lionesses before dawn

September 17, 2023Leave a comment

We all got up at 3am, for the second time in a week, to watch England playing in the final stages of the Women’s World Cup. The midweek semi-final was a fantastic win. The final, in those wee hours of a Sunday morning, as sketched here, did not go quite as well. Spain were the better team on the day, and deserved to win 1-0. Of course we all know what happened next with that awful Spanish FA president, it’s been quite a drama. The Women’s World Cup overall was a really fun tournament, even though we could not watch too many games live (as they were in Australian and New Zealand), we watched all the highlights each day. The USA were not so good this time, but I was pretty happy with how England did overall. European Champions last year, beaten World Cup finalists this year (I guess we start counting ‘years of hurt’ again now?). Congratulations to Spain though. This was nearly a month ago now, and these days we are back in the Premier League fun times, and Spurs are doing great so far under Big Ange Postecoglou. However now I am getting right into the Rugby World Cup, of all things. I’ve never been much of a rugby fan, I used to watch it sometimes on telly when I was a kid, but never really understood it like I do with football. I still don’t, but it has been fun watching these huge guys smash into each other this past week. Sport, eh. It’s the big distraction from all the other shitty things in the world, and there are increasingly shitty things in the world, that my mental health just can’t deal with, so I go back to watching sport. I was up at 5am this morning watching the Formula 1, and what a race (Carlos Sainz won; Max Verstappen for once did not win, coming fifth). Earlier this summer we watched pretty much all the Tour de France (well, all the highlights each day, I’m not actually watching them race live). At this rate I might even start watching cricket (no, let’s not go that far). But we loved the Women’s World Cup. And I’m now a big fan of goalkeeper Mary “F***-Off!!” Earps.

the poking machine

September 12, 2023Leave a comment

It’s that time of year when loads of street construction gets done before the academic year starts. At least, I hope it’s done before the academic year starts. 3rd Street is a bit of a mess, with loads of work meaning cars and bikes and even people can’t access it too easily, so we have to go around a short way, causing ‘chaos’. Hardly chaos, but the way people talk about it. It does give an opportunity to draw another construction machine though, I feel like it’s been a little while. Remember when my son was very young, I’d go out of my way to draw these machines, he loved those, we’d read books all about them before bedtime. Now he’s fifteen and a lot less interested in construction machines, but I still like to draw them. This one had an ominous looking pointed contraption on the front, like it is a machine designed for poking, or prodding. I’ve no idea what it does, and that’s how I like it, I never want these sort of things explained to me. If I were to go a big place full of these machines, the last thing I would want is for someone to tell me what they actually do, when I always imagine them as big mechanical monsters designed for destruction and, you know, poking.

let’s draw davis at orange court

September 8, 2023September 8, 2023Leave a comment

Last month I organized a Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl, the first one I’ve organized in a very long time. The meet-ups have still been happening regularly for a while, though due to my own busy weekend schedule I’ve not usually been able to join them, let along organize any. Hopefully that will change now, and I’m going to start getting out and sketching with other sketchers a bit more regularly again. It was a very hot morning in the middle of August, and we had a pretty good turnout as we met up in the shaded courtyard of Orange Court. I stood for what seemed like ages drawing the scene above, a view I’ve drawn before, I like all the different angles and shapes, and all the warm colours against the blue sky. I wish my scanner had done a better job on it though, I think the settings were a bit off. It was also really hot and dry – I found it very difficult to paint, because my watercolours were not only drying too quickly on the page (that may be the paper too, using the slightly thinner Stillman & Birn Alpha instead of the watercolour Moleskine) but also in the pan, I found it difficult mixing and judging the water to add. Here are some of the other sketchers I drew. The guy in the soccer shirt, Alejandro, I have sketched him a few times before, and I have drawn him in a Wolves shirt. I wasn’t sure what this jersey was – black and white stripes, made by Charly, they make a lot of Mexican teams’ kits, but I didn’t recognize the badge nor the colours. I was stumped. I like a challenge when identifying a kit, but I couldn’t figure it out. It turns out it was the kit of a team called Cuervos (Crows), which is not a real club but is from a popular Spanish-language Netflix show. Still it looked a bit like it might be a Charleroi shirt, and I just had to sketch it. I am a little bit obsessed with football shirts as you know.

