pacific heights

October 24, 20252 Comments

Here are a couple more from the end of May, we went to San Francisco for an overnighter, staying in Pacific Heights where I’d not really been before. I sketched the Vogue theatre on Sacramento Street before we went out for a nice dinner at Garibaldi’s. We were up here to visit the Disney Family Museum in the Presidio, where we went to a really interesting exhibit on Mary Blair, the renowened Disney illustrator who created a lot of the classic Disney artwork from the 40s, 50s and 60s, including the It’s a Small World designs for the Disneyland park. Afterwards we went down the Presidio over to the new park they built on the bluffs overlooking the Bay, some amazing views up there. I did a quick sketch but it was very sunny, I don’t like sketching in the sun. The next day, we visited the De Young Museum to see the Paul McCartney photography exhibit, ‘The Eye of the Storm’, full of his very personal photos of the early years of the Beatles on tour. That was absolutely incredible, one of the best things I have seen in ages. I got a large print photo of John Lennon with his acoustic guitar which I have framed on my wall, and a few other postcard size ones I will also put up on the wall. We enjoyed that exhibit a lot, and then had a longer look around the De Young itself, I’d never been there before. I like art museums, though ones like the De Young can be expensive to visit so it’s not something we’d do often. We did visit the SF MoMA earlier this year, first time in ages. They have the best gift shop. I do wish we’d had time to visit one of the big ones in New York like the Met, but another time perhaps.

tunnel records and trad’r sam

October 26, 2024October 25, 2024Leave a comment

Part Two of my day in the Clement Street /Geary Street area of San Francisco, about seventeen or so blocks further towards the ocean and the rolling fog. I was looking for the 4 Star theater, on the corner of 23rd, which shows older films and which unfortunately I had not given myself time to watch anything, but on this day they were showing My Neighbour Totoro (always a favourite), Toy Story 3 (good but I prefer 2), and North by Northwest (which I have never seen but I think involves a small plane and a man running away). I was here to look around the attached record store, Tunnel Records, which is in a little nook of the cinema. It is not the main shop of Tunnel Records, that one is somewhere else in San Francisco, another area I have not yet been to. It was not open when I got there, which gave me some time to draw the building. I stood opposite and looked up Clement, listening to another Jarvis Cocker interview, I can’t get enough of his soft Sheffield accent. I left the details of the other side of the street a bit sparse, sometimes that is all you need to get the message across, and all I had time for, this was not a ‘finish later’ sketch as so many seem to end up as these days, I just wanted to draw what stood out to me in those moments. The record store opened, and I went in to have a long browse. It’s something I don’t do any more, and I can’t remember how or why I do it, but once you start you can’t really stop and have to look at all the racks, alphabetically, in case something pops out that makes you think oh wait, now that I might like. There was one other person in there browsing too. I realized he was a few racks ahead of me, but browsing each rack one by one, same as I was, though more slowly. Was I not paying enough attention to what I was browsing? Either way, I knew at some point I would catch up, and would either have to go around to the next rack and quite obviously miss out the one he was looking at, or what, start looking at the same rack? You can’t do that. I would try to slow down by stopping and pulling out something interesting, to look at as if I could hear the music coming from the sleeve. I would nod and pull that expression people pull with their mouths when they want to show silent respect for something, you know the one, but I was just faking it really. In the end, I caught up. Instead of skipping to the next rack over, I decided to pretend that I needed to look at my phone suddenly, and then went to look at some t-shirts. I am not sure why I was acting like I was in some kind of play. I went and looked at the soundtracks section (like, why would I be looking there), and then after the other man, who was probably in some play of his own, moved to a different genre, I went back and looked through the alphabetical racks again but this time, in an unexpected move, in reverse order, starting at Z. I ended up not buying anything, despite being tempted by an Al Green album, because I didn’t fancy carrying a record around with me while sketching, and I didn’t really need it. I gave a little smile and raise of the eyebrows to the shop clerk as I left vie the movie theatre’s main entrance, and went off to draw a massive Russian church.

