back to nob hill

April 18, 2025Leave a comment

I went down to the city for a couple of days, as my friends James and Lauren were visiting from England for their 10th anniversary, and we met up for a fun day and evening to celebrate. They married here back in 2015, which history books will tell us is a different historical period, and I came down from Davis to spend a really fun day with them which included a few drinks with locals at Rogue in Washington Square. Nowadays we have self-driving robo-taxis going around San Francisco, and Rogue is long gone, but we ate at Fog City Diner, went to look at the few remaining sealions and walk around the Musee Mecanique, before visiting the old historic bars of North Beach, ending up with a trip to the Tonga Room, classic SF history. The next day after they went to the airport for the next part of their trip I spent the Saturday sketching around the city, mostly around Nob Hill where we had stayed. I sketched the view above, which I have done a couple of times before (a very long time ago – this one in 2006, and //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js” data-wplink-url-error=”true”>this one in 2011 – I’ve been here a long time now). Cable cars rumbled by, tourists took photos and waited on the corner for their robo-taxis (the Waymos; I took my first Waymo ride the day before and it is very strange sitting next to an empty seat watching a steering wheel turn by itself). It was quite sunny. When I came down the day before the morning started off pouring with rain, but it cleared up by lunchtime, I had good luck with the weather. We had just had a really nice filling breakfast and a walk back up the very steep hill.

When we were up here in Nob Hill for my birthday the month before we had such a great view from our hotel room (see that blog post to have a look, it was incredible) that I didn’t want to go out sketching the area during our rest time, so I caught up on that this time. The scene above is in the square in front of Grace Cathedral. I stood in the shade of a tree to draw this fountain. There are lots of little dogs off leash around here, people come and let them scamper about, meeting other dogs, they have a great time. Mostly small dogs with well-off Nob Hill owners. I took a little while drawing this; it had been a very fun evening before and I was feeling a little hungover, but full of sketching energy. Not as much energy as those little dogs though. I sat on a bench to add the watercolour, so I could put my paint set next to me, and after a while soon found that the dogs and their people were gravitating towards the fountain to chatter and smell each others bums (I’ll not explain who was doing what). Which was fine but the dogs were getting very excitable, and some would come over to me to see what I was doing and see whether my paints were lickable. One larger dog put his snout right into my Winsor and Newtons (that’s the brand of paint I use, not some Cockney euphemism) and I had to be like, whoah there. Its human owner came over and I assume apologized (I was listening to an audiobook at the time) but then decided to shield me from further canine interruption by standing right in front of me, which you do when someone is obviously drawing don’t you. More dogs and owners joined the dog and owner party, running around yapping and sniffing bums (again my memory is fuzzy as to who was doing what), and then put of nowhere an excitable Cavalier King Charles Spaniel jumped onto the bench and landed on my paintbox, knocking over my little jar of water. I had a dog like that growing up, ‘Soppy Dog’ (her real name was Lady) so I have a soft spot for them, and didn’t really make much of a fuss other than a Marge Simpson style “hmmmmm” and frown. The embarrassed dog owner quickly got them away and probably apologized (I was listening to an audiobook), and the crowd of dogs and humans started moving somewhere else. None of this affected my painting of course but I thought, this will be a funny thing to write about when I post this, instead of ‘it was a nice day and my tummy was feeling yesterday’s beers’.

I had the day to myself, it was Saturday and I wasn’t in a hurry, so I found another spot in the shade and drew the panorama above looking up at the Cathedral. I had intended to draw the whole lot in, maybe even do the rest later, but I did get a bit bored so just drew as much as I could and coloured in the bits that stood out the most. I wondered what it would be like to live on Nob Hill – you need to have a dog, apparently – and deal with these hills every day. I like a hill but even I’d feel a bit exhausted at the thought of going up and down them every day, so I probably wouldn’t leave the area much. It’d feel like some village, I don’t think I’d enjoy it. I didn’t go into Grace Cathedral this time (not now you have to pay a lot to enter – sod that, it’s nice but not exactly Westminster Abbey), but remember years ago when I illustrated their Christmas Concert official program, two years in a row? That was fun, I got to go to that concert both times, once with my wife and once with my mum. Well over a decade ago now, time flies.

I walked further down the Hill along Bush Street, and could hear people drinking and partying. Lots of people in green, it was St Patrick’s Day weekend, and there was a parade going on, and not far from here some big street party with live music echoing up the hill. I wasn’t in green (I was in blue, St.Patrick’s actual colour as I boringly point out to uninterested people every year, even though St.Patrick probably didn’t wear navy blue polyester with a big ‘AIA’ and a little cockerel on it). I stood in the shade and drew the Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires, deciding to sketch in pencil to be quick. I’ve meant to draw this church for years. I think there is an Institut Français around here, because this little quarter has a lot of French stuff, I remember my wife telling me about this when we first came over here, she came here while learning French (we met in France, see).

Which brings us to the next sketch (above) which is the Cafe De La Presse, on the corner of Grant and Bush, a French style cafe I’ve enjoyed for years. When I say enjoyed I mean I have eaten there probably two or three times in the past 20 years, but I don’t live locally so that is quite regular. Last time I had some lovely eggs benedict with smoked salmon, which I also ate that same morning somewhere else (and looking at this makes me think of that taste, big fan of the smoked salmon eggs benedict) (and yes, when I see the word eggs benedict I do think of Dirk Benedict, ‘Face’ from the A-Team who drove the best Corvette). More and more people in bright green with big silly hats, just what St. Patrick would have wanted (actually he did like a big silly hat, he ‘mitre’ worn some himself). I couldn’t draw this all there and then because the day was pressing on (get it), so I did all that brickwork and colouring in later on the train.

Speaking of the train, I did this sketch here on the Amtrak coming down to the city the day before, I guess I should show my work. I have to keep that pen moving.

While this one above was a very quick sketch I made at the Saloon in North Beach on Friday afternoon while watching this band play with my friends James and Lauren, before we went to Specs for some good chat. There’s no more Anchor Steam on tap, more’s the pity, but it’s a great city for a beer and a catch-up.

