upstairs, downstairs

April 14, 2011April 14, 2011Leave a comment

North Hall – or the back of it – at UC Davis. Isn’t it always the way, you start sketching and you just keep going, and then you run out of page for the top of the building. Well, you can imagine what it looks like. It wasn’t topped with a flashing reindeer or anything. This is a cool staircase though, I have drawn it before, four years ago or so, but I don’t remember where that sketch is. As you can see in the distnace, still some blossom on the trees. My allergies have been pretty naughty this year, but on this day they were behaving nicely, so I ventured outside and survived. Spring in Davis – a battle with the pollen count.

and fix upon the pattern on the wall

April 13, 2011April 13, 2011Leave a comment

Friday night, after the gallery event and a trip to the record shop, time to stop off at the pub, Little Prague, for some well-deserved end-of-week beer, coupled as always with even more sketching. I sketch this bar scene every few months or so; improving my bar sketches, that is my excuse anyway. For my other sketches in and of pubs and cafes, see my ‘pubs, etc’ flickr set. I wish I’d had the whole page, because I’d like to try a curvilinear sketch of this bar; I did go for a slight semi-curvilinear, but ran out of page. Up on the screen, Man City beating Sunderland, doing Spurs no favours. Below, bar staff rushing back and forth, and behind, people busy ordering drinks and socializing and dancing. You know those photos they take of city roads where you can’t see the cars, just long streaks of red and white light? That is how I should draw the bar scene. I am drawing what stands still; the rest of the world moves about around me. At this point I’m supposed to say, “oh, that’s how I feel all the time”, but it isn’t in the slightest, so I won’t. Well, perhaps occasionally, but only when I sketch.

Here are the beer pumps. Since I’ve not sketched fire hydrants since the end of November this is the next best thing. I drew this one on a small artist trading card. Useful things for pub sketches, as it turns out. Below, back to the Moleskine, but with a different colour micron pen.

got a lovely gallery

April 12, 2011April 12, 20113 Comments

Last Friday I was fortunate enough to be invited to take part in a show at the Artery, a local gallery in Davis. The show was called “8×8 small is great”, and all of the pieces had to be around 8″x8″. My piece, ‘Miscellaneous Details’, was a drawing I did a couple of years ago (remember?), and is made up of things found around my apartment, like a self-portrait in clutter, stuff. My reaction to all the ‘de-clutter your home’ shows, an invitation to re-clutter, and then draw it and put it on your wall. In the middle, a copy of another drawing i did once, crossed with the words “everything is interesting if you take an interest in it”, which has become my mantra. (See the original here). The interesting thing about this, is that it doesn’t actually matter which way you hang it. If you get bored of it being this way up, just turn it on its side. The way I drew it, ‘Up’ is actually where the viewer is.

Anyway…it sold! And it sold pretty quickly too. That’s what the little red dot means. I was very pleased. I did some sketches at the event, nothing grand, just a few quickies.

Below, a couple of pieces that were in the show, ‘Fiber Hat’ by Pam Berry, which I thought was amazing, and ‘Girl-Bird Dog’ by Aiyana Pearson.

And here are a couple of ceramics I found elsewhere at the Artery that evening, a piggy bank and some other stuff by Heidi Bekebrede, and ‘I love you’ by Rebecca Bresnick Holmes. There’s some great stuff at the Artery, if you’re in Davis, pop down to G Street and have a look!

emergency! ten-four, roger-roger, over-and-out

April 12, 20111 Comment

My son, watching Fireman Sam with his police ‘helicopter’ helmet on. It’s not often he sits still enough for me to capture a sketch!

crossing bridges

April 6, 2011April 6, 201112 Comments

When I first moved to Davis at the end of 2005, my wife told me about this cool thing she’d read about called ‘Sketchcrawl’, and that it was happening all over the world on the same day, and that there would be one in Davis organized by some local sketchers sketching the ‘Arboretum’ (another word that entered my vocabulary). I shyly met with a group of sketchers all buried in sketchbooks at Mishka’s cafe on a chilly morning and followed them to the Arboretum, by the creek, where evryone panned out and sketched away until it was too cold to do so. It was great, and though I didn’t draw outside for several months afterwards, and didn’t join another sketchcrawl for even longer, it was my first ever sketching day in Davis – the first of a great many. So for this latest Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl I was eager to show other people what a great place the Arboretum is to draw, but also to see for myself how my sketching has changed in the past five and a half years.Below is the same scene as above, sat in almost the same spot, but with my now differing styles.