It’s pretty hard to miss as you go up Geary, yet it’s not one of the famous San Francisco sights. The Holy Virgin Cathedral “Joy Of All Who Sorrow” has tall, shiny golden onion domes that probably look even shiner in the sun, let alone on this foggy day. It’s a Russian Orthodox church; there have been Russian communities in the San Francisco area for over 200 years. This is the largest Russian Orthodox Cathedral outside Russia, and was completed in 1965. I sketched it from across the street, adding in the metallic gold paint when I got home (you can’t tell here but the page is actually quite shiny). I popped inside, but only to peek through the door, I wasn’t sure if I could walk around and have a look. It was very ornate looking, and even though there wasn’t a service going on I felt a little bit like I was out of place, and I didn’t want to unwittingly break any rules. The Church Etiquette and FAQs pages of their website are quite interesting, full of extremely clear and specific instructions as to how you must behave. If your phone goes off: “You should answer the call (accept it), but do not start speaking until you have stepped away (outside or in the narthex). Walk out of the church quietly and calmly. Do not sprint/dash out of the church when this happens. Make the caller wait.” They are thoroughly disgusted at people leaving lipstick marks on icons, which is fair enough frankly and not something I was in danger of doing; as for clothes, shirts must have collars and be buttoned up, though you’re ok to loosen the top button if you have to, and don’t ever wear a t-shirt saying “This Bud’s For You!” I imagined there must have been a very specific incident involving a t-shirt with that phrase on it. I was wearing a Red Star Paris football shirt, which was probably a big nyet-nyet, and the big red Star on the badge may have been confusing, so I didn’t take any chances, and just peeked through the door. I tried to teach myself Russian when I was a kid, I didn’t get further than a few phrases, but I learned the Cyrillic alphabet and so I was enthusiastically reading the signs outside and trying to figure them out. I think it was in Old Church Slavonic, which would have blown my teenage self’s mind to see in person.

I stood outside the cathedral though to sketch my last destination on this day in the city, Trad’r Sam, an old tiki-themed bar that’s been around since 1937. It is not fancy, but is a real San Francisco legend I had read about on a list of historic San Francisco bars, since I have it as my mission to go and draw them all. I was already quite tired by this point, so when I drew the exterior and that big green sign, I went in through the saloon doors (am I misremembering that now?) and ordered a Lava Flow cocktail. I sent my wife (who loves a historic tiki bar) a picture of my drink; she was in Disneyland and had just ordered a Lava Flow ice cream at the same time, coincidentally. It was a pretty popular place on a Saturday afternoon and started filling with locals. The bar itself is a big horseshoe, my favourite type of bar set-up, and the barman was friendly. I chatted with some of the others sat at the bar, got comfy and finished off one of my sketches. I decided I didn’t have the energy to draw the bar itself, this time, but enjoyed the mood. I tried a Mango Mai Tai, and wow it was really good. I think it was really strong as well because I started feeling a bit drunk already; maybe that was the lack of a proper lunch mixed with looking at all that orthodox religious architecture and old pop records. I had to explain to the barman who Red Star Paris were; not the team I support, I just like their kits and the fact they aren’t PSG. He’d heard of Red Star Belgrade, and hearing I was from London he asked who my team was, giving me a fist bump and an acknowledgement of how good Sonny is when I told him. I talked to a couple who lived about a block away and gave me some good tips for other old local bars in this area, they are now on my visit and sketch list. It was a good place to wind down the day, and I had a beer to finish off, alas not an Anchor Steam which was always my SF drink, but eventually I had to get myself back to Davis, a long long journey from this part of town. I took the 38 bus back, got the Amtrak bus to Emeryville, took the Capitol Corridor train to Davis, and then had to walk back from the station up to north Davis, four hours later. I slept hard that night, but got up next day to watch Spurs batter Man United 3-0 away. A good weekend.

