Last Christmas, 2025…

August 17, 2026August 17, 20264 Comments

And so it’s time to catch up with last Christmas 2025, and close out the posts of sketches from that long long year of sketches. There is no way I will end 2026 with the same volume of drawings, even though I have certainly been busy filling those sketchbook pages. 2025 was just an unusually productive year. Here then are some very festive scenes from Davis, while we are here in the middle of another scorching hot summer; “I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes, global warming is all around us…” Back in December it was really foggy, some of the thickest fog I’d seen in many years, but the shop windows of Davis brought a lot of colour as they usually do, with their annual contest to see which shop can be the most festively decorated. It’s usually this store that wins it for me, Bella Luna on F Street. Not a shop I go to myself, I’m not really into jewelry and stuff, though I really love how they decorate for Christmas and have drawn it before. I remember sketching their old location on E Street many years ago, when they were still called ‘De Luna’, and they are a longtime family owned Davis business going back to 1967. I think I did go into De Luna once to ask about cleaning my wedding ring, if memory serves. Anyway this was one of my favourite festive drawings from last year, drawn the day before Christmas Eve.

This one was from much earlier in December, another very festive storefront at Avid & Co, the kids shop branch of the Avid Reader bookstore a few doors down. It’s one of my favourite shops in Davis, and before my trips back to England I usually get something in there for my young niece. Plus some Lego minifigures for myself, why not. Before it was called Avid & Co it was known as Avid Reader Active, as the bookshop would keep its travel books in here, as well as toys and games for the kids. Long before that, it was a different toystore called Alphabet Moon, which closed in 2012 (I drew that too). I used to take my kid there to play with the wooden trains; Avid and Co still have a train table for the kids. Avid & Co has some kids books, but most of the children’s books are in the main store, downstairs at the back for the younger kids and upstairs for the slightly older kids. Back when I first came to Davis, my first job was at the Avid Reader and I worked a few times in their old Children’s bookshop branch on the E St Plaza, and then helped move it all to the main store when that closed down. As you can see here, the windows of Avid & Co were decorated with festive muppets; the Muppets Christmas Carol is one of my favourite films. I drew this while on our monthly ‘Let’s Draw Davis’ sketchcrawl. It was very cold and foggy that day but I braved it for the love of sketching.

Well well well, what have we here, Santa’s Firetruck? Santa likes to ride this through Davis during December to cheer up the kids, and while I have probably drawn this truck before at some point over the years, I don’t remember sketching it while dressed up for the Holidays. Santa’s sleigh is attached safely to the top, and I don’t think fire safety regulations allow for reindeers to ride along. I wonder if Santa gets to slide down the North Pole? I drew about half of this right there and finished it off at home, it was cold and there were a lot of lights, plus people had started taking pictures with Santa next to the truck, they asked if I also wanted a photo but I thought I’d better not, though I think Santa will agree I’ve been a good boy, and all I want is more sketchbooks, paints and pens please. I might make this into a card for this year, give to my co-workers. When my teenager was a toddler, firetrucks were all the rage. Our local fire stations used to actively invite the kids to come by and meet them, look at the big engines, and even give them firefighter trading cards with their names and pictures on them! Good memories. The fire service folk do a very good job.

Here is a sketch from our annual Holiday Party at work, I did a few but am not posting them all here. This one looks the most festive. We always have a nice party for the students, staff and faculty, with good food, games, bingo, ugly sweaters, hot chocolate and even a bit of singing, with lots of festive karaoke. This year was especially fun, and while I did not sing karaoke, I did bring my ukulele and sing one song, an Irish song by Brendan Shine, ‘Catch Me If You Can’. I have never done that before, twenty years of working there, but I think it went alright. It was because I was almost reaching fifty, there is that line in the chorus “I’m awful shifty, for a man of fifty, catch me if you can, me name is Dan, sure I’m your man”. Now, my name is not Dan, and I’m not your man, and I don’t think I’m that shifty, but I am now fifty, which seemed an ancient venerable age when I first started working here. Anyway here is one of my co-workers Olga announcing the White Elephant gift exchange game (I got a nice notebook), and one of our students Oscar singing Ozzy Osbourne in a very festive hat.

