a festive friday

December 24, 20181 Comment

It’s almost Christmas! I haven’t had much energy for sketching lately, but I really needed to get some drawing in. I went to see Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (by the way, an awesome film, incredibly creative animation) and then popped into De Vere’s (not Into the Spi-De Vere’s), our local Irish Pub, for some Smithwicks and sketching. It was pretty busy with festive end-of-year partygoers. I sketched in dark green pen. It was really nice to get this sketch done, to get anything done. I’ve been finding it hard to be productive lately, everything seems to take me forever. Actually I have made a lot of things out of Perler Beads. This year I made my son’s advent calendar out of 14,000 of those beads; that was a lot of work. Anyway Christmas is almost here, so I wish you all the very best for the festive season, and hope you go and watch Spider-Verse, because it was pretty great.

to warwick and stratford

August 28, 2018August 28, 20184 Comments

And now for the final part of our recent trip to Europe. I was determined that we’d visit a historic castle, something we don’t have many of here in California (sorry Mr Hearst, Mr Disney, but those ain’t castles). So we hit the motorway (thanks to my mum for driving us) up to Warwick, in central England. I had been there a few years ago, and knew it was a pretty great sight. Warwick Castle is a little theme-y (being owned by Merlin Entertainment now) but as it has a Horrible Histories maze and some fun jousting entertainment that doesn’t matter. Actually, we missed the jousting as it’s not every day (though I did see some four years ago, and it was fun). Warwick Castle is in a beautiful location on the banks of the Avon river, and a historically significant geopolitical spot, being in the middle of the country and therefore an important stronghold for the balance of power. The Earl of Warwick in the late middle ages was known as the ‘Kingmaker’, not without exaggeration. The site of Warwick Castle was founded as a ‘burh’ by the formidable Anglo-Saxon lady Æthelflæd, ruler of Mercia (also ‘Ethelfelda’). She fought against the invading Danes and the Welsh, she was also a daughter of Alfred the Great, and in fact there was a re-enactment of her funeral in June 2018 in nearby Gloucester. When William the Conqueror invaded in 1066, the Normans built a motte-and-bailey castle here on ‘Ethelfleda’s Mound’, and Warwick Castle was subsequently built up over the next few centuries by later lords and earls. The first Earl of Warwick was Henry de Beaumont, from 1088, and the 16th Earl, Richard Neville (who gained the title through marriage to Anne de Beauchamp) was the famed Warwick the Kingmaker, who rose to prominence during the Wars of the Roses before dying at the Battle of Barnet in 1471. There’s a lot more history too, but I was interested in the old armoury. The suit of armour below is actually a child’s armour, likely for ornamental purposes. I sketched the castle above while taking a break with my son, who didn’t want to walk around the dungeons.

We didn’t stay in Warwick, though I’d love to sketch that old city some day. Instead, we stayed the night in Stratford upon Avon at a place called Alveston Manor, a large country house converted into a hotel just a short walk from central Stratford. It was lovely, and I love drawing buildings like that. Stratford is Shakespeare’s town, and they do not ever let you forget it here. We did walk up to see Shakespeare’s birthplace, and walk along the Avon, and I had a huge knickerbocker glory (with extra chocolate) at a local pub. So good.

In the evening after watching France knock Belgium out of the World Cup, I walked down to the riverside as the last mid-summer light faded away, and sketched the bridge below. This was around 9:30pm at night. I decided to walk across the other bridge to get back to the hotel, whcih was a mistake. It was a logn bridge along a road with a fairly narrow path for pedestrians, and lots of cobwebs. During the day the cobwebs were quaint. In the evening they were covered with thousands of busy, chubby spiders, loving their little legs and spinning and completely freaking me out. They weren’t dangerous, unlike the ones in my Davis back yard right now, but so many of them moving all around me was pretty much the creepiest thing ever. I ran as quickly as I could, but it was a long bridge. Yeah, I’m not into spiders.

seven dials

August 27, 2018August 27, 2018Leave a comment

Another panorama intended for colouring in but ultimately left as is, due to running our of time. This is the last one for London, then I have another post from elsewhere in England, and then it’s Davis all the way. It was the day of the England v Croatia semi-final in the World Cup. The evening before we were in Stratford-upon-Avon, watching France eliminate Belgium, and when we got back to London I took the tube down to central London for some last minute sketching and shopping, ahead of our trip to the Iberian Peninsula. This is Seven Dials, which is a junction of seven narrow streets located between Shaftesbury Avenue and Covent Garden. It’s one of my favourite spots in London, being right by the London Graphic Centre (where I stopped by for some replacement paint half-pans). That’s one of my favourite shops in London. The other is just around the corner, Stanfords, the cartographers and travel book store. I love a map. Ironically I get lost quite often. I think I see maps like art, beautiful objects of winder and magic that I just can’t understand nor explain. I always get there in the end, even if takes a long time. Seven Dials in London reminds of Seven Dials in Brighton (aka London-by-the-Sea), where in the early hours of one New Years Day a couple of decades ago I got terribly lost trying to find my way back to the indistinguishable house I was supposed to be looking for where my companions were staying. Brighton I thought is an easier place to navigate because there are only three directions – North, East and West, with South just being The English Channel. Haha, you foolish boy. I could not remember the name of the street I was supposed to be on, just that it was one of the ones going off of Seven Dials. Hours of walking around each of the ‘Dials’. I did have a mobile phone (this was 2000, well 2001 by that point) but it didn’t work very well and I may have been out of pay-as-you-go credit. I found it eventually, and forever have an amusing Brighton anecdote to tell.

But back to Brighton-by-the-Land (David Devant reference), I stood here sketching a panorama as people walked by, many heading to the pub to start drinking ahead of cheering on England. A lot of people, I noticed, were wearing yellow clothes. Yellows skirts, trousers, shirts, the occasional hat. I don’t think this signified anything, and certainly has nothing to do with the football. Perhaps yellow is ‘in’ this year. I don’t know fashion, but once thing I do remember about living in London, people would say, “oh green is ‘in’ this year,” or similar. “Brown is the new Black.” Football shirt fashion I understand, but real clothes, well I just wear navy blue and black mostly. Anyway I did notice this trend of wearing yellow, but I didn’t add anyone to my sketch in a yellow blouse or anything, so forget I mentioned it. The only colour I added, well you can see for yourself. The Union flag stands out. England were in the semi-final, and while it’s been a few decades since this was the flag waved at England games, it still seemed nice to include it.

I went home to watch the game with my family. England lost to Croatia. That’s that, then.

By the way, you might be interested in seeing the last such sketch I did in this neighbourhood, four years ago at the end of Monmouth Street, looking toward Seven Dials, below. This is one of my favourite sketches I have done of London.

Ok and one more for luck, this is a sketch of Seven Dials I did a few years ago around Christmas-time. At least in this one you can see the top of the coloumn. London can be beautiful sometimes.

old street, old pub, old football shirts

August 26, 2018August 26, 20181 Comment

London, early July. It was so sweaty. Air-conditioning is a thing that happens to other people. This was, I was often told, a heatwave to rival the one that happened in the year I was born. That summer was legendary, a long mid-70s sun-fest. I was too young to complain about it then but I’m sure I gave it a good old go non-verbally. I’m not a hot weather animal, which makes it all the more surprising that I now live in the California Central Valley, which has Really Hot Summers. “Dry Heat”. Not so much in humid London. While the temperature is lower than back in Davis, London summers can be unbearable. Specifically, London summers when you have to use the tube, especially when it’s packed, which is often. We went down into central London to go to the British Museum. I figured, it will be nice and cool in there, among all the marble. What we got was a ridiculously sweaty British Museum with no air-conditioning, with a large greenhouse in the middle. I tried to do some sketching in the Greek rooms but was sweating too much. Eventually we left, got back on the sticky tube, and went over to Old Street to find a very special store. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. Above, I managed to sketch this scene of Shoreditch High Street. It was hot and sticky but it was mostly overcast, so at least there was no baking sunlight. In the background, new buildings going up in the City. London is changing, always changing.

This is nearby, the Bricklayers Arms. I’d wanted to sketch an old pub, old pubs are becoming a little rarer each time I return (at least the ones that remain get a little older each time I come back too, if you think about it). I’d never been here before. I never really went out around Old Street and Shoreditch before, except a couple of times years ago. I wasn’t really Cool enough for this part of town. That was my excuse. I really liked sketching this – colourful flags, and lots of bricks. After I was finished with the sketch I popped in for a pint before heading home.