As I walked back I passed where a lot of the music and partying was happening, a block party just off Grant. It was a paid event behind security so I didn’t go in but I stood by the edge and did some people sketching. I was looking out for interesting football kits, there were some, plus a couple of rugby kits. Back in Irish north west London we used to have some fun St.Patrick’s Day parties as a kid, I grew up on the Irish music back in the 80s and most of what I learned on guitar was from a book of Irish folk songs we picked up in Willesden or Southport or somewhere. If my grown-up self didn’t feel so much of this was a bit cheesy I would probably have really enjoyed getting my Irish shirts on and getting all festive, my Mum would certainly have loved it. So I stood and sketched like a good urban sketcher, or maybe like a plain-clothed officer at a party in 1980s Cricklewood, and laughed that the band went right into ‘Come Out Ye Black And Tans’, which now makes me think of that episode of This Time with Alan Partridge. “Double-O Feckin’ Bollocks!”. I had the old Irish music of my youth in my head now, and felt like getting home and spending the next day singing the Wolfe Tones and Brendan Shine. Time to get back on the Amtrak bus and train to Davis, another good weekend in the city.

the north in january

February 1, 2025February 1, 2025Leave a comment

Today is February 1st, and outside it is pouring with rain. After a long dry January, maybe the driest I remember in a while, it finally started raining yesterday with the first ‘atmospheric river’ of the year. I’m finding it difficult to handle the overwhelming barrage coming out of the new guy in charge over there, and to mitigate the levels of stress and mental despair I plunge into the sketchbook and keep drawing the world, keep documenting the place, it’s one little thing I can control. This month I have drawn almost every day (there were three days in which I didn’t draw, but I had usually drawn more the day before to make up for it, and I need a rest sometimes, plus I do have a busy full-time job, though as I’ve shown in the past, I tend to draw the most when I am busiest, usually in January, to offset the energy). To continue showing my sketches from around Davis in batches, all of these are from north Davis, not necessarily the Old North, but all above 5th Street. Above is a church I have drawn before numerous times, Newman Chapel, on the corner of 5th and C. I’ve not drawn it from this exact angle before. It was the end of the day and the sun was getting real low, but I drew furiously because what else am I going to do but draw furiously as the sun goes down. You’ll notice the date was January 20th, and I wasn’t going to sit in front of the TV. I did have to colour most of it in at home though, losing my light fast.

I’m not religious, but I like to draw a church. I don’t need to say “I’m not religious but…” in front of a sentence like that, because who cares, but end up doing so anyway. It’s like when football fans want to say something nice about another club, like “I’m not a Spurs fan, but that stadium is great,” or “I’m not an Arsenal fan, but I bloody love Ian Wright”, or “I’m not a PSG fan, but I will admit I really wish I had their kit from 1994, don’t tell my friends from Marseille”. It’s not the same thing as when people say “I’m not a racist, but…”, or “I’m not homophobic, but…” because that means they will usually turn out to be a racist or a homophobe. When I say, “I’m not religious, but…” it’s usually to say that I like drawing churches, and especially cathedrals. I’m not going to say, “I’m not religious, but…” and then follow it with a sentence that says the opposite, espousing scriptures and deities and son on. But I do really love a cathedral, the bigger and more stony the better. I was pleased to hear Notre Dame in Paris has reopened years after that dreadful fire. I have been considering getting myself the Notre Dame Lego set as a birthday present to myself, but looking at all the very tiny pieces, I suspect it might take me six years to build that too. It would look great on display though. I have this dream to visit all the major cathedrals of Europe in one long trip. Start in the north, end in the south, or maybe start in Rome, end in Scotland. Wait, Scotland doesn’t have cathedrals, I learned that on my trip to Edinburgh and Glasgow when I called Glasgow Cathedral a cathedral. Yes, it will say ‘cathedral’ but since the Church of Scotland is no longer governed by bishops, they technically don’t have cathedrals. Fine. It’s a bit like how Westminster Abbey is not actually an Abbey (it’s a ‘Royal Peculiar’), but it’s fine, Big Ben’s Big Ben, whatever. (And it’s the bloody Gulf of Mexico, shut up). I loved the architecture of the Scottish Cathedrals / High Kirks, and then down in Toledo, the massive beauty of their cathedral, one of the best I’ve ever seen, then all the big Gothic medieval masterpieces in France, the grandness of those in Rome, and of course the onion-domed cake of St. Basil’s in Moscow which let’s face it, I will probably never get to see. Until this trip, which will need to be funded by a massive arts grant or a lottery win, I will be content to just draw the churches in Davis, like this one on 8th Street, the Davis Lutheran church. I’ve sketched it before, and I pass by it many times on bike rides home. On this day it was very windy, and I stood opposite with my paints fixed to the seat of my bike with a rubber band, trying to stop the bike from being blown over. A few close calls. The wind was so strong I did wonder; I’m not religious but is someone up above trying to wind me up? I went for a beer downtown after this. There are still a few churches and religious buildings in Davis I’ve not yet drawn, I’ll get around to them all some day.

We have a lot of really nice houses in north Davis, not all of them in the Old North blocks with a history paragraph in John Lofland’s book, but I pass by and think, I’d love to sketch that some day. The one above is a big house on Oak that I ride past and admire, it’s the sort of house I think I always wanted to live in. These days I do worry about the trees around the houses in my neighbourhood, after those big storms dropped so many a couple of years ago (especially on our street) and along Oak there were quite a number of huge limbs that dropped as well. The houses are very individual, with lovely character and yards. Ours is much smaller, with no real yard. Never mind all the cathedrals of Europe, my task feels like just drawing all the houses of Davis, like a one-man Google Street-View with a sketchbook. I’m really just drawing my own world, the world I pass through every day, so that when I inevitably start to forget this will be a reminder. I have been thinking about this a lot, aging and the mind, and recently have been contacted by dementia care homes in the UK asking about drawings of the local area, because the images do inspire older people’s memories. I have my own memories for each of the sketches I do in Davis, but as I’ve said many times before, I only see the surface, others will see their own stories. The time when I had that show at the Pence and a lady was looking at my drawing of the Mustard Seed restaurant, and telling me that what she remembers was that in the 60s that was her friend’s house and they would stay up late playing cards. I loved that; I just liked the shape of the building and the red British phone box in front. I feel like I’m illustrating stories that already exist but might not have been told; it’s hard to explain.

The little house above was drawn on one weekend afternoon when I went out to explore the Old North with Lofland’s book, so that I could draw buildings about which I at least had the start of a story. Lofland’s book ‘Old North Davis’ is brilliant for that. However this house on F Street, again I’ve passed a million times, is not mentioned in there so I don’t know if it has a name, like the ‘Greeble’s Home’ or something. What a sketchable house it is though, those long triangles and the framing of those two trees (both leaning slightly away from it, which is good if there’s a storm). It was late afternoon, so that 4pm sunlight was doing its thing. However I didn’t draw there for too long, as my legs were starting to feel a bit tired, so I drew just the outlines and then went and added all the details and colours while sat more comfortably.

