frat luck

February 19, 20092 Comments

A frat house downtown. I’ve mentioned before about the frat houses in Davis, all running along the edge of campus. They are so sketchable, yet I rarely get around to drawing them.

Did I mention the Amgen Tour of California, kind of like the Tour de France of California (like, dur), started here in Davis (amid a massive rainstorm) on Sunday? Well I missed it, sadly (hey, I stayed warm and dry, don’t feel too bad). Huge event. Lance Armstrong. Serious stuff. Davis is the bike capital of America and didn’t want anything to go wrong, this is a showcase. Now Davis did do really well, however… Lance Armstrong’s bike got nicked. No, not in Davis, and not while he was riding in the race; it was his one-of-a-kind time trial bike which he’d used the day before in Sacramento. Someone actually half-inched it. The most famous cyclist in the world.

I hope he didn’t chain it to a bollard, like David Cameron.

coup de foudre

February 14, 2009February 15, 20094 Comments

Happy St.Valentine… This is the Place d’Albertas (Aix-en-Provence), most romantic place in the world; well, our world. P xx

simon says

February 8, 2009Leave a comment

This is my friend back in London, Simon, actor, presenter and fellow on-street sketcher. I’ve attempted drawing him before, but couldn’t quite get it, but this time I think I got it pretty close. Used the sepia micron 0.5, nice for drawing people with.

who needs remote control

February 1, 20093 Comments

Perhaps… we spend too much time looking at the shadows, and not at the trees.

Or vice-versa, take your pick.

This is the old city hall in Davis (now part of a restaurant), sketched on Saturday afternoon on the last of january; see how warm and sunny looking it is. I hear you are having huge snowstorms in Britain. Sorry about that. I recall the arctic blast of 2003, that night I never got home to crouch end (but instead walked through the icy storm several miles to burnt oak). And then the second one a year later, when finchley central station closed because nobody had thought to grit the platform (but i made it home thanks to my boss giving me a lift, and managing not to get frozen in a slippery traffic jam on highgate hill, for which i’m very grateful). I love snow, it makes the world look so peaceful, except when it is causing utter flipping chaos.

daylight falls upon the path

January 30, 2009May 27, 2010Leave a comment

lunchtime sketch by the hog barn It feels like ages since I did drawings of Davis, I have been drawing so many other places lately. More than a month in fact. So I thought I’d make up for it. It was very sunny this week. Well, during the daytime obviously, I mean at night it was dark. It was pretty cold too but is getting progressively warmer; these Californian Januarys, eh! So I got out each lunchtime and sketched.

On Wednesday I sketched near the Silo, by the newly renovated Hog Barn (or Pig House, or whatever it is called; presumably it was renovated after the big bad wolf blew it down or something). No hogs here now though. There are cows not far from here though. Davis is well known for its cows. Scientists do experiments on them. Some of them have windows in their stomachs (please, no jokes about beef curtains, this is a family site).

I had a hole in my shoe once. I used to tell people it was a window to my sole.

On Thursday I went downtown, and drew a house I’ve drawn before, I believe it is some sort of dentist’s surgery on E Street. I drew it in sepia about a year and a half ago. Theres’ that tree look, in the foreground as usual, and it managed to keep itself within the frame this time.

Here’s the older version. I don’t mind drawing things I’ve drawn before. In a city this small it’s bound to happen.

And on Friday, to complete the triptych, I drew a frat house on First Street. Ths is right on the edge of campus. Most of the fraternity and sorority houses are.

Before I moved to an American college town I had no idea what frats were. All those greek letters, old boy’s clubs I guessed. Some frats are aparently older than the US itself. I met some American frat boys when I lived in France, I’d heard of their legendary alcoholic exploits (ah, no more than a typical night in any binge-drinking high-street town in England). They all start recruiting in the fall, having their ‘rush’ events and their ‘hazing’, and how the sororities have all these functions every night for a month whereby the wannabe entrants have to wear a different outfit each night or they are like so-out-omigod-who-does-she-think-she-is.

Yeah I’m glad we never had those sorts of things when I was at university. We had the student union bar, and some nights, oh dear, it was not pretty.

Roll on the weekend.

happy birthday to ya!

January 24, 2009January 25, 20093 Comments

My son turned one today! We got him (another) toy guitar to rock out on (he loves guitars and is already pretty good at strumming a real one, for a one year old). He also got a lot of other very musical toys from his nana and his nanny, to go with the drum, guitar, keyboard, musical table, and maracas he already has. I think he might become a conductor, or a busker at least. Daddy is still trying to draw him, but every time I get close enough approximation he gets a little older and changes – it’s a cliche but they really do change so quickly. I did the above in sepia micron 05 (nice for drawing faces with!!). Face is a little too long maybe, hair a little too dark. My art goal for 2008 was draw baby; I did, but not enough. My art goal for 2009 is draw more faces in general.

Happy first birthday Lukey! We love you dude!

president barack obama

January 23, 20093 Comments

Ladies and Gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States, new leader of the Free World, Barack Obama. President Obama. No more George W Bush. Did you hear that? NO MORE GEORGE W BUSH!! Off you pop. No more Cheney. But thanks, by the way, thanks for the wonderful state you’ve left the world and the country in. Not your problem, leave it for the next guy.

Finally, someone intelligent running America. Though of course, he had to take his oath of inauguration twice, because he kind of fluffed it up the first time. Was I the only one who thought, when he paused right after the words “I will execute”, that he was about to slip up and say… “George W Bush”?

perchance, to dream

January 20, 2009January 20, 20094 Comments

Martin Luther King Jr day, and so that meant no work. Was able to go to midtown Sacramento for a few hours in the afternoon (after birthday shopping for my son) to go to the art store and do some sketching around midtown, to catch some of those lovely shadows on the sides of the buildings.

The weather has been so nice, mid-seventies last week, high-sixties this, perfect sketching weather (don’t be jealous). Above, the building (monastic I think) on the corner of 26th and K. Below, the corner of 17th and I. I used my purple micron for this one, kind of embellishes the sunniness of the day.

And Tony Hart died! The gentle-mannered tv artist who inspired several generations (and had an unruly caretaker, I recall). Certainly inspired me, as a kid. That was sad news indeed, but he hadn’t been well. I wrote about him and his famous Gallery (from which no drawing may return) back in August. Farewell, Mr. Hart.

as the present now will later be past

January 18, 2009January 18, 2009Leave a comment

Time travel doesn’t exist; it cannot exist. Don’t let any quantum physyicist tell you otherwise. And yet, in fact I did manage to travel through time, when I got on a train to Charleroi, my home between ’99 and ’00. I live on the other side of the world now, and was stepping back to take a look around at a life I used to lead. Now that is time travel.

Nothing had changed. Well, not nothing exactly; the shops were now open on Sundays, and there was a new little mini-supermarket right by to where I used to live (which would have been really handy back when I lived there), but otherwise, Charleroi was still the same: unpolished, post-industrial, and very familiar. This is not a tourist town; Bruges it aint, and all the better for 100_3487 it. We had a classic Carolo night out; went to my usual places, rubbed shoulders with locals, had Kwak and Charles Quint at la Cuve à Bière (where the people are all the same as before), chatted drunkenly in the smoky Irish Times, staggered up to the excellent popular all-night friterie Chez Robert for a mitraillette de dinde (I am astonished I could still find it after all this time), and then a couple of Fanta Citrons in the morning for the hangover. The freezing cold sun helped too. While waiting for a train, I drew the picture above on tha banks of the murky Sambre (or at least most of it; the ink in my micron pen started complaining about the cold, so I finished it later). We walked about town, I wandered about in my memories and took plenty of photos, and drew La Vigie, the tall building where I used to live on the 13th floor when I taught at the U.T.

It was a fleeting visit, really (there’s not that much reason to stick around in Charleroi in the cold). Who knows when I’ll ever be back. I’m really glad I went though, and visited the increasingly-distant past, but it was even nicer to get back to the future.

soho continued

January 10, 2009May 27, 20105 Comments

Part 2 of Soho sketching day. This is Broadwick Street, and that is the Blue Posts pub, which I also sketched in ’07. In the distance, Centre Point. There I am, to the left, drawing this very scene. My nephew and I chatted while I drew, then went to art shops, foreign language bookshops, football shirts shops; I lamented the lameness of Carnaby Street, navigated through short-cuts and alleys, reminisced about nights out I can barely remember. I do see Soho as a city with a city, and one with tiny neighbourhoods of its own, and I could draw it endlessly, but the end of the afternoon came quickly, and so we got the tube back up the Northern Line, my tired nephew sleeping much of the way back (and giving me a chance to attempt some tube-train sketching; here is the result…)