vacation time in san diego

June 28, 2016June 28, 2016Leave a comment

We needed a vacation, away from it all, so we went to San Diego for a week of pool, beach, Legoland, zoo, and cooler weather than we’ve been getting in bloody sweltering Davis. We’ve been to San Diego one time before, seven years ago, when I went for a conference in La Jolla and we stayed to visit my wife’s uncle. This time we saw different areas, and it was lovely. I’m not done scanning the sketches, but here are a couple of ones I did at our hotel. We stayed at the Hyatt Mission Bay resort which overlooked a lovely harbour from our balcony. I sketched from the balcony one early evening, the sound of a sea-lion perched on a buoy honking away in the distance.

Waking up early was the usual thing to do in the mornings, because the football was on the TV, but it was also nice to go for a stroll around the marina, and I sketched the view of the Hyatt complex, joined by my urban sketching son. A pretty nice place.

making a song and dance about things

June 27, 2016June 27, 20167 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I went to the downtown Davis “2nd Friday Art About”, as I had a couple of pieces on display at the Pence Gallery following the Garden Tour (both sold, by the way – hooray!) and so while there was sunlight I stuck around downtown to do a bit of sketching. Inspired by the watercolour sketches of dancers by Kumi Matsukawa from Japan (who wrote chapters in my book Creative Sketching Workshop) I sketched a couple of women dressed in bright Spanish style dresses who were moving from spot to spot, performing a dance to some flamenco style music, and moving on. I also caught them in quick pencil gestures, below. This sort of loose style sketching is useful for people moving quickly, focusing on the gesture and movement rather than going for accurate details. That’s usually how your eye registers things, and your hand works slower than your eye so let it dance with the dancers.

I also sketched a band that was playing in the courtyard of the Pence. They moved around a lot less, but my eyesight sketching from a distance made it hard to pick out too many details, but the red of the middle guitarist’s dress really stood out.

how to stay in europe

June 24, 20168 Comments

I love this Euro 2016 football tournament. I love Europe in general, let me be clear about that – I was born European, and will remain European. The EU referendum news is fresh, new and bitter – and Cameron just resigned a few minutes ago – so to cheer you up again, I’ll bring it back to the football. I’ve often been frustrated by the European Football Championships, the less fun little brother of the World Cup. Perhaps it was the Years of Hurt – as a fan of both Ireland and, yeah, England disappointment went hand in hand. I still have a celebratory t-shirt from the famous Ireland victory over England back in 1988 (“These boys made history” it read, my mum got it for me from the Irish festival in Willesden Green). Despite some World Cup fun times since, the Republic of Ireland have either not qualified or just been rubbish at the Euros. England, well, Euro 96 was a fun ride, with a depressing end. These Euros have seen Wales, England, Northern Ireland and now the Republic of Ireland qualify for the knockout stages in dramatic fashion. Kind of pales into insignificance now with the political earthquake of “Brexit”, but while the two final group matches played yesterday lunchtime I sketched them both simultaneously (I do love split-screen). Ireland beat Italy 1-0 with a late winner, and I leapt off my seat, fist pumping. Even the Italians celebrated with the Irish. Both Ireland teams in the next round! Wales and England too! And Iceland, who are close enough to Scotland! Another of the teams I like, Belgium (I lived there for a year, during Euro 2000 funnily enough, I lived opposite the stadium where England beat Germany) beat Sweden, and I sketched some of them to, Belgium in their cool away kit. The outcome was finely balanced, but Belgium scored about 20 seconds before the Irish did, and suddenly Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s international career was over. There he is there, looking rather like a comic villain, Dick Dastardly but without the evil smirk. At least he wasn’t throwing on-pitch tantrums like Ronaldo was (though at least Ronaldo looked more like he cared, and scored a couple of goals out of it – not free kicks, of course). Zlatan has left the building – “Zlexit”, as I’m calling it.

I sketched these partly for practice. I just finished writing a book about sketching people in five minutes (coming out in the Fall!) and one section is about sketching people playing sports, live, so these are my efforts. There’s no football tomorrow, either. Well it’s already tomorrow now. But two days without football, just as all these teams celebrate staying in Europe, and what goes and happens? It all starts up again on Saturday – Wales v Northern Ireland! – and then the big one for Ireland against France on Sunday (6am wake-up for me), with England v Iceland on Monday. Allez les Euros.

