Tag: drawing

going nuclear

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crocker nuclear lab

It’s comforting to know there is a high energy nuclear lab right next door to where I work. The Crocker Lab has been around for years, flinging protons and electromagnetic particles and stuff around. Apparently there was an old hog barn here before it moved in. I wonder if they’ve ever had any superhero-type accidents, like maybe a pig got left behind and became the Incredible Hog or Dr. Hamhattan, nobody would believe it anyway, they’d think you were telling porkies. Still, looks like the sort of place it could happen. Actually no, it looks like a school sports hall or something.

It was a hot day today, mid-90s, so I went out and sketched under the shade of a tree, and imagined porcine super-villains concocting some scheme to produce atomic bangers, or something.

that’s no moon

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that's no moon

They call it the Death Star, but it’s too angular, and has no superlaser. It is home to some highly powerful people on campus however. I personally am not a fan of this building, Social Sciences & Humanities. Oh, it looks nice from afar, that huge angular, er, angle, which is supposed to represent the slope up to the Sierra Nevada mountains (yeah, hits it spot on, obvious really). But I have been lost many times in this gawd-forsaken labyrinth, up and down concrete passageways and open stairwells, and doors that no-through-doors. It is honestly like walking through an MC Escher painting. I find it an absolute Impossibility. Which, funny enough, is this week’s Illustration Friday topic, so this is my entry.

I sat outside at lunchtime (despite many sneezes, and the attack of lots of bugs – probably x-wing bugs) and drew this on the field in cobalt blue copic. The trees are still bright and spring-like.

never mind the bollards

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on the borderline

Incredibly, I did an urban sketch today, after something like three weeks. I’ve been busy, preoccupied, but mostly afraid of the outside world – hay fever allergies, you see. Today they eased off so I braved it, and sat over on the borderline of campus and city – these bollards represent the boundary, crossable only by bike, between UC Davis World and the City State of Davis. They really are two entities, they feel so different to me. It might be imperceptible to many but I see it. This weekend, however, they all come together for the annual UC Davis Picnic Day, the showcase event of the year, and the largets open house of any university in America. It’s a big deal going back many decades, and it is ridiculously busy (so naturally I’m dreading it).

my fleeting mind

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IF: fleeting

Illustration Friday this week is ‘Fleeting‘. This is Fleet Street. This could be Call My Bluff or it could be the Dictionary, Illustrated. Speaking of the Dictionary, Samuel Johnson, ol’ Sammy Johnno, me ol’ mucka, he used to live round the jack horner from ‘ere.

A sketchcrawl day today on which i could not sketchcrawl; i contemplated leaving the house for a bit but just couldn’t make it. I blame the hay fever. Big congestion. But I’m up and still drawing, somehow, inside and late in the evening, finishing off my Kwak that I’ve saved since Belgium, and tomorrowing Easter. No egg jokes. But I did manage a couple of golf jokes today while the Masters was on (I’m only allowed golf jokes once a year). One guy had two bogeys in a row; he probably has hay fever too, i said.

high tide, mid-afternoon

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highgate high street

A second in a possible trilogy of Highgate drawings. This is the top of Highgate Hill, that’s the little village store there. Old brick is good. A world away from here, but only just, you know, over there.

I might not join the global sketchcrawl tomorrow. I need to; I haven’t been drawing much lately, and I might be out of the groove, or just taking a rest. Been busy. You always wonder if one day it’ll all just stop, that you’ll not pick up a pen and draw things, that the sketchbook will end up being a collection of blank, unfillable pages. If this habit is just that, a selfish frivolity. You always wonder, after some non-drawing days, if that’s actually today.

Mauer im Kopf.

frohe geblogstag

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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).

a bridge to somewhere

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.

to view a voiceless ghost

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pond square, highgate

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.

you give me fever

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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 davis co-op

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.

and the band begins to play

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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. 

washington square

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. savoy tivoli jazz bandIt 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.

a cable car on california