: the same scene in december 2005

And below, here I am with Moleskine #7. More sketches to come!

drawing davis on a nice spring day

April 4, 2011April 4, 20111 Comment

It was time for another ‘Let’s Draw Davis’ sketchcrawl – our fifth one – this time at the UC Davis Arboretum. There were thirteen sketchers in total, mostly from Davis, but also from Sonoma, Sacramento, Oakland and the foothills. We met at 11 outside Borders, and spent the first hour or so in the little garden right next door, the Arboretum Terrace. That is a nice spot which is often forgotten about, and was a plesant way to start a relaxing day of sketching.The weather was nice, warm, though the wind was kicking up a bit. I drew the scene to the left, with powerlines passing overhead.

Below, sketching the sketchers: this is Sandra and Barbara, with Barbara’s dog Demi. Sandra has been on some of the previous sketchcrawls in Davis, but this was Barbara’s first ever sketchcrawl. Great to see you!

Below, Helen and Scott, sketching away.

More to come!

wir sind die meister, mein freund

April 1, 2011April 1, 20111 Comment

Weihenstephaner (literally ‘Holy Steve’) is one of my preferred Bavarian beers. About six years ago my wife and I visited Bavaria and drove around (well, my wife drove, while I spoke German and made old ladies giggle), and I loved all the local Bavarian beers. Every town we visited sold it own local beer, brewed locally, with very few big commercial beers available, for which I was very grateful. I remember I had one particularly nice beer in Schliersee, with one of the nicest roast duck meals I’ve ever had. One brewery we visited was on the outskirts of Munich, calling itself the oldest brewery in the world: Weihenstephaner. It’s at an abbey, and they have been brewing beer since the 8th century, though their brewery founding date is officially in the 11th century. On that day I tried a ‘Kristallweiss’ beer, and that’s what I had last night when I sketched this.

My reasons for wanting to visit the brewery back then were linguistic: I had recently written an essay for my Master’s (one of my courses was in Germanic Philology) based largely around the competing influence of both Anglo-Saxon and Gothic on Old High German, focusing on the words for holy, ‘heilig’ and ‘weih’, the latter being from the Gothic. If you’re interested, the Anglo-Saxon influence won the day for the most part (not surprising as the German patron saint, St.Boniface, was English), but I wanted to go somewhere which still used the Gothic word. I was a big Wulfila reader back then.

Anyway, a new shop opened in Davis recently, the ‘Davis Beer Shoppe’ (quite why it needs the ‘pe’ at the end of ‘shop’ is unclear) and I was pleased to see that they had my favourite Weihenstephaner beer. I still have some Hefe glasses from Bavaria (this one in fact was given to us by a talkative lady called Hildi, the now sadly passed friend of my wife’s German grandmother, in her home town of Ingolstadt. That day, I learnt a lot about the Bavarian language!).

While drinking this beer, I noticed something. The Hefe glass reminded me very much like the World Cup, which probably explains why Germans are so accustomed to lifting it. Interestingly enough, after a few of these, one tends to come over all Klinsmann and start falling over easily…

i’m your venus

March 31, 20116 Comments

It has been so sunny and so warm that sketching outside has become extremely necessary. I cycled downtown again at lunchtime today, and sketched the very Davis cafe, the Delta of Venus. It’s not a place I go myself (not really my cup of herbal tea). As I sketched though, a man cycling by said to me, pointing at a fire hydrant, “there’s the hydrant over there, draw that!” Or words to that effect. Either way, I was officially recognized, ‘that bloke who draws fire hydrants’. But I haven’t drawn a fire hydrant in months!!

do something pretty while you can

March 30, 2011March 30, 20111 Comment

Wow, it’s warm! For what had been a very wet month, March is ending up with weather in the 80s. This is the Cross Cultural Center at UC Davis; I don’t know why it’s cross though. It is one of many buildings on campus that look a bit like this. I cycled past it the other day and thought, better sketch that some day, so at lunchtime today I did. I drew most of it there, sat beneath the shade of a tree, but the lunch bell rang and so I finished off the rest of the detailing, and the colour, later at home.

So Spring is here, and that means Picnic Day is upon us. Being on a worldwide sketchcrawl day, April 16, I might not bother with Picnic Day this year. It’s always too crowded, and rowdy, and I always struggle to draw there. I don’t like crowds all that much. So I’ll probably go to sketchcrawl in San Francisco. They will be sketchcrawling in the Mission, I love it down there. For more details, go to the 31st Sketchcrawl Forum.

Don’t forget though, this Saturday April 2nd, sketchcrawl in the Arboretum! For more details, go to the Flickr group. See you Saturday!

circo shoe blue

March 30, 2011March 30, 20112 Comments

After a longer than expected hiatus, it’s back to Luke’s Shoes, a series detailing all of my son’s shoes in order of appearance. It doesn’t include rainboots, or snowboots, or slippers, just shoes, and sandals. This is Number 15 in the series, the blue Circo shoe. These haven’t been worn in a long time. I am slowly catching up with the shoes. Step by step.