the rest is April

June 24, 2025June 24, 20253 Comments

As I’ve said, I am a bit behind in my posting, though not in my sketching, and it’s another one of those times when I have a backlog of regular day-to-day sketches of Davis to post but not really a lot of stories to tell about them. I am sketching more than ever it seems, as I do when I need to think about something else; yay for anxious and uncertain and turbulent political times, I guess. I’m hiding in my sketchbook. Anyway, as a way to catch up, here are a bunch of sketches from around Davis in April. It’s already past mid-June in the real world, and if April thought things were bad, wait until they get to June. At least Spurs have won a trophy and sacked a manager in that time. Ok, let’s dive in. The building above is on 5th Street, and the bench outside commemorates where young Officer Natalie Corona was tragically shot several years ago, right here. I’ll always think of that awful thing happening when I pass by here. I stood over the street in the shade of a tree to sketch, headphones on. A woman passing by on the other side called over to ask something, I couldn’t hear over the traffic and whatever podcast I was listening to, football or history or something. Turned out she was asking where the train station was. I couldn’t tell why she had to yell it across a busy street and not ask one of the people passing by on that side, but I pointed in the vague direction of where the station is and put my headphones back on.

Here’s another from downtown, this time on the corner of 2nd and D, across from the First National Bank. I don’t know if this was the actual first national bank, seems like a wild claim to me, but I was drawn to the spots of yellow. These are days when I just need to draw something. I get out, eat lunch, have to draw. Helps me focus. I always go on about why I draw. I brew it down to the simple because I like drawing, which is good enough for me and good enough for you. Do I always like what I’m drawing? Probably not, but I like the act of drawing. I am up early right now and going for a run soon. It will probably be slow and not very interesting, running around the same circuit of streets and paths as always, nothing new to see, and not breaking any records or even really pushing myself, but its exercise, and when I do the interesting runs I need to have done the boring ones. It’s all exercising the muscles, practicing pacing myself, seeing what I can do in a certain amount of time and being alright with it. I track my running, but I track my drawing too. I don’t really push myself too hard to do anything out of the ordinary and I probably should, but while I’m thinking about doing that I’ll just go out drawing the world and see what happens. I tend to end up drawing places I’ve drawn many times before, but I’ve been living in this small town for 20 years now so I’m really just tracking the changes. I’m sure Cezanne felt like that as he was sitting under a tree in Aix-en-Provence painting Mont St. Victoire yet again. But I never drew that corner before, so it’s a new place ticked off the list.

Here is another sketch of the newly reimagined G Street, a couple of the big useful yellow chairs that have been placed in random spots on the side of the now pedestrianized road. I have never sat in one of these types of big chair other than for one of those photos where you go “look at me, I’m really small” and pull a face. It was warm out while I sketched this and being mid-April my nose was probably running, but I can’t remember all the details now. I am not really in love with G Street. It may be a while before it figures out what it really is. My favourite place on G Street was a couple of blocks up, the Regal Cinema with the stadium seating, but it has closed now because cinemas are closing. We still have the Regal on F Street which is slightly bigger but I don’t like as much, and we have the Varsity on 2nd which is great for the arthouse and quirky movies, you probably won’t see ‘Quick Angry Car Chase IX’ there (or whatever action films are called), though we have seen some really good films there. But I miss the other cinema on G Street because it was a couple of blocks less to cycle from my house, and one of my favourite restaurants Thai Nakorn was next door, also now closed.

On to more a familiar street for me, E Street, and Bizarro World Comics next to Chipotle. I stood in the little alley next to the Bull’n’Mouth (formerly De Vere’s; I feel I have to keep saying that in the same way we would say “X, formerly Twitter” but it’s not really a comparable comparison at all, and I don’t say “Bizarro World, formerly Bogey’s Books”, but that’s because Bizarro World used to be on 5th Street and moved here after Bogey’s went bye-bye). Anyway, that’s where I stood. I have bought comics from them over the years, though not recently since I’m not reading as many now. I have never rented movies from them, but if that’s still a thing, good on them. We were talking about that last night, how when I first moved to Davis we would rent movies and shows on DVD or even Video from Blockbuster (which was where Panera is now; I stopped calling it “Panera, formerly Blockbuster” right away because Panera sells big sandwiches that you don’t have to return nor rewind). Then Netflix came along and it was brilliant, getting our DVDs in the mail from our wishlist, mailing them back when we want, getting another, and you don’t even have to rewind DVDs, this is the future. Blockbuster went the way of MySpace (but we didn’t throw away our Blockbuster cards, did we? No we still hold on to them just in case, don’t we). Then Netflix was like, you don’t need DVDs, you can just stream stuff! Wow, mind blown. And they had all the movies, and all new shows they would make themselves and binge all at once, and we finally had broadband internet capable of handling that, what a time to be alive. Then bit by bit other streaming services came along, and Netflix seemed not to have quite as many movies you wanted to watch, but that’s ok because this other one had so many, and then this other had, and then this other one, and now there are so many different streaming services which you have to pay for, and none of them seem to have the movies you want to watch now so you still end up having to look for it on Amazon Prime (which you pay for) and then pay a rental fee to rent that movie so you can watch it that night. Just like when we’d go down the video store, except instead of watching trailers for other movies at the start of the video, you get to watch a couple of minutes of the same tedious adverts. What a time to be alive, eh.