Finally, the last sketch of January drawn on the North Davis Greenbelt. I have walked/run past this a great many times, but never climbed the small rise in the grass for the slightly better view. I thought of drawing the paths and trees, but settled to just sketch the little colourful house over there. It was a day when I was working from home (while most of my coworkers have a hybrid schedule, typically I am in the office every day, but every couple of weeks I will take a work-from-home day especially if I have a lot of remote meetings or workshops). It was mid-afternoon and I had a bit of time before a campus-wide webinar about the future of graduate study, so went for a walk along the Greenbelt, thinking that I really need to kickstart my running schedule again (it has been 2.5 months since my 10k now, but the weight of the world needs counterbalancing with the weight of my, well, me, so I’ve been not exercising and eating lots of junk food, for the sake of the world). I’ll start next week, or maybe after my birthday. So I did a sketch stood up on the grass, and then walked back home in time for the webinar. It was interesting, but not one I needed to take notes for, so I just coloured this in while listening to the speakers. Multi-tasking. Anyway, as I write on this Saturday morning, the first of February, the rain is pouring down outside, and I haven’t looked at any news yet to see what other stupid thing has been said or done today. I think I will just listen to the rain, it has been a long time.

tunnel records and trad’r sam

October 26, 2024October 25, 2024Leave a comment

Part Two of my day in the Clement Street /Geary Street area of San Francisco, about seventeen or so blocks further towards the ocean and the rolling fog. I was looking for the 4 Star theater, on the corner of 23rd, which shows older films and which unfortunately I had not given myself time to watch anything, but on this day they were showing My Neighbour Totoro (always a favourite), Toy Story 3 (good but I prefer 2), and North by Northwest (which I have never seen but I think involves a small plane and a man running away). I was here to look around the attached record store, Tunnel Records, which is in a little nook of the cinema. It is not the main shop of Tunnel Records, that one is somewhere else in San Francisco, another area I have not yet been to. It was not open when I got there, which gave me some time to draw the building. I stood opposite and looked up Clement, listening to another Jarvis Cocker interview, I can’t get enough of his soft Sheffield accent. I left the details of the other side of the street a bit sparse, sometimes that is all you need to get the message across, and all I had time for, this was not a ‘finish later’ sketch as so many seem to end up as these days, I just wanted to draw what stood out to me in those moments. The record store opened, and I went in to have a long browse. It’s something I don’t do any more, and I can’t remember how or why I do it, but once you start you can’t really stop and have to look at all the racks, alphabetically, in case something pops out that makes you think oh wait, now that I might like. There was one other person in there browsing too. I realized he was a few racks ahead of me, but browsing each rack one by one, same as I was, though more slowly. Was I not paying enough attention to what I was browsing? Either way, I knew at some point I would catch up, and would either have to go around to the next rack and quite obviously miss out the one he was looking at, or what, start looking at the same rack? You can’t do that. I would try to slow down by stopping and pulling out something interesting, to look at as if I could hear the music coming from the sleeve. I would nod and pull that expression people pull with their mouths when they want to show silent respect for something, you know the one, but I was just faking it really. In the end, I caught up. Instead of skipping to the next rack over, I decided to pretend that I needed to look at my phone suddenly, and then went to look at some t-shirts. I am not sure why I was acting like I was in some kind of play. I went and looked at the soundtracks section (like, why would I be looking there), and then after the other man, who was probably in some play of his own, moved to a different genre, I went back and looked through the alphabetical racks again but this time, in an unexpected move, in reverse order, starting at Z. I ended up not buying anything, despite being tempted by an Al Green album, because I didn’t fancy carrying a record around with me while sketching, and I didn’t really need it. I gave a little smile and raise of the eyebrows to the shop clerk as I left vie the movie theatre’s main entrance, and went off to draw a massive Russian church.

It’s pretty hard to miss as you go up Geary, yet it’s not one of the famous San Francisco sights. The Holy Virgin Cathedral “Joy Of All Who Sorrow” has tall, shiny golden onion domes that probably look even shiner in the sun, let alone on this foggy day. It’s a Russian Orthodox church; there have been Russian communities in the San Francisco area for over 200 years. This is the largest Russian Orthodox Cathedral outside Russia, and was completed in 1965. I sketched it from across the street, adding in the metallic gold paint when I got home (you can’t tell here but the page is actually quite shiny). I popped inside, but only to peek through the door, I wasn’t sure if I could walk around and have a look. It was very ornate looking, and even though there wasn’t a service going on I felt a little bit like I was out of place, and I didn’t want to unwittingly break any rules. The Church Etiquette and FAQs pages of their website are quite interesting, full of extremely clear and specific instructions as to how you must behave. If your phone goes off: “You should answer the call (accept it), but do not start speaking until you have stepped away (outside or in the narthex). Walk out of the church quietly and calmly. Do not sprint/dash out of the church when this happens. Make the caller wait.” They are thoroughly disgusted at people leaving lipstick marks on icons, which is fair enough frankly and not something I was in danger of doing; as for clothes, shirts must have collars and be buttoned up, though you’re ok to loosen the top button if you have to, and don’t ever wear a t-shirt saying “This Bud’s For You!” I imagined there must have been a very specific incident involving a t-shirt with that phrase on it. I was wearing a Red Star Paris football shirt, which was probably a big nyet-nyet, and the big red Star on the badge may have been confusing, so I didn’t take any chances, and just peeked through the door. I tried to teach myself Russian when I was a kid, I didn’t get further than a few phrases, but I learned the Cyrillic alphabet and so I was enthusiastically reading the signs outside and trying to figure them out. I think it was in Old Church Slavonic, which would have blown my teenage self’s mind to see in person.

I stood outside the cathedral though to sketch my last destination on this day in the city, Trad’r Sam, an old tiki-themed bar that’s been around since 1937. It is not fancy, but is a real San Francisco legend I had read about on a list of historic San Francisco bars, since I have it as my mission to go and draw them all. I was already quite tired by this point, so when I drew the exterior and that big green sign, I went in through the saloon doors (am I misremembering that now?) and ordered a Lava Flow cocktail. I sent my wife (who loves a historic tiki bar) a picture of my drink; she was in Disneyland and had just ordered a Lava Flow ice cream at the same time, coincidentally. It was a pretty popular place on a Saturday afternoon and started filling with locals. The bar itself is a big horseshoe, my favourite type of bar set-up, and the barman was friendly. I chatted with some of the others sat at the bar, got comfy and finished off one of my sketches. I decided I didn’t have the energy to draw the bar itself, this time, but enjoyed the mood. I tried a Mango Mai Tai, and wow it was really good. I think it was really strong as well because I started feeling a bit drunk already; maybe that was the lack of a proper lunch mixed with looking at all that orthodox religious architecture and old pop records. I had to explain to the barman who Red Star Paris were; not the team I support, I just like their kits and the fact they aren’t PSG. He’d heard of Red Star Belgrade, and hearing I was from London he asked who my team was, giving me a fist bump and an acknowledgement of how good Sonny is when I told him. I talked to a couple who lived about a block away and gave me some good tips for other old local bars in this area, they are now on my visit and sketch list. It was a good place to wind down the day, and I had a beer to finish off, alas not an Anchor Steam which was always my SF drink, but eventually I had to get myself back to Davis, a long long journey from this part of town. I took the 38 bus back, got the Amtrak bus to Emeryville, took the Capitol Corridor train to Davis, and then had to walk back from the station up to north Davis, four hours later. I slept hard that night, but got up next day to watch Spurs batter Man United 3-0 away. A good weekend.