And so, back home. A few days before Christmas, my wife was getting on with some festive wrapping, ‘When Harry Met Sally’ was being played on the TV. We like to watch a lot of movies this time of year. I do love Christmas, so do our cats, and I made a very special Advent Calendar in 2025, it was basically a record store in a lit picture frame box, with shelves full of records, posters showing snowman bands (Snowasis, Taylor Snowdrift, David Snowie etc), and the records were numbered 1-24 and opened each day, with a chocolate inside, a hand-drawn album cover with snowman replacing the real artists, plus a QR code to a festive song by that artist. AI is never making this, mate. It was a Big Idea and I rushed to get it done on time but finish it I did. I should post about it sometime but I always forget; besides the advent calendars are always a bit personal. I look back at them all sometimes and go wow, I made a lot of those didn’t I. Some day I won’t. Every year I say, I’m not making one this year. I am probably not making one this year, until I get an idea in my head and run with it. Anyway.

And last of all, a sketch of the Christmas tree at my wife’s mom’s house, drawn on Boxing Day (just ‘December 26th’ here) after we had a nice breakfast at a local diner, and shortly before heading home. And that is all for 2025. I’d say ‘Happy New Year’ but I know what 2026 has been like. But from the wilds of the never-ending summer it’s good to look back at the foggy festive days.

berries

January 26, 2025January 27, 20253 Comments

The last Christmassy thing I drew this festive season, right at the end. Not a lot to be festive about now is there. These little holly berries are another Jellycat thing, we have a few of those now. Sometimes, little things with smiles on them can cheer you up. The internet isn’t going to do that, social media isn’t. Social media. This phase of human history has been a bit of a social experiment, hasn’t it, and maybe it’s time to evolve again. I stopped posting to Facebook a long time ago, except when making Let’s Draw Davis events (which I haven’t organized since October, I have become a bit shy on that front). I stopped posting to Twitter (‘X’ is a stupid stupid name) due to the increasingly awful richest man in the world owner; a shame, as it used to be quite good. I’m still using Instagram despite the terrible shift in the owner, mostly because on the whole it’s been a good place, but I’m stopping using Threads because rather than being a ‘nice’ version of Twitter, for me it’s become an exhausting app full of posts I really don’t want to see but are which are designed to just draw you in and exhaust and frustrate you, and not even from people I follow. Threads might be my least favourite of all, I’ve decided. Look, if anyone follows me on there, all I do is complain/cheer about Tottenham, I don’t really post my sketching stuff there. I don’t interact with people, I follow accounts about sketching or football or history, and I don’t look for engagement either. Yet because the app defaults not to the ‘following’ list but the dreaded ‘For You’ list, I get pulled by gravity into looking at posts either complaining about the afore-unmentioned billionaire and whatever stupid crap the other one who shall not be named has said or done today, or it’s really mind-numbing engagement posts that for some reason the algorithm has decided I should see, such as “I don’t understand, why do the British have a different accent from me?” or “Can someone explain, why do the British eat baked beans, what are they?” or “Can someone explain, what is the difference between Britain and Ireland?” followed by frankly hundreds of stupid responses either actually explaining it or having a go at them for asking it. For a while most of the posts that showed up for me were along the lines of “Hey! I’m new to English Pre-Meer League, what team should I support?” as if they actually want a real answer. But of course they don’t. All of it, or at least 99% of this all, is just bait, we live in a world of endless click bait. And we all know who the master baiters are. Now even my phone is at it, I have been getting a lot of texts lately from spammers and scammers, I delete and report every one but it’s like Space Invaders, they keep coming. But Threads, sorry, it ain’t working out between us. I always preferred being petescully to ‘pwscully’ (that was always going to be my novelist name, but I couldn’t think of any good stories). So, I’m doing the latest New Twitter Replacement, Bluesky, which does seem nicer and easier to use without getting so much of the distracting noise (ironically, just like how Twitter worked for me, before every other post became an ad for whichever right-wing SuperPac paid whats-his-face the most money). I am ‘petescully‘ again at Bluesky, and sure half of my posts will be drawing related, half will be me moaning about Spurs, and the other half will be… until I’m bored of that. It’s almost exciting, like back when we were all doing MySpace and LiveJournal and something new would come along. To be honest, I’ve never been interested in big followings like some sketchers get, or being part of any global conversation, or even engaging in debates with people online who I do not know. I am one of those who just likes yelling at the void. I just like to draw, and look at the world and draw, and then ramble about whatever in this place, the good old sketchblog. This predates all the social medias that have caused so much of a headache, and a lot of people gave this sort of thing up for the instant expansion all that short-attention-span social media offered. I’m still here. I hope you like the berries.

