the old man is snoring

October 31, 2008October 31, 20082 Comments

When it rains it pours. No, this isn’t pouring, it’s bucketing, and do we need it. It rained overnight a few weeks ago, and that was the first rain in many many months, but this is the first proper rain for me – the first rain I actually get to see in the daytime. And I like it. And so do the weathermen (no that’s not a reference to bill ayers, I’m not a mccain robocaller). Now mark finan and dave bender can wheel out their fancy doppler and vipir radars, put on their best ties, and sink their teeth into some storms. California’s poor weathermen, there’s never really much for them to do.

Last time I drew from this window (in the silo, where sometimes i eat lunch), they were building that new bus terminal which is now open across the street. Back in those days, it was a lot hotter, and the dollar was really weak against the pound.

a friday in october

October 24, 2008October 24, 20081 Comment

I had to draw this lunchtime, though running out of things I want to draw near my office. This is the Physics Geology building. Physics. I remember my Physics teacher at school, Vilis, nice guy but a bit grumpy at times, and was forever slamming the windows closed, could not stand the windows to be open, must be a physics thing. I loved physics but was crap at it. I hated chemistry and was crap at it (the fear of bunsen burners, as you know). I was so-so about biology but got pretty good grades in it. I never wanted to be a scientist, but I always wanted (and still do) to know everything about science. It’s good to know stuff.

This is not part of the “you see, davis” series, it just looks like it. That series ended a while ago. A new series will start some time, based on something else. I just felt like adding words about the day.

let it B street

October 24, 2008October 24, 20082 Comments

After getting my new glasses earlier this week, I decided to spend ten minutes doing a very quick drawing. I kinda lost the ‘very-quick-drawing’ thing for a bit there, in favour of the ‘very-detailed-never-time-to-finish’ style of sketching, so it was nice to give myself ten minutes to do something quick. First thing I see. With a failing micron .03 pen too. This is the corner of B and 2nd (and no, there is no apostrophe in that bakers square sign). And it actually took eight minutes.

dial M for redrum

October 12, 20082 Comments

Just as you get off the freeway at downtown Davis. Caffino is a drive-thru coffee booth, and Murder Burger is an old-school american diner that does incredible burgers and amazing milk-shakes. Oh, sorry Redrum Burger.

They used to be called Murder Burger, and to most Davisites they still are. But a few years back they opened another one in some other dog-knows-where town, and someone complained that Murder Burger (“so good they’re to die for”) was not appropriate as a place to eat (even though appropriateness is usually measured by the money something makes). So they decided to change their name, and asked their customers to vote on a new name. The name that won with an overwhelming majority was, in fact, Murder Burger. So they went with the second choice, Redrum Burger (yes, I thought it meant the horse at first).

I don’t eat red meat anyway.

if you wanna be my cover

September 20, 20088 Comments

I was not a great chemist at school. I hated Bunsen Burners, you see, and those little gas-taps on each desk were just trouble waiting to happen (then again everything was at my old school). I used to like drawing on the desks, and in the textbooks, but that’s it. However, I was happy to lend my one of my lunchtime drawings to the UC Davis Chemistry department for their new graduate handbook (which made me want to completely redesign our own graduate program handbooks). I remember, it was a really cold December day when I drew this, I was proving my tenacity to myself (like I do when it’s hot in the Summer). I hope the chemists like it. Just don’t get me near those Bunsen Burners.

KMnO4, Potassium Permangenate. I knew at the time that t might be the only thing I would ever retain in Chemistry. I was much better at Biology. But only really interested in German and Art.

buttons

September 19, 2008September 19, 20088 Comments

nice with tea

Last week I was lucky enough to receive a package in the mail containing Cadbury’s chocolate buttons, sent from England by the fenland artist Anita Davies (check out her artblog). I had commented on one of her drawings (of a cake covered in chocolate buttons, it looked perfect to have with tea) that I had been moaning to myself that I can’t get Cadbury’s Buttons here in the US, and so she offered to send me some in exchange for a drawn postcard.

Cadbury’s Buttons for a drawing, well how could I refuse, and so I draw the picture below and popped it in the mail. It’s a picture of the Silo, which I’ve drawn on many a lunchtime (but a place which completely fails to sell Cadbury’s Buttons). It went from one flat land (Davis) to another (the Fens). I soon received my choccies (various different size Buttons, plus two ‘Freddo’s which were dunked in tea and eaten almost as soon as I saw them). Cheers Anita! Much appreciated.

