waiting on the corner staring through you in your different world

June 28, 2011June 28, 20115 Comments

More from Saturday’s Davis sketchcrawl… we moved from the station and went down Second Street, and I stopped outside Subway to sketch the little row where the Village Bakery is found. The restaurant there is Our House, which is, er, in the middle of, yes you get the idea. there used to be a nice Tapas place there, we went to a couple of times. For this sketch I decided to try out the Uni-ball Signo UM-151 most awesome pen ever, to see how it worked on the rougher watercolour moleskine paper, and how it really takes a wash. As expected, it did dull the wash a little, and being a thin nib it meant harder work on a larger drawing such as this (I have other pens that can do the job but it was a try-out) but on the whole it worked pretty well. I was sketching with Stockton artist Salvador Castío and Rio Vista artist Janice L-h. There is Salvador there in the drawing; I have followed his work for a while, and it was great to see it in real life, larger than expected, very strong lines and precise hatchwork (see his blog here). Janice’s sketching work was great, she had wonderful books of drawings from all over northern California, but her Davis sketches were amazing, an excellent style (check out Brightflyer, her Flickr site). I sketched her too, below, using purple micron pen with a background of the scribbles of paint from the previous drawing.

Also above, a motorcycle sketched on 2nd Street. I would have sketched the whole thing but I ran out of page. A few more sketches to come…

shades of earth

June 18, 2011June 19, 20112 Comments

Had about fifteen minutes or so yesterday lunchtime to to a quick sketch, so popped by the Arboretum to use my wonderful new pen. I scribbled some paint on the paper first, the typical Davis colours, and it was a fun exercise. This is a quiet time on campus, when the students are all gone and the sun is out and strong.

drawing downtown davis june 25

June 10, 2011June 10, 2011Leave a comment

It is time for another Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl folks, this time on Saturday June 25th! It will begin at 11:00am from the Davis Amtrak station (it was nice sketching there before, lots of benches, lots of history) and will amble through the old downtown area, before finishing up at the E Street Plaza at 3:30pm.

This is as always FREE and open to everyone, regardless of age or skill level. It’s a good chance to met other sketchers and artists, to see how they do things, to learn from each other. Plus the summer sun has finally arrived in Davis so it’s another excuse to get outside! (I’d wear a hat though…)

All you need is something to draw with and something to draw on. I personally use ink and watercolour in a sketchbook. In fact if you’r interested my materials are all listed on my ‘materials’ page.

DATE: Saturday June 25th, 2011

START: 11:00am, Davis Amtrak Station (2nd & H)

FINISH: 3:30pm, E Street Plaza (by clock fountain)

See you there!

Let’s Draw Davis: June 25 Facebook Event

Let’s Draw Davis Flickr Group

Aggie TV report about our January sketchcrawl

‘Let’s Draw Davis’ posts on petescully.com

how does your garden grow

June 9, 2011June 9, 20112 Comments

This is a house in Davis that I drew as a commission last month. It was an interesting house to draw, with lots of colourful foliage in the front yard, and so I tried to capture the house’s interesting character without getting lost in the greenery, and I’m quite happy with the result. The image is 7″x5″ and was done with ink and watercolour on watercolour paper.

Looking at this hortuculture again reminded me of a page I kept from my ‘Forgotten English’ calendar (by Jeffrey Kacirk – each day gives you a word no longer used in English. Today’s is “Alfridaria”, which has something to do with the supposed power that planets hold over people). The word was ‘hortyard’, meaning a garden or orchard, and it describes how that and the word ‘orchard’ originate in the Old English ‘ortgeard’, the first element being related to the Latin ‘hortus’ (‘garden’). It’s funny because I’ve been talking about gardens and yards here thinking of the way I use the word back home – when I say I’d like to have a garden, I just mean a back yard, but over here people naturally assume I mean I want to plant flowers and shrubs, and I don’t – I’m not a gardener!

If you would like an original drawing of your house, or of someone you know (would make a nice present), or even of a place in Davis or elsewhere I’d be happy to hear from you! I can draw from photos, and usually draw at 7″x5″ but can go larger. You can also find original drawings and prints to buy on my Etsy store – see the nice button I have added in the right column on this blog, or just click here: etsy.com/shop/petescully.

taco bell du jour

June 6, 20112 Comments

Taco Bell at the UC Davis Silo. I eat here every so often (though one time they mistakenly charged me 16 times for the same item – oops!). I’ve been sketching my places-of-lunch lately, so here it is, in dark blue micron pen in my wh smith sketchbook.

when you see me walking down the street

June 3, 2011June 3, 20111 Comment

The last regular page, and chronologically the last drawing done in Watercolour Moleskine #7 – another sketchbook finished! This is the corner of 2nd and G Streets, downtown Davis. That’s Froggy’s there, a popular local bar (they do nice burgers, but the acoustics are horrible), and the Aggies’ barber shop (I have never gotten my hair cut there). I had to do the colour at home, because it started to rain while I was sketching. It was the last day of May. So far, June (normally a very warm and sunny month) has seen epic thunderstorms and tornado warnings. A funnel cloud was seen over Davis on Thursday, and Aubrey Huff hit three home runs yesterday and one the day before. Mad June!

