Sophia’s Bar, Davis. Click on the image to see a larger version. 2014 has started as a very busy little year so far, with not enough time to sketch. Not enough time..? Well, make time. I’ve been feeling a little headless-chicken-esque, so one Wednesday evening I decided I needed to go and pour myself into another bar panorama, this time at Sophia’s, a bar which I have sketched before, but I had not included the fishtank before. The fishtank was going in this time, for sure. My friend Tel, who I grew up with but now lives in Korea for some reason, would like that fishtank. Years ago he used to make me go with him after school all the way to a shop in Colindale called Vibratanks to see the tropical fish in their bright tanks, his nose pressed against the glass staring at the tetras and guppies and swordtails. To get him back, I would make him come to WH Smith in Brent Cross where I’d spend ages looking at pens, travel guides and adventure gamebooks. In a twist of irony he now sells books, while I am sketching fishtanks. Anyway, I sat with an amber beer and covered the pages in paint before going in with the pen. I was spotted by the owner Kenneth who remembered my previous sketch, it was nice to meet him. After sketching the wider view I went to sit at the bar to get a better view of the bottles, and spent a good deal of time chatting to people, many from all over the world, while scribbling away continually. I am on a bit of a roll with these panoramas now, and have done a few more since then (yet to post; I am calling it the ‘panoramarathon’) but still 2014 continues to be busy, busy, busy. I’ve just remembered that when I am so so busy, and so so stressed, it’s always best to balance it with some art. No time for it? Make time for it. You’ll be glad you did.
Tag: pub
sweet spot, black friday
I hope you all had a very happy Black Friday last week. I went shopping and bought a blu-ray player and some toys, and then later that day took the blu-ray player and the toys back to the store, just so I could say I was involved in this very cultural holiday. I’m not really a fan of Black Friday. I always hope it rains on those people waiting outside Best Buy at 4am (although this year they decided that Thanksgiving was not an important enough holiday any more and all went shopping on Thursday evening, which thankfully we didn’t). This year our Black Friday was more relaxed, and we even went down to Scandia to do some go-kart racing. That was fun. Naturally I got a bit carried away, speeding around like it was the Monaco Grand Prix. Still, the one previous time I had been go-karting, as a kid twenty-five years ago in Spain, I literally had been carried away, crashing at full-speed into a pile of tyres on a tight corner, completely totaling the barely-safe go-kart. At least there was none of that this time!
In the evening I decided to head downtown (we were in Santa Rosa, not Davis) and sketch a bar. I wanted to sketch the Russian River Brewing Co, but it was a little packed to say the least. So I walked down the street to the Sweet Spot, a pub I’ve always liked. And here is why – there are football shirts (soccer jerseys to you) behind the bar. Some of you may know that my number one obsession is football kits. That is putting it mildly. So naturally I drew these fast. I could name almost all of them, however two of them eluded me. That drove me nuts! I spent the next day trying to figure them out. I determined that the blue one with the ‘Sol’ badge was actually a local team from Sonoma, so that doesn’t count. The red one, made by diadora with a blue/navy trim and the ‘Pilsener’ sponsor I simply can’t work out. The badge looked like it had an ‘N’ in the middle but I have no idea. A football shirt has me stumped. The beer was nice, the atmosphere friendly, and I finished the whole thing in under three pints.
ghosts and bars of portland
Regular listeners may be aware that occasionally I like to sketch bars, preferably ones with character, warmth, interesting people and of course nice beer. You’re always going to get that in Portland, so I was keen to check a few more names off of my list. Last year I visited Old Town Pizza with the PDX urban sketchers and noticed the lovely old bar area, but didn’t sketch it that time. While the rain tumbled down, I wandered the streets of the old town, stopping by Floating World Comics, before resting my tired legs with a pint of Old Town’s “Freshtoberbrau”. Old Town Pizza/Brewing is in an old hotel building which is apparently haunted, though you would never know because it’s not like all the publicity for this place goes on and on about it. The ghost is called Nina (pronounced like Nine-ah) and wears perfume and rides a bike and reads vegan zines, well maybe not the last two. I do like this place though, despite the Rentaghost theme tune playing in my head, and the beer was very pleasant. I especially enjoyed the Volkswheat, which I pronounced “Folksveet”. A guy at the bar kept coming in and out, and while you can’t tell here, he really looked like Tyres out of Spaced. Warmed up and rested, I went back to the hotel.
