Remember when I drew this scene while sitting in Alamo Square back in July? No? Well I did (here it is to prove it). And here is the same scene again, drawn this week, but in sepia wash. The ‘painted ladies’.
Drawn on a 5×7 canson watercolour postcard with a copic 0.1 pen and cotman watercolours. And a whole lotta love.
Another one in copic and sepia…this is my mother-in-law’s house in Santa Rosa. It’s in the historic Luther Burbank district. He invented lots of plants.
As you can see, I’m still doing the whole tree in front of the frame thing. It’s becoming my thing.
Ok. Thing is, I wanted to draw the new apartment in a kind of tryptich (or is it triptych?), and so I did, in three sepia blocks, each of which I’m showing separately here, along with the whole thing, and for bad measure, a photo of me holding the book (while watching ‘spaced’).
And this is also my entry for Illustration Friday this week (theme: ‘similar’). Our new apartment is very similar to our last one – it’s on the same complex, has all the same fixtures and fitting, but for one big thing – everything is reversed. It’s like walking into a mirror, but I like it inside this mirror, I much prefer it. even if there are more bugs (such as a centipede crawling up through the plughole – do I not like that!)
I was inspired because this week I got back my sketchbook from August’s Art House Co-Op Sketchbook Project, the theme of which was “How to Save The World”. My little book, which you can browse here, was filled with drawings of our own little world, the apartment where we spent all our time. I was saving the place I lived in, in the sense of recording it, so that in years to come I might look at it and say, yes I lived there, I remember that. Now we’ve moved I can do that already. And I can compare drawings of the new apartment to the old. The kitchen (above) is the other way round from how it is in this picture, for example. Even the hot and cold taps are reversed, not that you can tell, but I still get it wrong.
The first frame shows the baby monitor. Baby was sleeping soundly. That is, not making much of a sound. The second frame shows Mr Salt, the saltpot, and his lover Mrs Pepperpot. Mr Salt has very big trousers. He is either grossly deformed or carries a lot in is pockets (perhaps he too is an urban sketcher?). 
I think Mr. Salt is Dutch, but he comes from England. He is also into the lost practise of trepanning. You can also see the Christmas Tree, put up last weekend, hopefully out of the reach of little mischievous hands (I don’t mean those of Mr Salt, whose hands are stuck to his trousers). The final frame, looking over at the CD tower and the music players and the calendar of new york city, has a bottle of the local Sudwerk beer in it. This is purely decorative. I was actually drinking a cup of tea, but thought a beer bottle would look better. I pulled it from the recycling. I like Sudwerk, the Märzen variety, it’s a nice German style amber beer brewed just down the road from bei uns. One of the things I really like about living out here in the American West are the micro-brews – not as big a thing on the East coast. Back in London, we have the pubs alright, but I way prefer the beers out here. You can see also a Micron Pigma pen on the table; you can’t get those in England either (or at least, I couldn’t). Incidentally, I drew this in a copic multiliner 0.1.
So this is home. Not quite the same as the old apartment, but very similar.
New York City, continued… I moved up Manhattan to the West Village area, hoping for some lovely old bricks and some leafy autumnal streets, and yep, that’s what I got. I think I had in mind the excellent work of Nina Johansson when choosing what to draw here (though I’m a lot scruffier). 
I sat and had a beer called magic hat outside a cool, dark little pub called the slaughtered lamb, on west 4th. A great spot to watch the world go by, and other such cliches. Oh, and to watch taxi cabs nearly have crashes, that was fun as well. I love the yellow cabs in New York – better than our London black cabs (yes, better, that’s right). Not that I ever take either. I always wonder though, is that cab the Cash Cab? My wife wondered the same thing too; we love that show. I gave up on the magic hat after about two thirds of a pint, because a big red-eyed bug had decided to come in for a swim. I photographed the work in progress, for fun. I then wandered 
over to Washington Square, admiring the trees and the bundled-up chess players. I sat and quickly drew a guitarist, as you do around here, and took in the scarf-wearing intellectual atmosphere around NYU. I wanted to go there a few years ago, to study drama perhaps, but the fees are so big. I just love the area I think. I was looking forward to this neighbourhood most of all, and I was enjoying the sunny cold and the leaves, but I realised I hadn’t eaten anything that day, so pressed on up town. And, hot dogs aside (I don’t eat them), I decided that I really wanted something that tasted of New York.
