all you need is lava

June 21, 2018June 21, 20183 Comments

Another from the end of March. I did promise the staff at Sophia’s that this would be posted on my sketchblog but that it would be probably late, as I have been slow to sue my scanner; I was write, almost three months later. The past weekend involved a fair amount of scanning of several months of sketching (ironically, far less sketching than last year; in terms of volume, January-June this year is the same as January-March last year) (I do keep a chart) (this year I have been busy with learning a new job and coaching a select soccer team) (excuses, excuses). Anyway this was from the very sketch-productive weekend when I was home alone, so went out sketching the whole time. Usually I would go out of town on this weekend (San Francisco in previous years) but this year I stayed in Davis to (a) feed the cats and (b) I was too knackered to traipse around North Beach. After some sketching outside, followed by a chicken biryani at the Yeti restaurant, I popped by Sophia’s bar for a ‘Lava Lamp’ drink, which I had been told by my wife is very similar to the much-loved Lava Flow we had in Hawaii. It was delicious, so I made it the centrepiece of my latest bar sketch. It added a bit of contrasting colour to this quite golden-lit bar area. I had a couple of these. The white gel pen came in handy. This is another example of sketching in low-light conditions, and doing the paint on site if possible (not always a priority for me, I sometimes sacrifice the painting when short on time, the penwork on site is my thing) is important to really bring across my experience of the light, dark and colour. See I’m great at explaining things aren’t I. Hey, chapter 1 in my book ‘Creative Sketching Workshop’ is all dedicated to bar sketching tips. Anyway while I come in here about once or twice a year, it’s one of my favourite bars in Davis, but I love the food at the adjoining restaurant (Sophia’s Thai Kitchen), we eat there a lot.

Here are some previous sketches of the same place…

what’s the matter with you, sing me something new

June 21, 2018June 20, 20182 Comments

Here is another panorama, this one from Easter Sunday. This is the Davis Lutheran Church on the corner of B and 8th. B8. “B-8-iful sketch!” a passing punster might say. “B-8-a-fool” more like. Anyway I have wanted to draw this scene for ages, not so much the church which is just a regular building, not exactly Sagrada Familia, but that tree in front is incredible. I had to draw it soon; this was the start of April, which is still leaving it late, but I had to draw it when there were no leaves. It’s too leafy after that. Like this you can see the branches and the shape and yes, it was a bit tedious drawing all those branches but no, actually it was great fun. I’m glad I drew it on Easter because there’s that big cross on the lawn. There are significantly more colourful objects on the left page of this panorama than on the right. This is the way home from downtown. Nice to sketch something I have not already sketched in Davis. There are still one or two things left to draw, I guess.

cause those rosy days are few

June 19, 20183 Comments

Here is a panorama of the corner of 6th and G Streets, Davis. You can click on it for a closer look. It’s mostly trees and a couple of buildings, the usual. Couple of roads, the odd mis-shapen car. I only sketch in three chords, plus maybe a minor chord, you know what you’re getting. I should draw streets in musical order, so that they make a song. Start with C Street, then F Street, back to C, maybe up to the corner of G and 7th, you get the idea. I sketched it on the last day of March when I was home alone for the weekend while the family was in Oregon. It was one where I decided on just a few colours, mostly because I was tired. I still love sketching panoramas. There’s the Davis Co-Op on the other side of the street.

like the color when the spring is born

June 18, 2018

Still a backlog of sketches being scanned, and these are from March. We had a Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl on a very Irish-weathered (sunny! No wait, rainy, hang on no, sunny, wait here comes the rain; it was great) St. Patrick’s Day. The theme was very appropraite – draw in green. I used only green pen. Well I used other colour paints, but all the pens I used were green. Light green marker, dark and normal green fineliners, and two tones of green brush pen (double ended). The building above was the dark green pen, sketched from the shelter of the US Bicycling Hall of Fame (yep, that is here in Davis) while the rain came down. As I said I used watercolour. Oh actually there is a bit of orange pen in there too, which is ok because that is in the Irish flag. (Before you St Patricks enthusiasts say anything about green only, I should remind you that St Patrick’s favourite colour was actually blue, you’re doing it wrong) (while we are on that, my annual reminder that the four leaf clover is nothing to do with St Patrick, but the three-leaf shamrock totally is).

You can see the raindrops on this one. Quick single-line contour sketches of people passing by. Below is the corner of 3rd and A, at the entrance to UC Davis. These are all sketched in a Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook, which is a bugger to scan, as evidenced by the shadowy edge where I just cannot press it hard enough against the screen. Can be hard to photoshop out. Can we photoshop out the shadows on the edges of existence? Ouch that got philosophical, or maybe photoshopical.

