Part two (of two) of the ‘downtown snapshots’ spread of my (almost completed) fifth moley; this is Second Street, Davis, night and day. That’s the cool historic Varsity Theatre there, I have drawn it before, and the Avid Reader right opposite, an independent bookstore I worked at in the first half of my years in Davis. Second Street is probably where the heart of this small college town is.
Watching the World Cup warm-ups this week, I saw on the side of the North korean bus something like, “Heroes of 1966, Korea DPR will be victorious!” For those who don’t know, North Korea’s last World Cup appearance saw them beat Italy and go 3-0 up against Eusebio’s Portugal in the quarter-finals (before losing 5-3). My first reaction was, now come on North Korea, let it go. 1966 was ages ago! Get over it, move on, don’t live on past glories. England would never do that, eh!
As kids at school we learnt that the Battle of Hastings was 1066, the Great Fire of London was 1666, and England won the World Cup in 1966. History did apparently happen on other non-66 years, but the England football team winning major tournaments alas did not. Years of Keegan, Lineker, Gazza, Beckham… all those oh-so-nears wear you down. Thirty years of hurt became fourty-four, and I can’t see that we have improved so much that we will be able to get past another inevitable penalty shoot-out, probably against the Germans. (Incidentally, England has won the World Cup more times than Germany. ‘West Germany’ however won it three times…) Still we like to hope, and we have Wayne Rooney.
England open their 2010 World Cup against the USA on Saturday. Hopefully it won’t turn out like the first time they played each other in a World Cup, in 1950. On that occasion, when England first deigned to take part in this silly cup of inferior nations, the seasoned US beat the England of Mortenson, Finney and Wright 1-0. The US team still talks about it even now; come on now, 1950 was ages ago, etc etc…
Summer is here, and with it comes 90-plus degree weather and fans and sunscreen. It just suddenly arrives in Davis, acting as though it were here all the time. I was out yesterday (looking for things to sketch on Drawing Day 2010) and drew some images that struck me downtown, the colours especially. That first one, the yellow dress, is in the window of Pinkadot on E St; the last, the South African football shirt (World Cup starts in less than a week!), is in the window of Soccer & Lifestyle. That is a football (soccer) short shop and one of my favourite places in Davis (indeed it was the discovery of this shop that helped in our initial decision to give living in Davis a go). The red cars were on E and 3rd respectively, and were begging to be sketched. I wanted to give this spread a kind of comic book quality, and I was originally going to add words, I let them speak for themselves instead.
Saturday was Drawing Day 2010, so I used it as an excuse to do another drawing (even though every day I find some excuse to draw something). I have wanted to sketch this interesting looking building on the corner of 4th and G Streets in Davis for some time now. It’s right next to Little Prague. There are i think several busineses are located in this building, one being the Davis driving academy or something, another being the gingerbread real estate co, or maybe I just imagined that last one. I sat in the shade opposite (90 degree weather has finally returned to this part of the world; 90 and rising).
It has been muggy, the weather. It doesn’t feel quite like a Davis June, more like a London June. Still, summer is on the way; I even played some football at our annual picnic, but got tired quick; I felt so old! (Fortunately, old in a Stanley Matthews way). I did some drawing too; I got out today at lunchtime and sketched a building near my work, Cottonwood Cottage, at the HQ of the UC Davis Arboretum. I decided not to add colour, as I like it the way it was. You can guess the colours anyway. Print it out and use crayons. I like these wooden buildings on campus. There are so many of them; they look similar but have a lot of character.
Who was the greatest footballer of all time? And is that the same thing as the best footballer of all time? For most people the default answer is Pele. Even for those who never saw him play, except for a few inventive long shots, a header saved by Gordon Banks and that scene with the tactics board in Escape to Victory, he is the greatest footballer of all time. We trust what they all say; those who watched him know what they’re on about. He did score more than a thousand goals for his club, Santos. He did win World Cups in super stylish fashion, surrounded by a super stylish team, at the time when the TV age was bringing the World Cup to many more millions than ever before. I’m just saying. True, Pele never tested himself in the big European leagues, preferring to stay at Santos where the goal just opened up for him, but he also didn’t live in an age where the multi-million dollar transfer to Real Madrid was absolutely inevitable; unlike so many ‘new Peles’ after him, Santos were able to ‘match his ambitions’. He did live in the age where you went off to the United States for a bagload of cash though (yes Beckham, it has been done before), finishing off his career at New York Cosmos in the NASL, before helping the Allies (along with Sylvester Stallone and half the Ipswich team) defeat Nazi Germany. Can’t get greater than that.
