On the last night in Santa Barbara I went to look for a bar that I had heard about called Elsie’s. It looked like the sort of place I could sketch, and I wasn’t wrong – license plates all over the walls, a bike covered in lights above a pool table (alright I couldn’t sketch that, too difficult), good music, chilled out atmosphere, my sort of place. They even serve breakfast cereal, and Pop Tarts. Pop Tarts! And beer! It’s like I made this place up. All they need now is Ramen Noodles. I’m classy I know. Hey, earlier in the evening I ate pan-seared duck breast over a hibiscus flower reduction so don’t tell me I’m no foodie. I tried some interesting beer here too, something by Rincon Brewery, and “Beerito” by Oskar Blues (yes “Beerito”, as I say, I’m totally classy). This place was so much fun to sketch.
Tag: drawing
state street, that great street
More from Santa Barbara, earlier this month. May is going by fast, isn’t it. April did too, and March, and don’t even talk about February. These are my 40s now and time waits for no man. January by comparison was slow and languid, as I was in my leisurely carefree 30s. I’m only joking. So, that Day Of Sketching Stuff (“DOSS”? Hmmm) yielded more results, the sketch above, drawn from the window seat of the Santa Barbara Brewing Co, where I finished the day with a cold beer I can’t really remember much about, it was that unmemorable. These are my 40s etc. I just wanted a seat to look out at State Street and sketch that Santa Barbara daylight once more. My legs were so tired, and for some reason I quite inexplicably took an even longer way back to the hotel than usual. I discovered the short cut on the next day, it was called a “cab”.
The next day, after a day of Conferencing, I went back up State Street to sketch some more before dinner. And a lovely dinner it was too; the previous night I had eaten with fellow adviser types at a seafood place on the pier, and while the company was great, I couldn’t finish the food, it was a bit much. Some sort of seafood medley. I decided I would eat something fancier the next night, and I found a little place called Le Petit Valentien, where (dining alone; I was the only other person in the restaurant, on a slow Tuesday evening) which made the most delicious food, and I had roast duck, followed by creme brulee. There was a mirror opposite so I didn’t feel too lonely. The staff were very friendly as well. That was my rest after sketching these two scenes, above and below. This is El Paseo, a historic passage just off of State Street. I stood on State sketching the entrance above while people wandered by. I walked through, past a couple of restaurants a little bit fancier than what I was really after, and as the light started fading I sketched this courtyard. That round building is funny isn’t it, it has a goatee. You don’t often see buildings with facial hair but this one thinks it’s the 90s and might be wearing a t-shirt with a serious sounding band on it. And that’s all for now folks, but more Santa Barbara sketches to come. I’d post them all in one go but I just can’t find the narrative that strings them all together. Besides where better to leave this post than on a house that has a massive goatee?
miles and miles of red roof tiles
I was in Santa Barbara for a conference, but arriving the night before meant I had most of the day before check-in to do a bit of urban sketching around town. The tourist office pointed me in the right direction, up State Street towards the Courthouse. Off I went. There were interesting shops up there too though, and I spent a good deal of time mooching around Paper Source before finally hitting the Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook. Yes, I’m rotating books; I just finished Moleskine 14 the day before, so now I’m o a Seawhite (#4) and after that I will crack open the Stillman and Birn Alpha. Gone are the days of consistency but they all still line up on a shelf (I keep them in shoeboxes actually). Hey, want to know what my sketchbooks look like? I’m exhibiting them at the UC Davis Design Museum this Fall! Anyway back to Santa Barbara. Above is Anapamu Street, looking towards the mountains that give this city its backdrop. There are a lot of red tiled rooftops in Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara courthouse (above) is lovely. The current building was completed way back in 1929 just before the stock market crash and has an amazing interior, particularly the Mural Room. The website of the Courthouse is here. It surrounds a pretty garden square, where I sat and sketched the above. One passing couple joked that I can leave out the scaffolding in my sketch, but they can’t in their photos; trues, but I didn’t, I just hid it behind a tree. No leaving out important details in my urban sketchbook! I finished up my juice smoothie (still had the smallest hangover from the previous night at the James Joyce) and explored the building, climbing the tower (taking the elevator, that is) and getting the most amazing views across Santa Barbara. It was windy, and there were a fair few tourists crowding the platform, but I did manage one sketch, below.
