My young son recently finished playing his first t-ball season, closing off by being picked on the all-star team to play on the proper little league field on July 4th. Proud parents ahoy! I quickly sketched the field during the game, in my Miquelrius notebook below, and also drew his red all-star game baseball cap, above, in the Stillman and Birn alpha book. That is a good drawing book. After the game, when my son had finally stopped running the bases, we went to the little league pancake breakfast with all the other little leaguers, before going to the movies to see Brave. Well done little dude!
Tag: drawing
scheduled for demolition
I have drawn this building before, but never knew what to call it. It seemed rude to ask its name by that point. The boiler building, by the music building, has long been a favourite of mine for the rusting boilers and pipes that dot its edges, and its general old but warm feel. A slice of the old campus, a cousn of Hart Hall. Here is my previous drawing (which hung on the walls of the Pence in my show last December; it’s now available in my Etsy store). The one above was done a week or so ago, when I was invited to come and sketch it with Catherine Buscaglia, from UC Davis Design and Construction Management, who had emailed me to let me know that finally this old building will sadly be demolished later this month. I have come back a couple of times to draw it again, and may come back to witness its demise.
Here are some of the rusty boilers I was talking about. I have drawn them before, as part of my ‘pipes and hydrants’ series, and you can see them here. I have looked through the broken window, and inside it looks even more interesting for sketchers of metal pipes, though I may be a little too scared of spiders crawling all over me to sketch inside. Below, one more, done from the front side of the building. The ever changing landscape; I wonder how it will look by the time the new academic year begins?
city hall tavern
After a very busy week, I went out on Friday evening to the Art About and did some sketching at the Pence Gallery (haven’t scanned them yet), chatted to some very nice folk, and then strolled around downtown before parking at the City Hall Tavern (in the old City Hall building I tend to draw a lot). I wanted to do a bar sketch so I looked at the massive scene of bottledom and said, yeah ok I’ll give it a go. Those revolving bike wheels on the ceiling were a little challenging but there they are. The Giants were winning, beating the Astros, and there on the right are the black straws again that pop up in all of my bar drawings, everywhere in the world. The beer was nice too, Third Shift Amber Ale, and only $4 a pint. It was pretty quiet when I came in, but got busy by the time I left, with the young Friday night crowd. One guy spoke to me while sketching and recognized me as the guy who drew the bar at De Vere’s. Another guy, a younger Aussie bloke, chatted to me about Iggy Pop. I told him I always liked the song The Passenger because I can’t drive either. He said Iggy Pop was a real rocker, not like Justin Bieber or someone. Perhaps, but in thirty years people might be saying, oh these kids now aint real popstars, not like Bieber, yeh he was a proper rocker. You never know. I saw Iggy Pop supporting the Pistols at Finsbury Park in ’96, and just wanted him to put a shirt on to be honest.
This whole sketch took almost two hours, starting from right to left. It was done with a Micron Pigma 02 pen, with a bit of uniball vision micro for some of the thicker lines and shading.
drawing davis on bastille day
Yesterday was worldwide sketchcrawl #36, and we in Davis sketchcrawled downtown, meeting at Mishka’s coffee in the morning. There were about thirteen of us in all, and my sketch of Mishka’s is above. I took way too long on it of course, but it was a pleasant morning and there was no need to rush.
It was also Bastille Day, so before lunch I sat outside Soccer and Lifestyle with my son and I drew the France football jersey. Luke drew the Germany away kit (his is on the right). Good job! He joined me for most of the ‘crawl, drawing scenes from a story he had concocted about a man called ‘David Hotspur ‘who invented the France shirt and it was so good that he won a prize (but poor Monsieur Hotspur died before he could get it, a sad tale). We like out football shirts in the Scully household.
We sat outside the Hotdogger on E Street and sketched there, for quite some time. This was my last drawing of the day and then I went to meet the other sketchcrawlers, gathered on Davis Commons, to check out each others sketchbooks. It was a fun day! I nearly forgot all about the urban sketching symposium in Santo Domingo (I hear it was a lot of fun…)
Nice to meet everyone who came along, I hope to sketch with you again!
i’ve been around for a long, long year
While up in Medford my wife spotted this long blue/black Chrysler parked out near an old laundry, so I had to try and draw it. It was so long and mean looking it reminded me of the Batmobile. I stood in the hot sun to draw this, trying to get shade from a lamp-post (they don’t give much shade, by the way). This is a car that says, you’re gonna listen to what I gotta say, then I’m gonna run ya outta town. This isn’t a car for the streets of Colindale. This car is master of his domain.
against the grain
We spent a quick weekend in Medford, southern Oregon; I wasn’t feeling too well, however, so didn’t do a great deal of sketching. I did get out for a couple of hours one afternoon though, to Central Point, where it was very hot and there wasn’t much shade. I really wanted to draw this building, this big grain tower, but didn’t want to dry while drawing it. Eventually after much walking about, I crossed the railroads and drew it from the back, finding a tree to sit beneath. It was right beside a gas station which I think is the gas station of choice for police cars, as quite a few stopped there while I was sketching. I listened to the local wildlife, blackbirds chirping away, a young couple arguing loudly all the way down the street (“if you don’t walk as fast as me you’re walking home a single woman”, the charming man yelled at one point). These industrial buildings dotted the landscape, and I wanted to sketch them all, but I will tell you the most important thing to consider when doing an urban sketch – find somewhere comfortable to sit or stand first!
monochrome mini
Continuing with cars, after a period of non-sketching after London I finally got out and drew something, this little mini parked near Mansion Square on E Street. This was a quickie alright. Across the street is Uncle Vito’s, a pizza place and bar (I always want to called it De Vito’s, because De Vere’s is just up the road). Of course, this is a ‘new’ Mini, not a proper one like the really small Minis. That would look funny in America. I always feel these ones are really just regular sized cars trying to bend down.