The second morning in New York was brighter and breezier. I took an early train, and went all the way down to the bottom tip of Manhattan, to look out at the Statue of Liberty, which is famous because it was in X-Men. It was placed out on Liberty Island way before the world became a place full of digital camera snapping tourists, so it’s not there just as a cynical ploy to get you to take the ferry and get a closer look. It was there to greet the throngs of immigrants, the huddled masses arriving on ships toward Ellis Island, that the New York was eager to welcome, and who have contributed so much to the city and the country’s character (something to remember, daily mail readers). A gift to show the bonds of liberty and friendship between America and France (something to remember, fox news viewers). From here though it’s kind of hard to see properly. You’d think they’d move it closer.
Gotta love her though. Really, I couldn’t come all this way and not see Lady Liberty, holding up her ice cream. I’ve been close up before, and she’s cool. This day however was a sketching day and that means packing in as much of the city as I can grab, and drawing some along the way. I wandered about the 
financial District, stopping off at the World Trade Center site, still empty and closed off as it was when I was there six years ago. Mooched around the narrow streets that reminded me so much of the City of London (and with names like Thames Street you can see why). Stopped off in Wall Street, to see what all the fuss is about. There was a lot of construction work going on, cue all the quips from all the passers-by. Sat on the steps beneath a huge statue of George Washington (on the site where he was inaugurated President, which is pretty cool), I sketched the New York Stock Exchange, which is still covered over with that huge (and unnecessary) flag, which reminded me of a giant band-aid. Are they hiding behind it?
Wow, that was worth getting up on a Sunday for! But I felt really sorry for Felipe Massa. I watched the Brazilian GP silently; we don’t actually get the channel it was showing on, not properly, but you can see a not-too-bad picture. To compensate for no sound I had the CC on (closed captioning; is it still 888 on teletext back in the UK?). They do a hilariously bad job of transcribing the commentary (to be fair, it’s not an easy job). Cove Align On took some working out, as did Along Sew. Oh well, another F1 season over (another international sport nobody cares about here).
And another race finishes tomorrow, Election Day here in the US. Oh my, what a long, long election it has been. Our elections in the UK are nice and short, only about a month or so, without anywhere near as much of the trash talking rallies and for-show debates (where both candidates always say they won). Where punditry, which pretty much is the media over here, is usually restricted to smug Andrew Neill talking to smug Dianne Abbott and smug Michael Portillo, and an interview with a journalist means being utterly slaughtered by Paxman, not slightly embarassed by Katie Couric (can you imagine Sarah Palin talking to our Jeremy? Oh I can, and it is a LOT of fun: “Just answer the question, do you agree with the Bush Doctrine? Just answer the question! Answer it! Never mind Joe Six-pack or Bob the Builder or Ivor the Engine just answer the question Governor!” and so forth). And staying up all night watching the Swingometer, all those little constituencies, where red and blue mean the opposite of here, memories of Portillo’s not-so-smug face in ’97, Mandelson going all psycho in his ’01 Hartlepool victory speech, Major surprising everyone in ’92, Prescott punching an egg-throwing layabout (now I can imagine Palin doing that, actually), absolutely no political TV ads, except those special ones with the announcement in fron (warning you to switch over now to something more interesting), various Dimblebys confusing everyone, and the Prime Minister clearing his furniture out of No.10 the morning after defeat, none of that waiting around until January malarkey, get out of there now and don’t steal the towels. Oh I miss the British elections. I’ll make a point of going backnext time there is one, just for the fun of it (read about how I spent the last UK election here, here and here).
But tomorrow will be fun too (if the Republicans lose). Obama is preaching for change, while McCain is saying Country First and denouncing Bush (although Bush is a country member; I’m sure you will remember) (and that joke’s older than McCain). And Californians, please vote NO on Prop 8, save gay marriage, and save the state constitution from bigotry and discrimination. It has nothing to do with teaching schoolchildren about gay people, as the scaremongering ads say (like there is something wrong with teaching children that some people are gay, and not encouraging bigotry). Grrr!
This started off being about Lewis Hamilton…
It’s Hallowe’en…this is supposed to be the most haunted building in Hertfordshire ( that’s England, folks, just north of the part of London I’m from). It’s the Sun Hotel in Hitchin, and today my friend James is marrying his fiancee Lianne at this very place (many congratulations dudes!); unfortunately I can’t go (what with being on the other side of the world) so I drew this for them.
Happy Hallowe’en!
And so on to 24th Street, and to the more colourful latin-american part of town. I loved it down there and was itching to draw some spanish-language shopfront. I chose a barber-shop (yep, drawn barber-shops in SF before) which i could have simplified, but i did have lots of kids and adults wearing chivas etc football shirts looking over my shoulder exclaiming excitedly in spanish so I felt i should keep adding details. I enjoyed drawing this one. The one below, I finally got a powerline in there. Several other sketchcrawlers were at this intersection – one even spoke to me, and happened to be from England – and there were also two large cops on two large motorbikes hodden behind opposite corners, bursting out sirens screaming every time someone jumped a stop sign (presumably that was the reason, unless it was something more serious). Decided to colour this elsewhere, over a well-deserved fat tire in a little Irish bar called napper tandy’s, full of fairly well-watered and friendly Irish people. Decided on sepia in the end, give it a different flavour.
