a learning curve

April 7, 2010May 27, 20101 Comment

I had a pen in my bag I’d bought in London, a uni-pin fineliner I got in the big Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road, and wanted to run it down. I have wanted to draw the Shields Library on campus for a while but never found myself a good angle. I have also wanted to mess about with curvilinear perspectives for quite some time but have not done so. Until now; I sat at lunchtime in the shade among the bicycles opposite the library and started drawing. I’ve made it look like a baseball stadium or something. It is a very big library, and very well stocked. It was my destination of choice when I first moved here, way before I started working on campus, when I was just coming off from my Master’s back in the UK, where I had gotten quite used to spending hours locked away in the polished silence of the Maughan Library on Chancery Lane, or the high-up dustiness of Senate House. As a medievalist and germanic philologist I enjoyed the privelige of being in those quiet parts of the library that nobody went to, because usually nobody else was studying what I was studying (similarly I had little problem with borrowing books). I’ve not dusted off those books in some time.

I showed this to my two-year-old, and he was immediately impressed that I’d drawn a picture of a bicycle. He’s one for the small details (bit like me).

droit au but

March 30, 2010March 30, 20102 Comments

Target, in Davis. A controversial place in this town. It has only been open for about six months, but a few years ago it required a very narrow win in a city-wide vote for building to be approved. Target played hard-sell, appealing to the underwear buying public, college students and suburban moms alike, as well as sugaring the pill for Davis’s famed environmentalists by building the greenest Target building ever built (or something), but they faced some fierce opposition – Davis, with it’s anti-big-box tendencies, is not a town to mess about with. Downtown independent businesses banded together and fought the proposal, fearing (justifiably, given the story in so many other American towns) that the arrival of large big-box stores on the edge of town would destroy this small city’s downtown, and with it, its character. There were arguments, oh boy there were arguments, bitter bloody spit-in-the-street-and-call-you-elitists arguments. The underwear argument for one. The fact that there was already a new Target opening up the road in Woodland so another one was unnecessary. The whole creating new jobs thing (with the counter-argument that if it forced other stores out of business it would take away jobs too, and then the town is dependent on its big box store for employment, and if said store goes the way of Woolworths…) And then it was back to the underwear argument again (just where can you buy socks in Davis?).

But in the end, Target prevailed; with their national wealth behind them they had been able to spend sixteen times what the downtown stores had been able to muster up. And so here in 2010, here it is, green Target. And despite my love of and support for independent stores, I do go there when I have to, because it’s there. But personally, I don’t buy socks. I wait for Christmas.

sand between the toes

March 27, 2010Leave a comment

The Sonoma coastline of California is utterly spectactular. Today was a lovely warm sunny March day. This naturally equals going to the beach for a fun family day out, and it was fun. We went to Goat Rock Beach, at the mouth of the Russian River, where harbor seal pups were enjoying the balmy weather. We had sand in the hair and sand between the toes; soft, warm sand, a gentle breeze, perfect sun. The waves were loud and dangerous. We skimmed flat stones on the river. I sat on a log and drew some of the rocky coastline, before turning about on the same log to draw the Russian River snaking towards the Pacific Ocean. I thought how so very different this is to the seasides I grew up with, the windy English seasides with pebbles and candy floss and buckets-and-spades, and those amusement arcades with the bingo machines (“maggie’s den, number ten”). Not that there’s anything wrong with that (far from it, I love those places!), it’s just that this spot is so spectacular, so incredibly breathtaking that I can’t believe it’s real.

the sky’s the limit

March 23, 2010March 22, 20103 Comments

This is Maurice J. Gallagher Hall, one of the newest shiniest new shiny buildings at UC Davis. It’s home to the Graduate School of Management.

I don’t often draw such modernity. I was interested in giving it a go, a study in perspective, and decided that I’d leave the big blue sky blank. The sky is literally the limit. I’m not into management speak. I never give people a heads up, aka an FYI, vis a vis the big picture all on the same page. Sometimes I sketch small pictures on the same page though.

don’t let the sun blast your shadow

March 11, 2010March 11, 20102 Comments

I was outside Newsbeat, on Third Street, Davis. I don’t normally sketch standing up but the noisy trucks parked in front of me meant I couldn’t avoid it. I tried to lean against the wall, but I think someone had if not peed against it, then certainly left their scent there. There are smelly people in the world, I accept that. The fact I could smell it meant at least I was getting over my cold (although allergy season is apon me to re-block those nostrils). My pen didn’t like drawing at the funny angle of standing up, and protested. At least I had shade; it was sunny. But sunny is good, as it means I get to draw shadows of bare trees against cool little wooden buildings.