And further down E Street, another building I have sketched before a few times. I like the triangle bits, they remind me of Darth Vader’s mouth. They also remind me of those houses you see a lot in north west London, in the rows of suburbia that spread for miles, leafy Middlesex (I mean, “north-west Greater London, formerly called Middlesex”). If I ever leave Davis I’ll probably miss drawing this building. If I ever leave Davis I will probably get the urge to come back to draw whatever new buildings get built. I get that with London, the need to come back and record what’s still there and what is new. This gets me back to the whole ‘why I draw’ thing again. I draw to record the changes, so I can look back over two or three drawings I have done of the same place years apart and saw, oh yeah, looks a bit different. I have drawn many hundreds of drawings of Davis, thousands really (let’s say millions) and so I have this record of two decades in this place, scenes of my everyday life. Nothing special, not an unusual life, not an unusual town, just a place like any other. Things happen, most of the time they don’t. Things change slowly, sometimes a bit more quickly. That’s one of the reasons I draw. Mostly though it’s just a side-effect, I draw because I have to. Even when I try to take a break from it, I can’t really. I will still scribble on my notepad, or draw cartoons on my iPad, or design football shirts on the back of scrap bits of paper or envelopes lying on my desk.

That same evening, I popped into the aforementioned Bull’n’Mouth pub (formerly De Vere’s) and sketched the colourful bar area. “Is It Beer You’re Looking For?” it reads, above a large selection of not-beers. I did have a couple of beers; I find it harder these days to actually finish a beer, most of the ones now are way too hoppy, or make my stomach feel funny, or I just don’t like the taste. I drink a beer slowly when I sketch anyway. It’s a nice pub still, I probably liked it more as De Vere’s but that’s because of the Irish theme, which they don’t do any more. I used to like having a pint of Smithwicks here, but they don’t serve it now. Other than that, it still looks mostly the same. I like their cosy little library area.

And finally, on the last day of April we find ourselves once again at the comic shop next door, Bizarro World as seen from across the street. A building with a tree in front of it, the typical Davis sketch. I wander about in my spare moments, looking for something new to draw, but I’m so predictable. A building with a tree in front is like comfort food for a suburban urban sketcher. Now I am thinking forward, it’s already June but it will soon be July, and then August, and then I will be in Poland for the 2025 Urban Sketching Symposium, held in the city of Poznań, my first Symposium since 2019. I’m actually feeling nervous, not scared exactly, but apprehensive. The Symposia are so big now, I worry about feeling lost. I do know some people who are going, but it’s been a long time and I feel a bit outside of everything these days, the whole urban sketching community, like I’m a little bit from a previous world. I’ve become very shy since the pandemic, the thought of being lost among all those sketchers… I get overwhelmed and just wander off on my own. I’m sure it will be ok. When I’m around a whole world of people also sketching, I remember that it’s not just me, I’m not alone in my sketching obsession. And so instead of worrying, I’ll just keep sketching. That was April, another April in the bag.

Return to Pete’s Tavern

May 16, 2025Leave a comment

A little place of mine in New York is Pete’s Tavern, down in Gramercy Park. For really obvious reasons. It is one of the oldest bars in the city and still a very popular pub, in a well-to-do neighbourhood, on the corner of Irving and E 18th. On the first day while the family rested at the hotel I walked down as far as Pete’s, and stood across the street to start the sketch above. I didn’t get that far, because I was eager to go inside and have a beer after the walk through the city, so I drew the outlines and did the rest later on. I came in and ordered a Pete’s Ale, and spoke to a guy at the bar who was waiting for his friend to arrive (when they did he said “this is Pete” and I said “welcome to my Tavern!” because I am cheesy). Pete’s has been going since 1864, same as my jokes, and is a great place to sketch. I remember first finding it on our trip to New York in 2008, but I spent a fun day here celebrating my 40th birthday with two of my best friends from London back in 2016. Here’s my post from 2016. On that day I sketched a similar view to the one below, but in the afternoon, and on the way through several more beers than I could have now.

On the last evening in New York, after dinner and a walk in the rain, I decided to get on the Subway and go down to Pete’s for a last time to sketch the inside. It was a busy evening, but I found that same spot at the bar, got a Pete’s 1864 Ale and sketched fast before jumping on the Subway back. I enjoyed this one, plus I got a couple of beermats that say ‘Pete’s Tavern’. Until next time, Pete’s!

advance to mayfair

January 12, 2025Leave a comment

Mayfair is one of those parts of London I’ve frankly ignored for too long. Last year we nearly walked around there, to find the Mercato that we’d heard was cool, but after looking walking over to Savile Row to see where the Beatles played in 1969 on the roof, we ended up catching a tube to St. Paul’s for a walking tour of the City (those Blue Badge guides know their stuff). So I had it on my list to explore this area finally, for the first time in I don’t know how long. It’s that big area full of big super expensive buildings and flash cars, embassies and posh hotels, more Rolls Royces than you can dream of, all bounded by Park Lane, Oxford Street, Piccadilly and Regent Street. That’s a big area and it’s not all the same (I am not even sure all of it is ‘Mayfair’, except in the geography of my mind, but we call it that). So on this trip, I decided to make an effort to explore Mayfair again. I actually used to come through here almost every day, twenty-five years ago, on an open-top tour bus, telling the same old stories, waving at the barber, humming the Nightingale song in Berkeley Square song because I didn’t know the words (or the tune) (or the title, evidently), pointing out where the Queen was born (not the original building) and where Jimi Hendrix used to live before he died. Those well-rehearsed yarns have faded in the memory but not as much as the streets themselves; walking around it was like reading a book I had not read since I was a kid, knowing the lines and the characters but still being completely surprised by the story. I was certainly surprised by the little red Mini parked outside a fancy hotel, covered in a Christmas tree, people were stopping to take photos and so I had to grab a sketch. All along the street were expensive cars, this was Grosvenor Street. The Grosvenors are the big cheeses in this part of central London, and many other parts too, they are the Dukes of Westminster. The Grosvenors built this whole area, as well as Belgravia. This street leads up to Grosvenor Square, formerly the location of the massive U.S. Embassy, and the last time I was there, and in this part of town, was in 2005 when I completed my application for Permanent Residency, and had to go to the Embassy, hand in all my paperwork, have a little interview, pledge allegiance with my hand up (that was odd, did that happen?) and then it was all good, I can go ahead and live in America, and I’ve been doing that ever since.