the start of another long hot summer

August 5, 2024Leave a comment

I’ve done quite a lot of drawing since I got back from England, despite this awful heatwave we have had. July was perhaps the hottest on record. I did a lot of at-home drawing, not around the house itself (that was so 2020) but more drawings of places in London that I can put on the wall, not in the sketchbook, and I’ll show you those later. I have been getting out to sketch where I can though. Usually when I return from London I’m in a don’t-wanna-draw-Davis type of mood, but I needed to finish the sketchbook as I only had three pages left, so I went downtown and got working on them. The one above, that as you all know is the Varsity Theatre, sketched while stood in the shadier north side of 2nd Street. I liked how the faded red parasols stood out against the shaded cinema. This was the day before July the 4th, which was the day of the UK General Election, when the Tories were booted out after 14 years of misrule, and now everyone’s being nice to each other over there (checks news; oh). It was also in the middle of the Euros football tournament in Germany, where England got to the final and (remembers the game; oh). Still not talking about it. I’m still not talking about the Euro 2020 final either. It was hot, 102 degrees and rising, and it got way hotter the week after, hitting 116 at one point, July had more triple digits than the whole cast of the Simpsons (I had to think about that one, and I still don’t think it’s right) (Simpsons cartoon characters have three fingers) (no I don’t count the thumbs). I like the Varsity, it was the first building in Davis to have air-conditioning, so the stories say. The first film I ever saw in here was An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary by Al Gore about global warming (eighteen years later Al, we are living the dream!) and the most recent film I saw there was the 25th anniversary re-release of The Phantom Menace (love it). I like going to the movies. I also like drawing this building, this is probably my 20th time drawing the Varsity, and I’d draw it again later that month, because I’m nothing if not unoriginal.

The next one I drew was on the morning of July 7, that was a Sunday and Lewis Hamilton had just won the British Grand Prix (what a race! His team-mate George Russell had to retire his car, but at least was able to come back and grab a win at the Belgian Grand Prix a few weeks – oh). This is on E Street (That’s “On E Street”, not “One Street”, it’s not a typo), at Orange Court which I’ve drawn before. Name a place in Davis I haven’t drawn before. It’s less of a mission to draw everything in Davis now and more a joke repeated over and over. Though it was still only mid-morning, boy it was hot. In the end I went to Mishka’s and got a nice cold smoothie (or was it an ice-cold smoothie? One of the two). Still, I was pleased with the sketch. I’ve never eaten at the Dumpling House, but I have eaten at Sophia’s more times than I remember. The long hot summer starts.

fillmore, fifteen years later

September 6, 2023Leave a comment

Back in San Francisco, this time on a short trip with the family to escape the atrocious Davis heat. We went to Japantown and had a look around, and then I had a little bit of time to myself heading back to the hotel, so I wandered up Fillmore, to an area I had not been in about fifteen years. I had a new sketchbook, a Stillman and Birn Alpha. Despite having used those extensively in the past, it has been a while, and so I’m still getting used to the different paper after a few years back in the Moleskines. On this day, I decided what I wanted to do was draw quickly in pencil with some light wash. There are some nice shops up that way; I popped into Paper Source, still a great little shop I used to love getting envelopes and things from. I found the Clay theatre; I remember that I had sketched this place once back in late July 2008, back when my son was just a wee baby. I recall kinda struggling with that sketch a bit. It seemed to be closed down now, but still there to sketch. I walked about a bit more, there were lots of nice looking cafes and shops around here, it’s quite upscale. I did find this little bookshop, Browser Books, which at first I thought was Bowser Books, that big dragon guy from the Super Mario world, with Thwompers coming down as you enter and highly pixelated fireballs moving slowly towards you, but thankfully it wasn’t like that. I had a good look around at some books, and then I drew the shop, again just quick pencil with a little bit of watercolour. I took the bus back to our hotel, and then before our evening dinner at Fog City Diner I found, at the hotel bar, Anchor Steam on tap. So I had my final ever Anchor Steam on that day. I’ve not found it since, and I’m probably not likely to. I like it up Fillmore though, I’ll come back this way, but maybe I’ll not leave it fifteen years this time.