Downtown Riverside

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024Leave a comment

And here then are the last few of my sketches from Riverside, southern California. I did consider joining the trip to visit the UC Riverside campus, so that I could add another UC campus to my sketchbook list, but then I thought, nah sod it. I’m sure it’s lovely, with its big concrete block clocktower from a 1960s British town hall in the East Midlands somewhere. I however was surrounded by lots of actually beautiful sketchable buildings surrounding the Mission Inn, even though it was in an apparent Diet-Pepsi desert. The sketch above though was of the dome at the rear end of the Mission Inn, from a relatively quiet street called Main Street, drawn on my lunchtime on day two of the conference. The previously blue sky had become a little cloudier. I was not that interested in my conference lunch, it was a little bit bland and tasted of nothing. Downstairs there was another conference going on for employees of a local fast food chain called ‘Farmer Boys’ (when I saw the sign I at first thought it said ‘Former Boys’) and their food sounded really good (something a lot of us say when we haven’t actually seen a menu, judging it by its logo alone, which is totally fair enough) (example, ‘Happy Eater’, a former roadside restaurant in the UK whose logo was a boy putting his finger down his throat, and the French chain ‘Flunch’, which sounds like the sound you make when throwing up your main course), but I didn’t think I could get away with sneaking in there to try it out. I wasn’t up for any bland conversation that tasted of nothing (“what campus are you from, oh right, Santa Barbara, what campus are you from, oh right, Berkeley” etc; let’s face it, I’m not much of a conversationalist) so I excused myself and made it look like I had to rush to a meeting, which I did, a meeting with my sketchbook.

It was the second time I’d drawn that dome, as I had also skipped out the day before toward the end of lunch to draw a quick one on the corner of Main and whatever street, 6th I think. The sun was shining bright and I drew from what little shade I could fund but I didn’t have much, so I drew fast and ran back to my next workshop. My lunch hadn’t been very interesting, and conversation a little awkward, and there was only so much of that iced water with a little bit of lemon in it that I could drink. The dome reminded me of Balboa Park in San Diego, where I’d sketched back in, I don’t even remember, 2009? I hope I’m better at drawing domes now. These Mission-style buildings and their ornate details can be a little hard. Actually the Mission Inn is a blend of many different architectural styles, and had a number of architects.

This building was a little bit easier and had a couple of small domes. I was not sure what the building was, and then a random man passing by asked me, “hey what’s that church?” and I said, “I was hoping you’d tell me”, but I wasn’t hoping that. It was after I started sketching this that I decided a visit to UC Riverside was not going to make my life complete. The sun was hitting it in a way to give it a golden feel, and when I’ve got light like that, I ain’t going anywhere. You can see the lamp-post thing in the shape of that really old bell from the Mission Inn, you see that all over the area. This building is actually Riverside Municipal Auditorium (not everything’s a church you know), and I was told by a person we will meet in the next paragraph that it was built as a memorial to local soldiers who were killed in World War One.

The building above was just across the street and most definitely a church. The amazing bell tower really stands out in the neighbourhood, although it sits among many interesting looking buildings and churches. It’s the ‘First Congregational Church Riverside’ and is pretty historic, according to the fellow that spoke to me outside it. He saw me taking a photo of the tower and told me that it was the oldest, er, oh man I forgot. You see this is why I have to write everything down, because I will forget otherwise. Ok, I think he said, this was the oldest Spanish-colonial-revival church in California and was built in 1913, though the church dates from 1872. “Ah, so not very old then,” I said. I think he understood that I was from Britain, so that made sense without having to explain, and it turned out that he had been to Britain many times. Anyway he told me some more of the history, which I have unfortunately forgotten, so you’ll just have to look it up online. The tower is ‘churrigueresque’, which means ultra-baroque and is obviously a word I found on Wikipedia. My wife told me that she thinks her grandma used to go to that church; my wife was born in Riverside but left as a baby. I definitely wanted to draw this, but had to get the right angle (and right amount of shade). It was warm, and I was thirsty, and water just wasn’t going to cut it, I wanted a nice cold Diet Pepsi, but as we have established I appeared to be in a Diet Pepsi desert with no convenience stores and honestly after quite a lot of looking it was feeling a bit strange. Then I remembered – there was a Farmer Boys restaurant a couple of blocks away, that I’d walked past when I arrived into town. I was hungry (having had a bland taste of nothing for lunch) and still pissed off from the “he used to be a redhead but isn’t now” comments made by total strangers pretending to be administrative management professionals, so that sounded perfect. So I got there and ordered what sounded like a really tasty fried chicken burger and a big Diet Pepsi, and they said well you can have the Diet Pepsi, but unfortunately because our machine isn’t working you can’t have any chicken. Sorry, your ‘machine isn’t working’? Is it a machine that makes chicken? Right well, that has put me off food for a while, Farmer Boys. So I just got an unnecessarily massive soda and went out to sketch the building above, stood next to a bus stop where a random local man was harassing or just talking to another random man; moments earlier the same random man had said something to me from behind which I hadn’t heard, and then followed it up with a louder “hey! I was saying hello to you!” in one of those aggressive ways random people like to talk to you. So I said, “Hello!” brightly, and I think he realized I was not very good at conversation and moved on to randomly talk to someone else.

And of course we cannot leave a new place without sketching its fire hydrants. These two were within a short walking distance from the Mission Inn (that is, a short walking distance for me, but a very difficult walking distance for the fire hydrants). Fairly typical specimens for Southern California. And that was it, those are all my Riverside sketches, not bad for a brief couple of days. There were other places I wish I had sketched – the Fox Theater looked interesting, but what I didn’t know was that was the first place in the world that showed the movie ‘Gone With the Wind’, which I’ve never actually watched much of; Tico’s Tacos, an amazing taqueria with all sorts of weird and wonderful sculptures and artworks all over the place, a literal urban sketchers dream yet I didn’t go there; and the UC Path Center which is in a boring concrete building in an industrial estate, but since UC Path (a new payroll system) has given us so much grief since our campus adopted it I think it only fair I go and sketch the place, or not. I don’t know I’ll ever be back so I think I made the most of my trip to Riverside, and then I flew back home from Ontario airport (which is confusingly not in Canada). I was now into my 50th landscape sketchbook, that is my 25th landscape watercolor Moleskine.