xmas day 2024

January 17, 2025January 17, 2025Leave a comment

And back to America. This is a sketch from Christmas Day, in my wife’s mom’s living room in Santa Rosa, the fireplace after all the presents and stockings had been given out. I had done my back in the day before crouching down on the kitchen floor to find pots and pans for our annual turkey roast on Christmas Eve (it was delicious, but agony). For Christmas in Santa Rosa we have crab. I had been worried that my back would mean I couldn’t go, but was alright on the drive over, and we did our annual presents thing. While people chatted afterwards I sat and played Christmas tunes on my ukulele and sketched the living room. We didn’t go away anywhere for Christmas this year. I’ve often thought it might be nice to have Christmas in somewhere like Salzburg or Norway, or one of those other places in the Rick Steve’s Christmas Special, but it’s a lot of planning, and you want to see family. In the evening we went down to see family in Petaluma, always nice. Next day we walked (or in my case limped) about Target buying half price wrapping paper, and my back started to feel a little better. I never miss the chance to go and get half-price rolls of wrapping paper, and I cannot resist immediately using the wrapping paper like a lightsabre, it’s literally impossible, even with a bad back. I like shiny wrapping paper, and always go for the good stuff, the cheap stuff can go for stocking stuffers. Another Christmas in California, but now it’s 2025.

christmas under the tree

December 27, 2024Leave a comment

These little fellows are sat at the foot of our little Christmas tree this year, and I just had to draw them. This sketchbook is nearly over (yes, I still have to post my London sketches) but Christmas isn’t. Well, I get the feeling from a lot of Americans that it is, because it’s past December 25th, but that’s only Christmas Day. At Target today while buying discounted wrapping paper for next year I heard someone say to their kid, “no, Christmas is over now”. Today, for me as a Brit anyway, was Boxing Day, laziest day of the year. I keep the decorations up until January 6th, though as far as British tradition held when I was a kid, Christmas lasted for those exact two weeks of TV listings in the Radio Times; once it’s January 2nd, forget it, party’s over folks. But they (and the TV Times, and other papers with good listings, even really awful papers like the Mail would have good TV listings at Christmas time) would always list the days as “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Friday, etc, same with New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. So this day when people ask me what day Christmas Day is on, I say “Christmas Day”, because I figured we just didn’t use the actual name of the weekday for it, because the Radio Times didn’t. Still, I was glad to see Christmas Day fall upon a Wednesday this year, it feels somehow fair. Although on the Saturday before Christmas, I threw my back out and was largely unable to move too much for many days. I was in the kitchen making cranberry sauce, which I had never done before. I had the idea when I was deciding to make a special drink called a ‘White Christmas’, which I’d seen online, basically Prosecco with white cranberry juice (the one I used also had some peach), a sprig of rosemary and some cranberries. I had a lot of cranberries left over so I looked up recipes for cranberry sauce; there are hundreds, all different, some with loads of ingredients like rum and cinnamon sticks, some with hardly any. I chose one with perhaps a bit too much orange in it, and I squeezed the juice out of it myself. Once I’d made it, I put it in the fridge for a couple of days before tasting it, I was a bit afraid. It turned out ok, a bit tart and fruity, so we had some canned cranberry sauce as well, which was much milder. Anyway, after being down on the floor looking for various pots and pans in the cupboards, I somehow pulled my back, and this got worse over the next few days, even affecting my ankle and foot, meaning I spent most of Sunday and Monday lying flat in bed. In fact I drew this sketch when I woke up super early, unable to get back asleep, so I hobbled downstairs and drew these guys. Christmas Eve is traditionally the day for just our family, when we have my beloved Christmas turkey roast dinner. We go over to my wife’s family on Christmas Day itself and eat crab for dinner. At home though I get my parsnips (this year roasted with carrots and they were amazing) and different stuffings (both British Paxo and the American stovetop kind), turkey and crispy roast spuds, and of course I eschew brussels sprouts because I can’t stand them. This year though I made Yorkshire puddings for the first time ever, and they came out great. Achievement finally unlocked, why was I so afraid of messing that up. My wife made the turkey and it was fantastic. Though for all the bits I was cooking, I was bent over in the kitchen in agony and had to keep sitting down every few minutes, barely able to stand, but it all worked out deliciously. I was still pretty stiff on Christmas Day, but as the day wore on the back issue finally wore off, and by Boxing Day I was fine walking about Target. No mate, it’s still Christmas yet, not while there are mince pies left to be eaten, and I still have a lot I brought back from London. I’m in denial that 2025 has to start at all, if I’m honest. As I write it’s 3:30am and I’ve been unable to get back to sleep. Enjoy the festive season while it’s here folks, and to all a good night (or a good morning).