However, I was a kid in the 1980s, so for me Maradona is king, hands down. It’s all subjective. Puskas might have been the best. Stanley Matthews even. If Rivelino, Gerson, Carlos Alberto et al had all been born Ulstermen, George Best may have lifted the Jules Rimet in 1970 in the green of Northern Ireland, and we’d probably all be saying he was the greatest of all time. I’m just saying.
I’m sketching World Cup greats in my football sketchbook in anticipation of the World Cup, which begins next week.
Last summer I started a series in a small moleskine cahier, drawing every one of my toddler son’s shoes, in order of being worn. This is number 14 (some have been drawn more than once, at different angles). It’s a blue Old Navy shoe with orange sides and three strips, and was only worn for little more than a month! He outgrew them fast. So I’m calling it the ‘brief shoe’. Ironically, he still wears shoes he had for a good while prior to this one (shoe 10/11, the USA shoe); they just grew with him.
Drawn in Itoya finepoint 0.1, in a small moleskine cahier. Incidentally, I was in the bookstore on Saturday looking for a new watercolour moley, and could not find any; apparently (I was told) all Moleskines have been recalled in California due to some state law saying they had to state on the packaging which chemicals were used in making their covers! So I have to get it online instead. Oh well.
The Dresbach Hunt-Boyer Mansion on 2nd Street is one of Davis’s historic old buildings, flanked on its left by an old tank-house in a little orange-tree yard – hang on, er, flanked on its right. It has been physically moved. I had heard that the local cafe Mishka’s was going to build a new space between the Mansion and the Varsity Theatre, which would mean bye-bye tank-house. Well, the tank-house has been moved, and is now plonked, literally plonked, right on the other side, looking a little awkward and not un-carbuncle-like. So while moocing downtown, I felt I had to sketch it, having forgotten to do so before. It’s not the first time it’s been moved, though; apparently it was relocated to the spot it just left some time in the 70s, from a bit further away. The magical moving tank-house. I don’t know if it will stay where it currently is.
The Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center, at UC Davis, is a huge performing arts venue. It’s a pretty spectacular looking building, but I’ve not been inside to check out any performances. One day I will. It’s on the same square at the edge of campus as this building and this building.Years ago, when I did a degree in drama at Queen Mary in London, I took an enjoyable course in places of performance (taught by Dr. Schoch, who would call me ‘Scully’), studying theatre spaces through the centuries, how they allow audiences to relate to the plays or shows, the urban semiotics of the building and how it fits in with its community. Visited at Shakespeare’s Globe, looked at Greek theatres, explored East-End music-halls; it was interesting stuff. I was personally into theatres-in-the-round, and by extension football stadia – I subsequently wrote a piece about the old (and soon to be demolished) Wembley Stadium, but from what I remember it was a fairly tired and so-last-century piece of writing. In my defence, it was the last century at the time, and I probably was tired. I did learn a lot though, reading Marvin Carlson and co, and in fact I still think of what that course taught me when I’m out sketching urban buildings here and there, because I’m always thinking about how each building is a performace unto itself, speaking to and defining its environment, and how each sketch puts that building or that scene into centre stage. Just in case you’re wondering about what goes through my head when deciding how to compose a picture.
Oh yeah… I have changed the layout theme of my sketchblog. New header, wider space for pictures, different colours, and easier to find those categorized things (though some much-needed reorganization still to be done). I like it. It’s long overdue.
The European football season is over; Internazionale, of Milan, are European Champions for the first time since 1965 after beating Bayern Munich. Their manager, Jose Mourinho, has won it with Porto (but not with Chelsea), now with Inter, and it looks like he’s off to Real “we will do anything to win it yet again because we’re, like, obsessed” Madrid.
Drawn in my football journal, which is becoming increasingly manager-centric.
petescully 