a plate full of pancakes at the original pantry

April 10, 2024April 10, 20242 Comments

I had a lie in on the Sunday; well I woke up very early (even after the time change) to watch Spurs v Villa through the corner of my eye, but I fell back asleep when it looked like it wasn’t going anywhere (actually we ended up winning 4-0, best performance of the season). I needed the kip anyway, and was still feeling a little full from the pre-bedtime burrito I bought at the food truck across from the hotel. So it was pushing lunchtime when I finally went out into the world. I thought I might do some drawing around downtown LA before heading to Riverside, but my main goal was to eat at The Original Pantry. I first saw this place way back in 2010 when I sketched it but didn’t eat there; I came back in 2017 with my mate from England, but the line was so long we decided to go to Denny’s (and waited even longer just for our food), so I’ve wanted to come back for ages. The Original Pantry opened its doors a hundred years ago in 1924 and boasts to have never closed its doors since its open 24 hours a day (I don’t know about during the pandemic). It’s a proper classic little diner with excellent food and beloved by locals. I absolutely didn’t mind waiting in line because I knew I’d be hungrier by the time I got in, and I could sketch the line while I was out there. Their website does say they want peoples’ stories from being in line. So I stood and whipped out my little Fabriano sketchbook to draw my wait (see below). However, I hadn’t been there for more than about three minutes, when one of the staff came out to check the size of each party going in. Since I was by myself, they already had a seat at the counter for me so I was led past the long line, some of whom were saying “oh man you’re lucky!” to me (I resisted the urge to say “see ya later suckers!” but I did feel excited at being called in to eat). My seat at the counter was close to the very hot cookers, but there were other locals eating there and reading their papers, it felt pretty awesome. I didn’t fancy a big lunch, but I ordered a plate of their famous pancakes, and wow that was a big plate of pancakes. I couldn’t even finish it, it was so filling. My stomach (and my soul) well satisfied, I got up and went back outside, and finished off the sketch of the line that I had started (below), before heading across the street to draw the full scene (above). That sketch above took me about an hour, but it was nice standing on the corner of the street in downtown LA, it’s a bit different from Davis.

The last time I stood there sketching was in 2010, my wife and I were visiting Los Angeles for our anniversary, though she had a work event in DTLA that day so I spent the day exploring. The hydrant drawn in that old sketch is now different, and I stood at a slightly different spot of the corner. It’s not actually the corner of Figueroa and 9th (9th is the street on the other side of the main road) but at the junction of Figueroa and James M. Wood Boulevard (the stretch of 9th was named for local labor leader James M. Wood in 1997). Anyway I wanted to show this sketch here again, I always liked it.

Eating pancakes wans;t all I did that day. My hotel stay also gave me entry to the Grammy Museum a bit further down the road. I didn’t have a load of time before I needed to catch my train but I figured it would be fun to look around, and it was. The only sketch I made in there was of Michael Jackson’s jacket from Thriller, because we used watch and dance to that video so much when we were kids. I enjoyed the hip hop sections too, there was a lot of history there. It’s not a very big museum but was worth seeing, but I had a train to catch to I headed off to Union Station.

I had hoped to arrive a little earlier and spend some time sketching Union Station, but as it was I was able to take my time, and a very helpful young volunteer showed me the right ticket machine and the way to the platform, he was a university student who apparently helps at the station because he is so into trains; I understand, me too. I’ve been thinking a lot about taking a great train journey lately, one of those that goes across the country taking several days, with time to sit and think and read and get into adventures. Well maybe not adventures. Would I get bored? Probably, but I’d be moving towards somewhere. A couple of those long distance trains stop in Davis (the Coastal Starlight and the California Zephyr) so who knows, some day. As it was, I took a 1.5 hour regional train across the LA metropolitan area and into what’s called the ‘Inland Empire’, to the city of Riverside. And of course I sketched on the train.