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!

some of them fell into heaven

December 24, 2023December 25, 2023Leave a comment

I made an ornament this year with Shane MacGowan on it. My way of honoring him this year, after he died at the end of last month. Christmas Day would have been his 66th birthday. He lived a life alright, and there are a lot of people who didn’t make it that far. His funeral was quite the party. I just finished listening to the audiobook of his biography, written just a couple of years ago. I’ll for sure be thinking of him and his songs this year. Happy Christmas.

old sac at christmas

December 23, 2023September 26, 2024Leave a comment

Still in Old Sacramento last Saturday, I went and stood by the big Christmas Tree on Front Street, where people were gathering for photos, and there were different singers nearby filling the street with a range of sounds. I’m often reminded that I don’t always appreciate the qualities of street performers, this was one of those moments. It was a busy Saturday in the festive season, there were the classic cars riding around, people handing out flyers, musicians, all sorts of people out and about. Then there’s me, standing there with my sketchbook trying to draw it all, soaking it all in like one of those people that goes out and watches the world go by. I suppose I do. I leaned against a barrel, but my legs were like, mate can we go and sit down now?

So I decided to go and find a pub and sit down with a beer. Then I saw this old cart and decided to stand a bit longer, and draw that. I also popped into a shop full of every possible type of novelty sock known to man. I love a novelty sock, but even I was overwhelmed. There are all types of cheesy shops down here in old Sac, and I’m all for it. These days, just having physical shops of any description with interesting things in them is a bonus. One of the reasons I decided against going to San Francisco is because the Lego store downtown has closed, and I always loved going there. I don’t want to have be driven out to some far-flung mall to visit the Lego store. It was accessible and on the way back to the Amtrak bus, so I’d always go in and look around at all the stuff I didn’t need. Now we just shop online, and I’m a big offender, it’s so easy. That said I always make a point to spend quite a bit of money in the downtown shops in Davis at Christmas time, we still have some lovely little independent shops.

I headed to Fanny Ann’s Saloon. I don’t remember the last time I came in here, maybe a decade ago? I know that I last sketched inside here in December 2009, if you can believe it. It’s got a lot of old stuff to draw, yet I’ve not sketched it since. I sat at the bar and got a beer, and started to add a bit more detail to the cart sketch, before realizing that my inside up-close eyesight is getting worse (I went to the optometrist this week and have ordered some very expensive glasses to help with that). So I thought, let’s just sketch the bar anyway, and see what comes out. I was being picked up my wife to head back to Davis soon so I had a short amount of time to observe a large amount of detail, in quite a busy bar area, and I think I did alright. If I had sat further back and had another hour or so (and a couple more beers) I might have done a more detailed and colourful wider scene. The bar staff were friendly. My legs were happy to be seated for a bit, and sketching with a beer definitely helped me unwind. More than that, I am nearly done with the current sketchbook, which I had been hoping to complete by Christmas. I needed a day out drawing, I got one, and I was able to be home in good time for a curry.