a bug’s life
A Volkswagen Beetle, yellow of course, my entry for the Pence Gallery’s Bug Show – yes, it’s not an insect type bug but it is still a bug. When I dropped it off, Eileen at the Pence (a big VW Beetle fan) told me someone else had also submitted a Beetle; I’m not surprised! It is a classic among automobiles, the old Beetle. I have always loved them, and love seeing them (those newer ones are nice too, they look a bit like stormtroopers, but I prefer the older ones). Jurgen Klinsmann drives one I recall (I heard he got into a minor collision, fell theatrically out of the door and the other driver got a red card, or maybe I dreamed it). We all remember Herbie the Love Bug (well, actually it’s unlikely anybody has heard of Herbie any more, let alone remember it, in fact I don’t really remember it). My personal favourite was Bumblebee the Transformer, the original one, which was a classic yellow Beetle. When they made the new ones and turned him into a Chevy Camaro, I thought that was like remaking Star Wars and turning Chewbacca into Cousin It.
I didn’t draw this from life, it’s from photos, drawn on Canson textured white paper in micron pigma 005 ink, with watercolour. It’s for sale at the Pence Gallery in Davis for $66, during the Bug Show.
megatherium bones
No posts this past week; it’s been busy, and I’ve been ill – one thing I hate about being sick is that it’s so unproductive, such a waste of time. Still I managed a little sketching, though no scanning. This one, however, I drew a few weeks back, after coming back from London. From a photo, taken at the Natural History Museum, of a Megatherium skeleton. It’s pretty tall. A Megatherium, well that was some kind of giant ground sloth back in the prehistoric times. Pretty much sums up how I feel right now too! It was fun to draw this though.
a few more from London
Here are a few more random sketches from London, quick ones done in the small Miquelrius ‘Lapin’ sketchbook. This first one was drawn while seriously sleep-deprived and jetlagged, having wobbled from the plane hours earlier, and stretched out on the couch in my mum’s living room to watch the Champions League Final (Bayern vs Chelsea). Chelsea parked the bus and Bayern lost on penalties, giving Chelsea the trophy – the upshot of which my wn team Spurs don’t make the Champions League next year. Not good. Sleep was much better.
Next day I went to see my brother, and stuck around with him while my nephew went to a football tournament at Whetstone FC (which by the way is miles and miles from the actual Whetstone; I didn’t know this! North-West London is really huge, and all looks the same after a while) There was a lot of time before the torunament began, so I sketched the lads practising. My nephew Leo has suddenly sprouted up (he is twelve and a half) so he towers above most of his team now. I got to see one game before I had to go; I needed a SIM card for my phone because my old one had finally given up the ghost. Nice to see Leo play though, it’s been a few years. They grow so quickly don’t they!
I really would love to spend a day sketching at the Natural History Museum, it’s one of my absolute favourite places, but this was all I could manage, a quick sketch of a triceratops while my son and co sat down for a minute. We had gone down there with my wife and my older sister, who used to take me there herself when I was my son’s age (and back then I knew everything, everything about dinosaurs). My son enjoyed it, for the most part, but was quite nervous all the same. he loves dinosaurs, and is a big fan of T-Rex (not the band), but we had to line up to see the large animatronic tyrannosaur model, and it was dark, and we could hear roaring. Well, he got scared (as I would have, back then; remember the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds, c.1982? That’s another story), so my wife said, don’t worry its not real, it;s just a Robot T-Rex. A ROBOT T-REX?!! Even I got scared at that thought, imagining a huge godzilla-esque lazer-eyed monster tearing down South Ken.
Ah now this is sat outside the Orange Tree in Totteridge Lane. that’s a pub, well more of a restaurant now, that I used to pass by on the bus every day to Barnet College, but have never been to. Apparently Sean Bean is a regular. My friend and I were driving around London and he said he fancied going there for a quick drink, nice old pub, village 
feel, sit outside. his is the half-pint in that tall thin glass. It was nice, and the food was good, but inside it was just too clean, too modern, too shiny. No old pub feel at all. I couldn’t really do a proper drawing of the building without sitting far away from it (in the pond for example) so jsut sketched what I could, from behind my beer.
On the right, another few quick sketches, made while having a sandwich with my family in Trafalgar Square. We had gone to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guard, as seen in my son’s Paddington book, and I can assure you I won’t feel the need to go and do that again. Standing around for ages (with a four year old in my arms so he can see through the gates at guards who aren’t doing all that much changing to be honest – can’t they at least juggle or tell jokes?), with loads of other equally bewildered people snapping away with their cameras. It was a struggle let me tell you, so in the end we went down to St.James’s Park, and en route the guards marched past us, back to the barracks. While in the park itself, we were taking a photo on the bridge when a troop of royal Scots guards suddenyl appeared out of nowhere and nearly marched all over us, certainly the surprise attack, all we heard was “OI!!!” We stood aside and they marched onwards without missing a beat. That was funny. So off we went and had some Tesco sandwiches in the Square, the Olympic Clock counting down the days until the craziness begins. I told my son about Admiral Nelson, the famous “I see no ships” story, and the legend of the bronze lions getting up and dancing if Big Ben should strike thirteen.
Finally here is the last one I did on the sketchcrawl, which I tried to scan when I first posted but couldn’t (my scanner broke). I have a new scanner now, so here it is, Fleet Street looking towards St.Paul’s, one of my favourite views in all of London. I think that’s it for London sketches; oh no I have another one from the Jubilee Street Party but that’s for another post.
petescully 