the rest of my Saturday, from USC to DTLA

April 7, 2024April 7, 2024Leave a comment

After the day at the Natural History Museum, the sun was starting to think about setting. It was a nice evening in South Central LA, around Exposition Park, and some fans were starting to arrive for the LAFC game that evening. I’d thought about going, because former Spurs captain and club legend Hugo Lloris now plays for Los Angeles, and I wanted to see him in goal, but I knew I wanted to go back to the hotel and have dinner at the downtown indoor Market. But before I got on my Metro back, I decided to take a look around the USC campus right opposite. South Central LA is famous for all sorts of stuff in popular culture, not least the gang-type stuff, but its home to USC, the University of Southern California (sometimes referred to by other Californians as the ‘University of Spoiled Children’ because it’s a rich private school, that’s what I was told), and it’s a pretty nice campus. I didn’t wander too far, I had wanted to go over to the film school where George Lucas (among many others) had studied, but instead I stopped next to this lovely fountain and looked out at the Bovard Auditorium building. There were graduating students in deep red robes taking photos by the statue of Tommy the Trojan; the USC nickname is the ‘Trojans’ (like UC Davis are the Aggies, UCLA are the Bruins, UC Santa Cruz are the Banana Slugs…) and the college football team is famous. As well my guy George Lucas, USC’s other famous alumni include Neil Armstrong, John Wayne, Frank Gehry, and former F1 Champion Phil Hill, plus loads of other famous people I’ve never heard of. It was nice to sit and sketch on a quiet campus. I like to draw other university campuses when I can, since I spend my days drawing every bit of my own campus. I drew only one other thing there, which was the statue below found near the entrance, a little dog called ‘George Tirebiter’.

George Tirebiter was apparently a little shaggy dog who was a beloved mascon for the Trojans back in the 40s and 50s. He would come onto campus and chase cars, biting their tires, and became so popular that the students would take him to the Trojans games in a limousine (yes a limousine, at USC) and lead the marching band onto the field wearing little sweaters and hats, and once biting the UCLA mascot ‘Joe Bruin’ on the nose. The statue was created by Michael Davis and erected in 2006, and people were stopping to take their pics with shaggy boy George. For some reason, little googly eyes had been put on him.

I went back to my hotel for a quick rest, then headed over to the Grand Central Market for a bit to eat. I’d walked through there once before several years ago and thought it might be a good place to grab dinner and maybe draw a bit. It was so busy! A very popular place on a Saturday evening. I eventually settled on a little fired chicken counter called Lucky Bird, and had what may have been the spiciest chicken sandwich of my life, stuffed with jalapeños. It was delicious, but wow it was hot. I didn’t end up doing any sketching there, but had some amazing ice cream and then headed back to the hotel. I didn’t fancy sitting in my room (though it was a very nice room) so I popped over the to the pub across the street, an Irish pub called Dublins. It may have had an Irish theme and name, but it was very much an old school hip-hop night, with a DJ playing some really cool old stuff from the 80s and 90s, and an accompanying MC in a glittery shirt walking about the bar with his mic really livening the place up, it was great. There was a good atmosphere in there, the staff were friendly and the drinks were great. My hands though they got to keep on drawing so I relaxed with the music and sketched what was in front of me, the bar itself, though it would probably have been better to sketch the people and the pub as a whole, this is all I could manage to focus on. I did chat a little to other people and enjoyed the music, before heading back to the hotel (grabbing a burrito from a street van on the way, I do like late night street food in LA). Spurs were playing early next morning, but I was having a good Sunday lie-in next day, before heading to Riverside. All in all, a nice Saturday in downtown Los Angeles.

mammal bones at the NHM-LA

April 6, 20241 Comment

I drew more than dinosaurs at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. I explored as much of the place as I could (I was there all day after all, I wasn’t going anywhere) but when I saw the big mammoth, well, that was going in the sketchbook. I suppose technically it’s not a woolly mammoth because there’s no wool on the skeleton (and it was probably more of a hairy mammoth than woolly but I’m not going to, er, split hairs) (people kept saying “there’s a woolly mammoth!” but I wasn’t going to take them to tusk, etc and so on) (I was there a long time, my head ran through all the punning possibilities and decided none of them were worth it). I drew in fountain pen and was there quite a while; I considered adding some paint but it was a fairly white environment (ice age feeling I suppose) and I just couldn’t be bothered by the end. It was a magnificent display though, not every day you get to see mammoths. I have never visited the La Brea Tar Pits but I hear they have found some amazing skeletons of mammoths and other prehistoric creatures there, and still are; that’s a future visit right there.

Speaking of famous prehistoric mammals, there was the skull of a Sabretooth Tiger – sorry, ‘Sabretooth Cat’ as this one was more correctly called, they weren’t really tigers, the Smilodons – and I had to sketch that. The size of those incisors! I mean were they really necessary? I guess they were. What an impressive gob. I can see him hanging about outside the tube station shouting, yeah come on then you mug, getting into fights, all that. No wonder they went extinct, probably a bit too mouthy for their own good. There were excited kids looking at this while I sketched saying “wow, a sabretooth tiger!” without reading the sign that said it was a sabretooth cat and that you shouldn’t call it a tiger because science, but I wasn’t going to take them to tusk. Hang on I used that one already. It would be funny if we recreated one from its DNA and it learned to speak and said, “actually mate I’m ok being called a tiger, that’s fine.” Anyway tigers or cats, I like these a lot, but it f this is a cat I probably wouldn’t argue with it if it begged me to turn the bathroom taps on for it.

