it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas

December 8, 2010December 8, 20105 Comments

After all those fire hydrants, plus a short break from sketching, I was starting to forget what the nearly-finished Moleskine 6 looked like. I have three pages left, and intend to complete it in London, but I added a sketch yesterday lunchtime of the Christmas tree in the E Street Plaza, Davis. I drew it (as I’ve done before) from the window of Chipotle, with the clock fountain thing in the way, reminding me of how little time I have left to sketch. the trees are absolutely amazing right now, all brilliant reds and yellows and oranges, though as I speak a big storm is sweeping through the valley and blowing many of those leaves into the gutter.

So it’s nearly Christmas, folks. I did start making an advent calendar but it looked rushed and so I’ve abandoned it. I spent too much time on fire hydrants last month. Still, people seem to like them. I love the Christmas time of year. Santa’s not happy though, his naughty/nice list was published on Wikileaks. Here’s a tip, folks: don’t get the England world cup bidding team to write your xmas list, no matter how good you are Santa’s elves will stick you in the ‘naughty’ pile. I’m looking forward to mince pies and Quality Street, etc. I didn’t go to the Davis Christmas tree lighting thing though, which they hold here every year, as it is usually crazy. One thing I do love here though are all the houses that go mad with decorations; there’s one near us in Davis who really decks his halls out every year and has hourly music and light shows, even a little train that rattles around. Many cities have whole streets of houses that compete with each other for festive garishness, ‘candy-cane lanes’, with amazingly elaborate shows and attractions that must take all year to plan, all the windows, the whole garden, the whole roof, covered with loud Christmas ornaments – that must be a heavy burden to keep that up every year. I daresay in Britain you’ll say with a grumble, “ooh, it’s getting like that here now,” but believe me nobody does Christmas like the Americans*. They’re really really good at it.

(*Except the Germans, of course – German Christmases are truly wonderful, but I won’t mention them because they beat England 4-1 in the World Cup, lest we forget)

towering over our heads

December 2, 2010December 2, 20102 Comments

Finally! I reached my goal of fifty drawings in November for NaNoDrawMo 2010, and here are the last four. Actually I drew more than fifty drawings this month, but I’m not counting those not in this set. I filled a whole watercolour sketchbook front to back with drawings of fire hydrants and other metal pipes that come out of the ground. The final sketch is the biggest metal pipe, the larger of UC Davis’s iconic water towers. This was a fun project, and the majority of the drawings were done on site (except for those few from photos taken in LA), as I had really wanted to use this project to explore and take a closer look at the missable stuff around us. I can now spot even subtle differences between the hydrants I see around town, so the observation exercise was successful. Everything is interesting if you take an interest in it.

And now, no more fire hydrants for a long, long time! Here’s the book they all fit in, and the pen that made it through to the end (others were chewed up like, er, I dunno, chewits).

See the other great artists who made it to 50 here.

formed a band, we formed a band, look at us, we formed a band

November 30, 2010November 30, 20102 Comments

Ever more NaNoDrawMo pipes… I stood behind the Engineering building at UC Davis to draw the one above. I like pretending that these things are actually something else, like robot spying devices, or a cyberman’s torturing device. In fact it’s rather like a big elaborate pound sign (that’s pound sterling, not the # sign – which we Brits call the hash key, not ‘pound’ as Americans do. Very confusing when using banking menu systems). Below left is an insectoid intruder, poking his head through the concrete like a metal mole. Reminds me of an underwater adventurer.

Above right is a fire hydrant I attempted to sketch in Santa Rosa. I had to abandon it because I got rained on significantly, so finished it at home from memory (didn’t even have a camera). Well, I can remember what these types look like, surely.

Below, a big white dragon from outside the police station. It has two dragon-cubs beside it but they weren’t drawn in, as I didn’t have time, and couldn’t be bothered.

Below left, Ringo Starr’s drum kit. Actually could be any drummer, Ringo just popped to mind because he is an ickle fellow. I love Ringo.

Numbers 44-46 are drawn from photos taken back in September, when I was down in Los Angeles. These are hydrants from Venice Beach and Marina Del Rey. I was getting sick of local hydrants so added a few different designs. I sketched similar ones to these while down there, but took photos of these in case I had some ridiculous excuse to draw them later on, like NaNoDrawMo. Here they are. #45 is like a big yellow clown, like c-3PO’s insane cousin from the circus. I particularly like #46.

Just four more to go… today’s the last day…

the red lion

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010Leave a comment

The quest for the NaNoDrawMo fifty marches on… these three were drawn on the Davis sketchcrawl. I was drawn to those very red pipes outside the cinema on F street. There was something I wanted to say about the colour red and that particular weekend… oh yes! That Team in Red 2, Spurs 3! Great way to start the weekend, that.