Sketchcrawl ended at Muddy’s, a cafe with pretty much nothing on the menu that I wanted (this is why I prefer these things to end at a pub, at least they have beer, but that’s just me being a Londoner; I don’t drink coffee, so all those different flavour beans mean nothing to me). There were a LOT of other sketchcrawlers there, sharing their sketchbooks – though I usually like this bit, I was a little intimidated. I did sit and swap books with a few people, all great work, some people just doing one or two pictures, others filling pages and pages with quality work. I was given some nice compliments. But I got too shy to go mingling, and slinked off for a very messy mission burrito, before heading off to catch the amtrak bus over the bridge, and the train back to Davis, tired and exhausted.
I really enjoyed this Sketchcrawl. They’re always different. I guess the next one is in January some time – we’ll see! Hope you enjoyed my little trip through the Mission District.
Überlingen am Bodensee. I came here in 1996 to stay for a year, but liked it so much I stayed for nearly a month. That was a funny episode in my life. Whatever possessed me to up sticks and suddenly move to Germany? Where I knew nobody, with practically no money nor idea of what I was doing, going off to save the world I think it was. I’d always wanted to live in Germany. I had gone to work with mentally disabled children at the local Heimsonderschule, several miles out of town (on my one day off a week I’d hike or hitch into town, look around the record shop and the bookstore – I love German bookstores – then trudge back again). For one reason or other I decided it was the wrong move, though, and trudged back to England.
I no longer recall that much about Überlingen; I did revisit briefly in 1998 while on my five-week tour of Europe, and took the photo from which I drew this picture, but didn’t stay long. It also made headlines after two passenger planes collided ouside the town, a few years ago. I have been to Bodensee (or Lake Constance, on the Swiss/Austrian/German border) several times, first of all when I was 15, on a school work experience trip to Vorarlberg. “Schnupperlehre”, I think the experience was called.
I do remember hitching into town, though. The walk was pleasant enough, going past pear orchards and rolling sunflower meadows, but long; a lift would be nice. I often hitchhiked while strawberry picking in Denmark – pretty much everybody I knew there did, not just into town or back to the farm, but often across Europe. I was told one trick of hitchhiking, to stand nearby to where a car has broken down. They may just be waiting for the AA to show up, but you’re more likely to get offered a lift by some kind passing audi. When it’s raining, you’re happy for such advice, even if you feel a little guilty about it. But local people would always offer to give you a ride: the first evening I arrived in Überlingen, I was checking out the map at the station as the sky grew ever darker, when a family asked if I needed a lift to wherever I needed to go. Oh, no that’s ok, danke, ich gehe zu Fuss. “Nein, nein, es ist zu weit!” they insisted, laughing hearty German laughs (after discovering how far it was and how dark the countryside was at night, I bashfully agreed). They even invited me to dinner at their house the following week (I regret not going). It seems so long ago. The idea of hitchhiking anywhere now seems so mental to me, perhaps it’s living in America where, and I thank you media, hitchhiking equals certain death possibly involving machetes and being buried in the desert.
Between 1999 and 2000 I lived and worked in Charleroi, Belgium, as my Year Abroad while studying French. Who could love Charleroi? The sprawling decayed post-industrial mess at the heart of the slag-dumped Pays Noir, derided as a bed of crime and shady politics, and the place where a lot of England fans threw a lot of chairs and got hit in the face with big water-cannons for their efforts. Well, grimy as it is, I do love Charleroi. The people are warm and welcoming, and down-to-earth, and beneath the soot and neon there is some gorgeous art-nouveau archtitecture to be found. It’s the home of some of Belgium’s most beloved BD (comic book) stars, such as Spirou and Lucky Luke. Yes there are rats the size of small cows, but so what? (I tripped over a massive rat here once, actually tripped over it – it ignored me and just shuffled along, watched by a prudent cat).
And the beer is amazing. This is la cuve à bière, a little pub I used to visit several times during the week, largely because they had a TV that would show match of the day on BBC1. I’d sit and write or draw, taste new beers, eat cheese. Sometimes, Tel would come over from England and drink Kwak. I remember that on cold sleety nights I would walk through the doors, my glasses would steam up instantly, but by the time I’d wiped them clean and gotten to the bar, my beer would already be there waiting there for me. I don’t even know if la cuve is still there; I hope it is. When I’m back in the UK this december, I might pop over there to find out.
petescully 