on a chinese envelope

January 8, 2010January 8, 20106 Comments

I wanted to draw on some different surfaces, try out some new things. I get a lot of mail from all over the world in my job, mostly from China, and my recycling bin is chock full of interesting looking envelopes waiting to be drawn on. So I cut one up, pasted it into my moleskine and drew the view from the stairwell today, the UCD water tower on a foggy January lunchtime. I don’t remember which university this envelope came from, nor do I read Chinese, but I thought the effect of the red writing looked really cool on the brown paper. Oh, and yes I know it is upside down.

ushers in a drearier day

January 8, 2010January 8, 20103 Comments

It can get pretty foggy in Davis. After long months of summer, then the odd massive rainstorm, and some cold bright winter days, fog is not exactly the most frequent of visitors, but when it comes it comes. It collects on my top as I cycle down the bike path. It soaks the ground like a rainshower. It hangs around all day, sometimes vanishing in the aftenoon like it never existed, other times – like today – lingering like an army of ghosts. Ok, maybe that’s overdoing it. But it was cold today – I know, it’s freezing brass monkey weather in Britain right now, we can’t complain – and I didn’t much fancy drawing. But I decided to go outside and sketch a tree, my first outside sketch in what feels like ages (the last one was in fact this one, just over a month ago in Burnt Oak), and I’m glad I did, I got some fresh air. Or fresh fog, at least.

bye bye tree

January 6, 20104 Comments

It’s January 6th, so time to take down the tree, and put away the decorations! This is our little tree we got for our first Xmas in America, and we still have it. The ornaments, mostly my wife’s, go back years; some are older than I am, I think. The corner will look so bare without the tree, even though only half the lights were working on it (I never got around to changing them!). Oh well, it really is a new year now.

usa shoe (side)

January 1, 2010June 1, 20104 Comments

I had to draw this shoe again from a different angle. This is the twelfth entry in the book called ‘Luke’s Shoes’, in which I draw all of my son’s shoes (in case you didn’t know already).

This is my first drawing of 2010! My art goal for this year – draw more people, especially faces, and from life too. Also draw even more shoes. I do have New Year’s Resolutions (such as 600 dpi) but I’m not telling you what they are.

usa shoe

December 31, 20092 Comments

Another of my son’s shoes, and he still wears them. Not a baby any more, he’s very much a toddler now. These are his navy blue ‘USA’ shoes, made by Pipsqueakers – though they have been ‘desqueaked’. You can order them with special squeaks, you see, but daddy said ‘no squeaks!’ and so the shoes are squeak-free.

If you’re interested, this was drawn in copic multiliner 0.1 in a small moleskine cahier and took just over an hour to draw.

Oh, and Happy New Year 2010!

grey old navy shoe

December 30, 2009January 10, 20101 Comment

#10 in an ongoing series, in which I draw all of my son’s shoes. This is one of the beige grey (I’ve been corrected, and I was wrong, they aren’t beige at all) shoes from Old Navy, which he has already grown out of. If he keeps growing like this, I’m gonna need a bigger book.

i wish it could be christmas every day

December 29, 20094 Comments

I hope you all had a very Happy Christmas! We did. A Merry one too.

This is the very Christmassy fireplace at my wife’s mom’s house. To carry a British tradition over with me, I brought a tin of Quality Street from the UK, and to carry on another tradition (a Scully tradition) I swiftly nabbed all the purple ones before you could say ‘ho ho ho’!

America doesn’t have Cliff Richard, thankfully. But I did make sure we listened to Slade, Wizzard and Shakin’ Stevens on the way over. Along with John Denver and the Muppets, of course! I must say thought that since moving to America, Jose Feliciano’s ‘Feliz Navidad‘ has become one of my favourite Chrimbo songs!

On Christmas Eve I made some delicious mince pies – my son even left one out for Santa. I did add finely ground sugar (I ground it myself!) to decorate them. That one on the end exploded a little. I did also make big individual trifles, but didn’t photograph them, in case I turned into a foodblogger (we watched Julie and Julia the other day).

for your mince pies only

Happy New Year!

walk this way

December 23, 2009March 9, 20103 Comments

The last of my sketches from the trip back home to London. Burnt Oak, Middlesex, to be precise. Well Middlesex doesn’t really exist any more except in post codes, it’s part of Greater London these days – it has been wiped off the map (in the non-Ahmedinedjad sense, or maybe that is what he meant?). Anyway, this was the view out my bedroom window all through growing up, the orange-bricked houses and narrow tarmac pavements of the typical working class council estate. Those trees in the distance, that is Watling Park. Now I am in the distance again, back in California, far away from all the snow and chaos, and I haven’t done much drawing yet. But tonight, for the first time ever, I will attempt to make mince pies. Merry Christmas!

purple faces

December 23, 2009December 23, 2009Leave a comment

Here’s a treat, a guest sketcher in my Moleskine; while at the pub in London (The Ship no less), I met up with Tamara, an old friend from university who I’ve not seen in several years, and she insisted I sketch a quick portrait in the pub (my weak effort, which looks nothing like her, is at the bottom there – this is why I don’t do portraits while out and about!). In return, she drew a very nice one of me, and one of my friend Adrian, and here they are (I’m the one with the glasses obviously). Vielen Dank Tamara! A fun outing for the purple micron pen, and a very nice time was had by all.

angels on silver strings hang from above

December 21, 2009Leave a comment

After spending some time among the wild stones of Highgate Cemetery, I strolled through the park and back up to the village and sat in the middle of a traffic island, sketching the Angel Inn. Yup, another pub drawn. It’s a nice, warm pub with a good atmosphere and nice beers. I didn’t have the time (or energy) to draw the inside – some other occasion maybe. I would sometimes pop in here when I lived on Hornsey Lane, just down the hill. When I came out of the Angel Inn, the Sun had long since flown and the pretty garlands were zigzagging down Highgate Hill.

I hear there is a lot of snow in London these days. Have they learned to grit the roads on time yet? I remember back in, ooh, ’04 I think it was, the second annual Arctic Blast that caught us all by surprise (by giving us three days’ notice), and how my boss gave me a lift back from Finchley to Crouch End, bypassing the strangled traffic on the main iced-up roads by cleverly taking the back streets, but then having to navigate through stranded cars and sliding buses down Highgate Hill. It was like something from the Winter Olympics, but in extreme slow motion. Pretty scary. Highgate is a very steep hill.