Other sketchers posted some lovely drawings on the Let’s Draw Davis FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LetsDrawDavis. I don’t know if there will be a sketch-meeting this month, but I’m planning to organize one on the UC Davis campus on October 14 – details coming soon.

the trees weren’t blue

September 7, 2023September 7, 20231 Comment

It was lunchtime, I was cycling back from downtown looking for something new to sketch. I’ve drawn most of Third Street over the years but I don’t think I’ve ever drawn this little house, and I love drawing a picket fence with its repetitive pickets and close observation of the things behind it. I used a bit of blue paint on the trees to make it stand out a bit more (especially with the little bit of purple I’d used as well), though the trees weren’t blue, it’s more of a feeling. This is a typical looking little old house in this part of Davis, the old downtown before you get to campus. This was almost a month ago now. August flew by.

fillmore, fifteen years later

September 6, 2023Leave a comment

Back in San Francisco, this time on a short trip with the family to escape the atrocious Davis heat. We went to Japantown and had a look around, and then I had a little bit of time to myself heading back to the hotel, so I wandered up Fillmore, to an area I had not been in about fifteen years. I had a new sketchbook, a Stillman and Birn Alpha. Despite having used those extensively in the past, it has been a while, and so I’m still getting used to the different paper after a few years back in the Moleskines. On this day, I decided what I wanted to do was draw quickly in pencil with some light wash. There are some nice shops up that way; I popped into Paper Source, still a great little shop I used to love getting envelopes and things from. I found the Clay theatre; I remember that I had sketched this place once back in late July 2008, back when my son was just a wee baby. I recall kinda struggling with that sketch a bit. It seemed to be closed down now, but still there to sketch. I walked about a bit more, there were lots of nice looking cafes and shops around here, it’s quite upscale. I did find this little bookshop, Browser Books, which at first I thought was Bowser Books, that big dragon guy from the Super Mario world, with Thwompers coming down as you enter and highly pixelated fireballs moving slowly towards you, but thankfully it wasn’t like that. I had a good look around at some books, and then I drew the shop, again just quick pencil with a little bit of watercolour. I took the bus back to our hotel, and then before our evening dinner at Fog City Diner I found, at the hotel bar, Anchor Steam on tap. So I had my final ever Anchor Steam on that day. I’ve not found it since, and I’m probably not likely to. I like it up Fillmore though, I’ll come back this way, but maybe I’ll not leave it fifteen years this time.