I found the Mercato Mayfair, an incredible food court inside an old church. There are lots of different options from around the world as well as a bar over where the altar would have been. It was done up all festive for Christmas, and I grabbed some south-east Asian food and a fruity soda and had a late lunch/early supper. I still had a lot of drawing I wanted to do in Mayfair, and the daylight was already getting short. I walked over to Duke Street, near the magnificent Ukrainian church (how had I never seen this building before?) to the unusual Brown Hart Gardens. I’ve seen these on walking tour videos (tall tales about elephants being kept here) and one of the Urban Sketchers London events was around here a year or so ago, and I had really enjoyed all their sketches of these domes. I stood among the rich people in nice clothes and sketched. Behind me three suited men talked loudly about work, all business and deals and masculinity. I would have found it hard being a Man of Business, not the life for me guv. The sunset was causing all sorts of colours to appear in the sky, and made the buildings look as if they were made of gold, which they probably are.

A lot of the buildings nearby do look pretty golden. I found myself walking down past the Connaught Hotel, which is a five star hotel that looks like it needs a few more stars added to that description. I didn’t draw it this time, but I did stand outside the Pasticceria Marchesi across the road on Mount Street to sketch the beautiful window display. Their cakes were more like crowns or ornate cushions, and there was a line out of the door. This terracotta building was designed by William Henry Powell and I seem to remember having to say something about Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee when talking about it on the tour, back in the days when Queen Vic was the only one who’d ever had one.

The next stop was Berkeley Square, of the aforementioned song about a nightingale. I had forgotten how big this square is, and even though it was already dark I was amazed at how beautiful it was. I’d honestly not been there since swinging past on a Big Bus pointing out all the Ferraris. The one story I always had to mention were the London Plane trees, as there are a lot of them here, trees that were strong and particularly resilient to the infamous London pollution. I had to sketch one of course, in pencil this time, another tree for the collection. I imagined walking through here on a smoggy evening in Victoria times with horse drawn carriages and top hats and gas-lamps. Now it’s Bentleys and Maseratis, and I did notice that many of the map-posts have been converted into special chargers for electric cars, they just plug them into the lamp-post. We live in the future now my friends. I pressed my nose against the Ferrari showroom checking out a car that costs a quarter of a million quid.

Finally, a famous old pub on the corner of Bruton Street, near where the Queen was born (I suppose these days I should say ‘Queen Elizabeth II’ rather than just ‘The Queen’ in case you think I mean Camilla, or Taylor Swift), at Number 17. The Coach and Horses is the oldest pub in Mayfair, and history pours off of it. I didn’t go in this time, but I’ve been inside many years ago with my mate Tel. I have wanted to sketch this pub for years, another in the mock Tudor style (see my sketches from earlier that day for more of that) so it was always going to be my final destination, but as I stood on the other side of the street drawing the outline, and red buses and taxis passed between us, I ended up just drawing the outlines and scribbling the rest in later, as I had to catch a tube and a bus to Highgate Village. It was a nice stroll around Mayfair, well worth the 400 quid in Monopoly money. I mean, pound for pound, square foot for square foot, it’s the cheapest place on the board.

liberty’s before lunchtime

January 11, 20252 Comments

While in London last month I took a day to sketch and explore Mayfair, and area I have not really walked around in a long, long time. It’s good to not stick to the same places each time I go back. However I wanted to start my day somewhere more familiar, draw a lot of old timbered beams, and maybe do a bit of Christmas shopping along the way. I have sketched Liberty’s of London before, but it was a long, long time ago, when I drew smaller snippets of buildings, and in that case not very well. It’s such a big old building, a massive department store in mock-Tudor behind Oxford Circus station, that you want to spend the time to really catch all the details. I chose a spot on Great Marlborough Street that looked down Kingly Street on the right, a street well worth a day of detailed sketching in itself (but which I always associate with fancy bars and cozy pubs, having spent a few evenings down there with friends back in the old days either drinking cool cocktails among media types or room-temperature beer among tourists). It’s an intriguing little corner of the sketch that, like a window that you open on an advent calendar. There’s a fun idea for an advent calendar, one that for each window, you are taken to a new place full of other windows. I’m not sure how it would work but I can imagine quite a bit. The sun was blue and the sky was shining, there were clouds dotted about to make it more interesting for me when I drew the little triangle of colour on the top left. I wasn’t sure how much colour I would add to this drawing, it being an essentially black and white building, so I just added spots here and there, such as the golden parts (with my gold gel pen) and flags. Unfortunately I did not colour all the trees in, just putting in some green, the uncoloured ones were purple. I should have added that, I’m not averse to colouring-in later after all (I’m the king of colouring-in later, saves so much time on those days of exploration), but I never got around to it and the moment’s passed. Purple is very much the corporate colour for Liberty’s, though at this time they were also very invested in green as they were promoting the movie ‘Wicked’, and had large displays about it in their windows and interior. The whole sketch took me about an hour and fifty minutes (yes not quite two hours, I was determined to finish by midday and press a hard stop, though I spent some time faffing about taking pictures of it). I did go inside and look around, bought some Christmas ornaments and stocking stuffers in their amazing festive department on the top floor. I don’t remember ever walking around here before, it’s very wooden and unusual inside, well worth a look. Some of the things they have for sale are a bit expensive mind, the designer goods. I’d like to make a point of sketching more of the big old department stores of London, I drew Fortnum’s already, now Liberty’s. I tried to draw Harrod’s last year but it was covered over with scaffolding (to hide their shame presumably, given news reports about their former owner) and then there’s Selfridges on Oxford Street. I always took that for granted, but when I passed by it later on this day I remembered how absolutely immense it is, so I’ll leave that for another time.

