it’s not big but it is kleiber

May 3, 2012May 3, 20122 Comments

Another lunchtime sketch, braving the pollen (allergies are really bad this week) but more importantly, braving the squirrel. I sat beneath a tree besides the bike racks to draw Kleiber Hall (or half of it; I must master that trick of turning the page sideways to fit more in) when along came a squirrel. Nothing unusual about that, but this one seemed, I don’t know, determined. I thought it might be after my mint M&Ms (which are, I must confess, bloody amazing), but it wasn’t aftre food. It kept creeping right up to me from every angle, a look of indignance and annoyance on its face, like an Englishman who has been rudely queue-jumped but won’t actually say anything. No amount of shooing, chasing, stamping my feet, making vague threats was going to get this squirrel away. I was worried it might have rabies, except it was obviously competely sane, even if I appeared not to be. This furry thing was fearless. It took me a while to realise it was just territorial and that it owned the tree I was sat near (it had a Monopoly card to prove it, and I think the rent included nuts), so despite informing this squirrel about my rights to sit and sketch beneath any public tree I damn well please, I gave in and moved to the shade of a different tree. The squirrel, all pleased with himself, immediately leapt into his tree and sat on a branch like a little lord. Like he couldn’t have done that anyway!!

Next time I’ll draw the squirrel. If I’m brave enough.

having a mayor

May 2, 20121 Comment

Ken and Boris (and some other people) are the choices today for the London Mayoral election. I’m for Ken, personally, not ‘he of the unbrushable hair’. I wish I were there to vote, but I missed the first one in 2000 (living in Belgium), missed the second one in 2004 (off visiting France), missed 2008 (moved to California), and obviously I’ll miss this one too. But I still care who runs my home city! Boris could at least offer to shave his head if he wins. So to mark election day I drew them in my Stillman and Birn book in a pilot hi-tec C, a quick lunchtime sketch when I couldn’t leave the office due to the high pollen count. Ok here’s the inevitable pun, I’m hoping Boris gets a low polling count and has to leave office.

student community center

April 20, 2012April 20, 20122 Comments

A newer building on campus, the new Student Community Center, opposite the Silo. Sketched yesterday lunchtime. There has been a lot of redevelopment in this part of campus since I came to Davis. Drawn with a copic fineliner (fairly well used) in the gamma S&B sketchbook. Decided against colour.

The weather is heating up, it was 88 degrees in Davis yesterday and very warm at night. Picnic Day – tomorrow – will be a warm one this year…

dog and bone

April 17, 20125 Comments

Remember when we used to use public phones? God, we were dumb! Putting our coins in, talking for a bit, putting more coins in, hunting woolly mammoth; it’s so much better now we live in the future with our iPhones and blueteeth and hoverboards. There is a living relic of this ancient past on G Street, complete with a ‘phonebook’ (which doesn’t even have a search box, and people have clearly been writing their names on it to try). I have been meaning to draw this for a while, so I drew it during the sketchcrawl on G Street last Saturday. This being a historic neighbourhood, I can imagine it being used by early farm settlers, gold prospecters, maybe even local Native American tribes (before the invention of the smoke-signal app, obviously). I drew this in the Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook, with a Micron pen and Cotman watercolours, and it took a little under an hour.

and like a true nature’s child

April 13, 2012Leave a comment

Saw this Honda motorbike parked outside Bainer Hall today. After massive wake-you-up-at-night rain, the Sun came out at lunchtime, and so did the sketchbook (Stillman & Birn gamma one). I stood and drew, until the glare of the Sun started to make me squint so badly, and my eyes were heavy anyway from my allergies (and from the wake-you-up-at-night rain waking me up at night), then they started to stream like the Tigris and Euphrates. People probably thought I was a bit mental, crying while drawing, but I wasn’t really crying. Still the glare was getting to me so I put my hood on and crouched over the paper (and I look odd when I draw normally). I laboured on, trying to get every, um, axel, er, metal machinery bit (I am not an engineer, unlike the folks in Bainer Hall). And get this – by the end of the drawing, it had started raining again! Wouldn’t you know.

Tomorrow my eyes and the weather will all be fiunctioning perfectly once more, because it’s the next Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl, on G Street. Meet us at 10:30am on the corner of 2nd and G. See you there!

king kenny

April 13, 20124 Comments

This is Kenny Dalglish, current manager of Liverpool FC and unquestionably an Anfield legend. He returned last year as manager almost two decades after leaving the post, two decades in which Liverpool had not won the league title, 1990 being their last one (and that one being under Mr.Dalglish). His tenure at the second half of the 1980s saw perhaps their best ever team, which if English clubs had been allowed to play in Europe surely would have had more big trophies to sit on. First (and only) Liverpool manager to win the fabled ‘Double’ back when it was a rare and coveted acheivement (these days we barely bat an eyelid at a double, Chelsea won it two years ago, remember?), and that was as player-manager. He was also arguably Liverpool’s greatest ever player. Even as a Spurs fan, I’ve always liked King Kenny. These days he presides over a team unable to break back into the top party, despite new US owners, and, because success must be instant these days, is therefore under pressure to be, well, Liverpool famously do not sack their managers. They always ‘leave by mutual consent’.