man city v madrid at the mixer

July 15, 2023July 13, 2023Leave a comment

While in London I was doing a fair bit of remote work, which was usually done in the late afternoon and into the evening (and occasionally into the wee hours after midnight, since California time is eight hour behind London time). On one day I worked throughout the afternoon and had an early evening meeting which happened to finish around the same time as the Champions League semi-final was beginning. Back in California I might have (a) cycled home to watch it over some lunch, (b) sneekily put it on my iPad and watched in the meeting, or (c) not really cared that much since it’s not Tottenham playing. On this evening I fell more into the third category, since the meeting ran into the game time and I couldn’t bring it up on my mum’s TV anyway, but I had a feeling it might be an interesting game – Real Madrid vs Manchester City – so after the Zoom meeting ended I decided to go out and watch at least the second half at a pub if I could. I wasn’t sure where; I don’t know which pubs show football any more, and I didn’t really want to go to any pubs in Burnt Oak. I jumped on the tube, thought about Hendon, I remembered watching a football match in a big pub there (wait that was in 1996), considered Golders Green, again wasn’t sure, so I just headed to Camden. I knew the Earl of Camden showed football, so I headed there. Thing is, I don’t really like that pub much, it’s always a bit uncomfortable and packed. And it was too – nowhere to sit, screens in awkward places, there was a guy in a 1998 Real Madrid away shirt which was cool but other than that, I didn’t fancy it. The first half was just ending so I thought, look for somewhere else. I didn’t expect the Good Mixer would be showing it, but I passed by on my way to the High Street and sure enough, they had it on in there, and it wasn’t full of big football lads. I like the Mixer, it was always one of my favourite places to hang out in the 90s and early 2000s, me and Terry used to go an play pool there (well, he would play pool, I would lose once and then sit there watching him beat everyone for a couple of hours). I found a seat with a good view and watched City completely demolish Madrid in a “please make them stop!” sort of way. It was a bit like watching Terry play people at pool. (I remember one night, I think it was at the King’s Head in Crouch End, this cocky guy challenged him to a game of pool, the guy had a special expensive pool cue in a hard case, he got it out and was polishing it and chalking it, and gestured to Terry as a joke if he wanted to borrow his cue; Terry declined and picked up probably the shittest pub cue from the rack, and proceeded to wipe the floor with him, the guy didn’t pot a single ball. He then beat him a few more times in clinical fashion, I just remember the guy standing there furiously chalking his cue waiting for a go.) Real Madrid were taken apart, although in this case City have the most expensive cues and the hard cases. I sketched the pub in my little Stillman and Birn Alpha mini book, just a quick one in Pigma Graphic pen and what waetrcolours I brought with me (a small set of about five colours in a tiny stormtrooper-helmet tin, fits into my pocket easily). It’s one of my favourite bar sketches though, it captures the mood well. The game ended, some people celebrated (it’s an English team getting to a major European final, albeit one funded by a rich nation state), I remembered my old friend Rob who supported Man City back in the 90s when they were pretty crap (though they had amazing Kappa kits), and how this is for those fans who put up with all that back then. I went to the little chip shop next to the tube station where I’d always get my chips on the way home, and headed back to bed.

a night at the oakland coliseum

May 29, 2023May 29, 2023Leave a comment

The main evening activity for the UC-AMP Conference in April was attending a Major League Baseball game at the Oakland A’s stadium, the Oakland Coliseum. I was dead excited for this game. The stadium was pretty dead too. I went with a group of other UC Davis staff members and we all sat along with many of the other UC-AMP attendees, many of whom I had spoken to in the various workshops that day. We had good seats, and there was a mixture of Oakland fans and Chicago Cubs fans all around us. The A’s were playing the Cubs, and it was soon pretty obvious who the better team was. The A’s were more like a D-minus. The stadium itself is a vast concrete bowl, a short walk from the BART, not the most beautiful stadium approach in the world. Contrast with the splendid San Francisco Giants ballpark, whatever that is called now (I’ve not been in ten years). We had to walk quite a distance once we got inside the ballpark, but I had been here before, and things were starting to get familiar to me. I’d only been once, 21 years ago, my very first trip to a baseball game on my very first trip to America. In 2002 I went with my now brother-in-law to watch the Oakland A’s play a great game in the sunshine against the Cleveland Indians, with their slightly (massively) problematic ‘Chief Wahoo’ badge and even more slightly problematic (massively racist) chanting. That aside, the whole experience was bizarre to me, and nothing like being at a football match (except for the other team’s problematic chanting). It was much more of a family outing, with as many women there was men, all of whom were just as enthusiastic. This was definitely not the case in European football stadiums at the time, which were still mostly a male world full of gruff swearing and awful pies. It was one of the things that I really liked about America when I first came, was that things like sport that were seen very much as “boy’s things” while growing up in England were really much more Unisex over here. I think that has changed a lot back in the UK over the years, but certainly as a kid my female friends who liked football were seen as outliers, and even now people back home often assume my wife wouldn’t be interested in sports; over here I get the impression it would be ridiculous to think like that. American sports are for everyone, much more inclusive. On this night, there was one female A’s fan who was not only enthusiastic but angrily yelling at the players before breaking into a rousing chorus of “Let’s Go Oakland”, while another female Cubs fan got more and more vocal about how great her team was to the point where they were calling each other out across the crowd, in a way that was probably more good-natured on one side than on the other (I sketched them both). Back in 2002, I remember one difference between English football and American baseball that stood out most clearly was the part of the game they called the “Seventh Inning Stretch”, when everyone stood and sang this song about being taken to the ball game. I was like, what is this, what is going on? People were joining arms and singing at the top of their voices like it was an old cockney knees-up. It was like being transported back into some antiquated era, the only thing like it now being when they sing ‘Abide With Me’ before the FA Cup Final. Another thing I noticed on that day was how so many of the fans were into their statistics, often writing down all sorts of numbers and reciting all these things about ‘batting averages’ and other phrases I had never heard of. The ballpark on that day was pretty crowded; the A’s (short for “Athletics”) had a pretty good team that season, and made it to the play-offs where I remember they beat the Giants. They had this one player, Miggy Tejada, and then at the end of the game on the big screens they would show this little puppet called the ‘Rally Monkey’. They would wave that thing, there would be little comical scenes starring the Rally Monkey, it was for sure not something we ever did down at the Lane. Imagine if in the 80th minute of a game, we’re 2-1 down against Chelsea or someone, if at that moment all the fans suddenly started waving these little cuddly toys to try and encourage their team to get back to victory, well they would have got, to use a common phrase on the terraces, their “f&*!in’ ‘eads kicked in”.