So now I am ‘between sketchbooks’. Well, in reality I’m not, I have my WH Smith sketchbook which I love working in and several others not yet started, but I haven’t yet got my new watercolour Moleskine – number 8 – which are always the ‘main canon’. I want to pick up some more WH Smith books though when I’m back, if they still do the ones with the fabric cover and the long piece of string.

that old red barn

June 2, 2011June 1, 2011Leave a comment

I cycle past this barn in south Davis often; it’s just off the bike path, by Putah Creek winery. I have always like its colour and how the shadows hit it, so finally this weekend I cycled over and sketched it. I love the randomness of the windows, and almost ramshackleness of it’s structure.

it always leads me here, leads me to your door

May 29, 2011May 29, 20112 Comments

Finally, after an almost seven month wait, spread 12 of the Davis Moleskine is complete! 12 of 12 – this is the last page. Why I waited so long I’m not exactly sure, but here it is. This is Bizarro Comics, next to Chipotle on E Street. It is where Bogey’s Books used to be (so named, probably, because of the excessive abundance Davis has in allergy season). This is a three-page-spread, and I decided to just tail it off at the end because it gives the promise of more to come, but I assure you this is the last page. I’ll do another thing now, with colour. Soon maybe.

I’ll post the whole spread all in one continuous shot at some point, when I can figure out how to have it on screen within my blog, but scrollable side to side.

In the meantime, you can see all the other Davis Moleskine spreads here…

rain drops keep falling on my head

May 26, 2011May 26, 20111 Comment

I’ve cycled past this place on many occasions and finally stopped to skech. It’s unusual for such a shop to spell ‘quick’ correctly (as opposed to ‘kwik’ or similar), and say ‘market’ rather than ‘mart’, in fact to use ‘shop’ and ‘market’ together, but let’s not dwell on semantics. I sketched this while on my way to the library on a nice dry day when I didn’t get completely soaked.

Tuesday last week however, I did get completely soaked. I needed to go to the library to drop off some books which were overdue – I just had to go that evening, get out on the bike, maybe get another Portugal book, get home. It was a nice evening, cloudy, with golden rays of setting sun poking through the gaps (I’m not making this up, I even took a photo). For some insane reason, I forgot my ‘just-in-case, you-never-know’ rain jacket, AND my bike light. I obviously wasn’t thinking. While in the library, and having a conversation about art projects and displaying my work there in November, I could hear that rain had started to beat against the roof. Not beat, but slam down in torrents. The deluge had come. I hung out there, did a drawing on a postcard (they have some postcard exchange with a library in LA) while I waited, waited for the rain to disspiate (and presumably for the sun to come back out). I live a long way from the library.

It didn’t stop, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t go out in it. It’s only water, falling from the sky. We get loads of it in England. Cycling in it down bike lanes with little or no light was a challenge though. I had my flashing red back-light which is on my helmet, so that at least traffic behind could see me, but for the most part I walked – whenever I cycled I would invariably run into a large pile of wet leaves which people leave on the bike lane in the darkest possible spots (this is one reason a bike light is essential), and I know what sort of eight-legged baddies live in those piles. I passed by this place, not really having much need to buy six-packs of bud-light or large bags of doritos.

Eventually I reached Rite Aid (a store I can’t actually stand; it has such a wierd layout and they have never really codified their queuing system), where I was able to dry off a little and find an expensively-priced and cheaply-made bike light. At first it didn’t work, and it smelled of awful rubber. In the end though it came through, and helped me see my way home, and there are some really dark roads on the way to my house where cars tend to think nobody can see them speeding. I got in and had a cup of tea, and a hazelnut kit-kat. That was nice.

I was going to do some sort of drawing about that rainy journey home as part of this week’s Illustration Friday, whose them is ‘soaked’, but I’ve not had the time. I’ll wait until it rains again.

at the delta of venus

May 24, 2011May 23, 2011Leave a comment

I drew the outside of this cafe, the Delta of Venus, about a month ago or so. Last week I actually ate there, and of course sketched there, while having a very interesting lunchtime meeting about possible art projects with Shelly from the Davis Art Center. While sketching I noticed some of local artist Laura Kelly’s amazing artwork on the wall, she has been on a couple of the sketchcrawls. Davis is a town full of artists.