So, folks, I draw for buttons.

but not for zips

Tell you what, I do love Cadbury’s Tiffin too…

and now i’m mrak, from outer space

September 18, 20083 Comments

We moved apartments this week, hence lack of activity in the pete sketchbook front; however I had to get lunchtime sketching at some point, and yesterday took my little stool down to an old chestnut of a sketching spot, the view of mrak hall from putah creek (drew it last year too). The creek is actually made of green pea soup; it’s always St.Patrick’s Day in the arboretum. You may notice that the two very small hills formerly in this view with the eggheads on top have now vanished, to be replaced with mud and construction, the groundwork for the extension to the law school, because apparently what this country needs is more lawyers. This means this view will not last much longer.

The weather is cooling off here, at last – yesterday I wore a jumper for the first time in absolutely ages (that’s a sweater to you). And a couple of days ago I even got – if it can be believed – several spots of rain on me!! That’s literally all there were. From the cloud that had obviously gotten lost. It’s the first rain since about February I think. Or since the 1890s, or I don’t know, it feels like such a long time. Most of my son’s life. His Irish genes must be confused (though he was born in a torrential central valley rainstorm). Still, he has his own room now so is as happy as larry. Anyway, those seven or eight spots of rain were probably just a teaser trailer for the winter. “Winter”. That’s a misnomer. California’s winters are like our British summers.

Here are some more views of Mrak.

and when it’s cloudy we say nothing at all

September 11, 2008September 11, 20084 Comments

Yes; lunchtimes are getting a bit uninspired. Did this at the silo today during lunch. I’ve not drawn this week, until this. I just had to get the sketchbook out and draw the first thing I saw: in this case, a bench and two bins. Moving very soon to a new apartment in exactly the same complex, and moving means mind occupied. Especially since AT&T (named after the galactic empire’s battle-transport du choix) tell us that, even though we’re moving less than a hundred yards across the parking lot, same address, our internet speed will only be a third what it is now. That is, as they say here, bullshit man. I wonder if it will take a third as long to look at my website? I hope not.

At least the weather has gotten a little cooler. It’s so much nicer here when it’s not so hot. Really nice, I mean. I know you have had shitty rain in England almost all summer; sorry about that. We’ve not had rain since I don’t know when. Clouds? What are they? I forget.

Moving, though. I hate moving. Ever.

you do the math

September 6, 20084 Comments

I don’t like that expression, by the way. Plus being British I’d say ‘maths’ (though being a Londoner it sounds more like ‘maffs’). A lunchtime sketch; I’d never drawn the front of my work building before, so thought I should give it a go. since one of my other drawings will be adorning the front of the chemistry dept’s new handbook, maybe i’ll use this sketch for something one day too. Or not. There are then still things in Davis I’ve not drawn. It’s just usually too hot to draw them (he says with several full sketchbooks).

Mathematics…it must be popular in California, you always hear about all those math labs on the news, I think. At school, all I wanted was just to pass maths, no better. I quite hated the teacher of the top class, Blindty, an ancient creature who had been teaching there since before Pythagorus got into triangles, and he quite disliked me; well, me and almost everyone else. So I requested to move into the second class (and tried my best not to get moved back up), and as a result had a much much better teacher, Miss Barker, and I passed the GCSE no problem, and restored my self-esteem. I left maths behind at 16, but I’m still pretty good at the numbers game on Countdown. Perhaps I should try to become Vorderman’s replacement?

hart times

August 26, 20087 Comments

Do you remember Take Hart (and it’s later incarnation, Hart-beat)? Tony Hart was the art guy for a generation; famously named after three body-parts, he could do near anything with corrugated cardboard and poster paint (just as his caretaker Mr Bennett could always be trusted to get his foot stuck in a bucket), though most of us watched it for Morph, the little brown plasticine guy who could phase through tables but nothing else, and of course The Gallery. “Now it’s time for the Gallery.” For those Americans who don’t know, this was where the work of Britain’s young artist boys and girls was displayed to a backdrop of lift music and unpredictable camera-movements. Kids up and down the land who had submitted their work would sit anxiously, hoping their drawing of their cat would bring them a moment of fame. Kids who drew all the time. Kids like me. But not me.

I never submitted anything to the Gallery, because they had one infamous proviso: you will never get it back. “Pictures cannot be returned,” he warned us. So I did not send Tony Hart any of my drawings, preferring to wait until the internet age to start a sketchblog, and forego the music. I wonder what they did with all those drawings? Do they still exist? Does Tony Hart keep them locked in some underground storage facility? One day, they’ll surface; he or his ancestors will go through them and find an original Tracey Emin aged 7 (“this is everyone I ever ate crisps with”) or one by the 8 and three quarters year old Damien Hirst with his earthworm suspended in pritt-stick glue. And they’ll be worth millions.

Oh, the drawing? Sorry, yes it’s Hart Hall, UC Davis, and has nothing to do with the art-loving Tony at all. Drew and painted it today at lunchtime while escaping slowly moving shadows.