But the main thing I took away from that first ever baseball game was what I was looking for on this day – Garlic Fries. I was surprised when lining up for food and drink that you can watch the action on little screens as you wait in line, but the most suprising thing was that you could buy fries, right, but with garlic on them. Garlic Fries?! Oh boy I had to try those. And they were amazing. I got back from the game, this is what I talked about, these Garlic Fries. I’d never had anything like them. I’ve eaten Garlic Fries since, but they were never quite as good as those first ones at the Oakland ballpark. So that was my mission here. When I found them I was delighted, but when it came time to pay, I was surprised to find I’d only been charged 9 cents. The cashier when I asked just said, “hey I just press the buttons, I don’t know what the price is”, and she didn’t mind. So she got a better tip, and I got amazing Garlic Fries, that tasted even better for only costing 9 cents. On my way back to my seat I spoke enthusiastically to one of the stewards about my first time here in 2002, Miggy Tejada, Garlic Fries, the Rally Monkey and sunburn, and she listened and smiled, but I could tell there was a bit of sadness in her that things here were just not the same as back in those days, except for maybe the Garlic Fries. When I got back to my seat, everyone around me was jealous of my Garlic Fries, and I probably smelled of them for quite a long time afterwards.

No chance of seeing the Rally Monkey on this night. I left right after the seventh Inning Stretch when they were 6-1 down; in the end they lost 10-1. Even quite early in the game, the fans were singing “Let’s Go Oakland” and then leaving. The same night there was a big basketball match on, the Sacramento Kings were playing in some big important game, and most people around me were following that on their phones or watching it on laptops. Yes, people would come to a baseball stadium and watch a basketball game on their actual laptops. The team was pretty poor though. I heard that on Opening Day, they could only muster up about 3,000 fans to come and watch them. Enthusiasm is not high, and nobody likes the owners (there’s something that the A’s fans do have in common with many Premier League club fans, then). In fact, the day after I went to this game, the owners announced that they would not be staying in Oakland, and would be moving out to a new home in Las Vegas. I started to understand why some of the staff didn’t really seem to care that much, such as the one who charged me 9 cents for Garlic Fries; why would they care, the owners are about to boot them all out of their jobs. It’s a pretty ignominious end to a storied history in Oakland, and there will be a lot of fans that will be pretty unhappy, fans who always loved their team, but it was a pretty unhappy ballpark experience compared with that first one I went to back in the sunshine of 2002. I left on my own, got lost around the stadium, walking through a desolate parking lot before finding the BART and riding back to Berkeley, not the safest I’ve ever felt. It will likely be my last time at the Oakland Coliseum, but I’m glad I was able to go back one last time, and get those amazing Garlic Fries once again.