I had lunch at a Belgian/Bavarian sausage/beer restaurant called Brat Haus (I do recommend) and watched Spurs implode to a 2-2 draw with Chelsea handing Leicester their deserved title before heading out to sketch more. This below is at the historic Presidio area, a block or so off of State Street. There were lots of wineries around. I considered doing some wine tasting, but then I considered not, and did some sketching instead. Wine tasting is really something to do with others, I feel. You can’t nod appreciatively and make discerning faces at yourself when tasting wine alone. You can’t pretend you have a palette for wine when there’s nobody to show off to. You can just say, “I like this label, where is the bathroom, no I might come back later”, and then go and sketch. I’m sure the wine tastes great. I sketched this as the day got later (that clock was totally wrong by the way, it was only like 3pm), and went and sketched one more which I will save for next time (it’s not anything special, I’m just pacing them out).
the james joyce in santa barbara
This is the James Joyce pub in Santa Barbara. After my 11 hour train journey, I had dinner at an Indian restaurant (unfortunately it was a little bit bland) and went to a pub on State Street called the James Joyce. As you may or may not know, I like pub sketching – you can practice both perspective and low-light sketching, while having a beer and chatting with locals. This seemed to be a popular pub, and on this night it was karaoke night. There were several regulars belting out their usual numbers, some with more agreeable voices than others, and so I added my own not-exactly-agreeable voice to the mix and sang a few songs. I won’t tell you which songs, but I assure you I did not replace the lyrics of any with Yellow Submarine. Well maybe one. I did convince one older fellow to sing the actual Yellow Submarine though. Nobody left the room while I was singing which was a bonus (that has happened before) (in Antwerp) (those Antwerpers didn’t feel bad about telling me they didn’t like my singing either) (but they did give me sandwiches afterwards) (this is a long tangent so perhaps I had better get back to the Santa Barbara story). I did sketch some of the singers, of course, and here they are. I have no idea what the song about the rooster was (something about a rooster who isn’t going to die, obviously an immortal rooster), it was very serious.
Once this fun evening was over I walked back to the hotel. It was a long walk, and on the way back I couldn’t help but sketch a fire hydrant. This one, for some reason, had a small shoe rested on top of it. I had noticed this earlier in the day and thought it odd. I was surprised to find it still there. A couple of days later the shoe was sitting a few feet away from the hydrant. I assume it was waiting for its twin to come back, waiting for years like Rey on Jakku.
Well, here is my latest hydrant sketch. More Santa Barbara sketches to follow. There are some pretty places there.
draw your swords!
Before I plunge into posting Santa Barbara sketches, I thought I might show you some swords. They’re not real swords I hasten to add, that isn’t real metal, that isn’t real gold with blue Chi energy running though it. These were bought in Legoland, which actually isn’t a real land, it’s more like a theme park I suppose. My son has quite an armoury of Lego swords, which are made form a kind of hardened foam and really do take a beating – I should know, I’m usually the one getting beaten. I always need the shield to protect me from the rapid sword blows being rained upon me. I sometimes wear an Iron Man mask to give me some more protection, but unfortunately it doesn’t record, predict and counteract all of my opponent’s moves like the real thing. These are great fun, I must admit. I drew them in the Book of My Son’s Things. We will go back to Legoland, California, this summer, to spend more money, as you do. I love it.
Haha, “draw your swords”, haha, I just got that.
sketching in a garden
Last Sunday I once again took part in the Pence Gallery’s annual Garden Tour. I didn’t get to tour the gardens myself, but was a resident artist in one of the gardens, down on 4th street in Davis. The weather has turned hot, and so I stood in what shade I could shelter beneath and drew in a large Stillman and Birn ‘Alpha’ sketchbook. There were quite a lot of garden visitors that day, and I spoke to many about sketching, pens, and so on. Not being a big oil painter with a big easel I stood out a lot less than some other artists but I like to think I bring something different. It was an interesting garden, much less floral than others I have done, and more modern, a very interesting place to entertain; the owners have transformed it into a really pleasant and welcoming space. I sketched the views showing the house front and back, early and late afternoon, totally remodeled and repainted from what it looked like just a few years ago.
After that, I was very thirsty (the one bottle of water provided for me was very, very warm), so I went to the pub to cool off. It’s nice to spend an afternoon drawing though. Just don’t mention the football. Glossed right past that.