Variety Hatters

April 15, 2021April 14, 2021Leave a comment

This is the Va… wait what? This is the [insert name here] Theatre on 2nd Street in Davis, which as you can see is currently going by The Theatre Known Formerly as Varsity. (Sorry, “Theater”). Regular listeners will recognize this building from the 500 or so times that I’ve drawn it before, but there was one big difference. Can you tell what it is yet? (Um, that sounded a bit like Rolf Harris, you might be a bit more careful with your catchphrases) That’s right, the ice cream shop is closed. No I’m kidding, it’s the historic “Varsity” sign which ahs been taken down temporarily to be cleaned, or fixed or something. The movie theatre itself has been closed during this pandemic you might have heard about, though coming soon, folks, coming soon we will have cinemas open again. I miss going to the pictures. Nobody says that now, “going to the pictures”, it sounds like something people said in the 1930s. “Oh you’re going to the pictures, eh grandad? Don’t forget your penny farthing and your flat cap!” Oh right because “movies” doesn’t sound old-fashioned at all, like you have to make a distinction between watching a film that moves and one that doesn’t? “The movies eh grandad, well see ya later gramps, I’m off to the talkies“. In Britain we generally say “film” rather than “movie” (though my nan, who was from Dublin, used to pronounce it “fill-um”) and “cinema” rather than “movie theater”, and “theatre” rather than “theater”, and that is the end of today’s unwanted transatlantic vocabulary lesson. But I miss going to the pictures, it was something I used to do a lot. I’d go and see a film / movie here in Davis at one of the three cinemas / movie theaters in town, and then go for a pint / not quite a pint* at a local bar / pub. (*They like a 16oz “pint” in America, as opposed to a 20oz pint in British pubs). And of course I would then sketch the bar/draw the pub. As for the Varsity, I wonder if they will “accidentally” rearrange the letters when they reinstall the sign, Fawlty Towers/Watery Fowls style? It could say “Travisy” maybe, or “Sir Vyta”, or “Sty Vira”, , or “Rayvist” (which sounds like a magazine for techno -clubgoers), or “Stray IV” (people might think it’s a sequel movie about a cat, from the streets, who makes it big against the odds, and in this one he has a catfight against a Russian cat – wait, I might have to sit on this idea, it is Hollywood gold), or “Artsy VI” (about six artists stuck in a room with only one brush, one pot of paint, and a lollypop) or “Try Visa” if they want credit card sponsorship, or “Try Avis” if they want sponsorship from car rental companies. Or maybe sponsorship from the Swedish crispbread sector and call it “Ryvitas”. Do it, Varsity people! This is our chance for some Flowery Twats style silliness.

varsity town

July 17, 2020July 16, 20201 Comment

This is a familiar building. It was the first sketch I drew downtown in three months, and I felt awkward out there drawing after such a long time. I still do to be honest; we have a sketchcrawl coming up this Saturday and I’m nervous about it, although I’ll be wearing a mask with one of my sketches on (see those here!). I was masked up standing on the corner wearing this, I could hear that screeching violin music coming from a block away making me wish I’d worn earplugs as well as a mask, but it was a comforting view to draw. The Varsity Theater always reminds me of first coming to Davis, working across the street at the bookstore, doing some of my earliest Davis drawings of this 1950s exterior. The last film I saw there was Jojo Rabbit, one of our favourites, and in fact after cycling home from sketching this, stopping off in the Co-op to get some cheese and wine on the way, we watched another of Taika Waititi’s earlier films, “Boy”, which was brilliant and crazy. We’ve been on a Taika movie marathon lately, not a bad way to spend time at home.