This weekend sees the FA Cup semi-finals in England, and while my main focus will be Sunday’s all-London tie (Spurs -Chelsea! Come on Tottenham!), Saturday will see a Merseyside derby, Liverpool vs Everton, on the eve of the 21st anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. It’s even more poignant that Kenny, manager on that tragic day, is leading this current team into that match. Anyway, this is King Kenny, a true football hero.

I drew this in my Stillman and Birn gamma book with micron pen and watercolour. To the non-footy followers of this blog, who may not have read this far anyway, coming soon will be sketches from my new house (been a bit lazy on the scanning front…)

but is it really a barn?

March 29, 20122 Comments

It’s been (and continues to be) a very busy week. I’ve not even had lunchtimes. So there has been very little sketching, but today, on my late lunch, I just had to get out into the sunny weather (after the massive rainstorm of yesterday) and draw a familiar looking building which in fact I have never drawn before. It’s called The Barn, for some reason, on the UC Davis campus (actually I have drawn that cactus in front of it, fairly recently). This was in the Stillman & Birn gamma book using uniball vision micro and watercolour. Going a week without drawing… that’s tough, man. Nearly forgot which end of the pen to draw with, man.

glove is all you need

March 20, 20124 Comments

This was fun to draw: my son’s baseball glove (or is it a mitt? I already drew one Mitt in this sketchbook). The baseball glove is such an archetypal piece of Americana, and naturally it is completely alien to me. My four year old son had his first baseball game today – tee-ball, to be precise, and it was great, good job mate! – and while he is much more comfortable with the old baseball than a learner such as I, he did take to wearing it on his head for periods while out fielding. That is what I would do too, probably.

Drawn with micron pigma 03 in the gamma series Stillman & Birn book.

super troopers

March 15, 2012March 15, 2012Leave a comment

My son has the coolest shoes. I always knew this of course, because I have drawn a picture of every single one of them in a single book, chronologically, in black pen. These new ones however are my favourite yet. Based on the Clone Troopers from Star Wars (the forefathers of the Stormtroopers), they even flash blue. And I totally want some myself!! Except I don’t think adults can realistically wear such footwear in public. Perhaps Boba Fett ones? I liked them so much I drew this shoe twice. The one from the ‘official’ series is below, copic pen in a moleskine cahier. The second one I drew was on the first page of my brand new Stillman & Birn ‘Alpha’ series sketchbook (thanks Stillman & Birn for sending me that!), and it took me a couple of hours, mostly in copic multiliner (size 0.1) but with a little bit of uniball vision micro, and watercolours to colour it in. I’m pleased with the result, and the paper is nice to draw on, not as smooth as the Moleskine Cahier or Volant, smoother than the Moleskine watercolour though and it takes a watercolour wash pretty well.

They are cool shoes. But, alas, if I wore them I would be constantly worried that one day, they would turn on me, Order 66 style.

you’re mitt, and you know you are

March 7, 2012March 7, 20122 Comments

Yesterday was Super Tuesday. I’m not sure why it was so Super, it didn’t exactly fly by. A really Super Tuesday would be one where the next day turns out to be Saturday or something. That is the epithet they give to the day when lots of presidential primaries – in this case, for the Republican candidate – happen at once, therefore making the eventual nominee appear that little bit more clearly. The eventual nominee (Mitt Romney, above) has not emerged very clearly as the eventual nominee (though he will be), with the race still very much open for Rick Santorum (yeah it won’t be him) and Newt Gingrich (no, no it won’t be him either). Ron Paul is still in it too, apparently, though he really looks like Magneto. Personally I think they’re all nuts, and not very Super. Less-than-Fantastic Four? Mitt has a bit of Reed Richards going on with those grey bits, and he’s certainly the most elastic of all of them. Santorum I suppose could be the Preacher (except Jesse Custer is the epitome of cool while Santorum is clearly off his trolley). Newt, well he already sounds like a sinister twisted mutant super-villain (not his name Newt, just his, you know, personality and politics).

So it’s going to be Mitt Romney, isn’t it. At least we can look forward to such headlines as “Romney You Plonker” (well, maybe in the English papers). Now seemed to be the best time to draw Romney though, if only to capture that hair, because after November I would either have to wait another four years for him to run again, or he’ll get elected President and be completely grey by June.

HB Pencil in the Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook.