shine on alphabet moon…

January 5, 20127 Comments

Very sad news this first week of the year, our favourite local toystore Alphabet Moon has announced it will be closing this month. It’s come as a great “oh no!” to the people of Davis, parents and kids and others alike. The day after hearing the news, I just had to get over there at lunchtime and sketch the place for posterity. I must say I am gutted by this news. I take my son there most weekends, and they have toys out to play with such as the great wooden railway table. When I told him, he was none too pleased. It’s always sad to see local shops go out of business, especially toystores. Toystores are where you can find those things you never see elsewhere, you never knew you wanted. Buying toys online is not the same – for one thing it’s rarely cheaper, and two you can’t see the thing, pick it up, maybe play with it. Now everyone will have to go to Target or WalMart, and while they have a lot of toys they only carry the things that all the other big box stores carry, nothing unique. As Art Brut once sang, “Don’t buy your albums from the supermarket, they only sell records that have charted.” Toys R Us? Please, that place is depressing. They have a Thomas the Tank Engine set laid out as well, but you can’t play with it, all the trains are glued down. Small independent toystores are always better, and once they are gone they’re hard to bring back. But, as with everything, we’re all to blame. As more of us buy online, and we all do nowadays, more stores go down, both big and small, and that ultimately leaves us with emptier downtowns, and much less choice. Either way, the young kids of Davis will have one less fun place to go on the weekends.

first sketch of the year

January 1, 2012January 2, 20122 Comments

Happy New Year! My first sketch of 2012; it was a very mild and sunny day, and after taking a short power nap (yes, a power nap, after which I ate lunch, which is for wimps) I cycled over the freeway overpass to sketch this little fruit store on Mace Boulevard, Ikeda’s Orchard Fruits. This is the very edge of town, the easternmost part of Davis. Well, there is some more south of the freeway that stretches out further but it’s the easternmost point of Davis north of I-80. I guess.

Anyway, here’s to more drawing in 2012…

absolutely J street

December 31, 20112 Comments

Some more sketching from yesterday’s afternoon in Sacramento. Above is St.Paul’s church on J Street, in Midtown. I had thought about sketching the cathedral downtown, but decided in the end to do something a little smaller and homelier. I sat opposite, outside the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, and listened to the most recent Art Brut album (confirming my view that it’s really not as good as their previous ones). I sketched for just under an hour before moving on up J Street.

I ended up sketching this building above, which is home to the French Cuff Consignment boutique. They have one of these in Davis (everything in Sacramento has a double in Davis, it seems; I keep expecting to bump into the mirror-version of me, crouched over a moleskine) but it’s not in as cool-looking a building as this. A little sun peeked through the clouds giving some faint shadows so I drew those in.

Drawn on the second last day of 2011. If I don’t get around to posting my 2011 retrospective tonight, then Happy New Year everybody!

to you in your little dream world

December 30, 2011December 31, 20112 Comments

I went to Sacramento today, just to get out of Davis for a bit. Downtown there are so many people wandering about, up and down K, J and L streets, but me I stop and draw fire hydrants. The one with the green top has an unusual head attachement that I’ve not seen before, while the yellow one is a fairly typical design you’ll see in Sacramento. Fire hydrants make such good models, don’t they!

pub lunch

December 29, 20113 Comments

I went downtown at lunchtime today, intending to do some drawing in the bright weather. However I suddenly decided that chips in mushroom gravy sounded really good, so I popped into De Vere’s on E Street. Good place to sketch! I drew the bar previously from the middle; this one, which took under an hour, was drawn from the end. The chips in gravy were really good.

the answer my friend is blowing in the hair-dryer

December 23, 20112 Comments

How did a hair-dryer save my computer’s life?

It’s a fairly old computer as pcs go, six years old now and very cranky. It gets so dusty inside an periodically I have to clean it out (not with a hairdryer though) to stop it making that awful loud fan noise. Anyway, after the last time cleaning it out, I tried to turn it back on again, but got nothing. “Please, man,” I said, but no response. I am not a techie and didn’t know what to do. I need a new computer, been on the list for a while, but I also wanted to get back those items which hadn’t yet been backed up (including a load of hi-res scans of work that’s now at the Pence). Mostly I wanted to turn the machine on so I could just tell it to sod off, one last time. Ok, it’s not the worst machine in the world, not that slow, every now and then it plays up but it’s still got a fair bit of life in it, and lots of memory. There haven’t been any operating system issues. So what was wrong, had I broken some important tiny part inside it?

