Tag: micron pen

all along the rocky shore

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monterey coastlineThe Monterey Peninsula is some of the most incredible coastline I’ve ever been to, and it’s teeming with wildlife. And massive expensive houses. We drove the 17-Mile Drive, getting out every so often to take pictures, paddle in the rockpools, spot whales (and we did! out in the distance), and I even managed to scribble a few quickies before hopping back into the car. There’s me sketching quickly by the rocks. The last time I’d been, the fog rolled in and out like an army of ghosts, but this time it was warm and sunny.pete sketches monterey

We visited the Point Pinos lighthouse, which was very interesting. It dates back to the 19th century, and is pretty well preserved. point pinos lighthouseYou’re not even allowed to use the toilet, it’s so well preserved. When I was a kid I used to want to live in a lighthouse (so many of them in north London). I think it was because of that show Round the Twist, where they all lived in a lighthouse, or it might have been because of Fraggle Rock. Let’s face it, it was the latter. My son enjoyed ringing the huge bell downstairs, but we weren’t allowed to go up to the lamp. During World War II, in fact only days after Pearl Harbor was bombed, Japanese planes flew by Monterey Bay, and this lighthouse was used as part of the coastal defences.

After 17-Mile Drive we lunched in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Clint Eastwood was once mayor. I popped into a little candy store that sold British chocolates, at a price. $2.95 for a Curly-Wurly!!! Can you believe it? They used to be 15p. There was a Lamborghini parked outside. Curly-Wurlies are surely not luxury items. I imagine this rich movie star now, supermodel girlfriend, Lamborghini zooming down the coast, chomping on a Curly-Wurly. Didn’t stop there. $3.95 for a Fruit-n-Nut! Four bucks for a Walnut Whip, sod that mate, I’ll go without. I didn’t even check how much the box of Maynards Wine Gums were. We drove on to Carmel Mission, which is an absolutely gorgeous building on the edge of Big Sur, which looks like a trip back into the Mexican West. Another quick study, this time in wine red copic, and then off again.  
carmel mission

a poem, a stink, a grating noise

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“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”

– John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

cannery row in monterey

We were in Monterey at the weekend. Down at Cannery Row (motto: “Yes, We Can”), where they pack souvenir shops in like, um, sardines, I sat and sketched since that day was also Drawing Day 2009. This gave me a contractual obligation to draw. Cannery Row (not in fact named after the actor Sean Cannery) was made particularly famous by John Steinbeck’s book about the place, that people pretend to know well when they go there even if it’s the first time they’ve ever heard of it (and to be faiat captain bullwhackers, montereyr, since bits of it are mentioned somewhere every few yards you feel like you’ve read the book, seen the movie and bought the fridge magnet). It’s funny how if a writer is associated with somewhere then they make sure to drum on about it as much as possible, like those pubs where Dickens/Twain/Kerouac etc drank (Dickens for one drank in every single pub in London, I’m surprised he was ever sober enough to actually get any writing done). Writers hold a special appeal to tourist boards. You never get areas devoted to, say, Joe Bloggs the stockbroker or someone.
The drawing to the right is of the beer garden of the Captain Bullwhacker’s pub (I think that was the name), which was heavily pirate galleon/British pub themed, and undoubtedly where Steinbeck once popped in to use the loo, maybe.

sketching cannery row

Also blogged at Urban Sketchers.

pool your thoughts

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pool at alder ridge

This is the pool at our apartment complex here in Davis. I never go there. My mum however is visiting from England, and was sat out there catching some of the unending sunshine that we get here in California, so I joined her and sketched some of the pool area (after watching the FA Cup final played out in BBC website updates). This is what where I live looks like.

rush hour

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frat boards and bikes

Another lunchtime sketch (with purple micron), very quiet on campus right now, and I sat outside the Silo drawing bicycles and fart-boards. Oops, mis-spelling there, I mean frat-boards of course (are they even called that?). They look like a gang. I imagine the frat boards marching animated across campus, independently, gathering to harass bikes. A lot of them seem to be advertising Rush, presumably not a celebration of Ian Rush, though it would be more interesting. Ian Rush, he was great, he drank milk so that he’d be good enough not to play for Accrington Stanley. Funny fact, my A-level history teacher, a Welsh guy, left his teaching job to go and tour with his band who were called, of all things, Ian Rush. They sang in Welsh, and presumably scored a lot too.

get me to the church on time

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davis community church

I remember drawing this building, Davis Community Church, three years ago, and thinking, I don’t like this drawing much. Its the colours. I finally got round to drawing it again, and while i prefer this I still don’t like the colours much. So I’ve decided it’s not me, it’s the building, it’s the wrong colour. I might write to them and ask them to paint it something else, pink or white or something. I edited out the homeless person who was ambling about the entrance with a trolley, mainly because she wouldn’t stand still but kept wandering off yelling something like ‘get out of my head’. I also edited out the big SUVs parked outside. While I was drawing another one pulled right up and parked in front of me, and out stepped JR Ewing, or his double.  I’m surprised I saw any of the church. I actually made most of it up.

if you can’t take the heat

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The weather over the weekend was a whopping 104 degrees. Stay inside sort of weather. People from Burnt Oak aren’t cut out for hundred degree heat. G and 2nd

Davisites are used to it though. Californians in general love the sunshine and the heat (I have to laugh when my wife complains that it is cold when it is 65 degrees at 8am), though Central Valley heat is not so loveable, and the heat has come early this year. So I was pleased today that the weather plummeted to a brisk 90 degrees. I braved the chilly weather and poked about downtown during my lunch hour, huddling up for long enough to draw the corner of G and 2nd Streets, in purple micron and wine copic muliliner, before cycling back.

some things you only see upon reflection

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Big mirrors behind the bar always make you think about the Bar at the Folies Bergeres (get to the Courtauld, man, or just listen to Mr Solo), but also maybe of the bar at the good mixer in camden, which doesn’t have a mirror but has two sides; it took me years to realise there was a second side and that was why my reflection was invisible. I’d always imagined it was a vampire thing; it is Camden after all. More like a beer thing.

g street pub

This however is the G Street pub in Davis. I don’t go there very often; I prefer little prague. But I stopped in on the way home for a beer primarily because i fancied sketching the long bar and mirror area. There was an ice hockey match on a big screen, reflected in said mirror, and it wasn’t busy (there was a guy who reminded me of kevin smith a little bit, or it might have been silent bob). To be honest I got a bit frustrated with it, I was trying something different, attacking the long page with microns 1 and 01, and decided to give it a wash, drink up, and go home. I was also frustrated with my eyesight trying to make out distant details, even though it wasn’t particularly dark it was still a strain. But when I scanned it in, I decided that  upon reflection I quite liked it after all, especially as a thumbnail.

tadpolitical

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a blue house by arboretumThe cycle path alongside the arboretum has a row of cool houses that look great for drawing, but I never found the time, until yesterday afternoon on the way home from work. You may well be wondering what that mound is. Yes, obviously it is the muddy middle of a cycle-roundabout. But it looks like it could be the top of a giant’s head, buried in the earth beneath Davis, waiting for his time to come again. I wouldn’t like a city to be built on my head. I was thinking about this while cycling home, noticing the new building being done further east (possibly where the contentious Target is being built?), taking over ‘waste’ land that is home to many hares and snakes and other wildlife. Snakes need somewhere to live too you know, you can’t just build and then evict them. The city thought about this of course when building a big road bridge right through an area where lots of toads (may have been frogs, some sort of amphibian) live. They decided that to help the toads get across the road (remember the game Frogger? Very influential in urban planning) they would build a tunnel under the road, the ‘toad tunnel’. Nice idea. But then all them snakes who now don’t have anywhere to live thought, hello, they built us a nice tunnel, that was nice of them, and it has a free constant supply of toads for us to eat too. So the city thought, ok we’ll put lights in the tunnel so the toads can see if there are any snakes lurking.  But the snakes just waited outside, grabbing them as they popped out. So the city decided to fool the snakes and build a little house – a post office, in fact – for the toads to go into the access the tunnel. Nice idea. Toads delighted. And then all the toads starting burning their backs on the lightbulbs in the tunnel, and the city just said, oh sod you then, we gave you a flipping post office, write and complain to your senator or something, we have better things to do than worry about a load of bloody frogs or whatever you are. Of course that lost them the amphibian vote (the tadpole-mom demographic), but, y’know, in local politics those are the risks you have to take.  

Maybe I’ll draw that toady post office some day, to prove I’m not making all this up. Except for the bit about the giant.

union rules

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MU

Moo. Sorry, I mean MU; cowtown is getting in my head. This the MU (Memorial Union), a kind of equivalent to our student unions in England, but notably without any naked drunk rugby players. I don’t know what it is memorising. And this is where I get my art materials, there in the UCD bookstore. All my microns, copics, what-not. I hang about in there looking at them, they must think I obsess (well I do). When I was a kid I would go into Tonibell’s (local burnt oak sweetshop, long gone) and stand there for about half an hour, trying to decide between a Mars or a Marathon. I haven’t changed, only now it’s between a purple Micron 005 or a cobalt Copic 03 (and sometimes between a Milky Way or a Snickers).

After drawing this (in high heat) I bumped into fellow cycling sketcher Pica, who had just bought art materials at this very store. I also bumped into a fellow Spurs fan from London, which was cool. Small world.