This week I appeared on the local radio station KDRT interviewed by Bill Buchanan, host of the long time show Davisville. It was a fun conversation, talking about my sketching and the stories behind them, about missing London, about interacting with the community, about recording moments in time.
You can hear the show online at: https://kdrt.org/audio/davisville-aug-12-2024-through-his-prolific-sketches-pete-scully-conversing-davis.
I am pleased to tell you that some of my drawings are currently to be found in an excellent new book by fellow Urban Sketcher, Thomas Thorspecken, the USk correspondent in Florida. You should check out his website Analog Artist, Digital World. I have been a fan of Thomas (aka Thor) for a few years now, for his colorful and energetic sketches of performances and events, and have sought his advice in the past – you can learn a lot from him. Well, he came out with a book, which is very much a ‘how to do it’ book, right down to giving advice on scanning and correcting images in Photoshop (which is very familiar territory to a regular sketchblogger), as well as nuts and bolts such as perspective and composition, even giving step-by-steps by Thomas and other artists. I’m honoured to have been included; here is one of mine:
And another:
Thanks for including me Thomas! To everyone else: buy the book! Learn a lot!
I didn’t post the rest of the Davis Enterprise’s “Welcome to Davis” editions from a couple of weeks back, so here they are. These are big!! Broadsheets, really. Plus they make good curtains as you can see. I’m pretty chuffed to have had this honour, and hope that the people of Davis enjoyed them. Now the Toad Hollow sketch from the ‘Only in Davis’ edition, as I mentioned previously, is pretty small – a few inches up and across. I though you might be interested to see the other originals set against the papers themselves.
For the ‘On the Go’ edition my drawing of one of the Unitrans London double-deckers was used, so here’s a size comparison – the original was about 7″x5″ or so, and in fact if you’re in Davis and want to see it (or buy it) it’s at the Pence Gallery on D Street right now.
For the ‘Our Community’ edition my recent drawing of the Farmer’s Market was used. Incidentally, the sign in the middle has only some of the writing on it because they started packing up when I got to drawing that bit and I missed the rest. I did think ahead though and took a photo beforehand, very smart, but there was a lot of glare so I never could read it all. Doesn’t matter. The fellow standing next to it, he has a passing resemblance to me, because the passer-by that I actually drew was actually wearing a Tottenham t-shirt and stopped to talk for a moment when I said ‘Come on you Spurs!’ So in honour, I actually made this person look like me, though he really didn’t. Most moving people in these in-public-place drawings look generic anyway, as it’s always hard to really capture someone while they’re walking past, though otherwise all of the people that ended up in this one were actually the people stood there. Anyway, I loved how this turned out in the paper, and if that’s you in the drawing, hello there.
And finally, the really small one, which actually translated pretty well large, I thought. I sketched that one lunchtime at the Memorial Union back in 2009, and it took up a third of a page of my Moleskine. So anyway there you are. Many thanks to Tanya Perez at the Davis Enterprise, who does a great job in the Welcome editions, and it was great to be a part if them this time.
If you’re in Davis – and many of us are – you might have picked up today’s Davis Enterprise. If you did, you might have seen the first of the annual ‘Welcome to Davis‘ editions. I have always enjoyed these, and in the past would usually leave them in our lounge for new students to read and learn fun stuff about our city. This year, these special editions (of which there will be four) feature my sketches of Davis. Today’s paper, the ‘Only in Davis’ edition, has a close-up of one of my Toad Hollow sketches blown up large, and also has a write-up about me on page two. How exciting is that!! I am pretty massively honoured.
Many thanks to Tanya Perez, editor of these excellent editions. Tanya also wrote a lovely article on Thursday (“What’s the greatest talent? The one you don’t have” – see the article here) which made nice mention of me and my sketching, and showed off my phonebox drawing.
These are posted courtesy of the Davis Enterprise. It’s not the first time I’ve been in the paper, there was an article about me back in 2009 (here’s the blog post; I must dig out the article) and a short piece about my show last December, but it’s certainly the most prominent. See also: http://www.davisenterprise.com, and the Davis Enterprise Facebook page, and don’t forget to pick up the other editions this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Surreal moment this morning: I was mentioned on Fox News! They showed one of my sketches of Sacramento, drawn over two years ago with pen and watercolour pencils (see right), on the local morning news during a piece about Sac’s Tower Bridge. I thought that was pretty cool, and very nice
of the presenter Paul Robins to give me a mention. (I don’t mind that it’s Fox; next: the Daily Mail!). I remember drawing this (seems like forever ago), I like this bridge but wasn’t able to do it justice before but I did like this sketch. This has reminded me, I think it’s about time I went and sketched it again. It’s nice by the River.
Speaking of mentions, I forgot to say that I had a drawing – one of my ‘You See, Davis’ pieces – published in the local Davis radio station KDVS’s magazine, KDViations, this quarter, for their fund-raising issue. It didn’t print too well though, I think the resolution I gave them was too low.
I also forgot to report (since we’re talking media mentions) that I was featured in last month’s excellent Ripperologist magazine, their special 100th edition. It’s the premier journal – online only – for researchers of Jack the Ripper, a subject I know only the general details of (he killed girls, right?). But I did a drawing of the infamous Ten Bells pub a while back, which was also published in the London Walks book (for the Jack the Ripper section), and because the East End’s an old haunt of mine, I had the wonderful honour of appearing in their special edition alongside features of other talented Ripper-themed artists. Cool, huh!!
petescully 