In the evening I went out for a nice meal with some of the local artists I know (Hi Linda, Ron, Deb and Angelika!) at Bridgeport, where I had eaten back in 2010, a really nice brewpub. Unfortunately I arrived half an hour late, due to an immense amount of traffic on the way. I could have walked, or taken the MAX and walked, but I opted for the streetcar as I thought it would be quicker. Big mistake! I had given myself plenty of time, but it took forever to arrive, then crawled sloooowly up Broadway and finally across the river. It took me over an hour to get to the Pearl District from the Lloyd Center; hopping backwards with my eyes closed the whole way would have been quicker. I’m not used to these ‘city’ aspects of getting around any more! But in the end it was a lovely evening with lovely people, though I didn’t sketch there this time.
Afterwards, I went off to sketch another bar that was on my list. Bailey’s Tap Room is downtown, and lots of people recommended it last year. While it’s not an obvious sketch subject, no old dark wood and warm fireplaces, it was a nice place to sketch for a few late-night hours, sampling amazing beers from Montana, Utah, and elsewhere, talking to locals and visitors, reciting the text of Jabberwocky, and shunning frumious bandersnatches (except for that last part). It reminded me a little of the University of Beer in Davis, and the barstaff were friendly and really knew their stuff. A fun Portland night! This time, I did walk back to the hotel, crossing the Steel Bridge at night, it wasn’t very far. And I had a nice, well-earned lie-in the next day. Lubbly-jubbly!
turn turn, i wish you would
And another bar sketch for you, this one from a few weeks ago at the City Hall Tavern, into which I popped after sketching the Wealth of Nations band. Nice beer. Revolving bicycle wheels on the ceiling. Two and a Half Men was on the TV, for some reason (hence the blank TV screen, I simply cannot reproduce such unparalleled artistic genius on paper). Above the bar, a quote Benjamin Franklin once said to help bars sell more beer (“Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy,” he said apparently, but I suspect he said that about a lot of things). Bars like random beer quotes. That one by George Best about spending most of his money on women and beer (and the rest he just squandered) is often decorated proudly on pub walls, unflinching in its sad irony. I had the ‘Hell or High Watermelon’ beer. Halfway through sketching, the bad TV went quiet (hooray!) and the tables were cleared from the centre of the room (booo!) to make way for some sort of space for people to move around to loud thumping music, so I had to relocate to the bar to draw the details there. As the more well-dressed-for-a-night-out people started coming in, I finished up and called it a day. Another bar sketch done.
Incidentally I still have a few first-run copies of my short self-made bar-zine on my Etsy store, “Davis Bar-By-Bar“. I plan to print more and make further volumes, and if I ever get time, put together a book. Ah, time gentlemen, please.
