After a very busy first few days of 2013 (with busier days to come), I decided to pop downtown to check out some comics at Bizarro World and pop into De Vere’s on E Street for a couple of beers. It was a busy night as usual, but I settled into a comfy couch in the little area with all the books and games and read Frank Miller’s ‘Batman: Year One’, which I had heard was good (and it really is). We’re very Batman in our family right now, my living room floor is a scattered mess of Batman toys. Inspired, I did a bit of pub sketching too – I have previously only sketched the bar area so wanted to catch a bit more of this pub. Going for some depth in this one, tricky angle but I like how it turned out. It was pretty busy – there was a group of about ten young folks sat around a tiny table to my left playing some sort of game with what looked like tarot cards. Other similarly-sized groups were playing Jenga or other pub games. I did try a bit of people sketching, before getting back to my Batman.
Tag: people
the way we used to be
While I’ll be posting the remaining set of NaNoDrawMo pieces altogether shortly, I thought you might like to see #50, the final one. It’s a self-portrait, although admittedly a few years have passed between the photo being taken and the drawing being drawn. I have had a haircut since then, and wear glasses, and I’m sure those dungarees don’t fit any more. No this is me aged about three, demonstrating why I keep my hair short (so as not to look like a diagram of the Atlantic Summer Hurricane Season). Hair is a bright red, eyes a bright blue, cheeks a bright pink; nothing’s changed there! I’m still as sweet. I still remember this face though, having to stand on the chair to see it in the mirror. This face makes me think of the Mr.Men theme music, by far my favourite show when I was a little one. Drawn in uniball signo um-151 pen (two sizes, 0.28 and 0.38) in a big Moleskine.
yo-ho-ho!
Yarrr! Or is it Arrr? I never did learn to speak Pirate. I did get a big dose of Pirate while in Portland though, and what fun it was. On the Sunday evening I attended ‘Dr.Sketchy’s Anti-Art School‘, the Portland branch of the national Dr.Sketchy’s thing that is popping up all over the country. I had never been to a figure drawing meet before, and this one was a lot of fun, featuring Portland’s ‘premier pirate group’, PDXYAR. It was so much fun! The pirates really were very elaborately dressed (and just as elaborately undressed) and stood in a variety of poses lasting between two and twenty minutes each – not an easy task, but one they performed incredibly well.
As I say, I had a blast. It was so liberating to mess around with quick figure drawing, just focusing on the gestures as much as possible. The pirates had so much personality, and a decent array of weaponry.
I tried a few sketches on the pad of grey paper I had picked up at Muse art shop on Hawthorne. It was different; I think it might be more effective for pastel work, but I’m having fun with it.
And I even won a prize! A PDXYAR beerglass (with a beer in it) and rum shot glass. I shall treasure them. I guess I’ll have to get me some rum. I chatted to some of the pirates afterwards, a great bunch of lads and lasses (one was even from north Davis!), and I became convinced I wanted to be a pirate too. I went home to the hotel with my head lost in thoughts of sailing the seven seas, parrots on my shoulder, avasting ye landlubbers, cutlasses swashing buckles and so on. I do have a pirate-like name, Captain Scully, yar. Well ok, maybe I won’t make it as a pirate, but next time I’m in Portland I’ll certainly try to sketch them again, I dare say with a bottle of rum. Yar!!!
You can check out PDXYAR at http://pdxyar.org. Yar! If you’re in Portland, try to catch them at the Swashbuckler’s Ball on November 17. Yar! You can see other drawings done by my fellow sketchers that night at the Dr.Sketchy’s/PDXYAR Facebook event page.
meet the portlands
One of the reasons I wanted to go back to Portland was to sketch with the Portland Urban Sketchers, partly because I have at least met several of them before, and partly because I love their work on USk PDX. We met at Floyd’s Coffee in Old Town, and I got a breakfast burrito and sketched People. I traditionally only sketch People when those People are also Sketchers – it’s like it’s ‘alright’. Still, I need the practise, and I’ve been doing a lot more of it lately. Anyway, it was good to catch up with some familiar faces – Linda, Alanna, Kalina, Vicky, Pascale – and meet some more, such as Greg (who I actually drew in Lisbon but never met), Deb, Andrea, Marta, Marco, Cassie, Angelika, Gary (hope I’ve not missed anyone out!) – and of course, to watch them sketch. One thing I know about myself is that I don’t tend to sketch quite as much when I am talking, but when I meet other sketchers I do love to talk. About pens, mostly. And Magneto.
