free as a firebird

February 28, 2012February 28, 2012Leave a comment

This blue Pontiac Firebird, with furry dice in the window, was parked on 2nd Street last week when I was on my way downtown. I had to stand and sketch it. There’s a real primary colours feel to the classic cars I’m finding to sketch lately (ie, they’re usually red, yellow or blue). Speaking of primaries, big ones today in America. Michigan and Arizona. Mitt vs Rick, with Newt and Ron sitting it out. They should just merge them all into one candidate, “Mittrick Newtron” and have done with it. I must say, I’m dreading this marathon-of-marathons election season reaching California, all those horrible endless pointless soul-destroying attack ads, paid for by super-pacs and other nefarious organizations, which unfortunately really do have an effect on the outcome of elections, regardless of a candidate’s actual worth. And these torrential ads are called free speech… free to the highest bidder. I’m almost glad I can’t vote for any of them.

don’t start me talking, i could talk all night

February 25, 20126 Comments

Last night’s talk at the Avid Reader went very well, a lot of people came (many thanks to all who came!). I spoke for, I’m not sure, an hour and a half, maybe two hours? It was nigh on half past nine when I left anyway. I introduced the new Urban Sketchers book, ‘The Art of Urban Sketching’, spoke about Urban sketchers as a group, as a philosophy, how it all started, and I think I may have made some sense occasionally, stringing my planned talk together like I string my sketchcrawls together, if you know what I mean. I talked a bit about my own sketching, how and why I do it, and passed around some images of Davis that I’ve drawn. Quite a few familiar faces were there, for which I was very thankful! I even signed some books; nice to see so many people with the Urban Sketchers book, I hope they’ll be as inspired by all the other sketchers as I am! I read from the book, the manifesto, the profiles of certain artists, showed some of my favourite images in the book (several of them were by Luis Ruiz, including his one of Malaga’s now-closed oldest bookstore, Libreria Cervantes, which was very relevant being talked about in an independent bookstore, although the Avid Reader is doing pretty well these days and is in fact expanding into the former space of the recently closed toystore, Alphabet Moon, three doors down the street). I tried to talk a lot about urban sketching to Davis and cities like it, how we as urban sketchers are recording a place’s history in personal ways; I was pleased to meet another artist who had also painted the Davis Lock and Safe building, for example. My throat was getting pretty dry by the end of it.

So after the talk, I popped over to De Vere’s for a cold beer. All of this talk about drawing meant I was just itching to pick up a pen again, so I went straight to the bar and started sketching, and sketching, and sketching. I lay down a wash of browny-yellowy-orange first, to represent the bar’s light, then draw over that in my black uni-ball signo pen. I couldn’t represent the bar’s noise though – where last week’s Little Prague outing was defined by very loud music, this was deifned by very loud talking. It got packed quickly, and you couldn’t hear any music, but quite often people were yelling over each other at the bar. I however kept inside my bubble, and didn’t really mind; I had done all the talking I could that night, and now was my quiet time, in a barful of noise (that’s livin’ alright).

now you see it… now you don’t

February 21, 2012February 21, 2012Leave a comment

There’s a Davis building which has been around forever, and which I have drawn a couple of times now, Davis Lock and Safe on 4th St. Since drawing it I have had many local people (and non-locals too) how much they like that building; sure it’s empty, downtrodden, ramshackle, but it’s comforting, been there since they were a kid, cycle past it every day. Well, as of just a few weeks ago, it is gone!

It was demolished, and now the land stands empty. I have no idea what will go in there. I went down to sketch on Sunday. It’s useful for urban sketchers to document their environments, because once they change, they are changed for good.

Below, this is the first sketch of the building I did in 2010. Bye bye, Lock and Safe!

she’s a nice girl

February 20, 2012Leave a comment

Bloody lovely weather yesterday in Davis, so I went and sketched for a bit in the afternoon. I spotted this beauty parked on 3rd Street, so I parked myself on the sidewalk and whipped out the moleskine sketchbook. There were quite a lot of very sketchable cars out yesterday, for some reason, but I didn’t have time for them all. One thing that drew me to this car was its shadow – basically, it is Batman. Who knew?! There’s this advert on the telly these days for Fiats where this guy is confronted by a tall young Italian woman who slaps him in the face and then acts all seductively, before the guy realises she is just a car. My four-year-old saw that commercial, and he said dryly, “she’s a nice girl”, which had me in hysterics. He does like cool cars though, so this one’s for you matey.

whiskey in the jar-jar

February 18, 2012February 19, 20125 Comments

Last night, I partied like it was 1999. That is to say, I went to see the Phantom Menace. In 3D. I know I always say that 3D is shite, and that Phantom Menace is, largely, also shite, but I couldn’t wait – this would be awesome man! Well, the chance to see Star Wars, any Star Wars, on the big screen again couldn’t be passed up. Phantom Menace has its faults (I am looking squarely at you, Jar-Jar Binks – time has not made it easier to forgive the Gungan for his hapless existence) but in many places it is quite great – Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon is someone everyone would want to know, a favourite uncle, Obi-Wan’s lightsabre skills are still world class, and I think Jake Lloyd was superb as young Anakin. They made some improvements, fixing Yoda from that terrible puppet to a digital one that more closely resembles the original puppet, and switching all of Amidala’s lines with ones that made sense (actually they didn’t do that, sadly). I was reminded of how excited everyone was when the trailer first aired, when double-bladed lightsabre wielding face-painting experiment Darth Maul told us he would be revealed to the Jedi. But was it 3D? Nope.

