a change it had to come

June 19, 2009Leave a comment

Hundred degree weather came back to Davis this week, after a relatively cool period for California – on the KCRA3 Weather they said it had been a ‘summerless June’. Apart from a few clouds and some rain in the mountains, it has been generally sunny and in the warm 80s. So, obviously gloves and scarf weather. You gotta love Californians.

I’ve drawn this view – the Bike Barn and South Silo, as seen from Bainer Hall – several times before. I like the view, it is fun to draw and you always see it anew each time. The only things that change are the leaves on the trees and the work on the green in the foreground. Funny enough, that even changed while I was drawing. I had to spread it out over a couple of lunchtimes, and on the second lunchtime that fence had gone, and someone was mowing the lawn (after I’d drawn all that spongy long grass). Oh well! It is the front of the Hog Barn – sorry, it’s not called that any more, it’s the Hubert Heitman something or other, as they made clear at a campus design council meeting I went to there (coincidentally, fellow Davis sketcher/blogger Pica was at the same meeting, and caught me without sketchbook). Anyway it has recently been renovated and opened (and it smells so new inside) so they’re adding the finishing touches. The world sits still for no sketcher.

Here are some other versions of this scene.

we mean it, man

June 18, 2009June 25, 20093 Comments

#11 in the series. I have a box full of old cassettes, ones I’ve owned my whole life. Gonads, that was my band at school; I didn’t sing, but I played the guitar (well, I strummed it and my fingers made chord shapes every so often). The singer, Hooker, was very good. One year he sang in front of the whole school in only his y-fronts, and a beret, if memory serves. I also wrote the songs. Three, four chords. Sometimes we’d just improvise. Once we improvised an entire gospel piece, which still makes me laugh to this day. The song about Jacques Delors was very catchy, and was full of absurdist lyrics parodying the absurd Europhobic headlines of the day, all about banning crisp flavours and killing off willo-the-wisp. We had some of those teenage songs about girls, too, like the ‘Great Unnamed Love Song’, and we covered (rather, absolutely slaughtered beyond recognition) stuff from Sex Pistols to Bryan Adams to Wonderstuff. We were obsessed with ‘Enter the Dragon’. And we had a song about the people who sell the Evening Standard down in London, based pretty much on an encounter we had near Bank station with one particularly incomprehensible vendor. The things that inspire you when you’re fifteen.

Oh we sounded absolutely dreadful, but it was just great fun. Something I’m proud of. If you like I will tell you where you can hear some of it.

wrapped up in books

June 17, 2009Leave a comment

Cycled to the Davis library on sunday, took back those books I didn’t read. I then got books out I’ve already read, well this one anyhow. I sketched the biography section in brown pen. I’ve always been a library-dweller, since I was a kid. I used to bury my nose in books about language, scouring libraries across the borough (preferably for those that said “warning: contains obscure language”). Sometimes I would read fiction, sometimes – quite often – I would read travel books. And I used to spend a lot of time in the music library, taking out records, any scratches marked clearly on the vinyl by the librarian with that yellow crayon. I would get back on the bus with a can of Lilt and a Mars bar, and read up on philology, all the way home.

the usual suspects

June 15, 20094 Comments

Each pen was drawn by itself. These are some of the contents of my pencil case.

your tasty beverage

June 15, 2009June 14, 2009Leave a comment

Getting quiet on campus. I had Taco Bell for lunch on Friday, at the Silo, and drew the cup and the scene beyond it. The fountain soda cup (not the Big Gulp, mind) should be the on the seal of the United States, forget the eagle. this is pretty much the national symbol. Back in Europe the cups are all so small. Small means small. Here, ‘regular’ can mean ‘small’ in one place (roughly twice the size of European small), but ‘medium’ in another. ‘Medium’ on the other hand doesn’t mean ‘medium’ but ‘actually that’s quite big’, in most places. I know one thing, enough of these and ‘medium’ and ‘small’ soon cease to be in your vocabulary.

This is UC Davis, drawn again in purple micron 01.

pete folds none

June 14, 2009June 25, 20099 Comments

#10 of 30. Folding clothes is really really difficult. Look, I’m not setting out to write the message that ‘anything is possible if you put your mind to it’, I’m sure that’s true and I can vouch for it, in some areas. Don’t tell me that practise makes perfect. But folding clothes is flipping near impossible to get right, at least for me. It’s like magic, I mean I am always constantly amazed at it, the spectacle never wears off, to the point where I don’t want to know how they do it. I don’t go to the theatre, I just go down to the Gap and watch them fold t-shirts.