After Floyd’s I took a brief interlude to sketch in the rain (see the sketch at the bottom, drawn by Skidmore Fountain in very wet conditions), before rejoining the group at Old Town Pizza, an interesting old place full of things to look at at draw. It was a fun afternoon with lots of conversation, and I am glad to have gone. A shame we couldn’t have all sketched outside, but the rain really was pouring, and it was nice and friendly inside.
Here’s to the next time!
widescreen e-street
On Sunday, about seventeen sketchers of Davis (and surrounding areas) got together again for another urban sketch crawl, this time downtown at the E St Plaza. I must admit I didn’t do quite so much ‘crawling’ this time, and spent most of the day in the same spot, sketching people in the morning (see below) and spending over a couple of hours in the afternoon stood up drawing the above panorama, a two-page spread in my Moleskine. You can see a larger version on my Flickr site, and below is a detail. This was drawn in uni-ball signo um-151 pen.
I wanted to sketch the sketchers, needing to practise some people drawing. Amazingly I was able to get a quick sketch of my four-year-old son, when he stood still for a few minutes to draw a rocketship (mostly it was all about the sprinting about). On the right is Syd, another of the sketchers.
And here are two more sketchers, Emily and Scott.
Next Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl will be in November, date to be announced soon…
having a mayor
Ken and Boris (and some other people) are the choices today for the London Mayoral election. I’m for Ken, personally, not ‘he of the unbrushable hair’. I wish I were there to vote, but I missed the first one in 2000 (living in Belgium), missed the second one in 2004 (off visiting France), missed 2008 (moved to California), and obviously I’ll miss this one too. But I still care who runs my home city! Boris could at least offer to shave his head if he wins. So to mark election day I drew them in my Stillman and Birn book in a pilot hi-tec C, a quick lunchtime sketch when I couldn’t leave the office due to the high pollen count. Ok here’s the inevitable pun, I’m hoping Boris gets a low polling count and has to leave office.
know what i mean harry?
Do you know the difference between Basil Fawlty and Victor Meldrew? There is a broad range of character defects between the two but I’ve narrowed it down to this – things tend to happen to Victor, without them necessarily being his fault, whereas Basil’s woes are almost always entirely his fault and pretty preventable. As the episode of Fawlty Towers goes on you see him diggin further and further into a hole which it is almost impossible to get out of, and you can just tell is going to get worse. So what about Harry Redknapp?
I won’t go into the story, footy fans know it, non-footy fans have turned off already. Harry has been great for Spurs and may continue to be but this England job thing hangs over the whole club. Sure the FA are waiting on their decision – but I think it might make things a lot easier if Harry actually came out and said if he will or will not take it if offered. Spurs’s season since this whole thing came up has resembled an episode of Fawlty Towers (at least, I can’t get the image of Basil/Harry falling off the ladder trying to ‘look at girl in room’, that being the champions league), and wondering whether this business-end-of-season-collapse is Harry’s fault for not committing or the FA’s fault for not asking. That is, is Harry a Basil or a Victor?
Hmm. If someone had said to me in mid February when we were nine points clear of Arsenal that two months later we’d be six points behind them and sinking, I’d have said “I don’t believe it!” Now I keep imaging Harry picking up a puppy instead of a phone.
king kenny
This is Kenny Dalglish, current manager of Liverpool FC and unquestionably an Anfield legend. He returned last year as manager almost two decades after leaving the post, two decades in which Liverpool had not won the league title, 1990 being their last one (and that one being under Mr.Dalglish). His tenure at the second half of the 1980s saw perhaps their best ever team, which if English clubs had been allowed to play in Europe surely would have had more big trophies to sit on. First (and only) Liverpool manager to win the fabled ‘Double’ back when it was a rare and coveted acheivement (these days we barely bat an eyelid at a double, Chelsea won it two years ago, remember?), and that was as player-manager. He was also arguably Liverpool’s greatest ever player. Even as a Spurs fan, I’ve always liked King Kenny. These days he presides over a team unable to break back into the top party, despite new US owners, and, because success must be instant these days, is therefore under pressure to be, well, Liverpool famously do not sack their managers. They always ‘leave by mutual consent’.
This weekend sees the FA Cup semi-finals in England, and while my main focus will be Sunday’s all-London tie (Spurs -Chelsea! Come on Tottenham!), Saturday will see a Merseyside derby, Liverpool vs Everton, on the eve of the 21st anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. It’s even more poignant that Kenny, manager on that tragic day, is leading this current team into that match. Anyway, this is King Kenny, a true football hero.
I drew this in my Stillman and Birn gamma book with micron pen and watercolour. To the non-footy followers of this blog, who may not have read this far anyway, coming soon will be sketches from my new house (been a bit lazy on the scanning front…)
worldwide sketchcrawl #34, let’s draw davis
On Friday there was a massive rainstorm in northern California, with flood warnings and downpours so loud I could barely sleep. “But Saturday is the sketchcrawl!” I sighed. Not to worry – it all magically stopped, and the sun came out and the world warmed up and what a lovely day for sketching. It wasn’t a massive group, but it was a fun day sketching by the farmer’s market. I always sketch more slowly on these events, because I spend a lot more time talking while sketching, but that’s one of the fun things about sketchcrawls, meeting and sharing experiences with other like-minded folk. I started by sketching the other sketchers:
Above left is Marlene Lee, sketchcrawl regular and an inspirational artist; right is Jennica Forrest, who I met on the last sketchcrawl at the community park.
Above left is Leah Jin, who I know from UC Davis, and above right is Morning Waters, an artist from Fair Oaks, California on her first Davis sketchcrawl. Nice to meet you!
This was the day of the 34th Worldwide Sketchcrawl, and people in cities the world over were out braving the cold to sketch their cities, and be part of a global sketching community. Check out their results on the sketchcrawl forum...
More Davis sketches to come!
what a catalyst you turned out to be
After the Pepper-Spray, the reaction. UC Davis students, faculty, alumni, staff, all have discussed and debated last Friday’s events, while Chancellor Katehi, who has been called on to resign, has publicly apologized and started a series of dialogues with students, something they feel they did not have before. The camp is back, bigger and much more organized, and peaceful, civil protest is the order of the day. No signs of police around, though there were quite a few Facilities trucks casually dotted about campus. On Tuesday lunchtime’s General Assembly, which preceded a town-hall event in the evening, students debated the role of the chancellor among many other things, as they tried to bring the focus back to what they were originally protesting, the recent large hikes in tuition. I recorded this important event for UC Davis in my sketchbook. A photo of me sketching even emerged later on Twitter:
(photo courtesy of Kirby Araullo)
I couldn’t resist sketching more, as the Occupy UC Davis camp grew, so I came back today (Wednesday). As my sketchbook came out, the Chancellor arrived, bringing food to the protesters. I took the opportunity for some people sketching, and while she spoke to a small group of students, along with a set of news reporters, I sketched her. She got to see it, and I think she liked it (she did comment on the nose though) but she was pretty busy so I didn’t have her sign it. As I sketched, another student questioned her on a range of issues, so I sketched her too (she’s below left; Chancellor Katehi is below right).
One news reporter who I recognized from local TV, Chris riva, commented too on my Katehi drawing, so I asked if I could sketch him. I’m not sure he liked the sketch, but I had him sign his name on it. I’m glad I did; I thought he was Dale Schornack! (another local TV news guy) Whoops. He’s below left. Below right is someone who just happened to be there, Anna-Lisa from Chronicle Books. She saw me sketching in my Moleskines and, since she works for those who distribute Moleys, gave me the brand new Moleskine pen! I’m yet to use it (it’s apparently designed specifically for Moleskine paper, but doesn’t take a watercolour wash).
There were lots of people from outside UC Davis who had come along to see events take shape, and offer support and solidarity to the students. The protests are gathering in strength, and much-needed dialogue is finally taking place. I hope it all stays peaceful and productive.
petescully 