take a seat

April 23, 2010April 23, 20105 Comments

This is my sketching stool. It is an REI trail stool, foldable, very lightweight. I attached a camera-bag strap to easily carry it over my shoulder, and it is perfect. It has saved me from sitting on the dusty sidewalk on many occasions. In the past choosing a spot to sketch was often more important than what I was sketching. Now I can sketch anywhere (as long as I have good shade so I don’t burn to death). Hats and sunscreen obviously help there.

I’ve drawn this as an illustration to a new page on my site: Materials. Since I am so often asked what pens etc I use, I thought it would be nice to have a whole page showing what I use in my entire sketching experience, not just micron pens and cotman paints but my shoulder-bag and sketching stool. It’s not completely comprehensive however; I stopped short at revealing what I eat and what music I listen to while sketching.

https://petescully.com/materials

may the sixth be with you

April 19, 2010April 22, 20106 Comments

The UK General Election is upon us. Unlike in the US, where the election date is known years in advance and the campaigning goes on for about three hundred years, filling the airways with irritating paid-for campaign ads, British elections are called with only about a month of soapboxing and eggfacing until the big day, and the long swingometer-filled night. Also unlike America, Britain is not electing a President, but a party to govern. We’ve all become very comfortable with being uncomfortable at how ‘presidential’ our Prime Ministers are getting (ie, they brush their hair and grin a lot), so with thought in mind, which of the three below do you think will become our next ‘presidential’ PM?

See, I’m glad Gordon Brown (above) is not a smiler, and has unbrushable hair. Makes him less presidential. David Cameron (below) on the other hand, old Etonian, friendly chap, cheeky grin, America will love him like they loved Blair. Like so many pop groups before them, our PMs probably feel they can only be truly big if they can break America.

He has a big forehead doesn’t he. By the way, America, if you’re following the UK Election, Blue means Conservatives and Red means Labour. Red is the traditional colour of international socialism; it’s only the US that has that the other way round, where it means the colour of Limbaugh-loving necks.

And then in the Yellow corner there is the Other Bloke, who by all accounts won the UK’s first presidential – i mean, prime ministerial – debate (it’s not like they don’t already debate in the House of Commons though, is it). These debates mean nothing, the Liberal Democrats aren’t ever going to really win a general election, because they are deliberately ignored by the Murdoch press (the true rulers of the UK). Unless…surely not? Nick Clegg (right) is apparently becoming swiftly popular, and let’s face it, Brits (like Americans, to whom we gave most of our reality TV shows) love nothing more than an instant overnight popular political hero – oh, what am I saying, there is one thing Brits like more, and that is knocking said hero off his perch and dragging said hero through the razor mill of the tabloid press (hello again, Mr. Murdoch).

No, he’s not smaller because my Murdoch-payroll editors have instructed me not to get in the way of their Tory revival saga (I’m not The Times, you know). More that the sketch simply looks nothing like him, but hey, I don’t really know what he looks like, or stands for. I know he looks a bit like Philip Schofield, David Duchovny, Kilroy and Jim Davison (shuddering at the thought). Time for me to do some reading up on this election. I won’t get to vote, but I also won’t get to live through the consequences, now I’m over here in Obama-world. I do really miss British politics, honestly I do, I want to watch Paxman, I want to watch Dimbleby, I want interactive 3d Swingometers, I want to see eggs on faces and Prescott punches (whoever the modern equivalent of Prescott is), staying up all night and watching the results of Haltemprice & Howden and Cannock Chase and other places I’d never heard of. This election even looks like it might actually be a three horse race (unlike the last few, which were definitely one-horse races). I drew a political cartoon which got onto the Channel 4 web site last time (Goldilocks and the Three Unbearables), I need to sharpen that pencil again (Last of the Summer Whine: Foggy, Compo and Clegg would be a start, cascading down the hill in a tin bath).

At least this time I won’t need to stay up all night. I’m eight hours behind, so hopefully it’ll all be decided by midnight. I suspect Labour may have to do a deal with the Lib Dems to keep the Tories out of Number 10; if not, Brown won’t have a Clegg to stand on. May the Sixth be with you.

if you go down to the campus today

April 17, 20102 Comments

Today was the 96th annual UC Davis Picnic Day, the largest university open house event in the United States. That means thousands of people, lots of events like dachshund derbies and cockroach races, food, music, and animals. Admittedly I’m not a massive fan (see the bit in the last sentence about thousands of people) but braved it, because I thought my two-year-old would like the fire trucks and the horses. I wasn’t wrong; he loved it, had a great time, and so did we. I drew one of the shiny old fire trucks (I intended to draw more things, but don’t really like drawing crowds). As I write, the Battle of the Marching Bands is still raging down by the lake.

the bridges of yolo county

April 16, 2010April 16, 20103 Comments

Putah Creek, running through the long UC Davis Arboretum, has a lot of bridges. Well, it has to, otherwise getting to the other side would be a very long walk. Some bridges ar wooden, like the one in the background, and even covered in foliage like some Monet painting, while others a big and concrete, which might not sound too picturesque but in this case I quite like it. I’ve drawn this bridge before.

It’s April in Davis, California. Tomorrow, the annual Picnic Day takes place, the largest university open house event in the country. It’s Davis’s day to show off. There will be thousands of people there. This year I might even do some drawing.

the sun bends light

April 11, 20104 Comments

And so we continue, post 1001, another curvilinear sketch of a UC Davis building: the Walter Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center. It’s right opposite this building, which I drew a couple of weeks ago.

“I am an alumni,” is a phrase I hear all too often here. “No you aren’t,” I reply, “you’re an alumnus.” It is incredible how many highly educated people don’t actually know this, or think it matters. Maybe it doesn’t, maybe the language is changing and we should let it change, even stop using all latin-based singular words. But if you’re tring to get across that you actually are one, “I am an alumni” makes you sound like you aren’t. You wouldn’t say, that is a mice, I am a men, I just ate a bananas.

Anyway that’s quite enough prescriptive grammar for a Sunday morning. Besides, I’ve always been far more David Crystal than Lynne Truss. I’ve just had to suffer Spurs losing an FA Cup semi-final in extra-time, which isn’t fun. I want to point out that I drew this with a uniball vision micro pen, I’ve used them for years but almost always draw with my pigma microns or copics, because of better ink and finer lines. However, the nibs on those always run down quickly in my watercolour moleskines, which is frustrating, but the nibs on these pens last for way longer, an the ink is pretty black and does not bleed; just something to consider in future pen choices.

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.