just fort william

August 13, 2023August 18, 20232 Comments

We arrived in Fort William, parked our rental car on a very steep slope, and checked into our hotel. I think I’d imagined it to be a bit nicer, like some cosy guest house, but it wasn’t, it seemed furnished like an old office building, and was spartan to say the least. There was a sizeable colony of mould on the ceiling. The shower in our tiny bathroom was also unbearably hot to the touch, and would not go any colder than the insides of a new McDonalds apple pie (which if you’ve ever had one of those, you’ll know why it says “caution: HOT” on the sleeve). We had the front desk staff come up to see if it could be fixed, and they fiddled about and turned it on, to the same temperature, and touching it momentarily with their finger they said they thought it was fine. It definitely wasn’t. So no showers on this two night stay, unless you want to be scalded. So I dubbed the hotel “Faulty Showers”, and now I can’t remember the actual name, so it’s just Faulty Showers. The view from the bedroom was nice, overlooking the hills and the church of St. Andrews. We were in Fort William because (a) we were going on a very special trip on the Jacobite Steam Train the next day, and (b) this is really the best place to stay to explore the Highlands, being the biggest town for quite a way. I didn’t really warm to Fort William as a town. Great connections, some good shops (it had a good Tesco Metro close to our hotel, for sandwiches and supplies – ie, Irn Bru and Tunnocks Teacakes, which we brought onto the Jacobite with us). Dinner options were a little limited, because this being the main hiking and Highlands hub it’s where everyone stays, so they all go out for dinner at the same time, and food is expensive. One place we saw it was eighteen quid for a burger. We had a decent Indian meal on our first evening there; I was surprised to see “Haggis Naan” on the menu; I don’t even know how that works. The pubs didn’t look as inviting as I’d have expected, the best one looked like the Ben Nevis, but on this evening it didn’t exactly exude the Highland pub atmosphere I’d imagined, mostly tired hikers and tables of empty glasses, while some of the other pubs on the main pedestrianized drag seemed a little bit, well, ‘English lager lad’, doorways spilling with middle-aged English men and women aggressively smoking and vaping and swearing, so I gave them a miss. Around the rest of the town centre, teenage youths ambled up and down with an air of boredom, and hikers tiredly made their way in small crowds to whatever expensively priced and cheaply run hotel they were pitstopping at. This is the end of the Great Highland Way, but also the start of the Great Glen Way which goes up by Loch Ness, and of course it’s right at the foot of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain, which was completely shrouded from view by Scottish mist. the sketch I did above, early in the morning, was the Memorial to Donald Cameron of Lochiel, with the Duncansburgh Church behind it. As I sketched, a man passed by walking back to his hotel and said to me (in a southern English accent), “It would be quicker to take a photograph you know,” and just walked on. Something in his tone was so dismissive, it irked me. I just glared nonplussed as he hiked off towards his hotel, but in my mind I thought, “ooh, you’re my enemy now.”

Still, what a view over Loch Linnhe at sunset. After our day on the Jacobite, and after dinner (which due to the lack of available options at the time we ate at the Wetherspoons, not exactly my first choice, but it tasted fine), I decided not to go back to Faulty Showers and stayed out sketching. Sunset here is even later than in Glasgow, and it wasn’t raining, so I sat by the Loch which was pretty peaceful and drew the lovely colours. We really were on the other side of the world now, it felt like. Even though I’m from Britain, for a Londoner this feels like a million miles from home, let alone for a Californian. The Highlands really are lovely, and there’s so much of it to explore, we were only seeing a little bit. Satisfied with my sketch, I turned around and drew the scene behind me, the Highland Hotel. Perhaps a tad nicer (and a wee bit more expensive) than Faulty Showers, this looks like the place to be. It was the sunset-kissed clouds that drew me in though. And I am sure Ben Nevis is around there somewhere, but he wasn’t showing his face. I went back to our hotel and went to be (after watching with my son a few sketches from the old mostly-Scottish sketch show from the early 90s, ‘Absolutely’, which I used to love, because the ‘Stonybridge’ sketches had popped into my head while we were driving north the day before).

There was a really nice bookshop in Fort William though that we spent a bit of time in, and got some lovely prints. I nearly got a book to teach myself how to speak Gaelic, but I know I’m probably not going to do that, unless I take a class. It’s a lovely language though, and you will see it on so many road signs up here. Fort William is called An Gearasdan in Gaelic, and about 7% or so of the population speak it. While this is the main town for this part of the Highlands, it was built to, you know, put the Highlands people down. Originally established by Oliver Cromwell to keep the local Clan Cameron in line, it was later named Fort William after King William III who built the fort to control the local Highlands clans, who over the next century would rise up in Jacobite rebellion several times. We heard a lot about the Jacobites during this part of the trip. There was also a really nice visitor centre in Fort William where I got some postcards, magnets, tea coasters, because I am a tourist and you can never have too many of those.

I did get up early on our last morning there and draw the church of St. Andrews, which was close to Faulty Showers. The gateway was so pretty and covered in moss, which I didn’t end up colouring in, and the kirkyard had a lot of character (and probably a lot of characters). I was up to get some nice pastries (and Tunnocks Teacakes) from the little Tesco. I was also, if I’m honest, kind of hoping to see that English guy who had made the irksome comment the morning before. I’m not saying I had spent a lot of the day thinking of what my comeback should have been, like George Costanza (like “yeah, well the jerk store called, and they said it would be quicker for you to just bugger off mate”, yeah not that good really) but I was perfecting my dirty look. He was probably already halfway up Ben Nevis by now. At which point I thought, ooh I should walk past him trying to climb Ben Nevis, all out of breath and red-faced, and say, “it would be quicker for you to take a photo!” or something similarly witty. However that wouldn’t be true, because Ben Nevis just would not show itself to us, hiding behind all that mist. Rather than wait for the mist to clear, I determined it would be quicker to look at a picture of Ben Nevis on Wikipedia, and we left Fort William and its faulty showers behind us.

Edinburgh New Town

August 6, 2023August 4, 2023Leave a comment

We took a walk through Princes Street Gardens, which are absolutely lovely. Possibly one of my favourite things about Edinburgh. It’s great being up high and seeing over everything, but it was really relaxing being down low, and looking up at it all from among trees and flowers. I did a couple of quick sketches in my small Fabriano Venezia book, to capture the mood. Edinburgh is a lovely city. These gardens are the sort of place to sit and read a novel. They love their writers in Edinburgh – Sir Walter Scott has that absolutely massive monument by this park, the biggest I’ve ever seen for a novelist anywhere, 200 ft high. Apparently it’s the second biggest in the world, because there’s one in Havana dedicated to Cuban nationalist hero José Martí that is bigger, and since he was also a writer, well it means the Scott Monument isn’t the biggest one for a writer. Just the second biggest, which is fine.

We walked through the parks and there was an old time band playing old time music, I think it was for a gathering of veterans as there were lots of elderly people in uniforms with kilts, it was a nice event underneath the shadow of the castle. We had a cold drink and went off for lunch, before exploring some more of New Town, following a walk from my guide book.

New Town is (obviously) a lot newer than Old Town (wow, this is epic level travel writing here Pete, you’ll be competing with Rick Steves at this rate) but still historic and actually a UNESCO heritage area. Many of the buildings are Georgian (I suppose) and laid out very mathematically (I guess). It was a different vibe to Old Town and seemed to have fewer cashmere shops per square metre. We found ourselves on Heriot Row, which is where Robert Louis Stevenson lived as a child. Edinburgh loves its writers, and he’s one of the most famous, writing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child’s Garden of Verses (personal favourite of mine as a kid and as a parent), and loads of other stuff, I mean the guy was a literary legend. Does he have a monument as big as Walter Scott? He has little monuments all over the place. Maybe Robert Louis Stevenson’s true monument is his body of work. That said, he does have a massive state park named after him in California not too far from us. It is (checks Wikipedia) in fact the largest state park in California named after a writer, at 5,990 acres, so well done Robert. Jack London’s state park is only 1,611 acres and he’s a native Californian. We found Robert Louis Stevenson’s childhood home at 17 Heriot Row, and so I added that house into my sketchbook. I’ve loved his poems since I was a kid so this was really fun to see.