Next up, the Ground Sloth, every good Natural History Museum needs a Ground Sloth and I always draw them. This one was upstairs above the Mammoth and I loved the way it was standing, like an old end of the pier stand up comedian. I imagined him in a smoky Lancashire croak saying stuff like “I tell you, my missus, she says to me you’re so lazy you may as well be extinct, go and get a job, I says I’m a sloth! That is me job. I tell you she wears me down so much I’m a ground sloth” etc and so on. Catch him at your nearest Pontins (also going extinct). Now the one I drew from the London NHM (12 years ago) was actually a Megatherium which is a larger kind of ground sloth, living from the Pliocene to the Holocene, this one is a Nothrotheriops Shastensis (“that’s easy for you to say,” says the northern comic to much mirth), much smaller and living in the Pleistocene (“the missus tells me I can’t play with that stuff, it gets all stuck in the carpet” says the comedian, to a little confusion from his audience, forcing him to explain it, which didn’t go down well; “By gum you’re so slow, I thought I was the sloth!”). Perhaps though the Megatherium and the Nothrotheriops could form a double act, like all the old northern comedians used to do, Little and Large has already been taken by two other dinosaurs, so maybe ‘The Two Sloths’, ‘Megatherium and Wise’, ‘Good Sloth Bad Sloth’, I don’t know I’m a sketcher not a northern comic double act agent. They would have been long cancelled by now anyway.

Moving away from old bones and bad comedians, the gemstone and mineral section was pretty impressive. I sketched a few colourful ones with interesting names (the green one was surely Kryptonite) (I’ve always wondered about Kryptonite, did that planet explode because it relied too much on Kryptocurrency, was General Zod one of those Krypto-bros who don’t stop going on about it and was expelled to the Fandom Zone? So many questions). there was one room, a vault with tick walls and huge metal doors and security guards, that contained incredibly valuable gemstones of well over 100 carats each, it was like looking at the Infinity Stones. My son used to really like gems and minerals when he was younger and we’d spend more time in the geology sections of the NHM than the dinosaur sections, so I’ve drawn a few stones before, but this was a fascinating room to explore.

After going to draw the T-Rex having a chat with the Triceratops (see my previous post) I called time on the museum, and popped over to the California Science Center to have a very brief look before they closed. I drew this one plane, got a cold drink, and left as it was all closing up. All in all, a good day sketching old things. I wouldn’t have minded visiting the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition at the Science Center, displaying models of many of his inventions, but another time maybe. I know I would boringly have been taking everyone to tusk for saying ‘Da Vinci’ instead of ‘Leonardo’, and they’d have been saying “you mean taken to ‘task’ surely” and I’d have been like “look it was a call back to a previous joke you weren’t there for, I’m not a sloth you know.” It was a long day, though of course, I wasn’t done sketching just yet. Check back soon for more LA…

Dinosaurs at the LA Natural History Museum

April 4, 2024April 4, 20242 Comments

Part of the reason for taking a weekend in Los Angeles before the conference in Riverside is that I just really wanted to draw dinosaurs. I’d never been to the LA Natural History Museum before, but we had visited the California Science Center next door about six years ago when we went to look at the space shuttle Endeavour, so coming here had been on my wish list for years. As you know I’m a massive fan of the Natural History Museum in London, the superb building in South Kensington I have been going to since before I could even draw, one of my favourite places in the world. Well Los Angeles has a pretty cool one too, which beautiful architecture, lots of engaging exhibits and an abundance of dinosaur displays. Unlike the NHM in London it isn’t free to get in, but since the California Science center next door is free I don’t mind that. My plan was that if I had time or ran out of dinosaurs I would go there to draw planes. One of the last displays I drew here was the one above, the Tyrannosaurus Rex in combat (or conversation?) with a Triceratops,

