Remember when I drew this scene while sitting in Alamo Square back in July? No? Well I did (here it is to prove it). And here is the same scene again, drawn this week, but in sepia wash. The ‘painted ladies’.
Drawn on a 5×7 canson watercolour postcard with a copic 0.1 pen and cotman watercolours. And a whole lotta love.
Another one in copic and sepia…this is my mother-in-law’s house in Santa Rosa. It’s in the historic Luther Burbank district. He invented lots of plants.
As you can see, I’m still doing the whole tree in front of the frame thing. It’s becoming my thing.
This is not Our House and it’s not in the middle of R Street, it’s the Hunt Boyer House and it’s on the corner of E Street, and 2nd, Davis. There used to be this absolutely whopping tree behind it, and I mean enormous, but they cut it down as it was leaning a bit too far to the right (never a popular thing in this town). Mind you, from the other side it looked like the tree was leaning too far to the left. Oh well, I suppose many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Perhaps instead of cutting it down we should have bailed it out.
Until they think warm days will never cease
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells
(John Keats, To Autumn)
Drew this house – before the rains came, obviously – in Old North Davis, and it’s my first entry on the brand new Urban Sketchers website which officially launches today. Check it out! And, I am so honoured, the banner flag on the site for launch day is a photo of my own sketchbook, in SF.
Historic North Davis… a couple of blocks just north of 5th street, downtown, where the houses are old and the streets lined with trees and old america. It’s a historic area because it’s old, not because of any great historical event. Unless you count the 2000-01 tree stand-off against PG&E, where some residents, er, stood off against PG&E cutting down trees. Hey, fair play to them. PG&E don’t live there. Don’t mess with Davis. And if they cut down the trees, I’d have nothing to put in the foreground of my drawings, would I.
I think it was Ali G who said, “you may take our trees, but you will never take our freedom!”
Today was very hot in Davis; not good for allergies, not good if you hate bugs, not good for redheads like pete. After spending the morning playing guitar to the baby I decided to get out on the bike to draw. My bike, however, did not think so. After twenty minutes, on the bike path, it just died; the back wheel refused to spin. I wrestled with it in the heat for an hour, getting filthy, before taking it to a bike shop, where they apparently fixed it by turning a nut with a wrench. Ok, thanks, yes I tried that with my bare hands, that might have been the problem. I cleaned up, and finally got to draw something, choosing a particularly nondescript corner, in fairly nondescript sepia, because I was in a mood.
I then got on my bike to go home. And after ten minutes, the chain went, and then five minutes later the back wheel stopped again, stopped like a french worker in striking season (that’s about this time of year, usually). I had to abandon it, I had no phone with me, there were no payphones, and so I walked home defeated in the heavy heat.
I think the phrase is ‘Bugger’.
petescully 