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I could have spent the day sketching just around this little corner, looking across Regent Street with this winter sunlight hitting things just right. Carnaby street is nearby, but I don’t like it there much any more, it’s too bland, and there are just not any football shirt shops any more. The best was SoccerScene, a shop that did more than anything to enflame my lifelong obsession with interesting foreign football teams and their shirts (and their metal pin badges, they had a huge array of those). I remember further down Great Marlborough Street there used to be a fantastic foreign language bookshop, the best one in London, and when I was in college I spent a lot of time there looking at all sorts of interesting books in French, German, Italian, Danish, whatever was tickling my linguistics at the time. It’s gone now. Grant and Cutler, that was it. It seems they have merged with Foyles and have a section of that massive bookshop on Charing Cross Road, but I miss the feel of that other place. Anyway I was wasting time reminiscing in nostalgia again, I had to go to Mayfair.

I’ll put the Mayfair sketches in another post, it’s only fair, but this is another timbered building that I drew next, the Mason’s Arms on Maddox Street. It’s opposite a really interesting church which I’ll draw another time called St. George’s Church Hanover Square. This is across Regent Street, and I came across here rarely, probably feeling that this part of town was not for oiks like me from Burnt Oak. People get progressively richer with each passing square foot. I think I only had about a square foot of pavement to sketch on, the streets were a little tight, probably why they’re so rich eh. All the old tour guide jokes coming out now. I remember going down Regent Street on the bus once talking about Soho when an American tourist asked me why it was called Soho and is it named after the SoHo in New York. I said no it isn’t, that area is a contraction of ‘South of Houston’, whereas the one in London is ‘South of Hoxford Street’. After finishing my sketch of the Mason’s I popped in to sit down and grab a drink. I ended up not eating, saving my appetite for the Mercado in Mayfair which was my destination, but it was a nice little pub, historic (1721, though rebuilt as it looks now in 1934 in that Mock Tudor style; a new Lego set has just come out which reminds me of this, I might have to get it). The Rolling Stones had offices on Maddox Street and used to record at Chappell Studios a few doors down, as did the Beatles occasionally. It’s good to read the signs on the pub wall.

a saturday down portobello

January 7, 2025January 7, 20255 Comments

On the last day of November, exactly a year since Shane MacGowan died, I found myself in Ladbroke Grove, heading to Portobello Market. I was going to a book signing by an old friend of mine from university at a little bookstore. I was up early; my Mum and I were playing the Pogues music in honour of Shane, and having a morning singalong with a bit of the Wolfe Tones on my ukulele, and then I headed out for my day of sketching and literature. I decided not to take the tube, but caught the 302 bus from the end of my street like I would do in the long-ago old days. I hadn’t been this way to Notting Hill in over 25 years, I think, changing bus in Willesden for the 52 towards Victoria. The 52 used to run all the way from Victoria to Mill Hill before they split the route in two. I sat at the top looking out of the window, trying to remember and recognize all the places along the way, seeing some of them in a new way as an urban sketcher. I must explore Kensal Green and its big old cemetery some day. I got out at Ladbroke Grove, which was already quite busy with foot traffic for the market, and sketched the tube station from across the road. It’s not the most visually exciting tube station, but worth sketching. I am really into sketching tube stations, and old pubs, and bookshops. I like sketching markets too, but they get so busy that I often shy away from it. I stood outside an estate agents; as I sketched, tourists stopped by to look at all the places that were listed, massively overpriced tiny flats in a massively overpriced massive city. Tour groups gathered outside the station. Portobello has always been popular with tourists; growing up Ladbroke Grove was always seen as a little bit rough, but definitely a big area of music and culture. I’ve only been to the Notting Hill Carnival once, on a baking hot day in 1996, and spending a day squashed in a slowly moving crowd that moved like a thick sauce through these wide streets before ending up watching Jamiroquai in his massive hat, that was once enough for me. I thought about that as I sketched. I am better in a crowd when I’m by myself. I headed into the crowded market looking for some food, and smelled out what looked like a delicious paella. It really wasn’t, and I ended up throwing it away. “More like a paella shite” I said to myself, making a mental note to remember that if I ever came back. I went to my friend’s book signing at the nearby Jam Bookstore (more of that in a different post).