We wandered further on our guidebook walk, finding ourselves on George Street, popping our heads into the very fancy restaurant The Dome which has a spectacular marble-columned interior underneath a huge (surprise!) dome. We rested on the steps and I did a quick sketch of the 18th century church spire across the street, called “St. Andrew’s and St. George’s West”, the two patron saints of Scotland and England. We moved along to St. Andrew’s Square, which surrounds a very tall column with a statue on top called the Melville Monument. Named after Herman Melville, the writer of Moby Dick, Edinburgh really loves big monuments to its writers doesn’t it. It’s 150 ft high so not as big as the Scott Monument but bigger than Stevenson’s, though neither of them have massive state parks in California’s wine country. Further inspection of Wikipedia and my guidebook informed me that Herman Melville is from New York, has nothing to do with Edinburgh, and that the Melville on this big column is some old Viscount called Dundas from the problematic days of the British Empire who famously opposed efforts to end the transatlantic slave trade. So, not a novelist who wrote about whales. I think I prefer the monuments to the great writers. With none of this really on our minds, our tired legs needed a rest and wouldn’t you know it, there was a big screen set up and they were playing The Wizard of Oz. So we sat on the grass (well, I stood and sketched for a bit) and watched the second half of that great ancient film. I know all the words, my sister used to watch it about eight times a day when she was little. When we were done, we all went our separate ways for the afternoon, my wife looked about the shops, my son went home to read the new novel he’d bought at Blackwells (he loves a good book, so fits in well with Edinburgh) but I needed to do a bit more climbing so I walked up Calton Hill and drew this.

Evening Strolls in Paris

January 20, 2023January 17, 2023Leave a comment

I like my early morning wandering and sketching when we have family trips away, out by myself when the others are still sleeping. But I also enjoy the evening stroll as well, a good way to work off a long day’s walking and sightseeing. I’m just so keen to explore and to look, and of course to sketch. So much life was within walking distance of our apartment. I ambled over to Shakespeare and Company, the famous English bookstore by the Seine that everyone has heard of. We came by earlier, but didn’t go in because the line to enter was ridiculous. I’ve seen long lines to get into bookstores before; the Livraria Lello in Porto, for example, where you actually had to buy a ticket to go in, it’s that famous; bookstores everywhere on the night the last Harry Potter book came out; and of course, Faculty Books on the Middlesex University campus, where I used to work twenty years ago, there was always a line on the first day of term so people could get their massively overpriced Pearsons textbooks for their Econometrics class. the line for Shakespeare and Company, while moving, was too long for us to consider. It’s not like Shakespeare himself was in there signing copies of Much Ado About Nothing. No, it’s just a really famous bookshop. Loads of famous writers have been involved with this place. Loads of them. Loads. It’s not the same Shakespeare and Company that Hemingway and Joyce are associated with, but it’s named after it, and it’s really famous in its own right. I went back in the evening, knowing it would still be open, which it was, but there was still a long line outside. Well, I thought, perfect time for a sketch. I drew the panorama pretty quickly, and drew people even more quickly. The great thing about sketching people in line is that they will be there for a while, but because they don’t want to lose their spot you never get them coming up to you to see why you are sketching. Not that anyone would, this is Paris, it’s full of artists. I never got to go inside the store, as it closed up while I was finishing up the drawing, but I’ve been in before. I think it was in about 1999, one evening down by the river, came across this shop, there was no line outside in those days. It was interesting, in an old bookshop kind of way. I’m glad I got my sketch this time. I am a sucker for old bookshops, and for new bookshops too. I like the smell of certain French bookshops, very clean and tidy, with so many of those particular books with the white spines, and always with a huge BD (bande dessinee) section.

We were located very close to the church of Saint Séverin, and having passed by earlier in the day I earmarked that one for a sketch on my evening walk. I drew the rear (the apse) from the busy intersection where Rue Saint-Jacques joins up with the Rue du Petit Pont. The setting sky was cinematic. Restaurants buzzed with life. Nearby at a cafe a lady was belting out Edith Piaf tunes. One of those motorcycle delivery drivers nearly knocked someone over shortcutting up the pavement. It was like being in a movie, and just like being at a movie, I really needed the toilet so I went back to the apartment.

I loved our apartment for hanging out in. My son and I had our ukuleles on this trip, so I would sit by the window strumming to all the noise of the traffic. It was just like being in a Netflix show. Just like when I’m watching a Netflix show, eventually I left the room and did something else. I walked a bit further afield on this night, crossing the Seine twice and heading for the wonderful Hotel de Ville. I’m drawing the Hotel de Ville alright, I said to myself. I love the Hotel de Ville. I’ve always been impressed with it, but I especially love how the summer evening light hits it and appears to turn it different colours as the sun sets. Or at least I did before I tried to sketch it. Conscious of time, I decided to zoom my poor ageing eyes in to some details on part of the roof (it’s a really big building), and draw backwards as it were. I always add the colour last, this time I was like no, I am laying down this golden colour now. A lot of sketchers work this way and they love it, they say it’s the best and you should do it, but here’s the thing – no it’s not. At least not for me. I suppose the technique just doesn’t fit how I draw, or maybe my paints are often a bit dry so don’t always produce the most vibrant colours (I usually prefer the more toned down colours), or maybe I just tried to get the colour I saw and then it bloody changed into something else. The sunlight was slowly slowly oh wait now quickly fading, so I had to draw quickly. I still like it though, it’s a story in itself. It was nice out, people passed by and said “très jolie!” and “bellissimo!” and “das ist so cool!” and “hmm yeah that’s quite nice”.