Here is that brush pen. It’s double-ended, and is called ‘Zig Brushables’ by Kuretake. I dunno, I bought it in a shop and I’ve not really used it since. I do this with pens sometimes, I think oooh I will draw some great and very different sketches with this one, I will be all out of my box and shit. Then I use it once and it takes up space in my pencil case like an extravangant unknown foreign footballer. I think I will send it out on loan to Galatasaray, I’m sure its morale is low from lack of sketches. I did enjoy doing this one though, it was quick, far quicker than my usual stuff. Maybe if I sketched like this all the time I would fill hundreds more sketchbooks than usual, but they would give you a massive headache.

And here is fellow Davis skletcher Allan, who I ahve probably sketched more than any other person, over the years. This was at the end of the ‘crawl, when we all met to look at each others’ sketchbooks.

and he told us of his life

June 18, 2018Leave a comment

Aeons ago, when I first had a summer in Davis, I started drawing this town to build up an overall picture of it to post on my blog, so that my friends and family back home could get an idea of where I was now living. I was a Londoner, and Davis was new and totally different. I would cycle everywhere for a start, sometimes in heat that would make your eyes hurt. I would cycle home from downtown and pass this building, which was for a long time ‘Nails By Tam’ (which has now moved to F Street, or G, I can’t remember; I have drawn it, I’m sure). Well this little building was all by itself, plonked remotely at the end of 3rd St in the Old East downtown, and was the first thing I thought was totally sketchworthy in Davis. It wasn’t the first thing I sketched, but it was in that first summer’s sketchbook. Anyway I don’t cycle that way very often now, but I passed by there a few months ago and sketched it again, in the sunshine from across the street, behind the tree. It’s empty now I think. The spot has otherwise not really changed much, nobody has come in and developed it into an apartment complex or anything.

nails by tam

Oh, here is that one from 2006. I wasn’t even using watercolours then, just colouring in with pencils. And below, another one from 2009.

uncle vito’s

June 1, 20187 Comments

Slowly scanning sketches. This one is from a Davis pizzeria / bar called Uncle Vito’s. I have sketched it a couple of times before (once every couple of years or so) and on one evening in early March I needed to come out and do some bar sketching. The beer is nice here, and not expensive. And tall, as you can see from my drink. I don’t really eat the food here though; I had a pizza once that was not really to my liking (it had Thai flavours, which in this case meant peanut sauce and beansprouts), and I have also had their garlic fries, which are delicious but come in an enormous pile, I think I had it in 2009 or so and am still feeling full up. Just beer it is then. The screens are blank, there might have been sports on them, basketball maybe, too late for American Football, too early for American Baseball, maybe it was American Soccer, or maybe it was like just the news or something. Or a movie. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, stop wondering. The leg lamp-post, it’s from that Christmas movie, anyway the first time I went in there I though they had two of them, before realizing it’s just a mirror. Mirrors behind bars can be deceptive. For years I thought there was a mirror behind the bar at the Good Mixer in Camden Town, I never clocked that that was in fact another side to the bar. I never clocked that I had no reflection, or if I did I must look pretty different, Camden will do that to you. Anyway this most definitely isn’t Camden, it’s Davis.

give you a pizza my mind

March 1, 20183 Comments

This is another from late January. It is Steve’s Pizza on F street, Davis. Or is it Steve’s Original Pizza? It was called that for a while. No, the sign says it is Steve’s Place Pizza. (It might be Steve’s Pizza Place). My son tells me that no, it’s Steve’s Pizza Pasta and Grill. I think it says Steve’s Place Pizza Pasta and Grill. Whatever it is called, if you go there you will get pizza, and presumably it will belong to Steve. Until you buy it. Presumably also it is Steve’s Pizza, Pasta, Grill, Salad, Alcoholic Drinks and Non-Alcoholic Drinks. I don’t know if it’s necessary to say everything on your menu in your name. There is also a sign that says “Now Open Late”. So this probably means that if it says they open at 5 you should probably go around 6, in case they aren’t open yet. I don’t know, I have trouble with signs. I really like Steve’s pizza, I must say, we order it at work, and also this was the first pizza that my son would ever eat, having always turned his nose up at pizza up to that point. Honestly, I didn’t know what sort of kid refuses to eat cheese pizza. Any cheese pizza, he just refused it all. He should try the sort of pizza I used to eat when I was that age, the frozen solid mini-pizzas from Asda, microwaved and eaten with baked beans to give them some flavour (always makes me think of watching Rod Hull and Emu while eating that, for some reason) (remember that? Grotbags and the Pink Windwil, that was one weird show). Well ever since going to a Pokemon birthday party at Steve’s and trying their pizza, he has loved pizza. Only cheese though, nothing too extravagant.