christmas time at the farmers market

December 21, 2023December 20, 2023Leave a comment

A couple of weekends ago we held our latest Let’s Draw Davis meet of 2024, a small group in Central Park sketching at the Farmer’s Market. It had been a cold week and I was expecting a chilly morning, but the sun was out and the autumn colours were massive, and it was a really nice morning to be out with a sketchbook. I decided I’d sketch with my brown-ink fountain pen, it really creates a nice tone with the fall colours. There were a lot of people and stalls to draw; the flat earth people weren’t out this time, having probably fallen off the edge of the world. There was a banjo player making some nice tunes. As I sketched a young couple came up and tried to give me a flyer to some party with their church; no thank you, I said, but they were really insistent. I tried to politely make it clear I’m a little busy. They complemented my drawing but said “God gave you that gift”. I’m like, mate no, thousands and thousands of hours of practice gave me this gift, anyway see ya later, have a Merry Christmas. Still they held out the flyer, and then asked “Have you ever heard of Jesus?” I couldn’t help myself and said “No, never heard of him, who’s that?” As they started to actually tell me, and question me on how I celebrate Christmas, I had to say look mate you might try someone else, I’m not interested and obviously busy, and they finally left me to my sketch. Really not got a lot of time for religious converters, and don’t really have to explain why. One of the other sketchers later said they’d also been approached by the same insistent group, and instead had a long philosophical debate with them, and they eventually left him alone. At least it wasn’t the flat earth lot.

I drew more people about the market, I was going to colour them in but ended up leaving them as is, I like that brown ink. I wrote the colours next to them too, people were really out in lots of colourful clothing on this colourful Fall morning. Christmas is just around the corner. While I’ve no interest going to anyone’s Jesus party, I do absolutely love the Christmas carols at this time of year. One of my favourite festive moments since coming over here was attending the annual Christmas Concert at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which I did on a couple of occasions about a decade ago, having illustrated the program and poster for the event. There is nothing like a cathedral for the incredible acoustics of a Christmas concert. (Also, did you know that ‘Away in a Manger’ has a different tune in America than it does in Britain? We learned that song every year in junior school for our nativity play, so it is strange hearing it with a different tune, a bit like hearing Yellow Submarine with the tune of a David Bowie song) (which I have done at karaoke by the way, replacing the lyrics of Modern Love with those of Yellow Submarine, which really worked; I remember as I was going up a woman said to me “I really love this song!” and I said, “Yeah, you’re gonna hate this version”, but actually it really worked. I had this theory years ago that you could shoehorn the words of Yellow Submarine into any song. You can even do it with ‘Away in a Manger’ – try it! Fun Christmas party game). Anyway I love a Christmas Carol. You don’t get carollers coming round to your door any more, at least we never have here. I used to do it as a kid, me and a few other kids on our street would go round knocking on the doors in the Orange Hill area of Burnt Oak singing basically two songs, “Jingle Bells” and “We WISH you a Merry Christmas”. And occasionally Away In A Manger if they wanted an encore. We would get some money each, 10p, 20p, 50p if you were lucky, but woe betide those who gave away a full quid because word would get around and every carol-singing kid from Deansbrook to Stag Lane would descend upon your doorstep singing the exact same rushed verse of “We WISSHHH you a Merry Christmas” and hold out their hands. Ah fun times.

