrible, but British humour is different from American humour anyway. That said, my five-year-old nephew likes knock-knock jokes, and we always do the ‘interrupting cow’ version (“knock-knock / Who’s there? / The Interrupting Cow / the interruptin/MOOOOO!”) (I got that one from the Vicar of Dibley back in the 90s), and then many other variants (the one I like the most is the ‘interrupting rabbit’, because of course the rabbit doesn’t ‘moooo’ or anything but just makes a noise tapping its foot). Actually my favourite joke EVER sounds like it comes from a Christmas Cracker, but in fact it comes from ‘3001 Jokes For Kids’. It’s the only joke I remember from that book, which I got for Christmas when I was about nine or ten, and to this day is my favourite joke. When I first read it, by myself in my room, I laughed harder than I had ever laughed, and then laughed more. I still find it hilarious. What is the joke? Well if I tell you, promise not to laugh. Well I mean you can laugh at the joke obviously because it’s brilliant and funny, but just not at me for liking the joke so much. Ok, here goes, the best joke of all time, here it is, here goes.

“What is a polygon? A dead parrot.”

Isn’t that the best?! Many years later in America someone made some reference to the Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch being their favourite bit of British humour, and yes it is very funny, the Pythons are my favourites, but it’s not even the funniest dead parrot joke. Polygon is the funniest dead parrot joke. I remember doing maths at school and we had to do shapes and someone used the word polygon, and I laughed so much I had to go to the toilet. When I was in my late teens I visited Strasbourg and the lycee was close to a street called the ‘Route du Polygone’ and every day I would see that sign and laugh so hard, and I tried the French version of the joke, “Que-ce que c’est un polygone? C’est un perroquet mort!” The joke didn’t necessarily translate directly but they laughed at me anyway, and pointed a lot, which I think means it was extra funny. Strasbourg being historically part German I would sometimes impress people with the German version, “Was ist ein Polygon? Ein toter Papagei.” Again the humour isn’t necessarily transferable but I like to think that what I mistook for confused silent stares were in fact their way of saying, wow what a joke, das ist really cool, Pete ist sehr lustig.

Let’s move on from the world’s funniest ever joke (if you are finished laughing about Polly being ‘gone’, if not, take your time). Above, I sketched my mother-in-law’s Christmas tree, which this year was dressed up as a snowman. The hat actually has a history, it was brought over from London by my mum over ten years ago and left at my mother-in-law’s in Santa Rosa, and before that my mum actually got it from my uncle in Belfast, so the hat has a long well-travelled history. I like this snowman tree, and I sketched it while we watched the Water Horse, that movie set in Scotland with the Loch Ness Monster. It reminded me of the Family Ness, that was a cartoon I liked as a kid. Not as funny as the polygon joke but amusing nonetheless. I nearly drew a cartoon many years ago about fish living in a Scottish loch called “Under Loch And Quai”, with a kind of Porridge-like cell-mate dynamic to it, but while the little fishies were fun to draw, I had no actual material other than trying to work in the polygon joke, which doesn’t really work when it’s a cartoon about two fish, because (a) they wouldn’t understand what a parrot is, what with fish being entirely water-bound, and (b) parrots not exactly being aquatic nor common in Scotland. To the underwater community, “Polly” might well be a common name for a frog, for all we know, what with a ‘pollywog’ being another name for a tadpole, albeit more common in America than rural Scotland. So a better version of the joke for two fish to say would be “What is a Polygon? A dead frog.” And you can imagine, this might make two fish roll about in hysterics, but would have us humans just shrugging our shoulders. Maybe humour isn’t as translatable as we think. The only joke I could think of for this cartoon was another one which I may have read in 3001 Jokes For Kids, I don’t remember, but it goes as follows:

FISH 1: “Why are you swimming under the pier?

FISH 2: “Because it is raining.”