a campus in my sketchbook

February 28, 20185 Comments

If you keep a sketchbook, or maybe several at once, you are keeping a record of things that are in your head, just like a diary. The diary might be an internal monologue of how you are feeling, inward-looking and for your eyes only, or it might be one like a politician or a journalist might keep, their own observations on the world they see. They may be a place to work on your writing, to find your voice, to figure out your thoughts and expand your ideas. Sketchbooks can be very much like that. Sketchbooks can be whatever you want them to be, and for many are a mixture of the two, a sketched journal. I have tried that myself, writing out pages alongside the drawings, but I often have a hard time mixing the two; people can be so differently affected by text than by image. Image is often undermined by the text, which can be a distraction. Text, even open-ended and vague text, sometimes tells the reader what to think about the drawing around it. So I usually reserve my own text for the blog post when it is a step removed from the drawing, and very much a take-it-or-leave-it thing. You can look at my entire website without reading a word and it wouldn’t matter. In fact on my old iteration of my blog from a decade ago, every time I would post a sketch I would shrink the font of the accompanying nonsense writing to about size 8, so not to distract from the sketch itself. Anyway, I thought I would share this thought with you. I think of my own ‘main’ sketchbooks, which are produced very much with the idea that someone would look through them, as visual diaries. I would never let someone read a written diary (not without heavy editing), it gives too much away. (In fact when I was younger and wrote pages and pages in my diary nightly, I wrote in a different alphabet that I invented when I was about 13 or 14; hey you were interested in girls (or boys), well I was interested in alphabets). So my main sketchbooks are ways for me to relax and draw the world that I live in. I do have non-realistic more fantastical drawings too, but I do those elsewhere. Since I live in Davis, my sketchbook is filled up with images of Davis, and since I work at UC Davis, well I can say that I have a campus in my sketchbook. All of which is a way to say, I have just started to catch up on my scanning, so here are four recent (January) sketches from the UC Davis campus.

The sketch above (sorry, you need to scroll back up there) is the Science Lecture Theater, or SciLec, which would be a cool space villain name. It’s hidden behind those trees and frat boards. Below though, on a cloudier day, is Robbins Hall. I’m starting to catch up on the buildings I walk past but haven’t yet drawn (yes, there are still a few).

Underneath, sketched after a morning training class, is Veihmeyer Hall. I last drew this almost a decade ago I think it was, I like the way the shadows cross the white building. I sat in a little garden on a bench and sketched this. When January comes, with its bright chill skies, I get excited because I can finally draw the leafless trees, but sometimes they are a bit intimidating (see the ones of the right). I like it when the trunks are not just that bleached brown or grey, but also have patches or orange or green colouring the bark.

You cannot get much of a window into my thoughts from looking at the sketches. You can only imagine. I assure you I was probably thinking about soccer (listening to the Totally Football podcast or the Football Weekly podcast), or maybe history, or maybe alphabets. Below is one of Haring Hall, but I kept that uncoloured because I like the big yellow sign.

When I first starting drawing Davis in my sketchbooks, I hadn’t been here long and the idea was that I was drawing the world around me to remember it after I had left. Davis, I am still here, and still finding more to draw.

but to you in your own little dreamworld

February 18, 2018February 18, 20183 Comments

Well this is part two of the previous post, really.It jumps forward in time from last month to today, but posting that sketch inspired me to get out and complete the circle. The sketch I posted yesterday was done on the other side of the street from this one, directly opposite, here at 2nd and G. Froggies is now on the right, with Sole Desire is on the left (oh I get it, Sole like in a shoe and Sole like, no actually I don’t get it). If I had a shoe shop I would call it Over The Heel, maybe if it were a shoe shop for mature audiences. You can see the train station from here. My barber (Razor’s Edge) is a little way down the street on the right. I got my hair cut today. I am the most boring person when getting a hair cut. I get the same thing every time, for years. And every time he asks, how does it look. And every time I say, I assume it looks fine (my glasses are off, I cannot see a thing). I get an easy hair cut. I basically get it cut so I don’t have to brush it, brushing hair is so tedious. I do have a hairbrush for those times when it gets a bit longer. It is green and the initials ‘PWS’ are carved into it, because I bought it when I was 13 in Spain (my sister got it for me actually), a cheap plastic hairbrush from a souvenir shop, that has lasted me until my 40s because I hate brushing my hair. Why on earth am I telling you this? It is in no way relevant.