After I left the book signing at Jam I went back into the busy world, and stood in between two parked vans to sketch this book stall. I had books on the brain, and also on my arm, carrying a bag with five new books in it. I didn’t have space to buy any from this stall, but they were getting a fair bit of foot traffic. As I sketched, there was a fellow behind me taking photos, photos of me sketching as it turned out. I didn’t much mind. He introduced himself to me and offered to message me the photos. His name was Trevor Flynn, and he’s an artist himself who has sketched around Portobello for years, and runs a company called Drawing At Work (http://drawingatwork.co.uk/), he has got people out sketching for years. He also knew about Urban Sketchers London and has worked with sketchers I know. Always nice to meet other sketchers. In fact he told me he did all the sketching and storyboarding for the film Notting Hill, back in the 90s. I loved that film, I remember I had a really long and stressful day at university, I studied drama and they were usually long hours, and I would often stop at the cinema on the way home (either in Stepney or in Camden) to catch a film and relax, and this one night I watched Notting Hill and it cheered me right up.

I kept strolling further down the market; I had sketched down here last year so wasn’t necessarily going to do too much today, as I was heading towards Notting Hill Gate with the idea of walking down Kensington Church Street, but this colourful art market area on Tavistock Road caught my eye, especially the bits of orange on the trees in the background. Well I had to sketch the scene. As soon as I did, a lady in a pink high-vis vest came to talk to me, she told me this was something called Open Art Spaces (see openartspaces.co.uk), and these were all independent artists selling and showing their work, and she gave me their card (a Moo card; I had forgotten mine). As I sketched, I was joined by one of those artists, Chen Xi, who is also an urban sketcher. He is from Singapore but is in London doing a Masters, and he knew several of the Singapore sketchers that I have known over the years, even been taught by them. I chatted with him for a while sketching the scene, and when I was done I bought some of his cards and walked around the market talking to other artists and buying more cards, coasters, bookmarks. It was fun getting out and talking to people in my favourite city, I should do it more often.

I walked down Portobello with that Al Green song from the movie stuck in my head, though the seasons didn’t change, and I don’t look like late 90s Hugh Grant, well not much anyway. I saw the Electric Cinema and decided I really needed to draw that, with the Christmas trees for sale outside. I never saw a movie here, but I have a vague memory that they had a small bar here back in the 90s and I came in for a drink with an ex, though it might have been somewhere else, or maybe I imagined it. I’ve been dreaming about London for so many years now, I mean actual dreams when I’m asleep, that whole areas have grown that my sleeping self is convinced are real but actually don’t exist at all, built as if from broken Lego sets of real places and experiences; I wish I could draw them. There is a lot of London that I’ve not been to in over 25 years that I have almost entirely forgotten; later that week I walked around parts of Mayfair that I had honestly set outside my mind completely, not since I was an open-top tour bus guide, but when I walked through certain squares and down certain roads, memory and story came flooding back. In some cases, they trickle back, and it’s like that around here. Sometimes the mystery of memory is more exciting. I was standing next to a stall that sold quite posh looking ham, if memory serves (and we know it doesn’t), and the market was getting busy but I wanted to press on.

Down Notting Hill Gate I went, and there’s a lot to sketch around there, but I just wandered about, thinking about stories. I was near Campden Hill Road; back in the mid-90s I actually took an evening course in screenwriting here, not a very long one, but it was enjoyable. I remember quite liking the people in the class, and the teacher was nice, and I had to write a short screenplay; I think I wrote one about a priest meeting a woman, it wasn’t very original, and in fact the instructor complained it was too derivative of a TV show called ‘Priest’, which I had never seen, and didn’t sound like the sort of thing I’d watch. Then I wrote another about a woman who was in love with the grim reaper and would murder people to see him again; not very sophisticated, and my heart wasn’t in it. I’ve never written a love story since. I remember there was an Irish guy on the course who was writing a screenplay about the Battle of Brunanburh, but this was before I studied Old English poetry so I wasn’t really familiar with it, but I remember he did a good job. I should do more evening courses, though there’s not as much choice in Davis as there was in London, and I don’t know what I’d want to do. Not screenwriting again. I walked down to Kensington Church Street as I wanted to visit the Churchill Arms, or at least watch their Christmas lights come on. This is a famous pub, often winning pub of the year awards for its unusually over the top floral arrangements outside, though for the festive season they deck out in thousands of lights, and as you can see from the sketch lots of people gather to watch them come on. I stood across the busy street and drew fast. My waterbrush ran out so I had to add the paint in afterwards. As I sketched, a woman with a thick Texas accent asked me without prompting or introduction if I had visited the Tim Burton exhibition. I said I had not, and she proceeded to tell me I should go, because they had just been there and it was wonderful. She said my drawing reminded her of his sketchbooks, which was a surprise to hear. she then asked if I knew who Tim Burton was; now the thing is, whenever anyone I don’t know randomly asks me if I have heard of someone, my natural instinct is to say I haven’t, so I said “no; is he the guy who invented trousers?” It just came out; I was thinking of the clothes shop Burtons. So she listed all the films he had directed, and by this point I had to keep pretending I didn’t know who he was, in case she thought I was taking the mick, so I ended up making the “no, don’t know that one” face to films like Batman and Edward Scissorhands. I did like the sound of this exhibition though, and said I would try to go and see it; “Tom…Barton?” “Tim Burton, you’d enjoy it.” “Thanks, I’ll check it out.” “You should. Have a great vacation!” and off she went. It’s nice to meet people, I’m getting good at it.