But before I did this…further down the street was (during July only) the pop-up store of Classic Football Shirts. This was on the back of an exhibition of old football shirts called ‘Fabric of Football’ which had taken place in London this year.Now if you know me you know that I am obsessed with two things: fire hydrants, and football shirts. Ok I’m obsessed with old languages, travel, Formula One, noodles on toast, Marvel comics, Star Wars, Tottenham, and obviously drawing, but if you’ve ever followed my Twitter feed during football tournaments or any other time you’ll know I’m in love with those colourful uniforms. I pretend I know all about things like tactics and player fitness, but I’m usually just saying words I’ve read in a Jonathan Wilson book to sound clever. With football shirts though I feel like I do at least Know My Stuff. So it was a pleasure beyond pleasure to come here and browse through the old shirts, mostly the ones from the 1990s, such as that great Nigerian shirt from the 1994 World Cup (never mind the 2018 one, the home and away from 94 were the real classics). I was also pleased to find they had the very shirt I was wearing (1993-95 Spurs home shirt) on display outside the store. I got a few compliments at various times on this trip for this shirt, by the way. The 1990s kits have made a comeback in a big way (still amazed all my 90s shirts still fit, actually…). Anyway this place was a highlight of the trip! Check out their website at: https://www.classicfootballshirts.co.uk/. I didn’t buy myself anything (all the things I wanted were a little bit expensive) but I did get my son an AS Roma shirt from 2016.

back from outer space

August 25, 2018August 29, 20185 Comments

After I got back from Portugal, I had a hectic week (few weeks really) trying to settle back in. Busy work, busy life, jet lag, waking up at 3am every day, and the insatiable urge to just KEEP ON SKETCHING. It’s hard to explain the urge to draw stuff all the time. It’s probably less hard to explain coming back from a place like Porto where everything is a sketch waiting to happen, to Davis, which as we have seen over the past decade or so is worthy of a few sketches itself, but Porto it ain’t. You can only beat the team you’re playing, as they say, and since coming back I have ramped up my sketching of Davis once more after a relatively uninspired and fallow period. I’ve sketched almost everything I’ve wanted to sketch, so it comes down to sketching some of the old favourites just to keep the pen working, so one evening I popped once more to my local pub De Vere’s, always a nice place to hang out, and flexed the old ink muscles. This sort of drawing is about observing lots of detail, tackling interior perspective, and having a nice cold beer while you’re at it (the weather was so hot this summer). What’s more, I drew the pub from the outside a few days before: see below.

And as you can see, I also drew a Davis fire hydrant. These finished off my Seawhite sketchbook so that it was completed in July.

Now, I have a few more London sketches (and accompanying stories) to post, and then a bunch of new Davis panoramas I’ve been doing, but in the meantime I think I’m going to go out on this fine Saturday and do some more. I also need to get on setting the dates for the next few Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawls so stay tuned for those. My recent sketching travels has filled me with a new sketching-energy I want to share.

more campus vignettes

June 30, 2018July 1, 2018Leave a comment

Ok I am pretty caught up with the scanning so here are some more lunchtime campus sketches, packed into one post. Above is one of the oldest buildings on the UC Davis campus – North Hall. It’s 110 years old. This is the side of it, facing South Hall.

Here is the Bike Barn, as seen from the South Silo, next to one of the food trucks that frequent the Silo area these days (or during the academic year anyway).

This is the rear of the Enology Lab Building, just off California Avenue. It looks uninteresting but is the sort of thing I like to draw.

This is a tree outside the Arts Building.

The rear of Heitman (formerly the Hog Barn), with the south Silo behind it. I have taken a lot of staff development classes here in Heitman.

And the view of the Bike Barn from afar, once more. I have sketched this scene so many times over the years, but this time at a slightly different angle. That’s the front of Heitman there, with the South Silo behind it. Right now, at the end of June, the Davis Heat is here again. A hundred degrees and rising, with a hot wind blowing. Onwards with the World Cup knockout stage…

walker on by

June 29, 2018June 28, 2018Leave a comment

This is part of Walker Hall at UC Davis. which is now undergoing a large remodeling to turn it into the Graduate Center. Even now this looks very different; those windows have all been knocked through, the interior is largely gutted, and the building on this side will look completely different once all I done. I want to sketch how it currently looks but I have had no lunchtime time to do so. Change continues on campus…