The Hotel de Ville holds one of my favourite memories of Paris though. In 1998, on the first night of my five-week twelve-country train-trip, after a day walking about Paris I went to the Place de l’Hotel de Ville to watch the World Cup Semi-Final on a big screen in a penned-off area with thousands of dancing Brazilians and chanting Dutch. Ronaldo’s Brazil up against Bergkamp’s Netherlands, being beamed up from the Velodrome in Marseille. I camped in with the Brazilians, of course they would be the most fun to spend this warm evening with. And the the game kicked off, and they were all very quiet, a bit nervous, none of the singing and samba I’d expected. I looked across to the Dutch fans, as you would expect it was a sea of orange, and they would not stop singing. They were having a great old time. The game was a bit tense, not a lot happening, so at half time I decided to switch sides and join the Dutch. The grass is always more orange I guess; a minute into the second half, Ronaldo scored for Brazil. Yet the Dutch kept on singing and having a great time, so I stuck with them. It was a long old second half too. It looked like a Brazil win; ok so, I had a night train to catch anyway from Gare de L’Est, heading to Strasbourg, I didn’t want to miss it. And then, shortly before full-time, Kluivert equalized for the Netherlands. The Place de l’Hotel de Ville erupted in a volcano or orange facepaint. We were going to extra time; I still had time to catch my train, yeah? The Dutch camp was the place to be, momentum was with them, and maybe this would not be Ronaldo’s World Cup after all? Looking anxiously at my watch, it went to penalties. For the Netherlands, it was not to be, as the Brazilian goalie Taffarel pulled off a couple of great saves. As soon as Brazil won, I immediately switched sides again and went back to the dancing samba party, a carnival of yellow wigs and plastic whistles. Everyone was hugging and dancing and cheering (well, not the Dutch I guess) but I didn’t have long to party, I dashed to the nearest Metro and just about made it to that last train to Alsace. This was 1998, Brazil were in the Final, this really was Ronaldo’s World Cup. (Narrator’s voice: it wasn’t). The next day I watched France beat Croatia, at my friend Roland’s house in Strasbourg, and Zidane and Company went on to beat Brazil 3-0 at the Stade de France.

Anyway with those memories in mind, I walked back to the apartment. A couple of nights before on the TV we had watched England women beat Sweden 4-0 in the semi-final of the Euros (they went on to win it of course!) and the night after, France were beaten by Germany. On this evening though we were just packing for our flight back to the US the next morning. this isn’t all my Paris sketching though, there’s one more post to come…

Bonjour Bayeux

January 15, 20237 Comments

We spent a few nights staying in the little city of Bayeux, a good base to explore Normandy. There are a lot of places in Normandy we didn’t get to that we’d like to have seen – Rouen, Honfleur, Giverny, I mean it’s a big place – but for what we were going to see Bayeux was perfect, especially being so very close to the D-Day Beaches. For me though Bayeux was the place for the thing I’ve wanted to see forever, the Bayeux Tapestry. It did not disappoint! It has its own museum, and while we went when it was early and not yet too crowded, the line has to keep moving along it. It’s long – about 70 metres – and while I’ve learned about it for many years there’s nothing like the experience of seeing it all in one go, and constantly moving along, with the commentary in the headphones explaining it, made it feel like watching a long comic strip, a cartoon about the Norman Invasion of England. And it was funny, too. There were a lot of willies. The inventiveness and use of colours is incredible, and the sense of movement you get in the horses and the battle scenes is something a few modern movie directors could learn from. The Bayeux Tapestry was made sometime in the 1070s with the Conquest still fresh, is of course, neither a tapestry (it’s an embroidery) nor from Bayeux (Made In England, by Nuns in Barking and Canterbury, likely under the instruction of Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent) but so what, as Macca would say, it’s the bloody Bayeux Tapestry, it sold, shut up. It wasn’t about Peace and Love though. A brilliant piece of Norman propaganda, perhaps, but as I said to my wife, for me this is like going to see the US Declaration if Independence or something (but in reverse, I guess), 1066 being such a crucial moment in British history and in the history of the English language. If it wasn’t for William the Bastard getting all Conqueror on our medieval asses, we’d probably be speaking a language much closer to Dutch and German than the way it looks today. Either way, the gist of the story is that the Normans totally stitched up the Anglo-Saxons.

The Bayeux Tapestry used to be kept in the cathedral but isn’t any more. The Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Bayeux (above) is pretty massive and as in many French towns you can orient yourself by looking up and seeing where the spire is, and it’s visible for miles around. While we didn’t get a chance to go inside, I did sketch it on one of my morning walks, though it started to rain so I finished it off inside. It was consecrated in 1077 with William the Conqueror there, so it fits into the timeline of the Tapestry. It was supposed to be here that William got his promise from Harold that he would support him to be King after Edward the Confessor died, starting that whole thing. The little courtyard in front of the cathedral’s main entrance is very pretty, I stood at the rear a little way down the hill where the view was pretty magnificent. Even when looking at this, I keep thinking, I must go and get a pain aux amandes for breakfast.

The narrow street we stayed on, Rue Saint-Patrice, was full of little shops (many closed on both Sunday and Monday, when we were there) and many very old looking buildings. I don’t recall what this building was called, on the corner of Rue Franche, but I drew it on my evening walk after we had eaten dinner and had a busy day touristing somewhere else. There are flags lining the streets in Bayeux. I love a timber-frame building, it’s like a puzzle when drawing to make sure you get all the bits in the right place, but a little personality goes a long way and you don’t want too many straight lines. The weather was nice, the sky had dappled clouds and of course the sun set so much later, so after this I went further into town and drew another scene, below. This pretty postcard view is across the little river Aure, that trickles through Bayeux with the Cathedral in the background. Every evening we would take a walk down this way, and around the corner we ate some nice Norman food at a restaurant, though on one evening I walked up to a little store about a mile up the road (the supermarket in the centre-ville being already closed) to buy some dinner supplies, and was brought back to living in France years ago, standing in line in a small shop for about 20 minutes and then carrying heavy bags up and down streets and up a narrow staircase, it was like going back 20 years. I really liked Bayeux, and my family loved it, we had no ‘Bayeux remorse’. Bit quiet, but a good base to explore.

And of course, I drew a hydrant! More Normandy sketches to come…

gimme some Leuven

September 4, 2022September 2, 2022Leave a comment

I woke up and it was raining hard. There was no way I was going to Charleroi to draw old factories if I was sitting on top of a hill getting drenched. I spent enough time getting drenched in Charleroi between 1999 and 2000 for a lifetime. So I had a little lie-in, and then hopped on a train to the nearby university city of Leuven (Louvain in French, but this is in the Flemish region). I have only been to Leuven once before, and that was an even rainier day, meeting up with one of my fellow year-abroad teachers. Always thought it would be a good place to go back to a less rainy day, but since it was raining anyway I thought, what the hell. This was my last day in Belgium, I was going to be catching a Eurostar that evening back to London. Originally I’d planned to stay another day, but as much as I like Belgium, an extra day in London is something I knew I’d love more (and I did). I dashed from shop doorway to shop doorway to stay relatively dry, until I reached the centre of town. I spent a bit of time in an interesting bookshop looking at Flemish books, including one very big volume all about the various dialects of Flanders, complete with detailed maps. If I could read Dutch better that would be a fascinating book. It’s hard for foreigners to sometimes pick up the subtleties of accent and dialect in a language where they struggle just to understand the words (I said that very thing to someone when I first came here in 1999, they asked if I was having difficulties with the accent, I said no it’s the vocabulary). I didn’t for example realize that the French of Charleroi was a particularly peculiar version compared to many other places in Belgium, such as my friends in Liege who told me they couldn’t always understand Les Carolos. Meanwhile they are struggling to understand my French, and then when I went to Charleroi, people told me “oh you have such good French!” so I understood, right, I learned it here, that’s why nobody else comprehends me. That’s my story anyway. So, I got to Leuven and had a waffle, and tried to figure out what sort of drawings I would do. I was faced with this big church – I’d go inside later – and the extremely ornate Stadhuis (Town Hall) building, which I knew I’d need to draw, but wasn’t sure where to start. I walked about, and found a covered passage by the Grote Markt where I wouldn’t get splashed on too much. I drew the panorama above. This took under a couple of hours, though I added most of the paint later. Click on the image, you will see it in more detail (on Flickr). It was a reasonably busy Wednesday lunchtime. As I drew, a girl crashed her bike not far from me, sliding on the watery street, and she seemed pretty hurt. I went over with some other bystanders and she was helped up into the dry, and her bike put to the side. I got back to my drawing, I couldn’t really help much more with my limited Dutch, but someone else was able to help her get her phone to call her mother who came to collect her. I felt really bad for her, I don’t think she’d broken anything but she was pretty upset. As much as I enjoyed this drawing I do think of that poor girl falling from her bike now when I look at it.

