the medicine chest of the soul

September 2, 2010September 3, 20102 Comments

I like symmetrical pages in my sketchbooks, and this one is opposite the G Street pub (not geographically, don’t go looking it up on Street View, it’s in the moleskine). Appropriately, it’s the UC Davis Shields Library, possibly the opposite of the aforementioned pub. Here you borrow books; there you buy beer. There you can listen to, well, not very good experimental bands, here you can read Ibsen. But, you can’t drink your beer in the library (not that I’ve ever wanted to), while you can read library books in the pub (now that I have done), but only if you sit near a neon lamp.

I love libraries, especially academic ones. When we first moved to Davis I spent a lot of time in here, browsing the medieval language section. It’s very peaceful.

“A great library contains the diary of the human race.” – George Mercer Dawson

“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.” – Jo Godwin

where streams of whiskey are flowing

August 30, 2010August 30, 201010 Comments

While I certainly prefer the beers over here on the American West Coast, the pubs just don’t quite match up to the ones we have back home. Sure there are some interesting bars here and there, but give me a London pub any day (but with Anchor Steam and Fat Tire on tap). This is the imaginitively named G Street pub in Davis. I can’t say I’m particularly a fan of this place (where the guy at the door comes and stamps your hand after scrutinising your ID, though you may be halfway through your first pint), I much prefer Little Prague further up the road. It does attempt to bring a little piece of north London verite to the mean streets of Davis however: the toilets are as bad if not worse than any you’d find in Camden or King’s Cross. Nonetheless, it’s a good place to come and do some drawing, bar staff are friendly and pour a good pint, and there is a lot to sketch. Plus they have pool tables.

I wanted to practise drawing people, sure, but also bottles – I always have a bit of an issue with them, I rush the shape and scotch the symmetry. In fact, I have the same issue with people. Guitars too, funny enough, hence my hesitation at drawing musicians. I remember years ago studying art at school how often (especially in cubist painting) I’d come across still-lives of bottles, guitars and female figures, as though they were all aesthetically connected, which I think in a way they are. Practise is the only way. I’m pleased with how I represented the bottles in the image below though, it says exactly what I wanted it to. Not that I’d drink any of the contents; the shots here a big and potent. I’m a beer man myself. That tap on the right there is Anchor Steam, the San Francisco beer, very nice too. Mine’s a pint, if you’re asking.

down the market

August 29, 2010August 30, 20102 Comments

I don’t go very often to the Davis Farmer’s Market. It’s not very big – not compared with the sort of markets I used to go to in London, Belgium, France – but it can be pretty busy, with lots of things going on. Because it takes place in Central Park, Davis, between two playground, there are always lots of kids and parents about, it’s very much a family place. There is a carousel, and people making balloon swords and dogs, and organic chocolate, and so on.

There is usually music too, and so I sat and tried to sketch the musicians, very quickly.

Then I sketched the market itself, and look at me drawing loads of people! I am inspired by the symposium, you see. It’s hard to believe it was a month ago already! That means it’s only eleven months until the next one (in Lisbon).

I must confess, when I was a kid I hated markets. I hated being dragged around them, that slow walking, looking at stuff I was just never that interested in. Car boot sales were one thing, regular markets another, but I didn’t like any of them. The Saturday Market in my native Burnt Oak I hated, accessible via an old alley and piss-slippery steps. I remember going to Chapel Street or Church Street or one of them as a kid, pretty young I was, and stopping at a Pie and Mash shop afterwards and throwing up (I hate pie and mash too; some cockney I am). Then there was Wembley market, a gargantuan affair clustered in the shadow of the stadium, my enduring memory of it being so packed all I could see were people’s behinds, all those people at Wembley without the excitement of seeing an actual football match. I got tall, and still avoided markets (and Camden Town station on a Sunday), but I did learn to appreciate them when I lived on the continent: the one in Charleroi which covered the entire town on Sundays, the near-daily ones in Aix which were always better places to buy food than the stores, that amazing one in central Munich with beer and wurst and music everywhere. These helped me enjoy the markets back in London more: Borough, Portobello, Spitalfields. Next time I’m back, I’ll probably sketch them. I still don’t like crowds, but (since sketching the market in Portland) I’m getting more excited about sketching markets as important places of human existence. (Well, I say that now…)

trainspotting

August 28, 2010August 29, 20105 Comments

I sketched at the Davis Farmer’s Market today (I’ll post that later; all my sketches are being posted in nonlinear fashion these days while I catch up with my backlog). I missed my bus home by mere seconds, so had to wait an hour for the next one. The bus stop is by the railroad, and I noticed a cool looking engine parked about a block away, near 6th Street. I sat by the lumber yard and sketched away. It’s from the California Northern Co; if I’d had more time I would have sketched the whole thing, from side view. If it’s there again I will do so. I was pretty pleased with this drawing, so I couldn’t wait to post it.

ordinary people that are like you and me

August 27, 2010August 27, 2010Leave a comment

Back in Davis… Actually these were drawn straight after Portland, but just before Monterey, but I’m getting round to scanning my drawings. Quite the backlog built up…

You may have noticed, I have a thing for fire hydrants. I may even put together a special compendium (now don’t be silly). Most people ignore them. But as a Brit kid who read Richard Scarry and other such American picture-books, fire hydrants have always seemed exciting and exotic. Well, ‘exciting’ makes me sound like a trainspotter (I prefer drainspotting), but I still love seeing them dotted about towns and cities. Did you know (and I’m not talking to Americans, who obviously do know) that you can’t park your car in front of one? The fire department could have it removed. I like their shape too – some appear to be wearing hard-hats, some (like the one below, at UC Davis) look like those stocks they used to put crooks in back in ‘the old days’ to have tomatoes and abuse hurled at them. Now they just get parts on celebrity reality shows.