UC-AMP 2023 (“not the urban sketching symposium”)

May 28, 2023Leave a comment

The 2023 Urban Sketching Symposium took place in mid-April in Auckland, New Zealand. I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand; when I was a kid I bought a little pocket Berlitz guidebook for New Zealand, I used to read about Milford Sound and learned a couple of Maori words (admittedly it was just ‘Kia Ora’ which was easy to remember because of those juice adverts, “It’s too orangey for crows, it’s just for me and my dog” “I’ll be your dog! Woof woof woof woof…” You remember the one). So when the first international USk Symposium after the pandemic was announced, I was excited to go. Except, it was in April, and in New Zealand, and that was a tricky time with work, so I decided, ok, I won’t go. I’ll get to Auckland another time, I guess. So I got to watch all my other fellow sketchers’ posts from down in Auckland, but I didn’t have time to be jealous because instead, I went to a different conference. This was for work was the UC-AMP conference at UC Berkeley. Despite not being at the USk Symposium, I still acted as if I was, and kept my sketchbook out at all times. I drew pretty much all of the speakers whose talks I attended, as I usually do as I am taking notes at the same time. I was very impressed with all the talks, this being my first UC-AMP I was not sure what to really expect, but I’ve not been as engaged at a work conference as with this one, and I learned a lot that I will bring back to my own job. The networking was good too, and I met some interesting people and got some different perspectives. See, even though I’m not urban sketching, I’m still obsessed with perspective.

Many of the talks focused on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in a pretty broad number of ways. The keynote speaker was Dania Matos, Vice-Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at UC Berkeley, and I really enjoyed her talk. “Data drives decisions, but story telling drives commitment.” I liked that phrase. As I say, I drew most of the other speakers too, though I’ll not go into all their talsk or names here, but here are the sketches I did.

I mostly drew in the small Stillman & Birn Alpha pocket sketchbook I use for people sketches (and occasional travel sketches), and mostly used that purple Pigma Brush pen that I like for these quick people sketches (though I did use the black Zebra pen for one of Eugene Whitlock, above).

I will say though, the guy above, David Alcocer, gave a really excellent and engaging presentation on the UC Budget. I thought, as did others, that this would be the one very dry talk, but it was the opposite, and I felt like I knew a lot more about the bigger picture, plus he was just a great presenter too.

With these last two, I did write a lot more o what they were saying down, as it was worth noting. The colours by the way are just my usual watercolour, with a waterbrush pen.I’m very much looking forward to the 2024 UC-AMP conference, whcih will be in Riverside, and hopefully won’t clash with the Urban Sketching Symposium. Although actually it probably will, because once again the next one will be in the souther hemisphere, in April, in Buenos Aires, in Argentina. Another place I’d love to go, another place I probably won’t make it to. We shall see. I do miss seeing all of my global urban sketching community, but it was nice to be part of another community for a few days, and come away just as full of ideas.

Chicago high and low

May 4, 2023Leave a comment

I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t finished. And you’re right, this was all I could sketch at the time. I might have finished it later, but I didn’t. It’s the sort of view I might do a drawing of, on a bigger piece of paper, to test my drawing patience, but this one was drawn pretty quickly from the 94th floor of the John Hancock Building (sorry, it’s not called that any more), which might not be the tallest of Chicago’s big skyscrapers, but it was still pretty damn high up. The view made my knees go all trembly. That slightly wobbly line, that be the horizon, that be the eye level. So you can see that the two taller buildings in this view are the Sears Tower (sorry, the Willis Tower) and the Trump tower (yep, still called that). Our hotel room on the 16th floor was low down and quaintly street level by comparison. It was down there somewhere, we could see it. On the same observation deck there was this ‘ride’ where the windows would move outward from the building so that you appear to be hanging suspended over the city. Needless to say, I didn’t do that. The view didn’t look quite real. Buildings that had towered so far above us at street level as to be hard to grasp, were now some way below us. It was a bit like when I’d play Spider-Man on the PS4, except nothing like it. That is a great game by the way, as is the Miles Morales follow-up. When I’d sketched just about enough, we got the elevator down.

