bricks, guns, candy (and dollar bills on the ceiling of a bar)

July 11, 2011July 11, 20113 Comments

More from Jacksonville, southern Oregon. I sat beneath a shady tree and sketched the historic city hall. It is very peaceful around there, the chirruping of birds only broken by the families of visitors humming by on Segways. I sketched this with the uni-ball signo pen, and as I was about to add a tentative wash the pen said no, I will run. You can but but I can’t hide it. So it stayed black and white. You can colour it in if you like (just don’t use watercolours or sharpies on your monitor).

I had to draw this antique gun exchange. With all of the antlers and horns on the front of the shop, I wondered if it was really supposed to be a gnu exchange. You homo sapiens and your gnus. I also sketched a rather interesting candy dispenser, with glamourous looking shiny beads on it, in the window of a clothes store called La Boheme. It seems to fit nicely with the clothes I sketched before.

When I came here on the same day last year, I finished up the afternoon by sketching in the JVille Tavern, accompanied by a nice local beer (Ashland Amber Caldera). I setched this bar from the other side last year. This one was sketched quickly in my small red moley, and spattered with some paint afterwards to add an interesting effect. Those things inexplicably pinned to the ceiling are dollar bills, not butterflies.

hit the road, jack

July 10, 2011July 10, 20111 Comment

I had my bike with me in Oregon, so I cycled to Jacksonville. I went there on the same Sunday last year, and was retyrning to sketch the things I’d missed last time. It didn’t take long to cycle there, and it was a beautiful journey, much of the road running alongside a creek, with rolling hills, vinyards and even a snaowy peak popping out aboce it all. I had to stop at one point to sketch the view above, overlooking Jacksonville. As sson as I entered town, the sketching stool came out and I drew the First Presbyterian Church, a lovely wooden building which dates back to 1881.

And a fire hydrant; why not. More to come…

for now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring

July 9, 20111 Comment

Ashland in southern Oregon is famous (very famous) for it’s popular (very popular) Shakespeare Festival. This town is Bard friendly, and the British theme pops up here and there, such as in this pub, the Black Sheep. Set up a steep wide staircase off the main drag, this big pub serves fish and chips, beans on toast, and other such grub. They also have an old red phonebox; I think there are more red phoneboxes in American pubs than on English streets these days.

Ashland is a nice place. It was already a hot day and we went for a stroll through Lithia Park. While my son played at the playground, I sat by the heavy gushing creek and drew the sketch below. There were notices all around that on one morning the week before, a cougar had been spotted in that very park. That’s a mountain lion, not the other type of cougar. It gave tips on what to do if you see one – don’t turn around, make yourself look big, try not to make it laugh etc – and it reminded me that there are a lot of wild animals about in America. We’ve had mountain lion sightings in West Sacramento. Last week news reports told of coyotes in north Davis killing a cat. I saw a great big centipede in the bath once. Gotta be careful. Give me British beans on toast any day, much safer…

but come ye back, when summer’s in the meadow

July 6, 2011July 6, 20111 Comment

It’s that time of year, and over the July 4th weekend we went to southern Oregon to visit family. It’s a long drive up; northern California really is quite vast, though Medford is only just over the border. The state of Jefferson, some people call it, a state that never was. It’s nice up there, lots of hills and mountains in the backdrop, and a very different feel to Davis. I sketched above while my son and his great-grandma fed the kitties, and the sun went slowly down beyond the trees. Crickets chirped, a couple of horses brayed, there was a dog barking in the distance. In addition to this there were police sirens and the sound of a speeding motorbike but that just added to the rural feel. I’ve got quite a few sketches to scan and post so I’ll get around to them at some point.

mountain high

September 4, 2010September 4, 20102 Comments

It seems like there’s no staying away from Oregon this summer. We drove the long, long drive north, my third trip to the state in a little over six weeks.

We were in Roseburg this time. It’s quite mountainous there, and we were visiting a house at the top of a mountain. Beautiful countryside for sure, probably got bears and porcupines and mountain lions and all sorts of wild animals, oh my.

I took advantage of the incredible views to do some very un-urban sketching. Living in Davis, I don’t normally see inclines, let alone sketch from mountainsides.

This is historical logging country. We saw so many big trucks packed up with huge tree trunks. And there are a lot of trees. Douglas County where we were was named after Scottish botanist David Douglas, after whom the Douglas fir is named. He brought back a load of North American tree species to Britain. Look at me learnin’ ’bout trees.

preachin’ to the converted

July 12, 2010July 12, 20101 Comment

More from Jacksonville. There are so many interesting buildings to draw here, it’s impossible to know which one to choose. When in doubt, draw the church. Actually this was not as easy a choice as you might think, as there are several old wooden churches from the mid 1800s to choose from. I sat in the shade opposite the very classic Americana structure of St.Andrew’s church, originally built as the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1856. Picket fence, white wood, pointed steeple, all you need is a well-dressed bald guy with a pitchfork. How could I resist?

I started drawing another church just around the corner, another one from the 1850s but this time for the Catholics, but only got a third of the way through before giving up – I had no shade that time. Sitting in shade on sunny southern Oregonian days is a good idea. It looked just like the one above, but had some windows, and a telegraph pole next to it. Just imagine it, I’m probably not going to scan it.

Shade is good, but shade with fans and a bar and a cold beer is even better. That’s how I ended the July 4th sketching trip to Jacksonville, in the J’Ville Tavern. They have pool tables in there; I like the sound of pool, the kinetic crack of a break, the soft clunk of white potting black. I don’t hear it very often any more! They also have stuffed animal heads, lots of them in fact, and what looked like hundreds of dollar bills attached to the ceiling, for some reason (I didn’t ask; I prefer the mystery). Locals were very friendly though, and told me tales of historic Jacksonville. I guessed they tell them tales to all strangers.

drawn on the fourth of july

July 10, 20102 Comments

On a warm July 4 morning I was dropped off in Jacksonville – sorry, historic Jacksonville – just outside Medford, in the hills of southern Oregon. It’s a gorgeous little town, like the Old West, and Old Glory was draped up and down the main thoroughfare, California Street. And the cyclists! It was like the tour de France, so many cyclists, many of whom were on tandems – there was even a whole family of five on a single tandem bike, the tallest at the front, the shortest at the back (seems like it would make more sense the other way round). They received applause and cheers as they cycled south. There was a small British themed store, run by a woman from Yorkshire, and I bought a package of Yorkshire pudding mix (I love them!), which came with the warning that if I tried to make the puddings at any sort of significant altitude, they wouldn’t rise. I think I’ll be ok making them in Davis.

I opened up a brand new watercolour moleskine (number 6), drew a stretch of the main street, as cyclists and daytrippers whizzed and waddled by respectively. One passing woman stopped, asked me to remove my earphones, and told me that I should put my drawing on a t-shirt, Jacksonville needs that, “because you’ve probably noticed but there aren’t many t-shirts with drawings of Jacksonville on them.” I hadn’t noticed, no, I said, and put my earphones back on.

rural sketching

July 7, 2010July 7, 2010Leave a comment

It’s good to get away, for a few days. We (and family) drove up I-5 to Medford, Oregon, for the fourth of July weekend. There were ponies there, in the field opposite my wife’s grandma’s house. I’ve never drawn ponies, or any sort of horse before, so I grabbed a bic and quickly sketched them while they munched on the grass.

The long road up to southern Oregon takes you right up the hot, flat Central Valley, paasing places such as Redding (where Merle Haggard lives), Weed (where they sell a lot of tacky souvenirs based on the fact they have an amusing name), and the magnificent and perfect Mount Shasta. If you said to someone, draw a mountain, just a typical moutain, from imagination, it would look just like Shasta. It looms lonely on the horizon, still crowned with snow, and then you pass its feet from across a broad meadow, and even though it’s right in front of you it still it doesn’t look quite real. I’ve never really seen a mountain like it, not even Mont St.Victoire in Aix. I drew it on the way home, quickly from the window of the moving car.

yard birds

July 8, 2009July 8, 20092 Comments

More from Medford, Oregon. Amid a large reunion of family, on a very hot Independence Day (America is independent, you know, not part of a chain). I sat outside and listened to the sound of the kids playing, and drew under the shade of a big tree and two cars. A nice way to spend an early afternoon. There are lots of interesting things to draw at my wife’s grandma’s house, from the things in the front yard (my son just loved that wooden duck! I liked the little owl), to the birdhouse/doll’s house (um, I forgot to ask which!) sketched below. I did that in the evening while babysitting.

It was a fun weekend. Lots of nice people. Oregon is cool, different from California; you can’t pump your own gas there, for example, and there’s no sales tax. I was also away from the internet, and the news, for several days. Apart from the events at Wimbledon (poor Murray! and then poor Roddick!), I had no idea about the outside world, and that was nice. I totally missed that Palin woman’s resignation (she seems to think there’s no big deal, resigning as governor of a state midway through the first term, ah people do it all the time – um, no they don’t, not if they wish to remain credible) (hang on, did I say ‘remain’ credible? Palin?). I also missed Michael Owen’s apparent transfer to Manchester United, which could turn out to be the deal of the summer. (Or it could of course turn out that the boy Owen really has lost it, as his Newcastle form suggested, and that Sir Alex will just be putting lipstick on a pig… er…)

oregon trail

July 7, 2009July 7, 2009Leave a comment

We spent the long Independence Day weekend in Medford, Oregon, attending a large family reunion. I’ve been once before – it’s a long old journey through the northern reaches of California, up the valley and through the mountains, and Medford really does feel a world away from Davis. The heat came with us though, regularly hitting the low 100s. Right on the rural edge of town, horses, chickens, rabbits, and the sound of roosters crowing. I perched in the shade outside my wife’s grandma’s house, and drew my wife’s uncle’s Corvette, which had travelled even further than we had (in considerably more style), but stopped while adding the colours, just as a truckload of cousins-in-law pulled up. I think the ‘missing’ colours actually give the sketch a bit more strength; it is so easy to overdo it.

I did manage a drawing on the drive up too. I sat in the backseat for a little while to feed and generally entertain my 17-month old son, but he fell asleep, so I attempted some in-car sketching, which is pretty hard. You can just about see the mountainous forests whizzing by there.