I did want to rest my legs and have a festive pint before heading back to Burnt Oak though, as it was now dark and my legs were feeling weary. I stand when I sketch because I don’t like being hunched over on a stool, and getting some rest is good. The Churchill was packed, there was no room at the inn, even though the interior of that pub is on my list of must-sketch places. I used to go in there sometimes years ago and marvel at all the stuff on the walls and ceiling, the landlord was from Tipperary I think because I remember lots of Tipperary hurling memorabilia, had some good nights out in there years ago. They also did a lovely Thai curry, but no chance today. I walked about to some other little pubs I was surprised were still there, but didn’t look much like they did in the 90s, but I ended up in the Prince Albert, where a load of people were watching the football, Arsenal against a really bad West Ham. I sat down for a while with my back to the screen, nursed a pint and sketched them watching it, lads with no faces. The food smelled expensive and not very enticing, so I didn’t eat, and then I got the tube back home. It was a year since Shane MacGowan died, and I went back to Burnt Oak to spend the evening out with my Mum and some longtime family friends, and several pints of Guinness. That was a busy day.

beer and sketching after a long, long week

December 20, 2024December 19, 2024Leave a comment

After I was done with day two of the conference, finishing at about 8pm and exhausted, I walked downtown to grab some dinner and a couple of beers. Despite being tired I really needed to work out all the energy of that long long week into my sketchbook. I popped into the University of Beer, in a spot in the corner with a view that I have drawn before many years ago (2013), not long after it had opened. See below. I remember that afternoon, a hot day, and I was eager to practice my perspective sketching. Those older guys on the left were talking about Davis in the old days, the old bars that used to be there on G Street. They still had the long section of frost upon which you could put your glass to keep it chilled, but that seems to be gone now. And no more iPads with menus on! That seemed like a futuristic innovation back then but is apparently part of the dustbin of history now. To read the menu these days, you need to point your phone at a QR code, which means I have to read on my phone which is much smaller. So I’m sitting there looking over the rim of my glasses, even though I have varifocals, squinting to try and understand the ridiculous names all these beers have, looking for a nice normal amber ale. Back in the old days they only served beer too, but now they have all sorts of drinks, which is probably better for business to be honest, but the beer list is still long.

I ordered a beer and started drawing fast. I can draw quickly when it all starts coming out. As I drew, they started setting up for their Saturday night karaoke. It was pretty busy, that is a popular night out there I guess. People started singing, I didn’t always recognize the songs. I wasn’t tempted to have a go myself. I don’t mind a karaoke, historically, but I always like a stage. These ones where you are just in the corner by the door at the same level as people walking about would make me feel a bit odd. Not for me guv. Anyway, it was getting a bit loud, and I’d drawn very quickly and drunk my beer very slowly, but I wasn’t ready for the walk home just yet so popped by De Vere’s – sorry, not De Vere’s, it’s Bull’n’Mouth now, De Vere’s is in the past. I don’t go out much any more. They don’t do Smithwicks in there these days, and no Guinness, I think they are moving away from the Irishness of the predecessor pub. I drew a couple of quick sketches over a Bavarian beer, and made the long walk home for a long sleep. November was a long month.

The Dublin Castle

September 6, 2024Leave a comment

Another in the series of London drawings I did this summer after our trip, all of which have some meaning to me. This is The Dublin Castle, on Camden’s Parkway. I wrote some things about Parkway recently, but I did not stop by or sketch the Dublin Castle on that trip. I started coming here in the mid-1990s, and there were always live bands to see out the back. That famous sign on the right, with the black and white squares announcing who would be playing, is a piece of classic Camden iconography. It hasn’t changed in there, and that’s what I love about it. This is the pub that made Madness famous, giving them their first gigs and forever being associated with them afterwards. In fact, when I was in there one quiet afternoon ten years aqo I sketched the bar, and who should walk in but Suggs, the lead singer from Madness, who was chatting with the landlord. I didn’t sketch him (as I’d already finished most of the drawing) and I also didn’t go and say hello (what would I say? Would I tell him I once went to Aarhus in Denmark simply because if anyone ever asked where that was I could sing “in the middle of Aar Street”? I’d only embarrass myself). I like Madness a lot though, I never got to see them play live but I saw that they were playing in Oakland a few months ago at the same place I saw Belle and Sebastian, and I was very tempted. Lots of acts have passed through this pub, your Blurs, your Amy Winehouses, and all your up and coming Camden bands have squeezed onto that stage. I would go to the club nights there too, the beer soaked floor and sticky toilets, all my favourite music pumping those red painted walls, and you never knew what sort of conversation you’d get into with whoever you ended up being sat next to on those old pub seats, it might be some old geezer going on about John Lydon’s brother Jimmy and the four-by-twos, or it might be a conversation about Serbian poetry, to name but two things random people have started talking to me about in that pub. On our nights out in Camden in my 20s, usually with my mate Tel, this would often be the last stop, this or the Mixer, starting out at the Rat and Parrot (now gone) or the Earl of Camden (I think it was the Hogs Head) and on to the Spreadeagle (still there) or the Parkway Tavern (now gone). I’d avoid the World’s End, my mate Tel liked it there (though the Underworld was alright), and I always enjoyed sitting outside at the Edinboro Castle, though it felt a bit posh to be doing that in Camden Town. Speaking of the Edinboro Castle (not ‘Edinburgh’), that is one of the three ‘Castle’ pubs in this area, the others being the Dublin Castle and the Pembroke Castle, apocryphally to keep the railway workers from Ireland, Scotland and Wales separate in case they should start fights with each other. There used to be a Windsor Castle for the English too but that closed a long time ago, insert whatever clever comment here. Still, the Dublin Castle is the king of the old pubs around here, and holds a lot of histories.