christmas is all around

December 25, 20185 Comments

Happy Christmas to you all. This is the E Street Plaza in Davis California, decked out with the big tree. This came after a long period of not-sketching. I did this after work, after our office closed for the holidays; I just really wanted to capture a bit of Christmas, and followed this up by the evening sketch at De Vere’s. And now it’s Christmas Eve. Well, it just turned Christmas Day (better get to bed, the Ghost of Christmas Past isn’t going to haunt itself). I’ve spent today scoffing cheese, mince pies, turkey, hot chocolate, a couple of beers, pumpkin pie, and the second-worst level of Quality Streets (the strawberry / orange cremes, not the rock-hard toffee ones; it wasn’t a big box, in fact it only had two purple ones and one green triangle, but four toffee pennies? Inequality Street more like.) And of course, watching Christmas movies. It’s A Wonderful Life is one of my favourites, though actually most of it doesn’t take place at Christmas, and in the end they sing Auld Lang Syne on Christmas Eve, bizarrely. Abother one I always watch is Muppet’s Christmas Carol, which is probably the best version of that story that exists (the other one I love is the 1970 Albert Finney version of Scrooge, which I feel the Muppets drew from quite heavily. That Ghost of Christmas Future gave me nightmares for years!). One of the reasons I love the Muppet’s version is that Michael Caine plays it so straight, so believably, among all the Muppets, he doesn’t just pretend it’s all a larf. Home Alone is another classic Christmas film we love, my son adores it, so I like it a lot now as well. I have a soft spot for Love Actually as well, silly though it is. It reminds me of London in 2003, and seeing the occasional shots of the skyline, when not even the Gherkin was finished, it makes me very nostalgic for that period right before we moved to America; that was the London I left, the London of Hugh Grant being a bachelor Prime Minister telling American President Billy Bob Thornton to go and do one. We always watch some classic Christmas telly as well: The Snowman, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, and the Christmas edition of Father Ted (“and now we move on to liars…”). Of course in proper British Christmas TV someone always dies, at least in Eastenders and Downton Abbey anyway. Now it’s also the time of year when people include Die Hard as one of their favourite Christmas movies, because those people are really clever and perceptive and are the first people to figure out Die Hard was set during Christmas; well done you, here is a prize. One thing that is different over here in California is that we don’t get the special Christmas edition of Radio Times (and/or TV Times), when all the TV listings would be set out like great, epic events. Die Hard With A Vengeance is on at 11pm on ITV two days before Christmas? Set the video timer! Get home early from the pub! And the Queen’s Speech, oh I always loved the Queen’s Speech, though I don’t remember ever actually watching it, as we usually had Christmas dinner at that time and it was the one time of the day when the TV was off (the one time of the year in fact, our TV was always on). I like the idea of the Queen’s Speech but the only thing I remember was the Annus Horribilis bit. And that was because I thought it meant Horrible Bum. And on that note, Merry Christmas everybody, and a Happy New Bum!

a day in the city

January 29, 20182 Comments

Amtrak Dec2017 sm

Just before Christmas I went down to the city (San Francisco) for some pre-Christmas sketching, and to spend money shopping for last-minute gifts. Well, one last-minute gift. And it was from Tiffany’s so it was less ‘last-minute’ and more just ‘minute’. Well, maybe not that small. I walk in there and I say, look, I am a man and utterly clueless, I don’t even know what a Tiffany’s is, I actually thought you sold cakes, and they are like, absolutely sir, don’t worry, you are not alone, let me help. And they were very helpful. But you don’t want to hear about my complete cluelessness when it comes to shopping for things that aren’t made by Nintendo or Lego (hey, I feel sophisticated when I buy myself a new jumper, like I’m a style guru or something). You’re here for the sketching, and that’s what I do. Actually it’s not all I do, I’m also really into history and language and writing, and I totally love football (soccer) and spend ridiculous amounts of time obsessively making spreadsheets of football stats you don’t need (for example, the most worn kit make since the Premier League began is Umbro, also the most successful in terms of games won and equal on titles won with Nike, but Nike has a goal difference of +1316 compared to Umbro’s +341 (compared to Adidas whose goal difference is +480 – you really don’t need to know all of this, but this is the sort of stuff I think a lot about) (I do work for the Statistics Department, it kind of rubs off on me). Anyway, the sketching. I used a new Palomino pencil that my friend Terry in Japan sent me (I thought palominos were horses) (I should tell people, this pencil was sent by a pal o’ mine) to draw the Amtrak train scene above, because you have to draw on the train.

SFMoma Dec2017 sm

Now I haven’t sketched around SoMa in about ten years, so I went to the Museum of Modern Art for a little inspiration. I was mostly inspired by the entrance fee to maybe go and do some sketching outside instead, but not after spending a lot of time in the gift shop. They have the best stuff. I sketched outside in Yerba Buena Gardens, which is always a nice place for people watching (I love that phrase, I never watch people, they’re not very interesting). Fun fact, Yerba Buena is the original name of San Francisco, being renamed after the local mission in 1847.

SF Jewish Musuem sm

Now this unusually shaped building is part of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and I could tell before looking it up that it was designed by Daniel Libeskind, as those diagonally turned buildings are somewhat of a signature of his. It reminded me of the building he designed on Holloway Road in London, I used to go past on the bus. London Metropolitan University, that’s it. This one is much more dramatic. As I sketched, a rather shouty man, tailed by a police officer on a bike, wandered past yelling some angry gibberish at the world, with the cop shadowing him all the way. I didn’t add any paint, but moved on, as I only had an hour or two of daylight left.

SF Johns Grill Dec 2017 sm

I was near Union Square by now, and so I stood just off the Christmas shopping masses and sketched the signage of John’s Grill. I don’t know who John is or what his grill i all about but they appear to specialize in Jazz, cocktails, steaks and seafood, and have been around since 1908. Well done Pete, you have successfully read words, pat yourself on the back. I really liked that tall building in the background, on Market Street, and I used a grey pen to sketch it. San Francisco’s slightly damper air gives a muted, softer feel to its colours and lines.