scientia potentia est, gallia lardum est

June 27, 2018June 26, 20182 Comments

B Street, Davis. The corner of 3rd and B, to be precise. 3rd Street is undergoing some big changes. I can’t tell you what, but it’s exciting. I can’t tell you what, because I can’t remember. I did read a big sign detailing it all but I can’t be expected to remember that stuff. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast most days. Actually that isn’t true, it’s just one of those things busy people say to excuse their forgetfulness. No, I always have either a chocolate croissant or maybe a bowl of cereal. Sometimes I skip it altogether if one of those things is not available. I have been known to have a Twix from the vending machine if I am really stuck. Cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast. I eat junk food, yes I do. That building across the street used to be Cioccolat, speaking of chocolate goods, it was a cafe that had chocolate things, I think so, I don’t remember ever going there. It’s something else now. I don’t know what. I’m not very good at this am I, I should be detailing huge local knowledge but well, knowing things is uncool these days. Do you remember at school when the teacher would ask a question and you knew the answer but you would not raise your hand because the Thick Kids would hit you when the teacher wasn’t looking (or even when they were)? That’s where we are these days, it feels like. Except we don’t need to know everything, because we can Find Things Out instantly with our Devices, and those Things may or may not be even be Real. “Knowledge Is Power, France Is Bacon”. Smart Phones? Why can’t we have Thick Phones? Sorry, you have to say it in a Norf London accent, ‘Fick Fones’. To activate it with voice command you shout “oi!” and when you ask it a question it replies, “you wot? you takin’ the piss? come on then!” No, Fick Fones will never catch on. (Or maybe it already has and is called Facebook?) I do remember fondly those conversations at school though, I remember I was talking with one kid in science class once when I was about 12 and I said something along the lines of, “well it’s all relative, innit” and he gets all angry and starts going, “you takin’ the piss? woss my family gotta do wiv it?” Ah school days, they were such blissful times. I could be pretty monumentally dim myself sometimes though, so it all evened out. One time I handed in biology homework, which was supposed to be an essay based on explaining to an alien from another planet what the difference between cars and living creatures was. I didn’t write an essay, just the line “it’s probably a bit like your spaceship.” That may have not been what they were expecting. I thought it was so clever. God knows I could have warbled on nonsensically, I think they got off lightly with that concise (cocky) answer. My friend Tel once did something similar in history, answering one question that referred to “all four corners of the globe” with “globes are round, they don’t have corners” which to be fair is pretty true, and has remained true ever since. Nowadays though you get the Flat Earthers, which really are a thing, and if you should ever chance down that particular avenue of wisdom, I warn you that it is time you will never, ever get back. At first glance their argument appears to be the classic example of of wilful anti-knowledge and anti-science, but when you taker a closer look, the only honest response to all that is “you wot? you takin’ the piss?”

Saturday nights down at FC Davis

June 25, 2018June 23, 2018Leave a comment

There is a new team in town. Well, a new football club. Soccer, that is. They are FC Davis, and have been playing for the last few months at Aggie Stadium, on the UC Davis campus. We have been to a few games already, starting with the 1-1 draw against the East Bay Stompers (yes, Stompers), who had one tall player that had a big bush of hair and scored a penalty (you can see him below). Many fans were making reference to him being the Lion King because of his mane, which I think he seemed to enjoy, especially when he scored; he was definitely their main player. Lots of the people attending I recognized from AYSO, being a soccer coach myself, and while it wasn’t a big crowd it was a fun, local atmosphere. The kids of course just loved rolling down the grass verges behind the goals, that’s what you do when you are 9 and 10. It was a bit confusing having the field play on an American Football gridiron – the soccer field was laid out in barely visible yellow marking, much wider than the football lines, and on one occasion at least a player took a throw-in from the wrong place. I was expecting a Mexican wave to start on the other side of the stadium, one bloke to stand up, then another person thirty seats away, and another even further, but it didn’t happen. The sun went down, and it got quite chilly, and the game ended in a 1-1 draw (or ‘tie’ as they prefer to say here).

The club have an interesting colour scheme of black, gold and white, though we only saw them play in white (with gold numbers on the back; the FIFA kit police would not like that). Their badge is a lion; I’m not sure the connection of the lion with Davis California but a lion it is. I’m sure the same can be said for other teams with lions in their badges too, such as Chelsea (no, that is from the lion in the arms of the local Borough of Chelsea), England (no, those are Richard III’s coat of arms), and Aston Villa (ah now that one has a lion for no reason other than lions are cool). Still it’s a more interesting symbol than, I don’t know, a bike or a cow (with apologies to Oxford United fans, and I know it’s a bull). The FC Davis lion is quite stylized though; my son thought it was supposed to be a monkey, so we now call them the Golden Monkey Lion Kings, and I am sure this nickname will not catch on. I also don’t think my new fan song “One Lion” will catch on either, a reworking of the famous 1996 Lightning Seeds / Baddiel and Skinner classic. It goes “One Lion on the shirt, Water-Tower still gleaming, Three months of hurt, Never stopped me dreaming.”