brick top

March 10, 2010March 11, 20104 Comments

Do you remember Bill the Brickie? UK people of a certain age might. No, he’s not like Joe the Plumber (whose name wasn’t even Joe), or Mott the Hoople (who wasn’t even a real Hoople). He was a cartoon segment on a TV show we had to watch at school that would teach us about building ‘-ing’ words (which conveniently enough were bricks). It was however the song that would accompany the cartoon that got stuck in my head, and the heads of countless other British kids, an annoyingly catchy ditty that won’t ever go away, ever. It was brilliant, we loved it. And it worked too; I totally know how to build ‘-ing’ words. Cheers Bill. I was thinking about that today. It has nothing to do with this drawing of course. Any attempt to link the two is futile; not even Bill the Brickie, with his little trowel, could do the job. This is Turner Wright Hall, one of the more colourful of the UC Davis buildings. Not a single brick on view. I could have waited until I drew a nice big brick building, but I couldn’t wait to remind the world of the morpheme-friendly bricklayer.

but i don’t like to talk about it, smashie

March 9, 2010March 9, 20101 Comment

There was a charity auction recently at UC Davis, raising money for the local Special Olympics and Boys & Girls Club of Sacramento, which was organized by the student-run group Challenge for Charity. I donated a small drawing of campus (above), which I copied from another recent sketch of the Bikebarn and Silo from Bainer Hall, and then framed. I gather it even managed to sell (but I don’t know for how much). All for charidee!

the stars of track and field

March 2, 2010March 2, 20103 Comments

The Capitol Corridor Amtrak train ride between the Bay Area and Davis is one of my favourite train journeys, not least because the big Amtrak trains are remarkable to travel in. I used to like the Eurostar, years ago, when I used to zip between Waterloo and Bruxelles Midi, but the last time I did it I was amazed at how uncomfortable and cramped I felt, compared to these big American Amtraks. It’s always nicer when you have a table though, so you can spread out your drawing materials. In these cases, it’s obligatory to draw. I usually draw some of the quick moving bird-filled Delta landscape, capture some of the shimmering reflection of the sky in the San Pablo Bay with its lonely shacks and forgotten piers, and the colourful factories and refineries that dot the shoreline around Martinez, Benicia, Richmond. Or I just draw the empty seats in fron of me, which is nice too. I had grabbed a bunch of Amtrak timetables at Emeryville station, ones for the long cross-country routes such as the Zephyr, which goes across the Rockies and over the Plains from here to Chicago, the Coast Starlight, climbing up the Pacific states from LA to Seattle, and the Sunset Limited, running along the hot southern US from California to New Orleans. I look at them romantically, longingly, having once before travelled around Europe on the railway tracks, with the Thomas Cook European Timetable as my Bible; it’s always been a dream to see America from the sides rather than from above.

That was how I ended that brief jaunt to San Francisco, with my visiting friend from England. One last sketch to share, from that morning at Fisherman’s Wharf, while the skies were falling in big wet buckets outside, I was indoors at the Musee Mecanique, one of my favourite places in the city. I’ve sketchblogged about this place before, a year ago in fact (note the Amtrak train drawing also at the top of that eerily mirrored post), but it’s always worth showing again. Remember these arm-wrestling things you used to get at fairgrounds? I always hated them personally, but couldn’t resist drawing this one.

with never a whisper in the sea

February 27, 20108 Comments

I got up early on Sunday morning, to see what San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf looks like without all the slow-walking touristy people milling about. It looked better. I thought of how much more I like it, being near the sea. But it was very foggy, and then it started raining. It was ‘mizzly’. I went back to the hotel for a bit, and drew the view from the window, looking out towards Coit Tower (below). I went back out, when the sourdough-bread-and-sealion-photographing masses had emerged, and I drew a boat (above), while tucked away under some shelter. I like drawing boats these days; if it hadn’t been so rainy, and if I’d had more time, I’d have drawn boats all day long.

Telegraph Hill reminds me of a Provençal hill town, such as Gordes or Lourmarin, in this drawing.

Incidentally, the Pier 39 sealions appear to have gone. I’d heard that they had moved on from their home, which they have occupied since the 1989 earthquake. A few remain, honking for the cameras, but the rest have swum away.

Here’s the Moleskine spread, after drawing at Fisherman’s Wharf. I’m quite pleased with how these pages look.

mission accomplished

February 26, 2010February 27, 2010Leave a comment

Last weekend in San Francisco, continued… After another stop at a trendy cafe, we walked up the slopes of Mission Dolores park to enjoy the incredible views over the city. I stopped to sketch the tower of the Mission school yet again, while behind me pit-bulls tried to mate with chihuahuas (please, I know what the offspring would be called, don’t go there). We left that image behind and walked up Church, and towards the Castro district, where I drew the corner of Market street while my friend searched for a 3-day Muni pass (he’d been looking everywhere, with no luck). He did find one eventually, at a magazine kiosk on Castro Street (I noticed one magazine had what looked like Cristiano Ronaldo on the front, but, um, it wasn’t about football). Why you need to know all this I don’t know, but it’s a fun enough story, and means I get to call this entry ‘mission accomplished’, rather than ‘mission impossible’, which is what I thought I’d call it at the time. To be continued…