It’s hard to just switch a regular movie into a 3D movie, I guess. I remember seeing Jaws 3D at the pictures when I was a kid and jumping out of my seat when a harpoon flew out of the screen – now that was 3D (actually, Edgware cinema it may have been a real harpoon, looking back). There were trailers for new 3D movies last night which did look quite spectacular, but they were made with 3D in mind. Phantom Menace just wasn’t. Not even the podraces, exciting though they were, particularly flew out of screen. The most 3D bit, seriously, was when Watto was speaking Huttese and the subtitles came up. I was like, “oooh floating letters!” After a while, the 3D glasses (“3D – Real D” it says, whatever the heck that is supposed to be) were bugging me. I expected those light cardboard ones you used to get, red on one side, blue on the other, but these were proper plastic sunglasses. They’re great, if you don’t already have glasses on. They fit over your glasses, but wearing two sets of specs is a real pain on the nose.

Still, after Darth Maul went to pieces, after Qui-Gon Jinn was set on fire and after the Gungans paraded their vuvuzelas in the streets of Naboo (with Palpatine looking on saying to himself, seriously what part of “wipe them out” did they not understand??), it was fun to come out of the movie theatre feeling like I had relived the olden days. I then fancied a beer and a sketch. One other thing I did in 1999 was spend a couple of weeks in Prague, so I went to local pub Little Prague for some Czech beer. I’ve drawn this place several times before, and this time I drew on a brown envelope (from Peking University), using a uniball vision micro, a superb Y&G Calligraphy pen, and a white gel pen. Oh and a bit of warm grey Pitt brush pen. Took me about an hour and a half, while people milled about dancing and drinking. I like Little Prague, but the music on Friday nights can be a bit loud and, well, not my thing. Lots of others seemed to enjoy it though, but I concentrated on drawing all those bottles. I considered extending the envelope to draw the rest of the bar (I would love to do a curving panoramic of this bar sometime, perhaps on a less busy evening). I would like some time to organize a Drink and Draw type group here in Davis, something that seems to be popular in other cities. In the meantime, here’s wondering how the other Star Wars films will look in 3D. I think I can guess!

prickly business

February 2, 2012February 2, 20121 Comment

Yesterday I drew a cactus at lunchtime. It was standing out by a building called The Barn. I don’t know why, but this reminds me a little of the republican primaries.

and the seasons they go round and round

January 31, 2012Leave a comment

Here is another familiar scene, but drawn in a different way, at lunchtime today. My recycling bin is always bursting at the seams at this time of year, so I like to recycle the nicer brown envelopes for some sketching. I used a different pen, a black Y&C Calligraphy pen from Japan (well, from the University Art store in Sacramento), which was really fun to draw with. I have drawn this same view, of the south Silo from the steps of Bainer Hall, every six months since mid-2007, once in Winter, once in Summer, once with leaves and once without. One way to capture the changing Davis seasons. Here are the others…

call her green, and the winters will not fade her

January 30, 20123 Comments

I’ve not been feeling well the past few days (I’m home doing nothing but watching telly, drinking tea and listening to the dishwasher right now), but yesterday I managed to get out for some fresh air on my bike, and cycled around Davis in that laborious way you do when your legs are saying, you should be at home on the sofa. The sunshine was good for me though. I stopped on 8th street to do some sketching, after I saw a row of bicycles, each painted tip to toe in a different bright colour, nailed to stakes alongside someone’s garden fence. That’s peculiar, I thought, so I drew the lime green one. It’s so green it reminded me of Fungus the Bogeyman. Interesting public art in a bike-mad town.

say hello to my little friends

January 27, 20123 Comments

I’ve been drawing fire hydrants this week, ones I have not drawn before. The taller yellow one below was drawn at the end of last week’s sketchcrawl; the stumpy yellow one above is on the corner of 2nd and University. The other two are drawn on brown envelopes – I work with graduate applications, and recieve mail, transcripts, from all over the world (well, mostly China). I like to recycle the envelopes from time to time for some drawing, and well it’s that time of year. The one above was drawn on an envelope from Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in China, and is a hydrant from the UC Davis campus (they are white and blue). The one below is drawn on an envelope from Sri Lanka, and is found in the parking lot of Davis Commons. There are still one or two styles of hydrant in Davis that I’ve not yet drawn, I’m sure!

inside the walls of the old city hall

January 27, 2012January 27, 20123 Comments

You know the old City Hall building in Davis that I have sketched about a million times? This one here? Well I noticed the last time I sketched it that there was a sign outside saying ‘City Hall Tavern’, which was news to me. Apparently, this building (a wing of the restaurant Bistro 33, and the former police station among other things) has now been converted into a bar, so after the fun of last weekend’s sketchcrawl I popped by for a pint of Weihenstephaner. It’s very modern inside, dark walls and cycle-themed (there are rotating bike sheels all over the ceiling), and some sort of games room which was blocked by a curtain. It would be an interesting bar-room to sketch, though I only had time to do a quick one of the bar area itself. I’ll go back some time for a bigger sketch. It’s certainly an interesting use of this historic space.

Here are some previous outside drawings of the old City Hall building. It’s on F Street, near 3rd, Davis: