a city in three acts

June 19, 20103 Comments

Sacramento on a Tuesday. After watching Portugal draw with the Ivory Coast, I bussed across the Causeway to the capital city. The colourful and historic Crest theater on K street was just asking to be sketched. It’s a gorgeous building, opened in 1949 (though there was a theatre there since 1913) I’m not a big fan of downtown Sac, never really as busy as a downtown should be, the only bustle being the hum of the light rail and the shuffle of the panhandlers. It does give me some ‘urban’ to sketch though.

I prefer it in Midtown, further up the road. There is a little more character, and some pretty cool shops. There is a whole little arts district by the railroad tracks now called ‘MARRS’ (midtown art retail restaurant scene). I had to stop in the Streets of London pub on J Street to watch the Brazil vs North Korea match. It was a good one. I drew the middle picture at half-time. Brazil won 2-1. I had fish and chips. The chips were not good.

After some more sketching and shopping and strolling, I went to catch my bus by the Capitol building, the last subject of this triptych. This building is always in the news here, because of the state budget crisis. State workers in suits marched here and there past beggars and palm trees, not a furlough day for them today (though it was for me, hence my midweek sketching trip). And so back home.

station to station

June 14, 2010June 14, 2010Leave a comment

The mercury rose to there or thereabouts, and it felt very, very hot. I got out on my bike, my freckly celtic skin plastered in sunscreen, not sure what I wanted to draw, It’s like going to the library, you know; you think you’ve read all the books you could possibly want to read, and then you realise: hang on, I’ve not read Fahrenheit 451, I’m going to read that! So in what felt like a similar temperature, I sketched the train station. I have in fact drawn this building before though, so that analogy doesn’t really work, but it was like, 2006, and I didn’t really like it. I don’t like drawing this building, attractive and sketchable though it is. Something about the arches puts me off. However, my toddler loves trains and I knew he’d like it (see how he influences my sketching decisions now, it’s like he makes my mind up for me; well, someone has to).

Incidentally, I did read Fahrenheit 451. I didn’t like it. I got to about four pages from the end and never picked it up again, like, I couldn’t care how it finished. I felt a bit like that with the last season of Lost, too. I’m four pages to the end of moleskine #5 too… but this one I can’t wait to finish.

hang on a second

June 10, 20102 Comments

Part two (of two) of the ‘downtown snapshots’ spread of my (almost completed) fifth moley; this is Second Street, Davis, night and day. That’s the cool historic Varsity Theatre there, I have drawn it before, and the Avid Reader right opposite, an independent bookstore I worked at in the first half of my years in Davis. Second Street is probably where the heart of this small college town is.

could frame thy fearful symmetry

June 6, 2010Leave a comment

Summer is here, and with it comes 90-plus degree weather and fans and sunscreen. It just suddenly arrives in Davis, acting as though it were here all the time. I was out yesterday (looking for things to sketch on Drawing Day 2010) and drew some images that struck me downtown, the colours especially. That first one, the yellow dress, is in the window of Pinkadot on E St; the last, the South African football shirt (World Cup starts in less than a week!), is in the window of Soccer & Lifestyle. That is a football (soccer) short shop and one of my favourite places in Davis (indeed it was the discovery of this shop that helped in our initial decision to give living in Davis a go). The red cars were on E and 3rd respectively, and were begging to be sketched. I wanted to give this spread a kind of comic book quality, and I was originally going to add words, I let them speak for themselves instead.

the greatest

June 2, 2010June 2, 2010Leave a comment

Who was the greatest footballer of all time? And is that the same thing as the best footballer of all time? For most people the default answer is Pele. Even for those who never saw him play, except for a few inventive long shots, a header saved by Gordon Banks and that scene with the tactics board in Escape to Victory, he is the greatest footballer of all time. We trust what they all say; those who watched him know what they’re on about. He did score more than a thousand goals for his club, Santos. He did win World Cups in super stylish fashion, surrounded by a super stylish team, at the time when the TV age was bringing the World Cup to many more millions than ever before. I’m just saying. True, Pele never tested himself in the big European leagues, preferring to stay at Santos where the goal just opened up for him, but he also didn’t live in an age where the multi-million dollar transfer to Real Madrid was absolutely inevitable; unlike so many ‘new Peles’ after him, Santos were able to ‘match his ambitions’. He did live in the age where you went off to the United States for a bagload of cash though (yes Beckham, it has been done before), finishing off his career at New York Cosmos in the NASL, before helping the Allies (along with Sylvester Stallone and half the Ipswich team) defeat Nazi Germany. Can’t get greater than that.

However, I was a kid in the 1980s, so for me Maradona is king, hands down. It’s all subjective. Puskas might have been the best. Stanley Matthews even. If Rivelino, Gerson, Carlos Alberto et al had all been born Ulstermen, George Best may have lifted the Jules Rimet in 1970 in the green of Northern Ireland, and we’d probably all be saying he was the greatest of all time. I’m just saying.

I’m sketching World Cup greats in my football sketchbook in anticipation of the World Cup, which begins next week.

brief shoe

May 31, 2010May 31, 2010Leave a comment

Last summer I started a series in a small moleskine cahier, drawing every one of my toddler son’s shoes, in order of being worn. This is number 14 (some have been drawn more than once, at different angles). It’s a blue Old Navy shoe with orange sides and three strips, and was only worn for little more than a month! He outgrew them fast. So I’m calling it the ‘brief shoe’. Ironically, he still wears shoes he had for a good while prior to this one (shoe 10/11, the USA shoe); they just grew with him.

Drawn in Itoya finepoint 0.1, in a small moleskine cahier. Incidentally, I was in the bookstore on Saturday looking for a new watercolour moley, and could not find any; apparently (I was told) all Moleskines have been recalled in California due to some state law saying they had to state on the packaging which chemicals were used in making their covers! So I have to get it online instead. Oh well.

up, up and away

May 22, 20104 Comments

The ‘Little People’ airplane, we all had one as kids, and my two-year-old has one. He loves airplanes, loves to read about them, even knows his Spitfires from his Messerschmidts, and loves airports; he’s been on enough flights already, he’s an old hand. This plane is full of wooden letter-blocks, which in his universe are actually suitcases, luggage, and that makes sense.

This drawing is appropriate, as this weekend is the finale of plane-crash drama/mystery series Lost, a show I’ve followed avidly ever since we moved out here. It has been a great show (particularly season 4), but last year started to get a little, um, confused, and this season has been a let down to say the least. It’s almost as if they decided all those things which they built up as important over the years – the Others, Dharma Initiative, Ben vs Widmore, even the time travel stuff introduced last year – are in fact irrelevant because they’ve changed the story. They had to resolve the Widmore character (aka Jim out of Neighbours) so they brought him back and had him shot in the cupboard like a, well, a pussy to be frank. All season they’ve been showing us this alternate timeline and wasting time with new characters who are ultimately completely unimportant (ahem, Ilana). So the long awaited finale is tomorrow, and rather than excited, I am feeling like I just want it to be over and done with. At the least, I want to feel that all those years geting involved with the show and watching it with eager anticipation were not all for nothing. I don’t get into TV shows much, so it would be nice for it to be at the least satisfactory.

gordon is not a moron

May 10, 2010May 11, 20103 Comments

What an interesting few days! A week really is a long time in politics. The first general election to end in a Hung Parliament since 1974. The Conservatives won an extraordinary amount of seats, but not enough to gain a majority and legitimately form a government. To explain, this means that the party that came second, Brown’s governing Labour party, remain as government for now, until deals can be made for Labour or the Conservatives to form some sort coalition with the smaller parties, meaning all those that lost the election are allowed to govern rather than the party that ultimately came first, or failing any agreement, allow the Conservatives to form a minority government with Cameron as PM. Got all that? Don’t worry, I don’t think even they get it.

So amid the wooing of the Liberal Democrats by both parties, Gordon Brown offered his own head, and committed to stepping down as Labour leader. It was inevitable, of course (and he was constitutionally correct to remain in office while a new government is formed, despite Murdoch’s media arm of Sky News, The Sun et al trying to force him out in favour of their bloke).

The Liberal Democrats’ situation is wierd, isn’t it? The nation was so gripped with Cleggmania before the election that they forgot to vote for them – the Lib Dems ended up with fewer seats than in the last election! Even Lembit ‘Mr. Cheeky Girl’ Opik lost his seat to the Tories. But that doesn’t matter – despite such poor results, they now hold the key to deciding the next government, because it’s Clegg that Brown and Cameron are courting. Now explain that to the aliens from outer space.

I was thinking of that song Jilted John, and thinking of David Cameron. Listen to the lyrics and replace ‘Julie’ with ‘Clegg’, and imagine Clegg ditching the possibility of alliance with Jilted Dave and going off with Gordon. “And they were both laughing at me! But I know he’s a moron, Gordon is a moron…” It could still happen. One can only hope.

The election was fun though. I always used to stay up all night for elections, getting excited as they called such exotic places as Ceredigion and The Wrekin. This time we were treated to no ‘Portillo moment’, but watching Jacqui Smith lose her seta while dressed as No. 6 from the Prisoner was amusing. Paxman was a relative gentleman, while Dimbleby was getting tired of the shots of cars going down motorways. Bill Wyman showed up at one point, apparently dressed as Worzel Gummidge, declaring that basically he was working class but Labour did nothing for him, now he’s rich so he votes Tory. I didn’t even have to watch the sun rise; the great thing about living in California is that, being 8 hours behind, I could watch it all and see the new PM ‘crowned’ before bedtime. Well that didn’t work out! Several days later, it’s not done and dusted yet.

In other news, Chelsea won the Premier League, by a single point. Which presumably means that second-placed Manchester United can now do a deal with Arsenal and Spurs to become coalition champions instead. What? That’s not how it works? I’m so confused…

day of the jack-a-lantern

October 31, 2009November 1, 2009Leave a comment

So, Happy Hallowe’en folks. I might be the only person in America who spells it with an apostrophe. That’s ok. This is the smaller of our two pumpkins, this is the baby one for my toddler son. He tries his best to say ‘Jack-a-Lantern’ but it comes out as ‘Gelarkajah!’ which is infinitely cuter.

So October is over. Not been my favourite October ever, but, you know. November begins tomorrow. I will not be attempting the NaNoWriMo novel writing challenge this year because it will be interrupted by a trip home to draw things in England. Shame because I have an idea for a story; maybe I’ll motivate myself to write it one day. Or maybe I’ll draw pumpkins.

out to lunch

July 26, 20091 Comment

A couple of sketches, a week apart, both lunchtime scenes from the Silo at UC Davis. I’ve sketched there once or twice before. I don’t know who the couple are. I drew this a couple of years ago with a caption about how overheard conversations are not very interesting. However, I did overhear one conversation, two young students talking, one girl impressing the other girl with her knowledge of ancient Greek tales, particularly the fall of Troy. The other had not seen the film, she said. Well the first went into minute detail about the events of the war, right up to the Trojan horse (which was the point of the conversation, as she was explaining the meaning behind the phrase), which according to her was filled with Trojans, not Greeks, Trojans who were invading Troy. I smiled. It made a change from all the talk of budget cuts and furloughs.