This was the third time I’ve done the Garden Tour; see my previous results from 2014 and 2012. Images will be on display at the Pence Gallery at some point soon.
another changing corner
A couple of years ago I sketched the corner of 3rd and G when it was home to a much older, shorter building, which housed both my barber Razor’s Edge and the little shop called Tibet Nepal. See this post for example. Then the building was demolished, and replaced with this. It’s a bi taller, has more modern fittings, is pretty brown, and hoses a cafe which spills onto the street (with orange chairs) and I think another eatery of some sort. I sketched it one lunchtime last week and added another image to the endless list of Davis sketches. I think it’s about time I came out with some sort of Guide to Davis, but one entirely sketched, and written from a definitely Pete point of view. I know, I’ve had these ideas before, and I still intend to do a full on guide to the bars of Davis (“Davis Bar By Bar” the limited run mini zine had one volume and I never had time to print volumes 2 and 3). “A Davis Sketchbook” is something I have also long considered, I have enough material but time passes by so fast. Perhaps this will be a summer project. Or you can just look at all the posts on my blog that say “Davis“. It’s been quite the week for UC Davis. The Chancellor has been placed on administrative leave for a number of reasons I won’t go into right now (read the news…). I’ll just talk about this sketch. So this new building came in replacing an older building, and all those trees around make this spot very shady. Speaking of shady, it’s been quite the week for UC Davis, the Chancellor has been placed on administrative leave for a number of reasons I won’t go into right now (read the news…). Back to the drawing, I was in a hurry and so I kept certain elements pretty sketchy. Speaking of sketchy, it’s been quite the week for UC Davis…
bus stop inspiration
I stood at the bus stop on Third Street in downtown Davis. I hit the point recently where I have drawn all of Davis, literally the entire town. No that isn’t true, really, it can never be true, but sometimes it feels like it. I have drawn the building to the right before (actually that was a commission for the lovely couple who own it). I do wander about trying to get inspiration for a new sketch though and a lot of the time, nothing comes. That happens. You get uninspired. Everything looks so “common” and “everyday” and unworthy of recording again. I’m sure Paul Cezanne used to have days like that, “Oh not Mont St Victoire again, mon dieu” but he lived in Aix-en-Provence and unless there are Moleskine sketchbooks filled with his sketches of the Cours Mirabeau and the Dog People then I’m afraid he wasn’t really trying. Pull your finger out Cezanne! Mont St Victoire was like a comfort blanket for him, he’d get down, have a poulet-frites and paint the mountain again. It’s ok, I lived in Aix once, it’s a funny sort of town. More to sketch there than in Davis though. I have actually climbed Mont St Victoire you know, twice. I tell people this all the time like I discovered it or something, like I’m some big rugged mountaineer, Sherpa Tensing or someone. I walked up it, on the easy side, I didn’t freescale the steep side. Well, there are no mountains in Davis, but we do have this bus stop on Third Street. I wasn’t even waiting for a bus. I could tell you a great story about how I had twenty minutes to wait for the bus and I just whipped out the sketchbook and freescaled the Cezanne out of that blank page. The truth is I cycled there, and this wasn’t even my destination. I had no destination. It was lunchtime, I really needed to sketch, the final few pages of Watercolour Moleskine #14 had been blank for long enough and I had been putting off filling them until I had something amazing to fill them with. All I could find however was this bus-stop. It is a nice bus-stop, you have to admit.The incline on at least one of those metal poles is reminiscent of the incline on Mont St Victoire, if looking at it backwards. The moral of the story is if you have nothing left to draw, draw a bus-stop. YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE IT MIGHT TAKE YOU…
(Oh groan groan, and anyway yes you do, just look at the bus map. This line is on a loop anyway so if you want a rubbish bus metaphor it should be “drawing Davis is like the E line, you just always end up going back to all the places you’ve just been” or something)
the tall wings of the dark side
And back to the Lego. This is my son’s Kylo Ren spaceship, from a movie called The Force Awakens. Did you see that? It’s pretty good. It’s about this girl, and there’s this guy, and there’s this other guy who’s really grumpy, and they meet these guys and then all this stuff happens and the force wakes up, and the end. I saw it four times at the movie theater, or rather I saw it twice at the cinema (that is, in England), and twice at the movie theater (ie, in America), and one of those times was at the IMAX. I’ve seen it a couple of times at least on DVD now. So the shiny stormtrooper, if you live in London and go on the Northern Line, her other job is saying “This station is Chalk Farm. This train terminates at Morden, via Bank. Please stand clear of the closing doors.” I recognized the tall hairy bloke as well, I’ve seen him in something. So, I loved the film. I must point out that I am a massive Star Wars fan, I like all the Star Wars, all the wars, they’re great, and then there’s the stars, I love them, love all the different stars. Sirius, the Sun, Rigel, Nigel, Rigella, all the stars.
