yard birds

July 8, 2009July 8, 20092 Comments

More from Medford, Oregon. Amid a large reunion of family, on a very hot Independence Day (America is independent, you know, not part of a chain). I sat outside and listened to the sound of the kids playing, and drew under the shade of a big tree and two cars. A nice way to spend an early afternoon. There are lots of interesting things to draw at my wife’s grandma’s house, from the things in the front yard (my son just loved that wooden duck! I liked the little owl), to the birdhouse/doll’s house (um, I forgot to ask which!) sketched below. I did that in the evening while babysitting.

It was a fun weekend. Lots of nice people. Oregon is cool, different from California; you can’t pump your own gas there, for example, and there’s no sales tax. I was also away from the internet, and the news, for several days. Apart from the events at Wimbledon (poor Murray! and then poor Roddick!), I had no idea about the outside world, and that was nice. I totally missed that Palin woman’s resignation (she seems to think there’s no big deal, resigning as governor of a state midway through the first term, ah people do it all the time – um, no they don’t, not if they wish to remain credible) (hang on, did I say ‘remain’ credible? Palin?). I also missed Michael Owen’s apparent transfer to Manchester United, which could turn out to be the deal of the summer. (Or it could of course turn out that the boy Owen really has lost it, as his Newcastle form suggested, and that Sir Alex will just be putting lipstick on a pig… er…)

down by the levee

July 6, 20094 Comments

I fancied cycling tonight, before the Sun went down, so I went down to the very edge of town, to the levee, a spot I’d never actually been to before, though it’s right near where I live. You can see all the way to Sacramento, across the flat Yolo landscape. Not in this drawing, but it is there. The moon (also unseen) hung low and pink, in the east. Some interesting birds hopped about nearby. All very peaceful. The sun started to vanish so I cycled home.

Sepia micron 05.

as june becomes july

July 1, 20092 Comments

Optometrists (opticians in the old tongue). They are always filled with hundreds of glasses you can’t imagine anybody wearing, let alone yourself. I bought a pair of glasses from here once, though I usually get mine from a different place in Davis. On that occasion, my one had no styles I liked, so I went here, and found one that I thought might suit me, a different theme for me. I called them the ‘half-Svens’ because they were kind of half like the Sven Goran Eriksson rimless style (they had half a rim). Normally I prefer the Fabio Capello style of specs. Anyway ultimately I decided I didn’t like them. They didn’t quite fit right; I did get them adjusted, at least slightly, but still no. So I went back to my old place and found they’d just started doing some great Fabio Capello type glasses. (For those who don’t know, I’m not talking about great fashion designers, I’m talking about foreign England football managers, who happen to wear trendy glasses). I didn’t really like this optometrist anyway. They weren’t enormously helpful, and were a bit disinterested, not even calling me to let me know they were ready after they said they would, whereas the service in the other place is much better. (Jeez this isn’t a consumer blog). However, they operate in a bloody cool looking building, very sketchable, and so I drew this today at lunchtime, on the first day of July. The second half of the year has arrived.

it’s not easy being green

June 28, 20092 Comments

A couple of months ago I mentioned the story of the Davis Toad Tunnel, and promised to draw the little toady post office they built to evade the snakes. It’s down by the human post office, on Pole Line Road. Toad Hollow, it’s called.

Yes, they are actually pretend solar panels on the roofs. This is Davis, after all.

chipotle shoulder

June 23, 20092 Comments

Lunchtime downtown, sketched out in the heat (almost hit a century today). Had a burrito at Chipotle. That’s not my bike, by the way.

Have you noticed how everything these days is ‘chipotle’? Food marketers can’t get enough of it. I even saw some chocolate dessert thing somewhere that had chipotle in the title recently, presumably to entice ye who cannot get enough chipotle. I’m surprised automakers haven’t started using it to shift cars in these troubled times. “The new Chevrolet Chipotle, more fuel efficient than a Fajita and spicier than a Ford.”

bag it up

June 22, 2009Leave a comment

I have this bag, from Eddie Bauer, which I carry everywhere. It’s the perfect size for what I use it for, which is to carry my sketchbook and pencil case and anything else that might come in handy, with lots of extra little pockets and compartments, without being so big that I’m tempted to fill it up. It’s my perfect shoulder bag (I went through a few to get there).

And today at lunchtime I had nothing I wanted to draw, so I just drew the bag. Ive drawn it before. I also wanted to use my blue/black micron 05.

a change it had to come

June 19, 2009Leave a comment

Hundred degree weather came back to Davis this week, after a relatively cool period for California – on the KCRA3 Weather they said it had been a ‘summerless June’. Apart from a few clouds and some rain in the mountains, it has been generally sunny and in the warm 80s. So, obviously gloves and scarf weather. You gotta love Californians.

I’ve drawn this view – the Bike Barn and South Silo, as seen from Bainer Hall – several times before. I like the view, it is fun to draw and you always see it anew each time. The only things that change are the leaves on the trees and the work on the green in the foreground. Funny enough, that even changed while I was drawing. I had to spread it out over a couple of lunchtimes, and on the second lunchtime that fence had gone, and someone was mowing the lawn (after I’d drawn all that spongy long grass). Oh well! It is the front of the Hog Barn – sorry, it’s not called that any more, it’s the Hubert Heitman something or other, as they made clear at a campus design council meeting I went to there (coincidentally, fellow Davis sketcher/blogger Pica was at the same meeting, and caught me without sketchbook). Anyway it has recently been renovated and opened (and it smells so new inside) so they’re adding the finishing touches. The world sits still for no sketcher.

Here are some other versions of this scene.

wrapped up in books

June 17, 2009Leave a comment

Cycled to the Davis library on sunday, took back those books I didn’t read. I then got books out I’ve already read, well this one anyhow. I sketched the biography section in brown pen. I’ve always been a library-dweller, since I was a kid. I used to bury my nose in books about language, scouring libraries across the borough (preferably for those that said “warning: contains obscure language”). Sometimes I would read fiction, sometimes – quite often – I would read travel books. And I used to spend a lot of time in the music library, taking out records, any scratches marked clearly on the vinyl by the librarian with that yellow crayon. I would get back on the bus with a can of Lilt and a Mars bar, and read up on philology, all the way home.

the usual suspects

June 15, 20094 Comments

Each pen was drawn by itself. These are some of the contents of my pencil case.

the sweetest thing

June 13, 2009June 12, 2009Leave a comment

The last one from Monterey. I sketched this fabulous building from the 1880s, the Thomas Kinkade National Archive, in the Harry A. Greene Mansion. Or Willy Wonka’s Summer House, as I prefer to call it.

I sat across the road on Sunday morning sketching this venerable candy stick, wondering if there might be an old witch stuck in an oven inside. Why would someone put a giant toffee apple on their roof? Perhaps it attracts the flies and mosquitoes, they stick to it, nobody gets bitten, they’re laughing. Makes sense, really. I might try it. Better than spraying insecticide everywhere to prevent West Nile. Stick a load of half-sucked sticks of rock or candy canes out in your garden. Maybe that’s where the Christmas tradition came from, you don’t know.

Here’s the obligatory action shot.