hibbert lumber

June 22, 2016June 23, 20167 Comments

One Saturday afternoon recently I went into downtown Davis to do some sketching because there’s a bit I missed when I spent a decade sketching every inch of this town. I’ve never sketched Hibbert Lumber – I used to catch the bus across the street from here most days, the P bus back to South Davis. I live in North Davis now, it’s like a different country. There are no buses to where I live on a weekend, you have to walk or ride a bike (or drive if you are that way inclined). Well there is the P but it takes ages and totally goes around the houses and stops a couple of blocks away. Sorry, you don’t care about the Davis bus system. By the way that is run by Unitrans, on the UC Davsi campus, and they do a good job, even having some old London buses (pre-Routemaster even) which, yeah, sorry they are actually very uncomfortable to ride. I prefer the newer buses. At least they aren’t Boris buses. Perhaps one day the Boris buses will also end up out here in Davis. I wish we had gotten the Bendy buses, I actually loved those. Remember those, Londoners with short memories? Even though cities across the world (including San Francisco) have used them for decades in narrow city streets, London decided that after a few years of having Bendy buses that they just couldn’t have them any more, because the Evening Standard and Boris Johnson said they were the most pressing important thing for London to deal with. Boris Johnson yes, he has a tendency towards such political tactics to get himself what he wants (by the way, try not to give him what he wants today, Britain, or you’ll end up on a course which ends with him as Prime Monster. #VoteRemain). Yes I loved the Bendy bus, with its greater accessibility than double-deckers, so if there are any going spare and Davis can have them, let’s do it. I did spend a fun afternoon on one once though at New Oxford Street, the bus wasn’t even trying to navigate a corner, just get around some traffic, and it got totally stuck, like a boy with his head in the railings. The driver just got completely stuck in a Gordian knot of traffic and bus. I think in the end they got someone from Bletchley Park to come and unscramble the mess, it was quite the kerfuffle.

Hibbert Lumber is an old established Davis business, family run, located on the corner of 5th Street and G Street. They were founded in 1947 down on 3rd Street and in addition to the lumber yard they are a hardware store. I stood on a hot afternoon sketching from across the street. I went for the simplified colouring option, because I had to go home and pack my bag for a week-long vacation in San Diego – much needed, let me tell you. So Hibberts Lumber, another Davis spot sketched. Next!

theatre of the ab third

June 11, 20162 Comments

This is Third Street. Of course, I know that you know that, because I’ve drawn this before, and you definitely remember, of course. Continuing my theme of drawing the streets of Davis as panoramas but in numerical order, having just done 1st and 2nd, now here is 3rd. I saw “X-Men Apocalypse” lately and Jean Grey said something about “Return of the Jedi” being bad because everyone knows the third movie is always the worst (referring to X-Men: The Last Stand) yet following it up by actually being in a movie (namely “X-Men Apocalypse”) that is not fit to wipe the Ewok’s Feet of “Jedi”. But I’m not going to go into my feelings about comic-book movies (go and see “Civil War” it is amazing! Black Panther is the best!) rather I will talk about my process when drawing a panorama.

It was the day after the hottest day of the year, and this time it was overcast, but still very hot, and very, very muggy. Sweat dripped from my brow, but I toiled on, I just had to draw 3rd Street, it is the next chapter, ok it may not be as good as 1st Street or 2nd Street but it has its own qualities, it’s doing its own thing. So, when I do a panorama, I first use a pencil to block out where the road will be, and then main lines of perspective, as they curve left and right. When standing with sweat dripping onto the page you do the best you can. Actually the first thing I do is wander about until I hit just the right spot, usually the spot in the shade, one with the least foliage in the way of what I’m drawing. Then when I’ve blocked in a few lines in pencil (not too many, mind, no point drawing the whole thing twice), I do the actual drawing with the pen, usually ignoring some or sometimes all of my guidelines, holding my sketchbook in that awkward looking way that I do. I was sent a tweet recently on the Twitter, which said “are you the urban sketcher who holds his pen in a strange way?” Is this a thing now, is that my thing? Is this how I am known now? I’m kidding – that’s always how I’ve been known, ever since I was in primary school, it’s nothing new. People would ask me, “you hold your pen in a funny way, are you left handed? “Only if you can’t tell left and right I am,” I would reply, before running away very fast. At school they tried to change me, telling me as my hands got bigger I would never write or draw as fast as my classmates, and I would suffer academically. I wish I could go back in time and thank the teacher who effectively set me that challenge, but I wouldn’t thank them, I’d say hey, I’m Pete, remember me, my funny hands are bigger now, let’s have a writing and drawing race, see who is fastest! No, no I wouldn’t say that. I’d be all respectful and reserved and shy. I do wish they had told me back then that I also hold my book funny s well, I only discovered that a few years ago, when I first saw photos of me out and about urban sketching. I sometimes draw upside down as well when I get to the far right of the page, easiest to hold, plus I like subverting the far right, bloody fascists.