Thankfully I have a iPod and was able to google the symptoms straight away. On the back of the machine a little green light was flashing, which would otherwise be green. I love that you can google this stuff, and that so many people have had this exact same issue. Apparently it was something to do with the power source unit, and most of the places I looked said to replace it. Yes very helpful, I thought, but kept looking. Some forums said to go inside the machine and unplug this and reconnect that and put a paper clip here and hold down a button there, and all of this seemed very confusing and unecessary. Then someone said, just get your wife’s hair dryer, aim it at the power source unit, blow on full power for two minutes, and bingo, back to life. Nah, come off it, I thought, but it was followed by about a hundred comments that all said, “oh wow it actually works! Oh wow my computer hadn’t worked in months but two minutes with a hair dryer, and it’s back to life, it’s a miracle!” And words to that effect. Even then, thought, surely not, butwell I had nothing to lose.

I tried it out on cool air at first, but that had no effect. Then I did it on warm, again no effect. I remembered that it had to be hot – this was not just about the air blowing, but about the heat. I was convinced I would cause something to blow up, but I came back, hair dryer in hand, and aimed.

Two minutes later, the green light came back on! I pressed the power button, and the computer was back, as good as before. Back from the dead, like that fellow ET. Who would have thought? It’s a Christmas miracle!

I wish it would work on my awful cold though…

brings to us all both joy and glee

December 22, 20112 Comments

“It’s Chriiiiistmaaaaas!” Here is the Davis Christmas Tree on the E Street Plaza, downtown. I didn’t go to the Davis Downtown Christmas thing at the start of the month; I have been before, and it’s a bit crazy to be honest. I love all the decorations everywhere here though, and people’s houses get truly decked out. Last night we went to one street that must be vying for the title ‘Christmas Lane’, a little cul-de-sac in north Davis completely covered in all sorts of decorations, and very tastefully done, each house having some sort of theme in its wooden garden ornaments, and hundreds of lights and baubles on every tree. Of course it was a terribly windy night last night, so those baubles were flying off and rolling down the street. It was pleasant at lunchtime though, when I popped out to sketch this, after a thick foggy morning when even Rudolf would have had trouble.

Merry Christmas, everybody! (More Christmas tree stories to come by the way…)

how sweet the sound

December 17, 20114 Comments

This year, I was given the honour of illustrating the Christmas Concert Series brochure of Grace Cathedral, in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighbourhood. Last Sunday, with my Mum who was visiting from London, I went down to San Francisco and attended their show ‘A Cathedral Christmas’, performed by the purple-clad Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. It was a surreal experience seeing so many people clutching copies of a drawing that I had done! My Mum, as mums naturally do, pointed out to a few people, “he did that!” After being introduced to the Dean of the Cathedral, we took our seats and listened to the amazing concert, and what a location! Immediately I got my sketchbook out – it’s not every day I get to attempt a cathedral from the inside. I intend to go back and practise some more! I drew during all the traditional Christmas music, including some pieces by Handel (I’m no expert on this sort of thing, but it was pretty good; I also learnt from my Mum that Handel lived in Edgware for a bit, so we were near-neighbours, a couple of centuries apart) (Good job he never went to Edgware School though, with a name like that he’d have had a pretty obvious nickname).

Many thanks to Bruce and Abby for this wonderful opportunity, and for inviting me to the show. Here’s the Grace Cathedral website: http://www.gracecathedral.org/. And here are the remaining concerts they have this Christmas season, click here. If you’re in San Francisco, I recommend it!

And Merry Christmas everyone! Just another week now, and last week I chopped down my first Christmas Tree (well I say ‘chopped’, I mean ‘sawed’) – there it is in the background of my photo above…

for whom the bell tolls

December 16, 2011December 16, 2011Leave a comment

I hadn’t been to Berkeley in ages. I don’t even remember the last time I sketched there. I took the train down with my mum during her visit to California last week, as she’d never been there. We looked around downtown and explored the UC campus, going to the top of Sather Tower, the massive Campanile bell tower. I really must go back and draw a panorama! I couldn’t resist getting my sketchbook out, and a blue pen, and sketching while I had a moment. What a moment, it was five minutes to twelve. Before long, and out of the blue for some reason, the bell in the bell tower struck twelve, and it was LOOOUUUUD. And for some reason, it struck like twelve times. By the end of it my knees were kind of made of jelly. Again, obviously a totally unexpected surprise what with it being midday, but I did feel quite scard of heights all of a sudden. That soon passed, when the carillion player came up and started playing pop songs on the carillion. Lady Gaga, apparently, not that I know what a Lady Gaga sounds like. Anyway, nice view.

tonight! come and see my drawings…

December 9, 20113 Comments

This is the exhibit of my drawings upstairs at the Pence Gallery. I popped by the other day for a quick sketch. Tonight (Friday Dec 9) is the Artist’s Reception, when I will be there with my sketchbooks out, talking away. It starts at 6pm until 9pm. If you’re in the area, please come by!