It is actually the ‘Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County‘, and opened at Exposition Park in 1913. After a chat with one of the docents in the rotunda as you enter, where they have a statue of the three muses in a beautiful naturally lit space, I found the dinosaurs and started drawing the one above, perhaps my favourite dinosaur, Stegosaurus. By the way I’m sure I’m not alone in that ever since Jurassic Park I have to stop myself pronouncing ‘dinosaur’ as ‘Daano-sow’ like the little DNA cartoon character does. Yes, Jurassic Park is one of my favourite films, and no, I really don’t like the latest ones. Anyway I have always loved Stegosaurus with its big mohawk of bony plates, a punk vegetarian with huge spikes on its tail. I drew with my brown inked fountain pen. There was an Allosaurus behind it that you can just about make out creeping into view. It was getting busy, but not too crowded, a good amount of people for a museum crowd. I’ve sometimes been at the South Ken museums when they are mobbed, especially the Science Museum on a weekday with the school groups. This was just right, I’d say. I got down there as early as I could, I had aimed for opening time but was delayed by the LA Metro. I had packed snacks so I could make it through the day, I was well prepared.

There were three ceratopsian skulls side by side in a display cabinet, huge things though surprisingly narrow, a Triceratops, a Styracosaurus and this one, an Einiosaurus found in Montana. I was less familiar with this one, probably because the books I was reading when I was learning dinosaurs had left it out due it not yet being discovered. I really loved its downward curving nose horn, like a massive can opener.

In the same hall was found Thomas the T-Rex, along with a couple of smaller specimens, one clearly a baby Rex. You have to love the Tyrannosaur, I don’t think any other prehistoric creature has had such a popular grip on the public imagination. At once the greatest villain and greatest hero, its massive head and jaw always outweighs the tiny little arms with two tiny fingers. I drew another T-Rex, Sue, at the Field Museum in Chicago last year. The big one here is called Thomas the T-Rex. This made me think of Thomas the Tank Engine, which always gets mis-named by Americans as ‘Thomas the Train’ (or even worse, ‘Thomas Train’, which I’m convince people only say to wind me up specifically). Thomas the T-Rex is not a cheeky little blue engine from the island of Sodor, but I wonder if there is a Gordon the Gallimimus or a Percy the Protoceratops or even a Fat Paleontologist character in this story. It’s been a few years since we were in Thomas-world. This was a tricky dynamic scene to sketch though, and I had to really observe where I was putting all those little bones. But this was why I was here! I’d been in this one room for a long time already, so I went to explore the rest of the museum. There was another hall full of big dinos, and I wasn’t sure I’d have time to draw them all (including a huge Ticeratops), but I couldn’t resist this T-Rex skull. As I drew, one of the staff complemented me on my drawing and asked if I was a paleo illustrator. No, I just love drawing dinosaurs! While I was drawing the scene at the top of this post, I did see another artist sat on the floor in an archway drawing the same skeletons. I didn’t go over to take a look, but it is always good to see another sketchbooker with the same idea.

There’s more to come, stayed tuned.

the scum and villainy cantina

April 3, 2024Leave a comment

I arrived in downtown Los Angeles after dark, checked into my very nice hotel and nearly decided not to head out to Hollywood because it was already past dinnertime. But how often am I down this way? Not very often. So I jumped on the Metro, which didn’t take that long. The LA Metro on a Friday evening is a fun place full of all sorts of characters, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a hive of scum and villainy but it was interesting. It didn’t take long to get to Hollywood. I really like the aesthetic design of the station at Hollywood and Vine with its palm trees and movie cameras. The Oscars were happening that weekend, and further up the street they were preparing the Red Carpet. I eventually found the Scum and Villainy Cantina, one of my favourite places. I first came here in 2017, when it was just a pop-up place not expected to be permanent, and had a great evening with my friend from London (it was his birthday) and my brother-in-law. I came back a year later with my wife and son (who was then 10) for early drinks on the way back to our hotel in Burbank. So I was really pleased to see that these years later it was still going strong. It feels like the Mos Eisley Cantina, but has expanded its theme from simply Star Wars into a more general level of popular geekdom, with staff costumed in various guises such as the one guy dressed as Super Mario. I was particularly excited to see the one bartender dressed as Hunter from the Bad Batch, one of my favourite current cartoons. Some of the beertaps were lightsabres, and there was a comics-accurate Magneto helmet behind the bar. I ordered a deliciously messy “Charizard Chicken Sandwich” (I recognized Charizard from son’s Pokémon days) and a Blue Milk, of course. It was busy but not overly crowded, and I found a seat at a table with a good view of the bar, because of course I was going to sketch it. This is a very welcoming place that prides itself on being “Your Friendly Neighborhood Geek Bar”. The light was interesting; I was still getting used to my new progressive-lensed glasses so this was a test, but when it came to actually using my paints it was a bit of shot in the dark, as the blacklight changed most of my watercolours into something else, green being impossible to see. I know my palette pretty well though so I did my best, and when I looked at the sketch in proper light I was pleased with the accuracy of my colouring in. There was a lot of pink light though. I had another cocktail called Twin Sunrise, which I sketched below. I had a good evening, and the bar staff were pleased with my sketch, and the cantina reposted it on Instagram; someone commented that it looked like Snape and Voldemort were having a drink in front of me! It was just a couple on a date; I draw people pretty generically when I sketch bars (hiding features where I can – people isn’t my strong point!) (yes, despite the fact that I wrote a book about drawing people), but now I’m wishing that I had actually drawn people as sci-fi and fantasy characters, added in a Wookiee and a Gelfling or two. Maybe you can imagine the hairy figure on the left is Hagrid, crouched over. My eyesight was struggling as it was!

