gets me to the church on time

April 20, 2011April 20, 2011Leave a comment

Mission Dolores. It’s the oldest building in San Francisco, and gets picked first in all the football teams. It was very windy by this point in the SF sketchcrawl, and so I hid beside a postbox to sketch it, nestling it on the page between two drawings of local fire hydrants (I’m back! first hydrants I’ve drawn in months). Using the magic of photoshop I have surgically removed them from the drawing so you can read them on their own merit, but if you are interested in seeing the page as it is in my sketchbook, the unaltered piece is at the bottom of the post.

I like the fire hydrants with the little bobbles on top, you see those in the city. It reminded me of an albino smurf, so I had to add this to the collection. I also like those big fat hydrants SF has, like the one on the right. You’d want one of those on your side in a fight, I’m sure, stocky little things.

After this I walked over to Needles and Pens, just down the street, an excellent zine store. I bought there a copy of the Comic Book Guide to the Mission, which I’ve been looking forward to. I love the cover by Chuck Whelon! I was going to wait until I got to Mission Comics and Art (which was my plan for later that day) before picking it up, as they have the original cover drawing on their gallery wall, but I just could not resist. Anyway, the drawings continued, many more to come…

the little fifty

December 3, 2010December 3, 201027 Comments

Here are all fifty NaNoDrawMo sketches, all hydrants and metal pipes of some sort, 41 of which were in Davis. All in order.

towering over our heads

December 2, 2010December 2, 20102 Comments

Finally! I reached my goal of fifty drawings in November for NaNoDrawMo 2010, and here are the last four. Actually I drew more than fifty drawings this month, but I’m not counting those not in this set. I filled a whole watercolour sketchbook front to back with drawings of fire hydrants and other metal pipes that come out of the ground. The final sketch is the biggest metal pipe, the larger of UC Davis’s iconic water towers. This was a fun project, and the majority of the drawings were done on site (except for those few from photos taken in LA), as I had really wanted to use this project to explore and take a closer look at the missable stuff around us. I can now spot even subtle differences between the hydrants I see around town, so the observation exercise was successful. Everything is interesting if you take an interest in it.

And now, no more fire hydrants for a long, long time! Here’s the book they all fit in, and the pen that made it through to the end (others were chewed up like, er, I dunno, chewits).

See the other great artists who made it to 50 here.

formed a band, we formed a band, look at us, we formed a band

November 30, 2010November 30, 20102 Comments

Ever more NaNoDrawMo pipes… I stood behind the Engineering building at UC Davis to draw the one above. I like pretending that these things are actually something else, like robot spying devices, or a cyberman’s torturing device. In fact it’s rather like a big elaborate pound sign (that’s pound sterling, not the # sign – which we Brits call the hash key, not ‘pound’ as Americans do. Very confusing when using banking menu systems). Below left is an insectoid intruder, poking his head through the concrete like a metal mole. Reminds me of an underwater adventurer.

Above right is a fire hydrant I attempted to sketch in Santa Rosa. I had to abandon it because I got rained on significantly, so finished it at home from memory (didn’t even have a camera). Well, I can remember what these types look like, surely.

Below, a big white dragon from outside the police station. It has two dragon-cubs beside it but they weren’t drawn in, as I didn’t have time, and couldn’t be bothered.

Below left, Ringo Starr’s drum kit. Actually could be any drummer, Ringo just popped to mind because he is an ickle fellow. I love Ringo.

Numbers 44-46 are drawn from photos taken back in September, when I was down in Los Angeles. These are hydrants from Venice Beach and Marina Del Rey. I was getting sick of local hydrants so added a few different designs. I sketched similar ones to these while down there, but took photos of these in case I had some ridiculous excuse to draw them later on, like NaNoDrawMo. Here they are. #45 is like a big yellow clown, like c-3PO’s insane cousin from the circus. I particularly like #46.

Just four more to go… today’s the last day…

the red lion

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010Leave a comment

The quest for the NaNoDrawMo fifty marches on… these three were drawn on the Davis sketchcrawl. I was drawn to those very red pipes outside the cinema on F street. There was something I wanted to say about the colour red and that particular weekend… oh yes! That Team in Red 2, Spurs 3! Great way to start the weekend, that.

More to come…

but you didn’t take a peek in their artillery room

November 19, 2010November 19, 20106 Comments

These metal pipes are starting to look more and more like armed robots. I hope they’re not! Otherwise, well, there’s a sci-fi zom-rom-com right there. I might write it, maybe for NaNoWriMo next year. These ones above, red team and white team, look more like they should be shooting lasers at X-Wing fighters than putting out fires.

Here’s another fire hydrant, which someone on Flickr commented that it looks like a traffic cop. It does, but I prefer traffic droid. This one is opposite the UCD fire station.

say hello to my little friends

November 14, 2010November 14, 20102 Comments

I decided to go to old town Sacramento yesterday, and as you may gather, I sketched more fire hydrants. I also met with the SF Bay Urban Sketchers (Jana Bouc, Cathy McAuliffe et al) who happened to be visiting Sac that day and sketched with them a little while. The wetaher right now is gorgeous – sunny, a little breezy, but not cold, and perfect for sketching. Hopefully it will stay like this for next Suday’s Davis Sketchcrawl.

The hydrants in Sacramento are largely silvery grey, with a different colour top depending on the water pressure, or something. Iwas excited (yes really excited) to draw some different coloured hydrants, though of course it means that this set is no longer solely Davis based. Sacramento is close enough though. Below is an odd looking water pipe found by the underpass that connects old town to the downtown mall.

she may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid

November 11, 2010November 11, 20102 Comments

And this project is not even half way over… More fire hydrants, one from UC Davis, the other pair from Fifth Street. I don’t think there are any more designs in Davis, but I’ll keep looking. Of course, different designs will be drawn more than once, in different locations, and of course there are still a great deal of water and gas pipes still to sketch in this town. 23 down, 27 to go. I’m particluarly proud of that top one.

And I will, of course, get around to drawing some other subjects at some point too…

nanodrawmo 22 nanodrawmo 23

www.flickr.com/groups/nanodrawmo

and they were all yellow

November 9, 2010November 9, 20106 Comments

Six yellow dwarves, in six yellow caps. Please forgive my use of a Coldplay line in the title. Actually, no that’s not forgivable. It’s just that the line was obvious – they are all yellow, so very yellow after the white and blue hydrants of campus. These are all found in the City of Davis, and are all ‘dry’ hydrants apparently. Oh, they work, but, actually I’m not going to try to explain it. Davis Wiki can do a better job than I. I’ll tell you something though – I found an interesting website all about fire hydrants which at first amazed me in the range of interesting and unusual designs, and then made me jealous that I couldn’t see and sketch them all.

And then I felt a little like Arnold Rimmer and his collection of 20th century telegraph poles. Oh well, I’m getting to that age where I don’t care about geekery (like I ever really cared) and now fill sketchbooks with fire hydrants and water pipes. To me, though, this is urban sketching at its essence – sketching the urban furniture, the bits that make up the everyday in our towns and cities. Plus look at that one below left. that looks well cool, doesn’t it! And someone has drawn a heart on it, because they must love it so much, huh.

Anyway, back to them being dwarves. There are six of them, so one is missing obviously. I will call them Stumpy, Grubby, Captain, Constable, Eraser and Beretta. There, they are now christened, and maybe all fire hydrants should have names. Or maybe not.

So that is 20 of 50 for NaNoDrawMo… more to come!

we must not look at goblin men

November 5, 2010November 5, 20102 Comments

Expect to see a lot more fire hydrants, sprinkler gauges, gas pipes and other important functional metal poles that stick out of the ground on this site for the next month. I’ve decided to take up the challenge of “NaNoDrawMo“, which like its more famous father NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an offshoot for drawing only. The task is 50 drawings in one month, November. I decided that it might be nice to theme my drawings for this project, and sketch only things in my hydrants/gas pipes/etc category. Here are the first eight, all from UC Davis.

I particularly like #3, an unusual one, rather like the White Worm poking its way out of the ground. Do you remember that film, Lair of the White Worm? Hugh Grant swashing some buckle, Peter Capaldi before he learnt to swear, Catherine Oxenburg being all Countryfile, plus of course Amanda Donohoe slinking about; naturally my teenage self loved it. Now I draw fire hydrants.

As I’ve remarked before, they remind me of little gnomes, or dwarves, or goblins, with their funny coloured hats. Or droids. The hydrants on campus tend to be white with blue trim. It’s likely that I’ll draw many which look identical, but I think they all have character. Well, most of them. Well, some of them. Maybe.

And then there are these two fellows, in red. Up Periscope on the left looks like a character from Button Moon, while on the right that is I think a Sprinkler Gauge. Actually, I have no idea whatsoever. Sprinkler Gauge? They may not even exist. I just guessed at the name. Either way, it’s behind the library. Many more to draw yet – and I’m planning on filling a whole book, a small Cachet watercolour book, which rips my nibs up but loves paint. NaNoDrawMo? November is already looking that much shorter.