A few fall days in Portland

April 26, 20208 Comments

Last November after the Fall soccer season had ended I decided to take a weekend away in Portland, Oregon. It’s going to be a while before we can just take weekends away again huh. I’ve come up to Portland a few times in the past, usually November time, for a short break away from Davis, and I have good sketching friends up there going back to the first Urban Sketching Symposium in 2010. There is good food, drinks, bookshops, old buildings, falling leaves, comics, and generally lots to do. I stayed right downtown this time around, a good choice although I discovered that the food carts around 10th and Alder that I like to go to have been moved on due to construction of a huge building on that site. Boo! The nice folks at Finnegans Toys told me where to find some good food carts nearby though. I always like to get a nice hot Thai meal. Anyway, this is the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, which is a good thing to draw in Portland because it says “Portland” on it, and you can put it on the top of your blog post when writing about it six months later. My sketchblog is becoming like Marvel Unlimited, everything is added half a year after it first came out.

I like the autumnal colours. Or the Fall colors if you will. I was maybe a week or two late for the brightest blooms, and many of the trees were leafless already, but a few patches of autumn brilliance were still there. Grey skies, short afternoons, and brilliantly coloured leaves give me a cozy feeling inside, like 4:45pm on a late October Saturday afternoon in England as the football results come in (that is by the way the best time of day ever). Above is the Portland Public Library. I came in for a while, I like libraries (again, going back to those grey Saturday afternoons when I was a teenager and would go to libraries across north west London looking for books about languages and places far away). Around the corner, behind the Arlene Schnitzer, there are several blocks of park leading down to Portland State University, lots of colourful foliage still blazing. I drew the Shemanski fountain (below).

On the Saturday morning, I joined the Portland Urban Sketchers for a sketchcrawl at the Hawthorne Asylum Food Carts. We met at a cafe, there was a pretty good sized group, and before sketching everyone went round in a circle and introduced themselves, saying who their favourite artist was. There were lots of artists I had not heard of. When it was my turn, I said my favourite artist was Gerard Michel (he is too). We walked over to the Hawthorne Asylum; most of the carts were closed as it was early, but by lunchtime when we were getting done they opened up, and I had a pretty amazing egg/mushroom/cheese thing in a waffle, even thinking about it makes me hungry.

Here’s what I drew. I also sketched sketchers (below!) and had some very nice conversations. We passed around our sketchbooks and wow, there were some incredible sketches, very inspiring. That’s why we do these sketchcrawls, we come away with ideas after seeing how other people produce such great pieces of artwork.

I was a bit ‘meh’ about my own work that day, I felt a bit mechanical and rusty, but I did also draw something mechanical and rusty (below) which I did like. I didn’t colour it in though. I’m not sure what it was but I suppose it must be a robot from the future.

After lunch, I walked up Hawthorne (a long old road) and reached my final destination, the Bagdad Theater. This is a McMenamin’s-run place, a restaurant and cinema, and I was coming to watch Jojo Rabbit (what a great film, one of my favourites and I’m so glad I saw it somewhere so incredibly cool). Anyway, my iPad was still very new, and I had not used it much to draw with in ProCreate, not outside anyway. So I had an hour and a half before the film started, time enough to finally draw this building I have wanted to sketch for almost a decade. The iPad was a fun way to sketch, and I learned a thing or two that day. Firstly, layers are really helpful! Secondly, white lettering on dark backgrounds is so much easier this way. Third, I can do the sky separately and using very different brushes to make it look more like actual cloud. I also learned that a bit more experimentation in how to colour will be very helpful. I very much enjoyed this sketch.