I nearly came back again the next evening, a fun place to hang out this was, but I was pretty tired after drawing dinosaurs all day (which was my Saturday plan) so I didn’t come back up to Hollywood, especially on the night before the Oscars when I’m sure the LA Metro would have been full of celebrities and stars. I can’t wait for my next visit back though, to try more things. I bought a pin; I wanted a t-shirt but I’ll get one of those online. If you want to see their website (check out their drinks menu!), it’s at: https://scumandvillainycantina.com/. If you’re in LA, check them out!

Endeavour

May 21, 2018May 21, 20182 Comments

In early March we went to LA, and saw the Space Shuttle Endeavour. It was quite an experience. I loved the Space Shuttle as a kid. It was so exciting. That massive fuel tank that falls away, the spacewalks, the landing back on Earth, as far as I was concerned, it was something we would all be riding on in The Future. I loved reading about the space program. I remember clearly the Challenger disaster, when I was 10, that shocking image, that double headed explosion. I read every article about that I could find. I put the newspaper on my bedroom wall, along with the photos of all the astronauts. It was a scary moment for me, when the realities of space travel broke my fantasy of becoming an astronaut; except I never really wanted to become an astronaut, I just wanted to go to space, float around a bit, maybe meet some aliens. Now the Space Shuttles are all retired. I did see this one before, from a good distance. When Endeavour was retired, it was flown to LA on the back of a large airplane, and passed over Sacramento – and Davis – on the way to a Bay Area flyover, before heading down to its resting place in Los Angeles. Now it is at the California Science Center in LA’s Exposition Park. Up close, it looks different than I expected. It is not some shiny sci-fi spaceship, it is very functional feeling, made up of a series of tough looking squares, each one numbered, looking almost like it was cobbled together on the job. Endeavour was in fact built as a replacement to Challenger, and between 1992 and 2011 she flew 25 missions into the earth’s orbit. I enjoyed sketching Endeavour, rekindling all my boyhood space travel dreams.

weekend in LA

October 13, 20171 Comment

Early last month I flew down to Los Angeles with my friend Roshan who was visiting from London, for a boys weekend to celebrate his 40th birthday. I didn’t do much sketching; it was a short trip and we mostly did tourism and, well, the pub. One or two pubs! A good old few pubs. I do find it harder to sketch when travelling with non-sketchers, (not for any fault of their own, I just struggle to concentrate) but I did manage a few sketches, including the in-flight drawing above. We stayed downtown at an awesome hotel with a great view, I only grabbed a couple of quick sketches of it, but we were really close to the LA public library (which I have sketched before, years ago).

And of course, one fire hydrant. It wasn’t a 2am hydrant sketch (like on previous LA trips) but the library is once more in the background!

And I got a few quick people sketches down at Venice Beach, of dancing roller-skaters. I would like to go back there on a sketching trip someday, there is always so much to draw around there. I really like LA.

if ever a wiz there was

March 15, 2017March 15, 20174 Comments

Recently we went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which is part of the Universal Studios theme park in Hollywood (well, Universal City). It was a surprise trip for our son who loves Harry Potter (so do we!). It was pretty great, and the butterbeer was lovely. Wands at Ollivander’s were expensive, but really cool – you can cast spells around all the windows and make things move about. This is the second Wizarding World built after the first one at Universal Florida, and has a cool Hogsmeade area. The castle itself is pretty cool, and I sketched it while sipping butterbeer as a chorus of toads sang to my right. Overall though, I think the Harry Potter tour of the original sets at Warner Bros outside London was better, but this was still fun. The ride inside the castle though was utterly mental, a total thrill ride. By the way, I got ‘sorted’ on Pottermore into Gryffindor, which makes sense. My son got Gryffindor as well. My wife however got sorted into Slytherin! So I got her a Slytherin scarf. We had lunch at the Three Broomsticks, and later I had a pint at the Hog’s Head. Oh, I didn’t sketch with a Quill, but I totally would have done.