So there is a fair bit of Star Wars Lego in the house, and this is the tallest. Those wings are collapsible, much to Kylo’s annoyance. He needs those big wings, none of the other dark lords had wings that tall. Vader’s wings were tiny, and Darth Maul’s. You just know General Hux made him get collapsible wings so they would fit in the Star Destroyer. “Do you know how expensive those big bay doors are Ren?” he says. “You should be careful I don’t make your bay doors bigger Hux!” Ren retorts, before they both give each other very embarrassed looks, and Ren says “sorry that came out wrong, I need to go and speak to grandfather’s melted helmet,” before Hux suppresses a giggle and Ren shuffles away. On the back of this ship is a sticker that says “Chewie is my co-pilot” which obviously he put there years ago and forgot was there. That’s the thing, when you turn to the Dark Side do you go back and delete all those Facebook photos of selfies from high school, do all your friends unfriends you because your posts start getting all political, posting all “How to Talk to a Rebel” nonsense and changing your profile picture to a big Imperial flag with all “Proud To Be Imperial” and sharing “First Order First” posts that definitely aren’t racist against wookiees or gungans, but all seem to be stuff like “Who remembers when Coruscant was all Imperial shops, oh them were the days, now when you fly down a Coruscant street it’s all gungan blue energy ball shops, it’s a health hazard.” I bet Kylo gets into all sorts of arguments online, and all his comments are about three pages long full of links to Wikipedia or right-wing pro-first-order news editorials. He seems the type. I imagine being online was very much like that for Kylo, except I bet Facebook made him change his name back to Ben Solo because they have that bloody must-use-your-real-name policy, honestly you would think he would just not use Facebook, he doesn’t even like showing his face. I like how he smashes up his computer when he gets annoyed, that’s one way of getting a new computer. See I think that if Han and Leia didn’t keep getting him new computers every time he smashed one to pieces maybe he would have developed the emotional intelligence not to turn to the Dark Side. Then again I bet they were all like, “You’re not parking that ship in here, not unless you get collapsible wings” and he went out and got the wings made even bigger, just to rebel. Teenagers eh.
I can’t remember where I was going with this. As I said, I like Star Wars a lot. I really enjoyed The Force Awakens, but not in a fashionable smirky-cool “Hate The Prequels” way. No, I actually love the prequels, I love all the prequels. Prequels prequels prequels that’s me, I love them. Right, Lego. So I drew this in the Book of My Son’s Things. It’s a Stillman and Birn Alpha book. This was a fun sketch to do, and a fun ship to build, and play with. Note the little show running along the edge of the scan. I call that the Dark Side. Get it? Do you get it? Dark Side? No?
the last pink blossom
I’ve had computer issues for a while, and ended up with a dead hard drive which I was able to replace myself, like a tech expert or something. Then I couldn’t scan until I had gotten the absolute right driver for the printer. I went through a lot of drivers that just didn’t work, one chauffeur after another, none of which knew where they were going, no sat-nav or even an A to Z could get my computer to find my scanner (I mean, it’s right next to the computer, duh, even a complete wally can see where it is, yet my computer can’t find it, idiot). Anyway, all resolved now, so I am starting to catch up on some of the sketching from the past month or so that got missed, including this. Actually I have done a lot less sketching this past month anyhow, due to a massively busy schedule, but I’m getting back on track. This sketch was made over a month ago on the UC Davis campus when blossom was still bright pink. It is the site of the future (unnamed) Large Lecture Hall, to be built at a cost of $22 million (or about the price of Gareth Bale’s left thigh). It’s over near Kleiber, and Storer, and I believe it will cover all this lovely grass up so take a good look while you can.
petescully 