Today is one year since I set up this blog (and four years since I started the original blog). Over two hundred entries, or eight hundred in four years. Most of them with drawings (the past couple of years’ worth anyway).
To celebrate, a drawing of the golden gate bridge (which i drew for my sister, whose birthday it is today – happy birthday!) Thank you to all of you who have been following my sketches and drawings this past year and beyond.
They say Pond Square is haunted. Who are they? Well, lots of people and ‘ghosts of london’ books, but not the estate agents I imagine. It’s possibly haunted by a pond, but I have never seen it (there hasn’t been a pond here for more than a century and a half). I love this little nook of old Highgate village. I used to walk through here in the wee small hours on the way home after getting off the late bus up the hill from Camden Town (with a beer-sopping bag of chips and pepsi max). Give me Highgate and its Hill any day.
Copic multiliner and watercolour.
The Hay Fever’s really kicking in now. Sat outside the Davis Co-Op fighting back the sniffles and sneezes, and drew in the moleskine.
The Co-Op is a nice supermarket, a proper Davis institution. It’s in old north Davis where the picket fences and old buildings are.
Incidentally, I now have a twitter account. Not actually sure why or what for, but I have one.
A lunchtime sketch, while it was warm outside it was also making my allergies flare, so a nice inside view of the silo today. Yup, i had carl’s junior. I was thinking a little of patrick caulfield at the time.
More sketches from San Francisco. I trotted into Washington Square, at the heart of North Beach, where nearby there were many bars and cafes, and all around me there were green-t-shirted revellers galloping (for want of a better word) from pub to pub in honour of St. Patrick’s Day. I sat and drew the church of Saints Peter and Paul.
I saw an unpleasant sight. One of the gallopers in green, a rather plump lady, had some embarassing sweatmarks on her shirt. Not just coming from under the armpits, but around the whole bra area. A hoop of dark sweat around a lurid green t-shirt. It was a pretty cold day, I might add. I recomposed, and walked down a street where some interesting jazz or whatever (cool old men with trumpets and a big double bass, and an oboe and stuff) wafted out of an old looking pub, the Savoy Tivoli. 
It was pretty cool, so I went in and got a drink and attempted to capture the scene, failing spectacularly; however, I was trying different pens and a different style, and I don’t normally draw musicians, so funny enough I quite like the results, unmannered though they are.
There weren’t as many St.Patrick’s drinkers in there, but plenty more everywhere else. America really goes mad for it, more so even than in Irish north London which is my background. It’s ironic; years ago, St.Patrick’s day was the one day in Ireland when pubs were closed (presumably, people go out drinking because they think that’s all the Irish do or something). It’s funny how in America, people get very sensitive on tv and in advertising with the word ‘Christmas’, or even ‘Easter’, yet nobody bats an eyelid at exclamations celebrating the religious day of a famous saint. And all this ‘luck of the Irish’ stuff you see everywhere? I don’t get it, over the years the Irish have been one of the unluckiest peoples in history (living next to the English didn’t help much); possibly all of the four-leaf clovers plastered everywhere means that people don’t realise it’s the three-leafed shamrock that symbolises Ireland. And another irony: St.Patrick’s colour was actually blue.
I did my bit though; got myself a nice big green margarita, shortly after sketching my last urban scene of the day, a cable-car waiting on California St. Back to my typical old way of sketching. More to come.
I ambled and jaywalked into North Beach. That view down Columbus of the TransAm Pyramid, my final destination, a big triangular monolith on the horizon, calling me like a dark lord’s tower, but i would not draw it, for i was on another quest, to be as relaxed as possible about wandering up and down hills and streets and slamming in as many sketches as possible.
I feel I put too much pressure on myself sometimes. After drawing ‘Bimbo’s’ below (mainly for the powerlines, and the name, not the building), and stopping by LaRocca’s across the street to add the wash, I just had to climb Russian Hill; it was just ‘there’. At the top of Lombard I stopped and drew the view out to Coit Tower (above), doing it little justice, but after the slog of the climb it didn’t really demand penance, just adoration. Oh ok, it wasn’t really a slog as such, I just felt it later on.
The thing about Lombard Street is that they say it’s the crookedest street in the world, but surely Wall street is crookeder? The tourists didn’t care. Cable cars rattling by behind me. Weekenders standing out of their sunroofs camcording while zigzagging carefully downslopes. There’s me meanwhile, sat there using a micron 0.1 and a newly discovered micron 1, for things in the foreground. And occasionally a camera too, just to fit in with the crowd.
I went back to San Francisco to walk up and down more hills, and sketch more random spots in the name of satiating my urge to put pen to paper, and discovered a few art shops here and there to look at or buy more pens, because you can never really have enough.
And so I got off at the touristest of traps, Pier 39, and it was cold. I listened to the sea-lions, showing off, and looked out at boat-shaped alcatraz, deciding it was too cold to draw there, and that some hot clam chowder would help (and it did, though I broke the head off of the plastic spoon). I think I waslistening to Pulp, or the Smiths, I forget now. Was going to walk up Russian Hill from Fisherman’s Wharf – one look, and sod that. So went straight into one of my favourite things in San Francisco (and totally free), the Musee Mecanique, a motley collection of ancient and newer arcade games and attractions, wooden and pixelated.
I went there on my first trip to SF, back in 2002, when it was stranded out by the ocean at the cliff house, and loved it; I cannot believe I’ve not been back since it moved somewher a bit more accessible. It’s (and I use this word a lot, but I mean it, though it makes me sound like Timmy Mallett) brilliant, an historical treasure trove, full of things you might recall from your youth no matter how old you are, even if you’re 100. And people were 
having such fun. You will too. Bring quarters. I was skinnier back when I first shook this Uncle Sam’s hand; he hasn’t changed (though my less-than-extraordinary rendition makes him look a bit like rowan atkinson). I played the old Star Wars arcade game (i used to be an absolute artist at that; used to be, this time i got shot down by a stupid tower on the death star after dispatching loads of tie fighters), and got my Magneto-shaped ass handed back to me by Chun-Li in X-Men vs Street Fighter – been a long time since i played arcade games. So I did some drawing.
I could have spent all day there. But I didn’t. I went walking, and walked up hill.
Tomorrow morning, I will be off to San Francisco to do some more urban sketching. A couple of years back I videoed my sketching trip from the ferry building farmer’s market up Telegraph Hill. Here, at last, it is. Below are some of the drawings I did that day. Some are from early in my first Moleskine, others are from my as-yet-unfinished WH Smith spiral bound book, and this was also the first time I’d used Copic multiliners, funny enough.
This one’s Vermeiher hall, yet another on the UC Davis campus. If you’re wondering. It’s warm and sunny now, but chilly in the morning. This particular copic pen is living out the autumn weeks of its life with thicker lines and an uncertain nib.
Oh! Saw Watchmen last night. Flipping brilliant, start to finish. Big fan of the graphic novel, and cannot wait for the dvd. Rorschach wicked, when he roars, “i’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me!”
What is it? It’s an odd sculpture, living on the UC Davis campus. It may well be a doorway, a portal into another dimension; I’m not going to walk through it, in case I can’t get home again. It might be pi’s physical manifestation, or the place where Aslan rose again. It could be the winning goal. I drew it at lunchtime, in today’s lovely weather. It feels like Spring is in the air.
petescully