The other sketch above is of gas pipes, sticking out the back of a building on 2nd Street. It was in Portland where we (the European sketchers) were talking about how cool they looked, and Gerard Michel drew an excellent picture of some. I was eager to sketch them in Davis (having done so before, a good while ago). I think this all falls into ‘everyday objects we take for granted’, but if you’re illustrating your city, you can’t miss them out.

you do something toomey

July 27, 20103 Comments

Last day before I fly off to the 1st International Urban Sketching Symposium in Portland!! How exciting! It will be a huge learning experience for me, I’m sure, rubbing shoulders with some incredible sketchers, amazing artists, and meeting lots of people I’ve never met before. I’m pretty shy though. I’m all packed (spent longer deciding which paints to bring than which clothes to bring), bought my new pens, I’m all set.

Anyway, I got out at lunchtime today and sketched in the pleasant sunshine. This is Toomey Field (or rather, that sports stadium in the distance is) at UC Davis. The grass in the foreground is called A Street Field, according to the map.

brown is the colour

July 27, 2010July 27, 2010Leave a comment

I got this small brown paper sketchbook from the campus bookstore for only 89 cents, and it’s a real find. It has a corrugated cardboard cover and is handbound with a piece of string. These past few days it has become my favourite thing (funny how that happens) and I’ve been scribbling in it whenever I can (starting with the sketches at the Railroad Museum). I tend to sketch more quickly in this book; a drawing will take about ten minutes. Here are some of the things I’ve drawn (all in uniball vision micro pen, for the fellow pen geeks out there).

This is Sudwerk Märzen, a local Davis beer I like. It’s an amber beer, and the Sudwerk brewpub was the first place we visited when we decided to move to Davis. Funny what we may have decided if I hadn’t liked the beer.

This is my son’s toy digger, or rather, one of them (a boy can never have too many construction trucks).

This is Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and part-time firefighter. This is actually my toy. I love Star Wars.

A quick profile sketch of my wonderful wife. I really am trying to draw more faces on the spot and I think this turned out well.

Finally, a quick lunchtime sketch at the corner of A and 3rd streets, Davis. I’ll take this little sketchbook with me to Portland Urban Sketching Symposium I think. I’ve already packed my bag and chosen my materials, I just need a couple more pens (and maybe a new brush) and I am all set.

summer sessions

July 16, 20103 Comments

Regular listeners will recall that often, in the summer time, it gets quite hot here in Davis. A hundred degrees, pah that’s nothing. It was at least that today, so I didn’t venture out into the oven world to sketch. I stayed in the stairwell, sat on a very dusty step, and looked out of the big window. I have drawn this view before, the UC Davis skyline, the tall water-tower dominating events. However, the stairwell in our building isn’t air-conditioned, so it started to feel very sauna-like after a short while. It gave me a headache. I’m not designed for hot weather, I’m red-headed and freckly. I got this finished during lunchtime though, and in the incredible dry heat the paint dried as soon as it hit the paper.

number five is alive

July 1, 20104 Comments

The last page of Watercolour Moleskine Sketchbook #5. I have #6 ready to go. This is a scene I have sketched twice a year since 2007, once in the summer, once in the winter – with leaves, without leaves. Run them together, it’s like you can see the world breathing in and breathing out. This, being on the last day of June, is the summer one. I decided against the normal colours though and went black and white and blue, to give a familiar, green scene an air of the ethereal.

You can see all the other incarnations of this scene in January blog post “and the seasons they go round and round“.

So Moleskine #5 ran from the start of November 2009 to the end of June 2010. It has been an interesting journey, physically as well as metaphysically, one with an ‘A’ and a ‘B’, not necessarily on that order. You probably say that when finishing your sketchbooks too. As with others it encompasses Davis, London, Vegas, San Francisco and Sacramento. I have tried to design pages a little more in this one, and paste different papers or materials in (particularly brown paper envelopes). Here are some of the spreads.

You can see all the pictures from this sketchbook at the following Flickr page: MOLESKINE #5

the return of the king (hall)

June 20, 20103 Comments

In Summer 2007 I found a pleasant spot by Putah Creek with a nice view of Mrak Hall, and drew it. In the foreground, across the green pea-soup of an early-Summer creek, two small green hillocks. I came back a year later to sketch the same spot; the hillocks were gone, razed to make way for the proposed King Hall law school extension. Fences were up, construction yet to begin. A year later I sketched there again, and the shell was up, the view of Mrak blocked. Another year has passed, and King Hall’s extension is almost complete. I drew the above picture on Friday lunchtime, while trying to avoid the England match, which I was recording to watch later (little did I know it was truly worth avoiding). I think it’s interesting to see how a view has altered over the few years that I’ve lived here.

The drawings from 2007-2009 are below.