grad study
This is the Grad, or the ‘Davis Graduate’, a long-time bar of these parts. It’s a sports bar with about a million screens to watch all kinds of sports (you can get little portable speakers at the bar tuned into whichever game you’re watching (I was watching Marseille lose to Monaco, but didn’t need the speaker). It’s also a dance hall, though I’ve never actually been in the evening, not my kind of thing. It’s also a place to eat burgers and fries and other similar things. In fact, I hadn’t actually been to the Grad since about 2008, when I came to watch Turkey play the Czech Republic in the Euros. The Grad has never been particularly high on my list of bars to sketch – I’d always remembered it as too awkward a space, too many sports screens, that loudspeaker that announces when someone’s Gradburger is ready, my hands being greasy from eating fries, plus I’d seen Tottenham lose too many matches while there. However I am on a mission to sketch as many Davis bars as possible (for my bar-zine, and maybe a book), so on the Labor Day weekend I came down (I live closer by these days) with the sketchbook, and I honestly have to admit I have been missing out. This was an excellent place to sketch! And I had forgotten they had a pretty large selection of excellent beers on tap. Plus Olympique de Marseille playing on the screen (next to, er, Judge Judy). Oh, this was definitely sketchworthy, and worth coming back to sketch some more. I stuck around for a while and chatted to the bar-staff (cheers Greg for the pint!) and another regular who told me stories about Davis from years back. I’ll probably be telling my own Davis stories in years to come. Various sports happened on screens around me; try to count how many screens are in this sketch alone. Happy with my latest panoramic bar sketch (another one for the zine) and sufficiently full of that very nice Summer Solstice beer, I left, got my Weetabix at Trader Joe’s, and sauntered home.
the little shamrock
After the Zine Fest in San Francisco I crossed over Lincoln Way and sketched a pub opposite Golden Gate Park, The Little Shamrock. I remember seeing this pub once ages ago when we drove past here, because it is pretty old – 119 years old in fact, according to the sign, though the date of founding means it’s probably 120 years by now. A hundred and twenty years ain’t bad! Not bad at all. So it was worth popping in to do some sketching of the interior. I must say that pretty much all of the interior was sketchworthy, a comfortable pub full of character. The people were friendly too, and the beer selection good. To my left were a group of people who from what I heard of their conversation (they were discussing performance art pieces at public galleries) they were curators at SFMOMA and probably somewhere else. Art is all around. I just hacked away at the sketchbook, and enjoyed my beer. I like the Inner Sunset.
sketching on a summer’s evening
This month’s Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl was a bit different, in that it was on a Wednesday evening, a hot summer evening. We met at Central Park for the Wednesday Farmer’s Market, “Picnic-in-the-Park”. There were a LOT of people out, and downtown Davis was bustling. I spent a good time sketching the panorama aboveThere weren’t many of us sketching, met some new faces, one who joined us was Terry Banderas (below in the red shirt), a local northern CA artist whose ink and watercolour sketches inspired me a lot when I was first doing these types of sketches and posting them online (and continues to do so), so it was great to finally meet him and chat with him. My son sketched with me for a while too, sketching hot-lava-breathing dragons (as you do) before hitting the bouncy houses with all the other local five-year-olds.
I was sketching in the Seawhite sketchbook, which I’m still getting used to. It’s not really the one for the paint that I’m used to laying on, but it’s nice to draw on. The sketchcrawl ended at De Vere’s Irish Pub; it was Davis Beer Week so it seemed appropriate. Here is yet another sketch of De Vere’s (and not my best). I tried a couple of beers, from 21st Amendment in San Francisco (and they weren’t cheap), “Amber Waves” and “Hell or High Watermelon”. Not bad!
and all the pictures on the wall
To round off all the pub drawings here is another panoramic I attempted last weekend at the University of Beer, on 3rd & F (Click on the image to see the bigger picture). This is one of the newer places in Davis and is a beer-geek’s dream; I have sketched it before from the far side of the bar (see image at the bottom of this post) but didn’t quite manage the two-page panorama, so I came back to sketch that far wall. As you can see, it is worth it. they have beer signs, both metal and mirrors, from all over the world (though mostly the US and Belgium). It was a very hot day and I was just not motivated for outside sketching, so I got a footy magazine (the Premier League is finally BACK! Hallebleedin’lujah!) and popped into the ‘UoB’. After about ten minutes looking through their extensive menu and studying the beer taps I opted for a Monty Python’s Holy Grail ale – I’ve never had one before, it was very nice, and made me want to put the movie on when I got home. One of the barman had an Arsenal hat on (backwards; I suggested it maybe should stay so) and we discussed the chances of our teams in this coming season (as you know, I’m Spurs all the way). I started sketching, and quickly realized there are many more details in this place than I knew; they now have loads of beertaps lining the ventilation pipes near the ceiling. To be honest it was nice to sketch some people – the three fellows to my left were sharing stories about Davis in the olden days, while further down the bar there were other conversations of varying degrees of volume; but on the whole this was a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon. One of the barstaff remembered me from the last time I sketched here (he is in fact in both sketches, so I had him sign the second one) and I spoke to him and one other about my favourite Belgian beers (Charles Quint and Fruit Defendu, if you’re ever wondering). I followed on from my Holy Grail ale with a really nice beer called Summer Solstice, by Anderson Valley, a creamy brown beer with a very caramel-like taste, and it was delicious. If Quality Street made beer, it would probably taste like this. I had their Winter Solstice beer here back in February and that too was incredible.
