I’ve never been to Dairy Queen, never stopped in for a KitKat Blizzard, but this one is on 5th street in Davis and I’ve passed by it a lot. As you can see, it’s by the railroad tracks. And a fire hydrant. I still love their fire hydrants here. did you know it’s illegal to park in front of one? This could be anywhere in America really. But it’s in Davis. It’s a funny republic, this country. They have a Burger King, a Dairy Queen, but no Taco President or Soda First Lady.
I finally sat down and started a new series, much in the vein of the ‘you see, davis’ set, but this one being situated in the town where i was born (and hence called as such). actually burnt oak isn’t really a town, it’s a suburb, a part of london still lost in the middlesex postcode, long after middlesex has been wiped off the map (i suspect this is what ahmedinedjad really meant by that phrase). This is also my entry for illustration friday this week, the theme being ‘opinion’. I am glad that my opinions change over the years, that even though i am very opinionated I can still change my point of view. Or maybe my mind is just drifting along and ultimately doesn’t care about any opinion either way. Maybe we will never find out. For example, I hate arsenal, but actually felt sorry for them this week. Oh who am I kidding. Anyway i think it was muhammed ali who said, the person who thinks the same at 50 as they did at 20 has wasted 30 years of their life. Or something like that. I’ll find out when i’m 50 i guess, when i’ll probably think that was all bollocks.
With the raining coming down in meows and woofs, I took the Subway to Brooklyn, down under manhattan bridge overpass (I believe this area of town is named after a disney movie but I forget which). Too rainy to sketch. I took a lot of lovely photos from the shores of the Hudson, looking across at the grey fog where Manhattan should be. On my way back to the Subway however I remembered my friend Simon, sketching in the downpour on the South Bank in London back in May, 
and said to myself I could not leave without one sketch of these amazing views I may not see again for a long time. As I sat on my stool, the rain stopped, and I drew the Manhattan Bridge above – it really does make all the difference, actually sketching on location, than later on from a photo, and I’m please with the result (and yes I counted all the details as I was drawing them).
I went on the the Lower East Side. I got a big messy sandwich from “tiny’s giant sandwiches”, and ambled around in the fading light looking for some urban to sketch, and there was lots. It felt like I was in London again, in Holloway or Camden or Whitechapel, or maybe even Soho, with the narrow grid streets. Chose a street corner that is home to rosario’s pizza (my wife’s maiden name) and sketched in the dying light, the rain now passed but the streets still wet and shiny.
I walked around in the dark streets taking in New York City at night, this big far away place from the movies and the album tracks, and then got the Subway to Union Square area, stopping off in a cool art 
store and a great kid’s bookshop (to pick up a board book for my book-loving nine-month old; he’s very literate and loves a book he can really sink his two bottom teeth into). I was looking for Pete’s Tavern, apparently the oldest bar in the city, and I thought it might be good for some interior sketching. Fat chance. Sure, nice old place, and I got a Brooklyn Lager, but the bar area was very busy while all the tables were empty, reserved for some work thing happening later on. Annoying; my feet hurt. Pete was not amused by this (it’s for this reason I never reserve tables in pubs, I hate to be that person). So I sodded off, back to Long Island.
When it rains it pours. No, this isn’t pouring, it’s bucketing, and do we need it. It rained overnight a few weeks ago, and that was the first rain in many many months, but this is the first proper rain for me – the first rain I actually get to see in the daytime. And I like it. And so do the weathermen (no that’s not a reference to bill ayers, I’m not a mccain robocaller). Now mark finan and dave bender can wheel out their fancy doppler and vipir radars, put on their best ties, and sink their teeth into some storms. California’s poor weathermen, there’s never really much for them to do.
Last time I drew from this window (in the silo, where sometimes i eat lunch), they were building that new bus terminal which is now open across the street. Back in those days, it was a lot hotter, and the dollar was really weak against the pound.
I had to draw this lunchtime, though running out of things I want to draw near my office. This is the Physics Geology building. Physics. I remember my Physics teacher at school, Vilis, nice guy but a bit grumpy at times, and was forever slamming the windows closed, could not stand the windows to be open, must be a physics thing. I loved physics but was crap at it. I hated chemistry and was crap at it (the fear of bunsen burners, as you know). I was so-so about biology but got pretty good grades in it. I never wanted to be a scientist, but I always wanted (and still do) to know everything about science. It’s good to know stuff.
This is not part of the “you see, davis” series, it just looks like it. That series ended a while ago. A new series will start some time, based on something else. I just felt like adding words about the day.
First drawing in the new apartment. Unpacked boxes not in view. Wish I hadn’t done the shsding lines on the walls, but they have a ‘sod it, just finish and go to bed’ feel to them. This apartemtn is in reverse to the old one, it’s wierd, like bizarro world or something.
Illustration Friday this week is “routine”…this is my entry.
Now, before you say, “do what?”, I’m playing a game here I used to play when i did interactive theatre. This image, ok, it’s an image of Tel looking out of my window in Belgium, about eight or so years ago. Add the word ‘routine’ and you start to write the story in your head around it.
This may have been the night after this night here. But it was probably after a different night.
But that windowsill! Man, I spent so many days and nights sat on that, looking out of my thirteenth floor window, across the Square Hiernaux (I nicknamed it the Vicious Circle because of the quite crazy Belgian driving), to Ville Deux, to the Stade Mambourg (where England beat Germany in Euro 2000), and to the terrils, the large slag heaps that dot the landscape of the forsaken pays noir.
Luke has this great toy (given to him by my cousin) full of lights and shapes and buttons and songs, all in French, and he absolutely LOVES it. “Ainsi font, font, font, les petites marionettes,” it sings as you turn it on. We’re trying to expose him to French early on (we also have a CD of French nursery rhymes and sounds for babies his age), so hopefully one day he’ll be able to teach us what we have long forgotten. I look forward to us one day taking him to the south of France, to where I met his mommy. And we’ll eat poulet-frites. (Funny enough I got a postcard from Menton today).
This week’s Illustration Friday theme is ‘detach‘. Here then is my entry: a picture of Burnt Oak tube station.
I think the reason is that, each time I go back home, I feel more and more detached from the place I grew up. How much further detached from it will I become; am I even really detached, or is it all just imaginary? This is Burnt Oak station. Second from last stop on the Northern Line. Not a particularly nice place to hang about of an evening, you might say (or daytime either). It’s on Watling Avenue (previously seen here). I’d come out of the station, look up the hill to see if my bus was coming, and if not, I’d walk home (only one bus stop away up Orange Hill). A favourite hang-out for dodgy kids with nothing to do.
And it rains there. It doesn’t rain here.
An ink attack on the page by the Copic pen, fresh from drawing every single line in fleet street, on night two of ‘sleep-training’ (it went very well too). I wanted to draw more bare trees again, but this time with buildings behind them, so I went back to a photo from London back when I lived there, and was studying nearby this place: Temple Church, off Fleet Street, former HQ of the Knight’s Templar, now a busy destination for tourists bugging the priest about the (inappropriately titled) Da Vinci Code, and medieval students looking for William Marshall (guess which of these two groups I fell into).
petescully 