I didn’t enjoy the street musician much though. Some young lad with an electric guitar and a microphone and an amplifier was stood right outside the Bagdad’s doors playing and singing. It was very loud. It wasn’t very good. I’m not being judgy of his musical talents, it may be better than my drawing with an iPad, but only one of those is being blared out around the street. A staff member from the Bagdad came out and asked him not to play there, as he was disturbing people inside. Naturally he got very lary and gave it all that, getting in the staff member’s face in that way that indignant young males of the species do when a female politely asks them to maybe not be so loud outside their business which is not only a restaurant but also a cinema. She went back inside and he continued for a bit longer. He was very loud, and used the microphone to tell the rest of Oregon that her request was illegal and that he had a right to play his music loud right there. Right or wrong, he must have realized he was perhaps being a bit of a dick because after ten minutes or so of occasionally singing – mostly vocalized ranting about the injustice, and reminding everyone that this is America – he decided to move along the street, to a spot about six feet away from me, and then proceeded to yell over the microphone about people who only live in Portland because they saw Portlandia, and the woman who told him not to play outside the Bagdad was breaking the law, and then a few conspiracy theories Thrown in there, and then onto how we’re all sinners and Christ was coming to reckon us or something, and guys this felt like a long bloody drawing. How I didn’t just turn around and pull the plug on the amp I don’t know. But eventually he packed up and sodded off, and I finished my sketch and went to see Jojo Rabbit. The movie was great, was the theatre was amazing, historic and grand, and you can grab a beer and order food and actually have it delivered to your seat while you watch the film! I had pizza.

I also drew several bar sketches in Portland but maybe I will compile those together in a different post.

why the panoramic face?

June 1, 20165 Comments

Long weekend here in America, which meant longer drawings. Ok, a horse with an injured tail walks into a bar. “Why the long weekend?” asks the barman. No, no it was a bank, he walks into a bank on a holiday. “Why the long weekend?” asks the bank clerk. Maybe not an injured tail, maybe his tail was all overgrown rendering it useless for whatever tails usually are for, hence not being as strong as his front end, for example. So a horse with a less strong, very hairy tail walks into a bank, while on holiday, and the bank clerk says to him, he goes “why the long weekend?” Maybe there’s nothing wrong with his tail at all, maybe he had just been in a race, and had originally been one of the front-runners (that’s a horse racing term) but towards the end he had started to tail off (that’s another one), finally just ambling over the line, not even trotting, just going really slowly, like he had no energy, maybe he was already thinking of his holidays on the beach, before finally he walked into a bar, I mean a bank, and the bank clerk who had been watching the race on the TV, he asks him “why the long, weak end?”. Or maybe, maybe the horse is Bryan Singer and the race is X-Men Apocalypse and I am the bank clerk and maybe I asked exactly that question after seeing that very movie, which I in fact did, not long after finishing this drawing that you see here. (You see I was going somewhere with all of that, I wasn’t just ambling on, or trotting). This is Second Street (though in my opinion, it’s first), Davis. I sat on the corner of F Street (which in my opinion is more of a B+) and drew this familiar scene. In the middle there, the Varsity Theatre, historic centre of the Davis downtown, right opposite the Avid Reader bookstore. I sat drawing for a couple of hours, drawing furiosuly with my uni-ball signo UM-151 brown-black pen, and doing some of the water color on site and the rest at home; pizza dinner awaited me. And then, X-Men. While it was not a bad film (it was not quite Batman v Superman level of “what-the”, there was no “Clark Kent gets into the bath with his shoes on” moment), and it had some good moments and good call-backs to the previous films, it really suffered in its storytelling. I know that sounds ironic given that I spent five minutes trying to tell a joke about a horse at the start of this post but my budget is a little lower. I just felt the narrative started to fall apart somewhere around the middle of the film. It doesn’t stand up to the other X-films. A few good bits – well X-Men The Last Stand had good bits too but overall gets a terrible rap (deservedly if we’re honest). Even “X-Men Origins – Wolverine” was a good idea, though Logan’s (spoiler alert) cameo in this is (spoiler spoiler spoiler) totally unnecessary, inconsequential and utterly shoehorned into the film (you might say it spoiled the movie). Still, Magneto saying “Who the fuck are you?” to Apocalypse was fun. Everyone knows I love Magneto. As I say though, the ending of the film was long and weak, and since it could be said (not by me, but I’m about to say it so I suppose it is by me) that Fox is flogging a dead horse, then that brings us nicely back to “Why did the chicken cross the road? To stop the rights going back to Marvel.”

Hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend.

sketchcrawl 44: uc berkeley

July 20, 2014July 20, 201414 Comments

Last week was the event of the 44th Worldwide Sketchcrawl. Regular listeners will know I have been on many of the worldwide sketchcrawls over the years in many cities. Last Saturday morning I woke up, and decided: I’m going to Berkeley. The sketchcrawl was on the UC Berkeley campus, which for me was significant as one of the first sketchcrawls I ever took part in (it was in fact the second, the first being in Davis at the end of 2005, but I did not do much that day) was at UC Berkeley, in March 2007. On that day I sketched a lot but kept to myself, too shy to talk to other sketchers. I’m not so shy these days, but I did sketch solo, though it was great to meet and talk to other sketchers. I also remembered just how much I love being in Berkeley. The theatre above, the Calfiornia, I sketched in the morning before meeting the sketchcrawlers. I remember one of the last times I was in Berkeley saying, I must sketch that next time. That was five years ago, so I got there eventually.

Above, my first sketch of the day. It took about an hour and a half, and I had intended to colour it but I haven’t yet. All of the colouring in I did was done later, because I didn’t bring a little jar of water for my paints (of my two small jars, one was lost and one broke, I haven’t found a good small one since). I don’t really do the waterbrush thing any more. So, it gives me more time for penwork, diving into the details. This is South Hall. Davis has one of those too, but it’s not as nice as this. This radiates grandeur.

This is a building I have sketched before, Bowles Hall further up the hill. It looks like an old English country public school (Americans note, ‘public’ school in England is actually what we call private schools; our public schools are called ‘state’ schools. Mine was always in a state, anyway). I sketched it in 2007 on a much sunnier day (sunnier, but through the fog I actually still got burnt last week, stupid deceptive weak bay fog). This time there was construction going on in front of it, so I imagine this view will look different next time.

I went down the hill to the southern edge of campus, to the corner of Bancroft and College. This building is called the Free House I think. I was enticed by the colourful newspaper boxes which again, I had to colour in later, but spent a good deal of time (just over an hour) sketching all the little marks on each one. By the time I was done it was time to reconvene with the other sketchers, back at Sather Tower. There was quite a gathering. Here I am with a few fellow sketchers (left to right) Jana Bouc (one of the SF Bay Area Urban Sketchers and whose own sketchblog Jana’s Journal in fact inspired me to start this very blog you are reading); Pete (that’s me there with uncoloured version of sketch above); Gary Amaro (also an original Urban Sketchers correspondent, see his work online at garyamaro.blogspot.com); and Flory Nye-Clement, a sketcher from Benicia (who by the way is organizing a sketchcrawl at the Benicia Capitol State Historic Park on August 23, starts at 11am). Results of the sketchcrawl in Berkeley are being posted on the forum at sketchcrawl.com.

I’ve been quite a hermit lately in terms of sketching, and I must say it was very nice to get back out there and meet fellow sketchers again. It’s always good to rub shoulders with other people on this planet who ‘get it’. Hey, there are a lot of us urban sketchers out there!

you know that i gotta say time’s slippin’ away

March 26, 2013Leave a comment

Another view of the Varsity, but this time from the side. It’s a bigger one than usual at 8″x10″ (on Canson illustration board – lovely for the pen, bit too smooth for a nice wash) sketched while sat on one of the benches outside. I’ve not drawn from this angle before, and yeah it was a fun angle, but I also realized that the bit of the Varsity that I like drawing the least – the underside of the roof – takes up most of the drawing. I’ve always hated that bit, with it’s peculiar angles, uneven shading and lights I can never quite line up. You don’t want these buildings to be easy now do you. Oh Varsity, I’ve been sketching you for years now, I feel like I am doomed to draw you forever, but you’re a great building, and in many ways I’ve only started. I did take a pretty long time drawing this though, longer than I’d have liked (funny how bigger drawings take longer). Hard to tire of this iconic structure. All it needs though is a holographic shark to come out and try to swallow me up.