SF Union Square Xmas Tree 2017 sm

Yes, I have posted it before but here it is again to round off the daytrip. It’s the big Christmas Tree in Union Square. It was busy, lost of people stopped to take pictures with the tree (a lady sitting nearby was asked many times by people to take their photos, she was very obliging; nobody asked me, I was sat above, my head buried in a sketchbook). I did draw a couple taking a selfie though because that’s the thing nowadays, actually people have always done it even with their old cameras but it didn’t seem to offend grumpy people as much. Seriously, people who get irritated by people taking selfies, get over it. I know the standard response to that is “seriously, people who get irritated by people who get irritated by people taking selfies, get over it” but if you start down that road you end up on a continuous looping paradox of nonsensical arguments (aka Twitter) (or aka everywhere these days). Anyway, after this sketch, the sunlight fading faster than fog in a funfair, I switched into hapless Christmas shopper mode and spent the rest of the day making the wallet a bit lighter. And then I caught the train back home to Davis.

Voices Singing, Let’s Be Jolly

December 25, 20174 Comments

Davis Xmas Tree 2017 sm

I’m hoping 2018 will get me back into the groove of sketching-scanning-writingnonsense-posting, but we shall see. I haven’t even scanned my November sketches yet! And some of those were from lovely Hawaii. Also, a couple of sketchcrawls not reported on, but actually a lot less sketching than usual. The large massive glut of sketches at the start of 2017 has, well not dried up exactly, just been a bit disrupted by my working-through-lunch habits, and also running out of things to draw in Davis. So anyway rather than play catch up, here are three recent and timely sketches of Christmas Trees. The one above, that’s the one down in E Street Plaza in Davis, sketched on the December “Let’s Draw Davis” sketchcrawl. I really enjoyed sketching that, after quite a busy and stressful week, I needed to be out sketching with sketchers and it was nice.

SF Union Square Xmas Tree 2017 sm

Now this one was done only a couple of days ago, down in San Francisco. Needed de-stressing, so getting out of Davis for the day down in the City was the ideal tonic. I just went around SoMa and Union Square, and ended up sketching the big tree with the extremely festive Macy’s in the background. It was very bright.

Home Xmas Tree 2017 sm

And finally, our own little Christmas tree at home. It’s a fake tree, which we bought if I remember rightly back in December 2005, our first one in Davis. It’s heavily protected from kittens who like getting in and lying on the branches. I always like to draw it before Christmas Day itself, so it still has pressies around it. It’s Christmas Eve right now – well, just turned Christmas Day, and I just finished off a bottle of Italian red wine, which feels not only supremely festive but highly decadent, I have not finished a bottle of red wine pretty much since I was at college, I think. I’m not a huge wine drinker; this one was quite nice. Also ate a lot of turkey, parsnips, cheese, chocolate, and even a mug of hot chocolate – I accidentally bought a tin of hot chocolate at the store today for $12.99 which is completely mental, I don’t even drink hot chocolate (once every few years) but I saw it and thought yeah, that looks nice, and only $2.99! Checked my receipt later and was like, what the? But the store was so busy I didn’t want to go back. So I got my $12.99 hot chocolate and yeah it was nice I guess, it bloody well better be, $12.99, that is, wow. I bought a lot of unnecessarily expensive cheese too. The selection wasn’t very good either. Well, Christmas is all about the dearth of cheeses.

Sorry, cheesy Xmas joke ahoy. Actually the selection of cheeses was very good. Merry Christmas everyone! Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings and And a Happy New Year. May you have all the joys of the holiday season, full of friends, fun, festivities and lots of things that begin with f. Buon Natale! Joyeux Noel! Meli Kalikimaka! Frohe Weihnachten! God Jol! Prettige Kerstdagen! Nollaig Shona! Feliz Navidad!

Alright here’s a few more Christmas trees I’ve sketches from down the years. Not all of them, just a few.

christmas in south ken

January 10, 2016January 10, 201610 Comments

There are a few places in the world that are very special to me, and this is one of them – the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London. I came here just before Christmas with my family to see the dinosaurs (Dippy the Diplodocus is still taking pride of place in the main hall, but will soon be replaced with a whale skeleton). I used to come here when I was a child to see the dinosaurs (Dippy was my favourite), when my older sister used to bring me here as a four-year-old so that I could argue with the staff about vertebrae (I never understood that story either). I was a total dinosaur nut, and I even still have a few of my old dinosaur books from my youth. Those dinosaur illustrations enthralled me, and the long hard-to-pronounce names were fascinating to me. This place is more than just dinosaurs of course, and within its walls it keeps a massive collection of specimens from all periods of natural history – around 80 million specimens in all, mostly housed in the Darwin Centre. This is an unbelievably important place. But back to the dinosaurs, the term ‘dinosaur’ was coined by Dr. Richard Owen, who eventually helped to found the Natural History Museum. This building was opened in 1881, and is one of the jewels of London. And importantly, it is free to go in.My son’s not as into dinosaurs as I was, he kind of likes them, but he really likes rocks and minerals, so he enjoyed that. After we were done and had played a few games of Top Trumps in the cafe, we went and had lunch in South Kensington (it’s so nice there, so civilized, and I had an organic mince pie which is very posh of me), I went back to use up the rest of the daylight sketching the ice rink and Christmas tree in front of the museum. In London in December it starts getting dark at about half past three, though this was an unseasonably mild day with some clear sky. The scene before the museum is so festive, I might make it into a Christmas card next year. You’d probably not catch me ice skating though.