This week in fact is Davis Beer Week, a celebration of craft beers in Davis, and so if you’re in Davis you should pop by here, or de Vere’s or any of the other great beer spots in town. This has really become a beer-lovers town lately, and it’s not surprising – UC Davis has an excellent beer-science facility. People here really know their Chit.
I must point out – this sketch was done in a Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook I picked up in London. Smooth paper and takes a light wash, not as robust as the watercolour Moleskine but I’m looking forward to playing with it some more.
**Incidentally… you can buy a print of the University of Beer panorama above at my Society6 store (society6.com/PeteScully), just follow this link. There is free shipping worldwide until this Sunday (Aug 25).**
University of Beer as sketched in May 2013
and they sang him a song of times long gone
You would think I draw nothing but pubs. These two yellow-stained sketches are from a month ago in London, both sketched while out with my friends. The top one is the Angel Inn in Highgate, a lovely pub I have been to many times before. I especially like it on a cold wintery day, when you can escape the chill of the Highgate Hill and sit by the warm radiator with a pint and a paper (or in my case, a sketchbook). This was not the case during heatwave-era London, but it was just as fun, catching up with my friend and relaxing in the atmosphere. I drank a couple of English craft ales, though I forget what they were called.
This one was sketched more centrally in Soho, on a Sunday evening which actually saw several pubs. We popped into this one (because one of my favourite pubs, The Ship on Wardour St, was closed for the night): the John Snow on Broadwick St, because it has fairly cheap and good beer and nice wooden interiors, though it was pretty empty. I also remembered after we’d been there for a while that this was the pub that gained notoriety a couple of years back when it threw out a gay couple because they kissed each other. Boo, this pub! I do know the pub is named after a very famous epidemiologist (and not the bastard son of Ned Stark, nor the Channel 4 newsreader whose cousin Peter is the guy with the Swingometer). These were the only London pub sketches I managed on this trip. Next time perhaps I will manage a big panorama!
hang around a ink well
A break from the London posting, here is a bar panorama I did at the weekend. This is Little Prague, a bar attached to a Czech restaurant on G Street in Davis which as regular listeners may recall I have sketched many times, though not for quite a while now. On Saturday, after a lazy day of not leaving the house, I lazily left the house and ambled downtown to the comic shop, Bizarro World (I bought “Infinity Gauntlet”, in which an all powerful but rather barmy Thanos takes on like every superhero in the universe – which is a lot of fun, if a little light on actual plot). Then time for a beer and some sketching. I chose Little Prague, because despite my many sketches of that bar I have never done the big two-pager, with the lamps on either side of the bar. The beer’s different from the last time, nicer, and I had the Staropramen Granat. It wasn’t busy – this is summer in Davis, the quiet months in a college town. This took me around three hours; three beers to be precise. Drink slow, sketch really fast – there is a ton of detail! Click on the image to see a larger version. And see if you can spot the ‘pete’.
So that is the 180 degree panorama done! I have to move onto the 360 degree ones soon, right? That may take a few more beers…
petescully 