The next time I went they totally went and won for the first time at home. They played Napa 1839 (who very sensibly have a wine bottle as their badge; I wonder if their nicknames is The Bottlers? I don’t know but I already have a slew of potential headlines about them, if ever I have to sub-edit their match reports for a tabloid paper: ‘Napa Caught Napping’, etc and so on, I’m sure there are lots of good wine and bottle ones, ‘Napa bottle their opener’ if they lose their first game for example) (many apologies to Napa for this by the way, got nothing against you, it’s just these headlines would work really well in the British gutter press). So FC Davis won this one (there’s no way they’d get me to write match reports, I go off on more tangents than the Argentine midfield), and Napa sported a two-tone green outfit. It was a close contest, but when FC Davis scored the winner the goalscorer took his shirt off to celebrate with the roaring crowd.

The third and most recent game we went to was against FC Academica. I kept saying it didn’t matter what the score was, “it was academic”, but nobody seemed to hear me. This was a good game. Academica were pretty tough, and took a commanding 3-0 lead. But as it turns out, FC Davis have a a lot of lion’s courage in them, because they came in the last 20 minutes back to tie it up to 3-3, and really should have won 4-3 but had a free kick disallowed (I think VAR would have probably rectified it). It was a very exciting end to the game. I sketched as much of the match as possible (click on the image below to see in more detail). I haven’t had a chance to come to any more games but it was fun sketching them, hanging out with the family and friends and the players on our team, having pizza and beer, and it only cost five bucks to get in. Go Golden Monkey Lion Kings!!

Sorry, ‘Golden Lions’, that is the real nickname. If you’re local and interested, you can visit the FC Davis club website: https://www.footballclubdavis.com/

i was dreaming of the past

June 24, 2018June 25, 2018Leave a comment

Another panorama, this one is of E Street in Davis, stood in the shade outside Peet’s Coffee next to Chipotle. Pete doesn’t drink coffee. This was a fun one for perspective. Nothing too complicated, all heading into a single vanishing point at eye level, but made interesting by that Chipotle design going off at a different angle. Yeah some of the brickwork goes askew but that is ok. Again I have used the tree as the middle of the page, to help mask the valley you get in between two pages in these Seawhite of Brighton books, something I don’t get as much in the Moleskines and the Stillman & Birns. Actually in this spread it does open very flat, it’s one of those pages, but nonetheless in these spreads it’s good to have a tree or a pole in the middle so you can fudge it a bit if need be. I didn’t include any people walking by, because I didn’t want to. I have drawn along this street for years, from various angles, never this angle. One time I was drawing, some weird guy said to me “are you pretending to be an artist?” I said “are you pretending to be funny?” He went away. I saw him a couple of weeks later in Newsbeat, and he spoke to me again, “wow Snickers, that is a great thing to buy, you will really enjoy eating that, Snickers, those are great, good choice!” I ignored him, because seriously. Downtown Davis, man. I’ve been in Davis almost thirteen years. This Chipotle was here when I first came, it was one of the first places I ate, I still get the same thing whenever I go, a chicken fajita burrito, no beans, mild salsa and corn, light on cheese. I am a creature of habits. Beyond that, the comics shop Bizarro World (formerly on 5th Street), which is in the former location of Bogey’s Books when I first joined this town, I bought a set of Prisoner Cell Block H dvds there in like 2006 and the guy behind the counter said, “do you miss Australia?” assuming me to be from down under (for many Americans the London accent is easy to confuse with Australian, I’m used to it). I used to love Prisoner though, it was one of my favourite TV shows, old Lizzie Birdsworth and co. Beyond there is De Vere’s Irish pub, which regular listeners will recall is a pub I have sketched many times since it opened in 2011. Really good place for a pint. Across the street (unseen) is Baskin Robbins, from whom I have bought many a massive milkshake over the years. That’s what I get when I need cheering up. Anyway, on with the rest of the weekend.