Well there was a group of singers in the park this day giving a performance of festive songs (though it was much more the church hymns than your Jingle Bells), but they were really good and I enjoyed listening to the singing as I sketched, with the fall colours behind. Nobody tried to give me a flyer either. Still I was up against the clock as the sketchcrawl was ending soon and we always meet to look at each others’ sketchbooks and share sketching tips. That Lamy Safari fountain pen with the brown ink is good for the quick sketchy movements of drawing people. These singers mostly wore black or dark clothes so it really stood out against the autumnal trees. Catching this season while I can.

yuletide ukelele

March 23, 20233 Comments

I know it’s nearly Spring Break, but since we are still catching up with the end of 2022, here’s something that took up a lot of my time last November. Every year, I make an advent calendar for my son, and every year I feel like I have to outdo the previous year, or if not outdo, then at least do something different. Last year I didn’t make a calendar so much as painted Studio Ghibli images onto 24 round plastic baubles, filled with coloured paper and candy, and placed them on a small tinsel tree. This year, my son has gotten into playing the ukulele in a big way, so I decided that would be the theme for this year. I would make a ukulele shaped calendar. Then as that idea got itself into complicated knots, I realized, why not make an advent calendar out of a real ukulele? I had a cheap one lying in the cupboard that I bought at an ABC store on Maui a few years ago, when I was desperate for a ukulele to play on the beach but had left my nice Luna one at home. I think it was about $25. It plays fine too. I thought about putting an LED light inside and covering the palm-tree shaped opening with a coloured gel, so that it would act like a lamp when hung on the wall. I tried that out, but in the end never added the LED due. It’s an idea I’ll still explore though, I like the idea of hanging playable ukuleles on the wall that can also act as colourful lamps. Now because I’d had so much fun last year painting with acrylics in tiny detail on curved plastic surfaces, I just knew that was the way to go with this project. It was still trial and error though, and the smooth lacquered wooden surface, once painted over, never got as smooth again, though I did add layers of acrylic varnish to make it shine a bit. This was a lot of work, but a lot of fun.

But an Advent Calendar needs windows, and how was I going to do that by just painting the wood? I didn’t want to cut windows into the uke – it’s a soprano, small enough already, windows would basically destroy it. What would be behind the windows? When my son was little I would add in pictures of the things he was interested in that year, TV shows, our cats, places we had been. I’ve created a few with candies and stuff inside window boxes, impossible on this one. I decided I would do two things: add scenes from our favourite Christmas movies and shows, the ones we always watch, but painted on in acrylic rather than stuck on. I would also, around the edge, add in the names of Christmas songs that could be learned and played on the ukulele. That meant this would take aaaaages, but that was a lot of fun. In the end I decided to do a third thing – there would be a holiday song to play for every day, 24 in total, with chords and lyrics printed onto a small piece of paper that would also be behind the window, whatever the window itself would be. I spent a lot of time making those, figuring out the chords, getting them in the right key. But how will those go behind windows? I decided to use round stickers, with little tabs beneath them to easily pull them off. The stickers should stick easily to the acrylic and be removable without peeling off any paint (ever tried to remove acrylic paint from a plastic palette? That takes a bit more effort than a little sticker). That totally worked. However, try as I might, I could not add the songs, no matter how small I printed them, with those behind the stickers the sticker would not stay in place, especially on the curved edges. So, I decided to put the songs, along with a little candy snack, into the windows of the old 2020 advent calendar, the one designed to be a model of our house. For the ukulele, it would just be the reveal of the images, but I really had fun painting those. I’m not going to show you all those (I always keep them just for us!) but here are some of them. I loved doing the Home Alone window, with the iron mark on one of the Wet Bandit’s face, and I was dreading attempting to draw the flippin’ Polar Express onto a tiny little circle, but I was really pleased with the result. The Feliz Navidad image was nice and simple, and also based on the logo of Red Star Paris (and my wife got me a Red Star Paris football shirt for Christmas). You can see below also the in-progress painting of the front, which I did last, but started with all the Hawaiian hibiscus flowers, and there are the snow-people on the beach, who first made an appearance in the hastily-drawn 2019 Hawaiian advent calendar (drawn on my iPad on a flight back from England).

It was a success, and my son and wife both loved it. And yes, we even played some festive songs on it, though I’m not sure how many of the Christmas tunes my son actually learned, but he’s getting really good at the ukulele, and is now getting pretty skilled with the guitar too. It’s good to have a bit of music and a bit of Hawaii in your life.