shake, ache

June 14, 2008June 14, 20082 Comments

it was a nice shake though, chocolate and peanut butter. But I couldn’t walk it off.

Went to see Indiana Jones* this afternoon (note to self: wearing shorts and t-shirt in a freezing air-conditioned movie theatre is not necessarily a good idea), and then since I was downtown and it wasn’t as roasting as I’d expected, I decided to draw. I didn’t have my little stool, and I didn’t want to sit on the floor, and was feeling less than inspired by things to draw downtown that didn’t involve sitting in the sun or on the sidewalk. So I found a shady bench on E street and drew a completely uniniteresting sight. With cars! I never draw cars.

Lots of graduating people out today, with their folks.

dirty old river, must you keep rolling

June 13, 2008June 13, 20083 Comments

Now I think I’m tenacious in my sketching. I go out in all weather, just to get a drawing in the moleskine. Admittedly I live in Davis, so the weather is usually very changeable – one day it’s hot and sunny, next thing you know it’s hotter and sunnier, can’t keep up. Back in London it rained almost every day; on Monday I went back to the South Bank with Simon, where we sketched in sunshine a year previously. It was ok while we were under a tree, and the clouds merely threatened us like hoodies in a chicken-shop doorway – that’s when I did the pic to the left there, drawing someone with absolutely no resemblence to my sketching pal. But then we moved on, and I started to draw the banks of the Thames by Oxo Tower, but rain stopped play.

For me, anyway. Si sketched on, disregarding any silly rain, his sketchbook getting slowly drenched, now unable to erase any pencil marks. But he was on a roll, and did a fine pencil pic cafe rouge, shepherds bush with lots of detail. I chickened out, and finished mine off later (the top image). It looks like it’s a monochrome, but I guess this is actually a colour picture, since that’s exactly how it looked that day. London was an exercise in greyscale waiting to happen (it sometimes is in the summer).

Prior to that, there was lunch in Shepherd’s Bush, at cafe rouge, and I did this sepia picture of the mirror while we ate. Not exactly the bar at the folies bergeres, more the cafe at the buisson des bergeres. Kinda.

rub-a-dub-dub

June 12, 2008June 12, 2008Leave a comment

Parts 10 and 11 of the Sketchbook Project, and I’m wondering if the world actually needs saving, I mean once someone sets themselves up as a saviour then we’re in all sorts of problems, aren’t we. Perhaps we then need saving from them? Or their followers, or their enemies?

And never ever trust a politician who runs their election on “only I can save you”. Over and out.

morning in hampstead

June 11, 2008Leave a comment

A sketching morning in Hampstead, with Si, starting at the tube station, wandering about the high Street and its alleys, then off to the Flask for a good pint of Deuchars. And it didn’t even rain!

it’s so grey in london town

June 8, 20086 Comments

Sketched on a quiet corner of craven street, behind busy whitehall, the house where herman melville lived 150 years or so ago for like five minutes probably (had a whale of a time). It started raining while drawing this, so I ducked into a doorway, and then hightailed it to a nearby old pub, the ship and shovell, where I finished off the wash, washed down with some cold bavarian hofbrauhaus beer, served by a brazilian.

But this says London, doesn’t it. I think so.

(sketched may 29, micron pen)

in the town where i was born

June 8, 200810 Comments

A familiar skyline to all Burnt Oakers: Watling Avenue, in the rain, leading downhill towards the tube station. While most of the shops change over the years, the skyline of sloping chimneys has remained the same. Actually one shop that’s been there all my life is Vipin’s, the stationers where I bought my pens and paper growing up. It hasn’t changed a bit. (I do wish they’d stock Micron Pigmas though!)

This is my contribution for Drawing Day 2008. Micron Pigma .01. It’s also my Illustration Friday entry (theme: ‘forgotten’, because I felt like I’d almost forgotten what it was like in Burnt Oak, until I went back just recently and was quickly reminded; this skyline, however, will never be so quickly forgotten).

knows not where he’s going to

June 6, 2008June 6, 2008Leave a comment

I continued the ‘how to save the world’ sketchbook project in London, but did far fewer entries than I’d hoped. It was an emotional place. Below are parts 7 – 9, preceded by a short intermission, in which the fictional terry follows the steps (a click will bring you to the flickr page). You will see there is a real cup of tea and a real mars bar. the mars bar is normally dipped in the tea. Sometimes i eat the edges of the mars bar, then the top, then the rest. Sometimes.

Part eight shows the view I saw for many, many years, every single day.

fast to westminstar-ward i went

June 6, 2008Leave a comment

I regret not sketching as much as I now do when I lived in London, for there is so much history and life to draw. I’ve drawn these railings before (with a burnt bike), and I thought I should start my sketching here. I met Simon and we proceeded on a sketchcrawl through a surprisingly sunny London. We walked through the narrow streets of St Giles and Covent Garden, as the city I’d not seen in a year came flooding back. After drawing the pic below (a whisky shop in covent garden; i was trying out a new brown micron pigma, i need to work on that effetc though), we stopped off for a Belgian beer (I had Maredsous) and some frites at the Bierodrome in Kingsway.

And then, through my old haunts of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Chancery Lane (to see the spectacular Maughan Library), and Fleet Street, before crossing Ludgate (pointing out the face of King Lud) and reaching St. Paul’s (and doing the sketch on the right, previously posted). More to come!

london lickpenny

þe mayster-toun hit evermore has bene

May 27, 20085 Comments

I’m back in London, for the first time in a year.

After such Davis heat, I am happy to say that the rain I had wished for has come in abundance, though I got out to sketch on Saturday with my old long-missed sketching (and lightsabering) buddy in some great sunshine, drawing from St.Giles to St.Paul’s. I stocked up on pens before coming and have really not had many chances to wear them out yet; but I have been eating hob-nobs, drinking millions of tea, looking at old photos, spending time with family, catching up with friends over many a cider in Camden, gettig frustrated with the sheer amount of people gong here and there in this mad mad place. How did I ever survive here for so long? But I did, and this is still my town. The town I know so well. More to say have I, but not the energy just yet.

By the way, ten points (or an MA in my case) to they who can guess the reference in the title.

on the last bus out of town

May 21, 2008May 21, 20084 Comments

Appropriately as I am red-bus and red-brick city bound, an old routemaster which has travelled wide and ended up in Davis. (Hence my illustration friday for this week, theme “wide”). I sketched & painted this (and it was a proper sketch, not a drawing, as i was sat waiting for my own bus) in just over 15 minutes before another bus and some people got in the way. I had better get used to that where I’m going. this is a little bit of London in California. I can relate to that.

If Mayor Boris Standard-endorsed Johnson really does get rid of bendy-buses (at a cost of millions which could go into, say, crossrail) perhaps they too will end up in Davis.

Illustration Friday…

“Knock Knock”

“Who’s there?”

“Wide”

“Wide who?”

“Wide don’t you open the door and find out?”

(kids! don’t open the door to strangers! especially if they tell bad knock-knock jokes!)