Anyway, the next step is to draw the whole thing. I don’t really do the thing where I draw outlines of everything and fill in the gaps, rather I draw small details from point one. If there is signage I draw that first, because I enjoy it the most. Cars…occupational hazard. If there are cars parked I will avoid drawing them until I absolutely have to. For example one was parked in front of the middle house for ages, but it left so I quickly drew in the bits previously obscured. No other car ended up parking there (oh there’s nowhere to park downtown on a Saturday, boo, um actually yes there bloody is) meaning I could draw to my leisure. The building to the left had lots of “No on A!” election signs. I don’t see why they don’t like A, it is the first letter of the alphabet, without it there would carnage, etc etc and so on. So then comes the paint. If I have time I will do it all on site, and with a panorama it takes that bit longer. Often though I will use the extra time getting the drawing right, doing some of the colour on site, and finishing off the rest at home (or a nearby pub which has tables and beer). For this I coloured in a few main details and then did the obvious stuff (trees, road, rooftops) later on. Then I scanned it, scanning both sides and using Photoshop to stitch them together. Then I save it in both 300dpi (for printing) and 72dpi (for posting online – smaller file size, easier to appear on the website, gets all pixelated when people try to print it out themselves – ha ha). Then, I post the sketch to Flickr, which is a good place to host your drawings, as you can organize them into handy folders – a nice online portfolio. I’ve used it for nearly ten years now. Then I post it on my blog, and – this is important – I like to keep the writing to a normal, readable size which makes total sense and doesn’t ramble off in all sorts of nonsensical directions. And then I spend about three hours thinking up a title which might come from a song lyric or a famous poetic quote, I add the tags, I press publish, and I go to bed listening to the Football Weekly podcast and playing Scrabble on my iPod. This, my dear sketching friends, is the whole process. And if you have read this far, I thank you for your staying power, and urge you to pick up a pen and go out and draw your city streets too. It’s fun!

(Coming next – 4th street, aka “The 4th Awakens”)

celebration time

June 10, 2016Leave a comment

Here in the world of academia, this week is graduation week. Thousands of students undergrad and graduate receive their hard-earned degrees this week and step out into the world. In our department at UC Davis we held a special awards and graduation ceremony a week before the official commencement, honoring our young statisticians and biostatisticians. I did a couple of sketches at the event, but mostly got award certificates ready and took photos and applauded enthusiastically. Great job, everyone!

And a few days later, on by far the hottest day of the year, we held our annual Spring Picnic, and I did this one sketch below. The banner is part of a poster I had made to advertise the event. It was really, really hot, but we had a good turnout, and it was a nice way to round off the year. And so, on towards summer…

if there was a sequel would you love me as an equal

June 2, 20168 Comments

On the second day of the Long Weekend, in the morning while my son went to a birthday party, I cycled downtown for some pre-lunchtime sketching. Another panoramic two-page spread, as you do. I decided to return to First Street, which is a block away from the similarly named Second Street (I know, makes no sense). Here, outside the Natsoulas Gallery, a huge cat is being erected, covered in mosaic tiles, next to the already installed colourful dog on the corner. While sketching, a guy working on the structure came over and chatted with me about art (he draws stuff as well) (hello by the way if you’re reading this). This is turning into a most colourful corner. On the other page, the fraternity house of Theta Xi (no, sorry, no jokes about taxis today). This is a bit like a sequel (or a prequel, technically, being First Street) to the sketch from the day before. I should do a panorama of Third Street to keep it up, like. Maybe I will wait 30 years and then sell my sketchbook for billions to Disney and they can get J J Abrams to sketch it, but as much in the style of the Second Street sketch as possible, with a fire hydrant and a bit of lens flare, forgetting that First Street with its giant cats and midichlorians even exists. Or maybe not. It’s getting hotter, hotter, hotter. This weekend is going to be a scorcher. Time to get out of Davis…

why the panoramic face?

June 1, 20165 Comments

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

Hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend.

building the pitzer, part six

May 30, 20162 Comments

It’s nearly done, the Pitzer Center, the new Music Recital Hall on the UC Davis campus. I’ve sketched this spot since it was the Boiler Building, and watched that old campus character get knocked into the dust, with this finally rising to take its place. It’s nearly done.

Here is the front entrance area, now fully glazed. This is what will greet visitors to campus for years to come. I’m looking forward to finally seeing performances there myself.

Below, a panorama using pencil. I was thinking about Florian Afflerbach that day, he would have enjoyed to sketch this building. It’s through him that I gained the interest in sketching buildings like this, and using them to really study perspective.

Here are the previous chapters: PART FIVE (Feb 2016), PART FOUR (Oct 2015), PART THREE (Aug 2015), PART TWO (Aug 2015), PART ONE (July 2015).

walker way

May 29, 20162 Comments

This is the back of Walker Hall, which will be redeveloped into the Graduate and Professional Student Center at UC Davis. The basic “E” shape of this building will remian and the front will be pretty much as it is now, but the interior and much of the rear will be radically altered. I am therefore planning to sketch it a few more times before the winds of change blow in. It’s not really used for much these days so a change is on the cards – another one. I remember when there were other walls in front of these, with cacti all along them, and then when they redeveloped this stretch of campus they opened this up into the walkway you see now. This will in fact be opened up further creating a corridor all the way down to the entrance Shields Library (visible in the distance there). Walker Hall was named in 1959 after H. B. Walker, who was chair of the Agricultural Engineering department. One of the things they will have in this new center are rooms that can be named after people (faculty, I presume). More information about the new center can be found on the UC Davis Graduate Studies website. I drew this one lunchtime this week, while listening to the History of Rome podcast.