More to come…

davis sketchers

November 25, 2010Leave a comment

Photos from last Sunday’s Let’s Draw Davis sketch crawl: above, budding young sketcher Luke shows his dad a thing or two about urban sketching. You can clearly see here the ‘incroyable tenue de crayon de Pete’, while Luke demonstrates a new take on the ‘non moins incroyable posture’. Urban sketching runs in the family!

Fellow Davis blogging couple Alison (Pica) and Allan (Numenius) (check out their blog Feathers of Hope) show off their sketches at the end of the day on 2nd St. I have sketched with them before a long while ago so it was nice to sketch with them again.

On the left is fellow moleskine sketcher Laura, who came to the first sketchcrawl in October. She draws great pictures in sharpie pen, and told me a great trick for getting over that ‘first page of sketchbook’ anxiety that a lot of sketchbookers have – she starts in the middle of the book! I thought that was a great approach. On the right, my colleague in the Statistics dept Rahman Azari, a great artist who has a good eye for colour, sketching the autumnal tones at the train station.

And here is my sketchbook at the end of the day. I struggled through a cold, which got worse, but I’m glad to have had a nice day sketching with other Davis sketchers. More sketchcrawls to come in the new year, dates to be announced – please join us on the next one!

Let’s Draw Davis! Flickr group

meeting you outside the station, asking about your favourite colours

November 24, 20105 Comments

Last Sunday, the weather was bright, sunny and cold, following an enormous sketchbook-scaring-away rain and thunder storm in our part of California. Still, a few brave Davis sketchers got together for the second of our Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawls, going from the train station and down Second street, braving the fantastic sunshine.

My sketch on the left was while I was sat outside the amtrak station, and I wanted to keep using the paint splatter thing, but this time contain it within a box. Interesting results. It’s a colourful enough view anyhow. You can see fellow sketchers Pica and Rahman sketching away.

While sketching, I was joined by my son Luke, who had just been to the toystore, checking off things he wants for Christmas. He also did a sketch; he likes using daddy’s paints. He’s a great little urban sketcher already!

Next sketch was the Davis Tower, still at the train station. Several of us sketchers were all sat together at this point so I got to converse about Weetabix, the new TSA screening regulations, Peregrine Falcons and Tottenham Hotspur, among other things. I’m getting used to sketching with others, it’s fun. I recommend it. I had to draw that guy who sat in the picture, he was very sketchable.

The day continued down 2nd Street. I added a few more pipes and hydrants to my NaNoDrawMo tally, but I’ll post them another time. Here are the corners of F and E as they meet 2nd St. The autumnal colours are out in force. More photos of the day to come…

ceci n’est pas une pipe

November 23, 20102 Comments

More old pipes for the NaNoDrawMo project. These incredible old pipes and tanks are outside the music building on campus (or rather, the one next to the music building, called ‘Temporary Building 159’). I think it’s going to be demolished or redeveloped, so I’ve meant to sketch these rusty pipes for a long time.

Below, a very useful pipe outside Chemistry, and next to it, three rusty pipes which just stick out of the ground doing I’m not sure what. This is a very metal pipe month. These are exercises in observation though.

enter the dragon

November 20, 2010Leave a comment

The green pantomime dragon of Fifth Street. It’s pretty common to see (especially at this time of year) nice coats on these colourful water pipe things.

So the rain has come… but tomorrow we’ll still be sketchcrawling in Davis! Rare opportunity to draw Davis with puddles so must take it (positive spin!). Join us at the Amtrak station at 11:00, or catch up at some point down 2nd Street as the day goes on. I’ll be the one sketching fire hydrants. We’ll finish up at 3:30pm over at Davis Commons on 1st/E, outside (or, let’s face it, inside) Borders, to see what we’ve done. Let’s Draw Davis!

but you didn’t take a peek in their artillery room

November 19, 2010November 19, 20106 Comments

These metal pipes are starting to look more and more like armed robots. I hope they’re not! Otherwise, well, there’s a sci-fi zom-rom-com right there. I might write it, maybe for NaNoWriMo next year. These ones above, red team and white team, look more like they should be shooting lasers at X-Wing fighters than putting out fires.

Here’s another fire hydrant, which someone on Flickr commented that it looks like a traffic cop. It does, but I prefer traffic droid. This one is opposite the UCD fire station.

it’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out

November 13, 2010Leave a comment

I went down to Little Prague again, to carry on the spread I’d started before, with a dark Krusovice, nice beer to sketch with. Again I splattered the page with lots of little spots of paint, and then after drawing everything with the pigma sensei pen, I did a sepia wash. I was glad to get some people in this one. It’s such a sketchable place.

It was the ‘2nd Friday Art About’ earlier in the evening, though I missed many of the exhibits this time. And now it’s the weekend! The weather is cold and bright, which means scarves and sunglasses, a great time of year. Christmas shopping and afternoon sketching in store.