This is the other of the drawings I have in this year’s Pence Gallery Art Auction, by the way, and bidding starts very soon on those. Get yourself a little bit of north London history for your wall, and next time you’re in NW1, pop by for a pint, and maybe some live music.

half moon bay

August 10, 2024Leave a comment

The first couple of pages of a new sketchbook. It was another stupendously hot weekend in the central valley of California, hitting the 110s in Davis, so we drove down to Half Moon Bay, on the coast just below San Francisco, where it was about 50 degrees cooler. While we have been to nearby Pacifica a few times back in the soccer tournament days, I’ve never been to Half Moon Bay. It was very foggy, and the cliffs were tall and rugged. The town itself was nice, we stayed at a hotel on the edge, and drove down to the walk along the cliffs nearby, and down to the Pigeon Point lighthouse further down the coast (it was all scaffolded up). Near our hotel, the walk to the seashore was made by a little hike through a spooky tree tunnel, created by the leaning of the fog-washed trees bending away from the ocean winds. It was an unusual place, I took many photos but had to stop and sketch, as best I could. I wandered back to the hotel, and managed to get lost on the way, daydreaming little chord sequences in my head and looking at fog. We never actually went down to the beach itself, we couldn’t find the path, but it was very damp, and those sneaker waves were looking a little bit fierce.

Our hotel was located next to a British themed pub called Cameron’s, an older place full of all kinds of British themed stuff that was just begging for a pub sketch. Definitely not named after a useless former Prime Minister who gambled the future of his country on a referendum and lost, and then sodded off. Thankfully there were no pig-themed items about the place. I had a little time before going out for dinner so I got myself a pint of Smithwicks and sat in a little alcove ready made for sketching. At the bar when I ordered my drink, the barman who’d been talking with some of the people at the bar asked me if I was related to another man at the bar, and pointed to someone older, and they were all chuckling. I squinted to see any likeness and said, “oh right, we do resemble each other; in no way whatsoever.” Bit weird. Then again I’m always thinking people look like other people. Only that day I had been wondering if Half Moon Bay was in any way related to the Eastenders character Alfie Moon. Anyway it was nice to have a good pint of Smithwicks (since the Bull and Mouth in Davis doesn’t do that beer any more, unlike its predecessor De Vere’s). It was an interesting place, although all around the pub and the hotel there were British flags which were displayed quite obviously upside down. If you don’t know what way round a British flag should be displayed, well I forgive you I suppose, but the red diagonal on the top left corner should be touching the left edge, ie the flagpole. When you see it painted on the right side of an airplane or a ship it might look upside down but that’s just because the invisible flagpole is on the right and it’s flying against it, and that’s fine. If you see it displayed on a flagpole where the pole is on the left and the bottom red diagonal is touching the pole, then it’s upside down and it means you are a ship in distress, maybe you’ve been captured by pirates or racists or online trolls or something. So imagine my concern when I kept seeing the British flag displayed upside down, I mean we are right by the coast and you never know if there are pirates nearby. Even the logo of the pub showed an upside down British flag. I mean, it’s practically treason. I did want to point this out, but if this is a British themed pub the right thing to do would be to not point this out but to grumble about it to myself privately, in the proper British way, so that’s what I did, I grumbled about it privately for several hours to my family who didn’t really care. Nice beer though, and I’d liked to have spent longer drawing the pub and all the colours (all the flags in view were the correct way round, or maybe I corrected them), but they were setting up for karaoke, and we had to leave for dinner. IMG_1385(2)sm

a few more corners of London

July 22, 2024July 22, 2024Leave a comment

Before I dive into my sketches from the south of France, here are a few more London corners that I caught between doing other things. Above, a quick sketch of Neal’s Yard, while my family were looking through shops in Covent Garden, I decided to pop in here to draw. It was nice watching people move by, tourists getting an ice cream, people out enjoying the June afternoon. It was warming up. One weird bloke came through yelling obscenities at random people, though not to me thankfully. After sketching, I headed to my favourite map shop Stanfords.

Above, a quick sketch of De Hems, a well-known old Dutch pub in London’s Soho. I was meeting my friend here on a busy Saturday evening, we were watching the opening game of the Euros, Scotland v Germany. Alas, Scotland lost big time. I think the Dutch in there were for Scotland mostly, but it was a convivial atmosphere with Scottish and Germans together. As full-time blew though, the pub did decide to play The Proclaimers ‘Letter From America’, bit of a low blow given they’d just been beaten 5-1 without I think an actual shot on target (their goal was an own goal). The Scottish fans were popular in Germany though, as in most places they play well with the locals, unlike a lot of times when England play abroad. My friend and I stayed in the pub for a good long time and an old catch-up, with plenty of beers along the way. Central London has always been busy on a Saturday night, but I’m not wrong in feeling that it seems a lot busier than it used to years ago. I mean, better than during the Covid years of course, but still it felt pretty crowded. Summertime though, footballs on, weathers nice, good time to be alive I think.