Oh, this was page 1 of my second Stillman and Birn “Beta” landscape sketchbook (blue softcover). Those are nice. I also enjoyed the whole Simpsons-themed area as well, having a pint of Duff in Moe’s Tavern, getting a massive pink Lard Lad donut, eating chikcen and waffles from Cleetus’s Chicken Shack, popping into the Kwik-E-Mart, great fun. Oh, and here is a sketch I did on the plane down to Burbank in my Miquelrius “Lapin” covered sketch/notebook. .

abbot kinney boulevard

May 31, 20154 Comments

And here are the last sketches from my trip to LA last month. These were done on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a very interesting stretch of street in Venice away from the main madness of the beach. This street was named after Abbot Kinney, the man who developed Venice, California, a neigbourhood of canals and amusements. There are still several lovely canals lined with expensive houses, and in fact many of the big streets in this neighbourhood were once canals themselves. Anyway, Abbot Kinney Boulevard has lots of eclectic stores and cafes, and I stopped outside ‘Tumbleweed and Dandelion’, who I believe sell beach-themed furnishings and stuff. I liked the picket fence and the yellow flowers. I was wearing my France football shirt, and while sketching a man from Senegal stopped and chatted with me for a while, even about the Senegal team of 2002 beating France in the World Cup, I was living in France at the time and knew several Senegalese so that brought back a fun memory. When I was done, I had enough time for one more sketch, so I drew the scene below. This is a pretty typical view on Abbot Kinney, and hip trendsters sidled by being all hip and trendy. Unfortunately I didn’t give myself a lot of time to look through many shops (such is the life decision of the urban sketcher! Sketch, or actually do stuff!), and soon I caught a bus back to Santa Monica for more sketching by the ocean, where I met fellow urban sketcher Shiho (see my previous post), before dashing to the bus for the airport. And I only just made my plane…

Here is the map included in my sketchbook. Yes, there is an Electric Avenue.

and our friends are all aboard

May 31, 2015May 31, 20155 Comments

More sketches from Santa Monica. Above is a sketch of the bar area at The Galley, a nautical themed restaurant on historic Main Street which dates from the 1930s. Back in 2007, I went to Santa Monica after going to the UCAAC and stayed down here in the Ocean Park area. I really liked the area, so on my trip last month I came back. I had sketched The Galley that first time, but only from the street – the interior is another matter entirely. It is themed like a boat, of course, but also lit up by hundreds of Christmas lights of all colours, a sight which I cannot recreate in pen and ink. But I gave it a good go! I kept thinking of the lyrics to Yellow Submarine, and as I sketched I played a game in my head, whereby for every song that came on I would replace its lyrics with those of Yellow Submarine. After a while it was becoming uncanny – try it, is really works! No, it does. If it doesn’t, you’re not doing it properly. Anyway I sat at the corner of the bar, it was pretty busy, and sketched as best I could on the last page of my Seawhite book. The atmosphere was friendly; one fellow told me that on this night there was a party going on for a staff member to celebrate her last night of work there, and so I did my best to include as many faces as I could in my sketch. This is definitely a place for locals, and I chatted to some very cool people over the course of the evening. This really is a city I love visiting.

The next day I made sure to come back down Main Street in the sunshine, and so I couldn’t resist sketching The Galley again from the outside, just as I’d done those years ago. This time I climbed the stairs of the Edgemar center across the street for an elevated view. I also bought a t-shirt at the tourist center downstairs.

After eating an amazing chicken pie with mash and gravy at a place called Aussie Pie Kitchen, I remembered that there is a great Farmer’s Market on Main Street, and I caught the tail end of it. I sketched a band with the California Heritage Museum in the background. Here is a handy map from my sketchbook to show you where everything is.

Hey, remember that I sketched a fire hydrant in the wee hours of the morning in Westwood? Not to be outdone, I did the same thing while walking back through the quiet streets of Ocean Park. There was this really interesting hydrant which had been sprayed lime green. I couldn’t let this one go!