I have more sketches to post from the interim period, between the last post and today’s. I can’t guarantee the text will be as riveting as my 1989 hairbrush discussion. I did go to England, briefly and unexpectedly, at the start of this month and have a few sketches from there. I’ve been up a long time today. I woke up early and registered for the 9th International Urban Sketching Symposium in Porto. I am excited, but nervous all the same. It’s changed a lot since the first one, back in Portland in 2010. Portland to Porto. Anyway, if you are going to Porto for the Symposium, do say hello to me. You can if you like mistake me for someone else, that sometimes happens at the symposium. I remember Lisbon in 2011, a woman came up to me and said, in an excited but serious manner, “I know you, stay here, my friend really wants to meet you.” I was talking with Florian Afflerbach at the time. He had to go, and I was stood there like a plum, and a few minutes later the woman’s friend comes up to me, and the woman says “this is Paul” and her friend peers at me over her glasses and says , “no that’s not him, ” and then without another word they just walked off!! I’m standing there like an eejit, obviously they think I’m “Paul” (Heaston probably, another redhead urban sketcher) (or McCartney maybe?) (Weller?) (Pogba?). No what I love about the symposium is meeting all the people whose sketches I have followed online, been inspired by, learned from, it is very educational like that. You make connections, you might meet someone at one symposium just briefly, literally a couple of words, then follow their work on instagram or something, and by the next time the symposium comes around you’re like old buddies. It’s nice. I’m interested in seeing what Porto has to offer, it looks like a really interesting city. Of course, the first thing I think about is FC Porto, and that time Spurs beat them in 1991 in the Cup-Winners Cup (which no longer even exists), with an incredible team goal scored by Lineker. I’m looking forward to seeing the Portugal Urban Sketchers again, I enjoyed meeting them before (and eating a nice dinner with a group of them in Manchester, though I understood barely a word). I guess I had better start brushing up on my Portuguese…

you get from day to day by filling your head

February 17, 20185 Comments

Another downtown panorama from January. Remember a few years ago when I did loads of panoramas (panoramae? panorami? panoramodes?) in January 2014 and called it a ‘Panoramarathon‘, or in the spirit of naming months after doing artwork, a ‘januaramarathon’, yeah that one didn’t catch on, not exactly
‘inktober’ is it. Hey maybe there is still time for us to do another movement, okay February is already gone but perhaps this March we can dedicate it to panoramic sketches and call it “Panoramarch”. Seriously we have to do it in March because “Panoramapril” sounds rubbish. “Panoramay” could work though, if you can’t do March. I like drawing panoramas over two pages, in fact I would love to bring out a whole book of my Davis panorama sketches, that would be a fun thing to flick through, maybe include some witty little stories, observations, reminiscences, maybe the odd story with long-term locals about the places they love. If I did that I would probably edit down the nonsensical stuff, the ‘stupid-don’t-make-sense-stories’ as me and my friend Terry used to call them when we were at school. Back then we had a short-lived home-made magazine called “The Silly Goats Gruff” which honestly made zero sense. Like, literally. Like if you read some of my more long-winded go-nowhere blog posts, that is not even close. The ‘Stupid-Don’t-Make-Sense-Stories’ were pretty ridiculous. I should try to find some and post them here. There weren’t very many. Terry’s ones were actually pretty good, I thought, while mine always felt a little forced. Listen to me critiquing my 14 year old self’s writing style. That guy who reviewed my book on amazon (the one who said “the author’s explanations are so boring by the time he gets to the point I’ve forgotten what he was talking about“, that guy) (by the way, that guy, if you have forgotten what I was talking about, just look at the page titles), well he would have hated The Silly Goats Gruff. Definitely would have given it 1 star on amazon, plus a whole bunch of links to better publications about goats. “It doesn’t even tell me how many goats there are!”

Anyway, back to the sketch. I know, I know, you’re thinking “that guy has a point”, well yes, he definitely does. So, this was sketched one Saturday afternoon in mid-January after I got a haircut in downtown Davis, on the corner of G and 2nd. The heart of historic downtown, this. That new signpost is nice. On the left, Froggie’s, a bar that has been there for ages. When Terry came to visit me in 2006 I took him there, he loved it. He doesn’t write Stupid-Don’t-Make-Sense-Stories any more, more’s the pity. Now on the right is a shoe shop called Sole Desire, which again, thinking back to the last post, is another example of a Davis shop using some sort of pun in their name and I just can’t tell what it is. This took me under a couple of hours of drawing, but I added the colours when I got home.