that’s no moon

April 17, 2009April 17, 20093 Comments

They call it the Death Star, but it’s too angular, and has no superlaser. It is home to some highly powerful people on campus however. I personally am not a fan of this building, Social Sciences & Humanities. Oh, it looks nice from afar, that huge angular, er, angle, which is supposed to represent the slope up to the Sierra Nevada mountains (yeah, hits it spot on, obvious really). But I have been lost many times in this gawd-forsaken labyrinth, up and down concrete passageways and open stairwells, and doors that no-through-doors. It is honestly like walking through an MC Escher painting. I find it an absolute Impossibility. Which, funny enough, is this week’s Illustration Friday topic, so this is my entry.

I sat outside at lunchtime (despite many sneezes, and the attack of lots of bugs – probably x-wing bugs) and drew this on the field in cobalt blue copic. The trees are still bright and spring-like.

never mind the bollards

April 16, 20093 Comments

Incredibly, I did an urban sketch today, after something like three weeks. I’ve been busy, preoccupied, but mostly afraid of the outside world – hay fever allergies, you see. Today they eased off so I braved it, and sat over on the borderline of campus and city – these bollards represent the boundary, crossable only by bike, between UC Davis World and the City State of Davis. They really are two entities, they feel so different to me. It might be imperceptible to many but I see it. This weekend, however, they all come together for the annual UC Davis Picnic Day, the showcase event of the year, and the largets open house of any university in America. It’s a big deal going back many decades, and it is ridiculously busy (so naturally I’m dreading it).

my fleeting mind

April 12, 200911 Comments

Illustration Friday this week is ‘Fleeting‘. This is Fleet Street. This could be Call My Bluff or it could be the Dictionary, Illustrated. Speaking of the Dictionary, Samuel Johnson, ol’ Sammy Johnno, me ol’ mucka, he used to live round the jack horner from ‘ere.

A sketchcrawl day today on which i could not sketchcrawl; i contemplated leaving the house for a bit but just couldn’t make it. I blame the hay fever. Big congestion. But I’m up and still drawing, somehow, inside and late in the evening, finishing off my Kwak that I’ve saved since Belgium, and tomorrowing Easter. No egg jokes. But I did manage a couple of golf jokes today while the Masters was on (I’m only allowed golf jokes once a year). One guy had two bogeys in a row; he probably has hay fever too, i said.

high tide, mid-afternoon

April 11, 2009April 11, 20095 Comments

A second in a possible trilogy of Highgate drawings. This is the top of Highgate Hill, that’s the little village store there. Old brick is good. A world away from here, but only just, you know, over there.

I might not join the global sketchcrawl tomorrow. I need to; I haven’t been drawing much lately, and I might be out of the groove, or just taking a rest. Been busy. You always wonder if one day it’ll all just stop, that you’ll not pick up a pen and draw things, that the sketchbook will end up being a collection of blank, unfillable pages. If this habit is just that, a selfish frivolity. You always wonder, after some non-drawing days, if that’s actually today.

Mauer im Kopf.

frohe geblogstag

April 9, 20098 Comments

Today is one year since I set up this blog (and four years since I started the original blog). Over two hundred entries, or eight hundred in four years. Most of them with drawings (the past couple of years’ worth anyway).

To celebrate, a drawing of the golden gate bridge (which i drew for my sister, whose birthday it is today – happy birthday!) Thank you to all of you who have been following my sketches and drawings this past year and beyond.

to view a voiceless ghost

March 29, 20095 Comments

They say Pond Square is haunted. Who are they? Well, lots of people and ‘ghosts of london’ books, but not the estate agents I imagine. It’s possibly haunted by a pond, but I have never seen it (there hasn’t been a pond here for more than a century and a half). I love this little nook of old Highgate village. I used to walk through here in the wee small hours on the way home after getting off the late bus up the hill from Camden Town (with a beer-sopping bag of chips and pepsi max). Give me Highgate and its Hill any day.

Copic multiliner and watercolour.

you give me fever

March 27, 20091 Comment

The Hay Fever’s really kicking in now. Sat outside the Davis Co-Op fighting back the sniffles and sneezes, and drew in the moleskine.

The Co-Op is a nice supermarket, a proper Davis institution. It’s in old north Davis where the picket fences and old buildings are.

Incidentally, I now have a twitter account. Not actually sure why or what for, but I have one.

in the city of blinding lights

March 22, 200910 Comments

This is the one I began sat in North Beach outside City Lights, but abandoned after drawing the outline when it started to rain. I did most of it at home with a photo and plenty of time (and a roof over my head). It is one of the best spots in the city; indeed, one of those really cool spots in the whole world. City Lights is an important San Francisco bookshop, most commonly associated with the Beat poets (presumably they were called that because they were tired the whole time?), and a bastion of progressive politics. Right next door, just across Jack Kerouac alley, is Vesuvio: a colourful brewpub that also trades on its historical Beat clientele.

I went there after visiting Specs, an old old place packed with junk and people just across Columbus from here. Very nice atmosphere, and they do a lovely Anchor Steam.

Drew this in copic multilner 0.3 and 0.1, cobalt blue. And I nearly did the whole thing. But I decided not to complete it. I heard somewhere that leaving something at 75% is often better than going for 100%. With this drawing, I felt that to continue would make it look overdone, and I think I’ve made the right choice. This is also my illustration friday submission for this week (been a while), theme of ‘subtract’, because this is columbus avenue with part of it taken away.

here’s another sunday morning call

March 20, 2009March 21, 20094 Comments

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

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

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

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

can’t hear no buzzers or bells

March 16, 2009Leave a comment

I went back to San Francisco to walk up and down more hills, and sketch more random spots in the name of satiating my urge to put pen to paper, and discovered a few art shops here and there to look at or buy more pens, because you can never really have enough.

And so I got off at the touristest of traps, Pier 39, and it was cold. I listened to the sea-lions, showing off, and looked out at boat-shaped alcatraz, deciding it was too cold to draw there, and that some hot clam chowder would help (and it did, though I broke the head off of the plastic spoon). I think I waslistening to Pulp, or the Smiths, I forget now. Was going to walk up Russian Hill from Fisherman’s Wharf – one look, and sod that. So went straight into one of my favourite things in San Francisco (and totally free), the Musee Mecanique, a motley collection of ancient and newer arcade games and attractions, wooden and pixelated.

I went there on my first trip to SF, back in 2002, when it was stranded out by the ocean at the cliff house, and loved it; I cannot believe I’ve not been back since it moved somewher a bit more accessible. It’s (and I use this word a lot, but I mean it, though it makes me sound like Timmy Mallett) brilliant, an historical treasure trove, full of things you might recall from your youth no matter how old you are, even if you’re 100. And people were at the musee mecanique having such fun. You will too. Bring quarters. I was skinnier back when I first shook this Uncle Sam’s hand; he hasn’t changed (though my less-than-extraordinary rendition makes him look a bit like rowan atkinson). I played the old Star Wars arcade game (i used to be an absolute artist at that; used to be, this time i got shot down by a stupid tower on the death star after dispatching loads of tie fighters), and got my Magneto-shaped ass handed back to me by Chun-Li in X-Men vs Street Fighter – been a long time since i played arcade games. So I did some drawing.