I don’t really. But you know what I mean. Maybe.

i’ll meet you on a bus at dawn

June 13, 2009June 25, 2009Leave a comment

I’ve talked before about my summers as a tour-guide above the streets of London. It was a very physical job. And highly enjoyable. Like sketching, you learn to look. On each tour I’d notice something new, a face in the masonry, a pub with an interesting past, an actual Han Solo in carbonite movie prop in a video store window (it’s in Gloucester Road), and take note, and use it to illustrate my next tour. Useful if stuck in traffic (a frequent occurence) to know lots of little facts. I can probably still remember most of them. You don’t want to know them.

Still, there would occasionally be that one person who knew it all, and would interrupt with the one nugget you left out while whipping down Fleet Street, or correct you at every turn if you weren’t quoting sources like footnotes at every red light. One person in particular (a British man with a very embarrassed looking daughter) did this incessantly on one tour, pissing off several other people, some of whom even kindly offered to throw him into the Thames. I generally ignored him, but as we passed into Parliament Square, I announced (as per our training) that the English Parliament, which dates back to about 1250 (“or ten to one”, which always got a giggle), is known as the “Mother of Parliaments”. Well, it is. The interruptive guy frowned and raised an eyebrow. “The Mother of Parliaments? What about the Icelandic Althing?”

“No, that’s the Father of Parliaments,” I shot back. “But you always know who your mother is.”

This is number 9 in a series of 30.

put the book back on the shelf

June 12, 2009June 25, 20098 Comments

#8 in a series of 30. The way I’ve put it makes it sound like a fetish or something. I’m just lazy. I have good intentions, but instead of reading them I stay up and draw the edge of the table, or whatever. Still, it’s the hope of reading them that counts, and hope is the main buzzword in this brave new world, isn’t it? Perhaps I hope they’ll read themselves to me.

Still no name for this deeply personal autobiographical series.

all along the rocky shore

June 11, 2009June 10, 20091 Comment

The Monterey Peninsula is some of the most incredible coastline I’ve ever been to, and it’s teeming with wildlife. And massive expensive houses. We drove the 17-Mile Drive, getting out every so often to take pictures, paddle in the rockpools, spot whales (and we did! out in the distance), and I even managed to scribble a few quickies before hopping back into the car. There’s me sketching quickly by the rocks. The last time I’d been, the fog rolled in and out like an army of ghosts, but this time it was warm and sunny. pete sketches monterey

We visited the Point Pinos lighthouse, which was very interesting. It dates back to the 19th century, and is pretty well preserved. You’re not even allowed to use the toilet, it’s so well preserved. When I was a kid I used to want to live in a lighthouse (so many of them in north London). I think it was because of that show Round the Twist, where they all lived in a lighthouse, or it might have been because of Fraggle Rock. Let’s face it, it was the latter. My son enjoyed ringing the huge bell downstairs, but we weren’t allowed to go up to the lamp. During World War II, in fact only days after Pearl Harbor was bombed, Japanese planes flew by Monterey Bay, and this lighthouse was used as part of the coastal defences.

After 17-Mile Drive we lunched in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Clint Eastwood was once mayor. I popped into a little candy store that sold British chocolates, at a price. $2.95 for a Curly-Wurly!!! Can you believe it? They used to be 15p. There was a Lamborghini parked outside. Curly-Wurlies are surely not luxury items. I imagine this rich movie star now, supermodel girlfriend, Lamborghini zooming down the coast, chomping on a Curly-Wurly. Didn’t stop there. $3.95 for a Fruit-n-Nut! Four bucks for a Walnut Whip, sod that mate, I’ll go without. I didn’t even check how much the box of Maynards Wine Gums were. We drove on to Carmel Mission, which is an absolutely gorgeous building on the edge of Big Sur, which looks like a trip back into the Mexican West. Another quick study, this time in wine red copic, and then off again.

as long as i gaze on

June 10, 2009June 9, 20092 Comments

Monterey, sunset. Micron pen and watercolour, in a watercolour moleskine, and pretty much all but done in the dark. That’s ocean fog hanging out there in the distance.