Leuven is an important old town, the historic capital of the Duchy of Brabant. Its university goes back to the 1425 (as the old University of Leuven, though that was abolished in 1797, and its successor KU Leuven was founded in 1834). The university’s library was atrociously burned to the ground by the invading Germans in World War I. The enormous St. Peter’s Church (Sint-Pieterskerk) is opposite the Stadhuis and dates from the 1500s, though it too was seriously damaged in both world wars. I stood at the rear of the church sheltered from the storm, and drew the sketch above. I liked the shape of those rooftops. The flags were above a bar called Leuven Centraal, where I would stop in for some food before heading back. there was a young couple seated nearby who were if not on a date, seemed like it was a kind of date, they were having that “I like this music, do you like that music” sort of conversation (from what I could gather of their Flemish; I may have misunderstood, they could have been talking about horse racing for all I know). So I went into the church, walked about, was a bit overwhelmed to do a proper big sketch int here, and drew this big wooden pulpit thing that looked like a magic tree. I bet the priest loves going in there, it’s like walking into a fantastical sculpture, like you become some sort of wizard on the other side.

A couple of different things. The first was outside a friterie, and is an anthropomorphized bag of frites eating a frite. He only has one arm so maybe another bag of frites ate his arm. Maybe cannibalism is a thing in the live-action-frites community. Either way this was CREEPY as hell, but not the creepiest frites related image I’ve seen in Belgium (that would be the odd three-legged feminine-frite, a ‘frite-fatale’ if you will, seen in Charleroi next to an image of, for some reason, Dopey the Dwarf). Still it is a bizarre figure. Yet it still made me hungry for more salty frites. The next statue is a more well-known Leuven fixture, ‘Fonske‘, or ‘Fons Sapientiae’. I would presume this is Leuven’s version of the Fonz, is telling kids “eeeh, be smart, be cool, read books, stay in school” and then for some reason pouring a drink on his head, which Fonzie would never do, unless the drink was hair gel. I don’t know, I’ve not seen Happy Days for a long time. Fonske was created in 1975 to commemorate the university’s 550th anniversary, and the name means “the fountain of wisdom” in Latin. Just like Mannekin Pis in Brussels, the statue is sometimes dressed up in costume. I really hope that one of those costumes is of the Fonz. (Side note, when I first met my wife in France, I would sometimes make her laugh by singing the theme tune to Happy Days in French, “Dimanche Lundi, Heureux Jours…” etc).

Well there was no goodbye grey skies, hello blue just yet, so I popped into the cafe Leuven Central (my guidebook recommended this place) for a late lunch. I got a veggie curry and drank a Kasteel Rouge, which to my surprise was a kriek (or cherry beer). Krieks are popular over here, I’ve never been a big fan of them but this was quite nice. And that was my day out in Leuven. I had to get back to Brussels and back to London, and this little sojourn in Belgium would be over.

“thou Scheldt not pass”

September 1, 2022August 30, 2022Leave a comment

I weaved through the streets of Antwerp heading for the river Scheldt, to use that brilliant “thou Scheldt not pass” line I had thought of in my previous post. I might use that as a title for this blog post. I headed for Het Steen, the little castle on the banks of the wide river that is the oldest building in Antwerp. It dates from the early 1200s, and means “The Rock” (though “Steen” is a pretty common word for a stone castle in Dutch). There was a castle on this spot right back in the 9th century Carolingian period. It has a decent tourist information office in there now, where I bought some chocolates for my son (little chocolate hands from Antwerp). I had a good spot to sketch from across the busy street, up some stairs, but it was starting to spit so I sketched quickly. You know I love a street sign, so I made sure to include the blue crosswalk sign in the bottom right corner. Some people might think no, you leave those out, takes away from the historic castle, but I say thee nay, give me modern metal street signs and old medieval buildings any day. Back on my 1998 train tour of Europe I became a little bit obsessed with crosswalk signs, because they were a little different in every country. I liked the German ones in particular, wearing the little hat, as do the ones in the Czech Republic which look a bit like spies. I would always get obsessed with things like that.

I tell you what, they can’t get enough of those Flemish giants here in Antwerp. This is a statue of a big lad called Lange Wapper. It’s right outside Het Steen, and shows Lange Wapper doing that Tory-party conference stance and looking down on two smaller people, crotch out, threatening them with his Lange Wapper (I’m so glad he is clothed, unlike Silvius Brabo). Lange Wapper is a Flemish folk tale, about a boy who started out as a bit of parsley and cabbage and then became a bit of a trickster. He apparently saved an old woman who had been thrown into the river Scheldt by a gang, and the old woman gave him the ability to shape-shift, for example turning into a massive giant who could leap between towns. He got into all sorts of antics; he would probably be cancelled now. He is kind of like a bogeyman figure of Antwerp. This statue was put there in the early 1960s.

Not far from here I found another hydrant I needed to draw. This one had a peculiar sticker that said “Love the game, hate the business” and “Against modern football!” on it, which must really make the firemen think. Haha, a fire hydrant talking about sportswashing, the irony. Anyway I drew this down a fairly quiet street. Those few drops of rain I felt over at Het Steen were coming back, we were definitely going to get wet today. It’s good to keep adding new city fire hydrants to my big collection.

This is the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Kathedraal, in the heart of Antwerp. As well as fire hydrants, and crosswalk signs, I am obsessed with drawing cathedrals, though one subject generally takes a lot longer than the other. I drew this one looking upwards from a standing spot, all the benches in that particular square having been taken, and those clouds were pretty ominous. I did about 75% of it and finished the rest later when I was sitting down not craning my neck. The hours of the day were moving along quicker than those clouds, and I wanted to go and sit inside somewhere before getting the train back to Brussels, and have another hearty Belgian beer. I had a place in mind, but it would be a walk to get there. It took a while, but I beat the incoming rainstorm by bare minutes.