hey paper champion!

July 30, 2011July 30, 20111 Comment

Five hours to kill in Philadelphia, so what do I do? Do I go down to the historic centre, visit where United States of America was made, see the Liberty Bell, see where Ben Franklin lived, eat a Philly cheesesteak? Well I wouldn’t do the last one as I don’t eat that sort of meat. No, for me it’s all about Rocky. I took the train to 30th St Station (an impressively grand station, in what I must say is an impressively grand city), checked out a map with my ipod on the free wifi (gotta love technology), and walked over to the famous Museum of Art, where Rocky Balboa famously ran up the famous steps, humming the famous tune under his breath, jumped up and down a few times, then ran down and got back into his tourist bus with the scores of other people doing the same. I for one walked up the steps. The view is very nice. At the bottom of the steps and to the side is the famous (and impressively grand) statue of Rocky, a prop from the movies which has become a pilgrimage spot for folks like, well, me. Well I wish they had a statue of Clubber Lang, he’s my favourite. Him and Mickey. “This guy’ll kill ya to death! He’ll knock ya to tomorrow!” Anyway after a sketch and a few photos of the Italian Stallion, I sauntered back to the train station, having only enough time to stop and sketch one Philly fire hydrant. I liked the yellow traffic lights here too. And then I flew to England, to tell everyone I saw Rocky. They were suitably impressed.

hit the road, jack

July 10, 2011July 10, 20111 Comment

I had my bike with me in Oregon, so I cycled to Jacksonville. I went there on the same Sunday last year, and was retyrning to sketch the things I’d missed last time. It didn’t take long to cycle there, and it was a beautiful journey, much of the road running alongside a creek, with rolling hills, vinyards and even a snaowy peak popping out aboce it all. I had to stop at one point to sketch the view above, overlooking Jacksonville. As sson as I entered town, the sketching stool came out and I drew the First Presbyterian Church, a lovely wooden building which dates back to 1881.

And a fire hydrant; why not. More to come…

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