The last one is a quick sketch I did while we were down in Spitalfields, my family and I had just eaten lunch in Spitalfields market (a much trendier and modern place than the old Spitalfields Market used to be), and were looking around shops and stalls, so I popped out to the street and did a quick sketch of the Ten Bells pub with Christchurch Spitalfields behind it. It was a hot day, and I just wanted to draw quickly and sketchily in pencil, and just added in a couple of colours for a fun effect. After this we walked down to the Classic Football shirts store to look at some great old kits, have a cold drink, and wander up Brick Lane looking for murals and public art. London’s great.

primrose hill

July 19, 2024July 18, 20241 Comment

This might be the best view in London, and it’s been many years since I went up there. Primrose Hill, just above Regent’s Park. After a day exploring the Spitalfields area of London, we were all a bit tired so took the Northern Line home. I had to go to Hampstead anyway to get some photos developed (totally 90s thing to do), but I decided to get out at Chalk Farm and explore this area first. I really like the walk down from Chalk Farm station, the parade of shops in Primrose Hill, it’s quite a well-off area. I went into a little bookshop, remembered afternoons out down here years ago, and made my way up the much-steeper-than-I-remember Primrose Hill itself. I’ve not been up there in over 20 years, so that skyline has changed a lot! This was the first time I have sketched up there in over 30 years, and it was even more different then.

Back in early 1994, still doing my A-Level in Art (for which I got a final grade of D, hooray, thanks for that), I had to work on a project and as usual was out of ideas. When I am out of ideas for anything I just go and draw, which is always the best idea. On that January day though, after a visit to the galleries at the South Bank Centre in which I saw some interesting sculptures with branches and umbrellas, I took myself to Primrose Hill, climbed up and drew the same scene as above, minus the odd comedy-shaped skyscraper. I remember looking out over London Zoo there, drawing that same shape of the Aviary (which is now ‘Monkey Valley’ apparently), drawing the Telecom Tower (the ‘B.T. Tower’ formerly the Post Office Tower which is what people still called it when I was a kid; I read that it was sold earlier this year to a company that will turn it into a luxury hotel), and of course St. Paul’s Cathedral (which as yet has not been turned into a luxury hotel but give them half a chance). I believe this is one of the places in London that has a protected sightline to St. Paul’s, so no building big towers anywhere between Primrose Hill and St. Paul’s, that means you, Euston, don’t even think about it. Primrose Hill actually has two ‘protected vistas‘, the other being the Palace of Westminster, but that was just off the page in my drawing, my sketchbook’s a little narrower than the panorama books I usually use, then again it’s not high enough to be that prominent (my eyesight’s not that great). Oh dammit it’s a protected view and I didn’t put it in.

It was busy up there this time, and much hotter than in 1994 (what with it not being January), and I was starting to bake under my hat. At least I had a seat, and the time to paint. A man had two huge colourful parrots and was flying them around for the amusement of the tourist groups up there. Most people were just enjoying the view on a really nice June afternoon. The sort of afternoon that makes you glad to be in London. This drawing is a lot better than the one I did in 1994, and I didn’t end up with frozen fingers. I don’t still have that drawing, though I remember I transferred it onto a screen to print onto a piece of cloth, which I hanged between two branches similar to what I’d seen on the South Bank, something to do with nature holding up the city or some A-Level nonsense. It was a good drawing but that wasn’t enough. For me now, it is more than enough, the meaning is just in the actual doing and observing. If there’s a story to tell too, all the better. This one is about frozen fingers and a decision soon after not to pursue art academically any further, but take a different direction, which I did, and here I am years later up Primrose Hill drawing the same view. That’s a comforting thought.

Speaking of years, it was 20 years ago this year that my wife and I got married! And therefore 20 years since my stag party, or ‘stag do’ as we say. That’s what Americans would call a Bachelor Party; a Bachelorette Party is called a ‘hen do’ in England. I made the joke that parts of London on the weekends are ‘Hen do Central’ (a reference to the name of a tube station; you had to be there). Well my stag do was up here in Chalk Farm. We had a lovely dinner at the now long-gone Belgo Noord restaurant, before heading over to this pub, the Pembroke Castle. Its a historic old pub around the corner from Chalk Farm tube on Bridge Approach, next to the railway lines. Local lore has it that there are three pubs in the Camden area that are very close to railway lines and were for the railway workers who came from other parts of these islands, but they would often fight after a few beers, giving it the old ‘Scotland is better than Wales!’, and so local authorities set up four ‘castle’ pubs where they could each drink separately and in peace, the Irish at the Dublin Castle, the Scottish at the Edinboro Castle (it’s always been spelled like that), the English at the long-gone Windsor Castle, and the Welsh right here at the Pembroke Castle. It is of course most likely bollocks, for a whole number of reasons (why would the Scottish be happy about misspelling their capital?), but it’s a nice story for the tourists, and those are all that really matter.

I liked this pub though, it had a good outside area for a nice Sunday afternoon beer with friends. I think Liam Gallagher used to go here, not that I ever saw him in there (I never notice anybody famous at pubs or anywhere). Well my stag night in there was fun, I know that was where my friends started doing that thing they do at stag parties where you get lots of shots for the groom-to-be, and basically it’s lights out after that. I remember very very little from about this pub on, but photographic evidence shows we did end up at another place in Camden, probably the Camden Head, before crashing out at my friends place in Tottenham. It was quite the hangover next day, but it was a good month before the wedding so plenty of recovery time. I don’t think I have been to the Pembroke Castle since moving to America, and didn’t have time to pop in for old time’s sake here, but of course I had to draw it. I love those London skies.