We did spend some time up at Lincoln Park, going to the Zoo, eating the most incredible corn dogs, wandering about a bit looking for a record store my guide book had told me was amazing (only to discover it had closed a while ago; well of course it had, a record store, in 2023? Why it’s next to the penny farthing store, just past the monocle repair shop). So we got the ‘L’ (the Elevated train) back downtown, feeling very much like we were in the Chicago from the films. One of our favourite films set in Chicago is High Fidelity, the one with John Cusack from about 2000. For me and my wife, that film may well be responsible for our whole relationship (to paraphrase the film). Well sort of; we both talked about it a lot when we first met, so I lent her the Nick Hornby book (set in north London of course) which was one of my favourites, and then we started going out. So it kinda is, actually. We were therefore excited to see sights we had seen in the film, such as the Kinzie Street Bridge, sketched above. It was about a 15 minute walk or so from our hotel, and I remember it in the film when Cusack’s character Rob was giving some monologue to the camera, although I think there were fewer big glassy buildings behind it then. When my wife and son went back to the hotel, I stayed to draw the bridge. I was listening to a fascinating Chicago history podcast, several episodes about how things in Chicago have often changed their names, and despite said things only being named something for a relatively short time, locals would refuse to call it by its new name for many decades longer than it had the original name. A bit like people who keep saying ‘Baby Yoda’ instead of ‘Grogu’. I did learn a lot about Chicago’s history and places though, and wished I had a lot more time to explore, but I would probably get tired, and like that record store, the places I’d be looking for might already be gone. Story of my life. Still I was very happy to have some mild weather for a moment to spend time drawing a bridge.

These next few are from the afternoon of the next day. I have some others from the morning of the next day, but those involve dinosaurs and I’ll post those next time. We found the big Chicago Theater with its bright red sign, and I stuck around to sketch it. Eventually it started raining, so I stood under some shelter and sketched Chicago people in my little book, using a brush pen. As I sketdched, one lad came up to me and asked if I had a disability. I laughed, strange question, no I just like to draw in the street. It turns out he was asking about the way I hold my pen. Ah. No, always done that, but thanks for asking, I guess. I mostly drew people coming out of the Metra station (yes that’s ‘Metra’, not ‘Metro’, that’s basically the Subway).

I also drew this fire hydrant, a few blocks away beneath the L. Standing under the ironwork of the L, with the train rumbling above me and the traffic rushing by beneath, I really felt like I was in Chicago like you’d imagine it. Not far from here there are those busy roads that are just underground, beneath the other roads, that make me think of the Fugitive, which we had watched not long before our trip.

Before heading home, and to get out of the rain for a bit, I found a very cool pub with a bit of a Belgian beer theme. Monk’s Pub was the perfect stopping off point, and good to sketch. I had one pint, and drew fast. I listened to a couple of older lads next to me talking with some passion about baseball. Monk’s was warm and welcoming, but I had to get back to the hotel to rest before dinner, so I waited for the rain to ease off and walked back.

quick people

May 2, 2023Leave a comment

And now for something completely different. I went to a small gathering of sketchers (there were two of them) who had posted on the Let’s Draw Davis page (it is still going! But I’ve not organized one for ages, due to busy weekends) that there would be a quick people-sketching session at the NAtsouals Gallery in Davis that sketchers could go to. Each person would take five minutes exactly to hold a pose while the other sketchers drew them. Well, I did write a book called Five Minute People Sketching, mostly because I find it hard to spend more than five minutes sketching a person, so this was good practice for me. Stuff like this allows me to play around a bit more than I usually would. I pulled out an old pocket-sized Stillman & Birn Alpha book that I’d not actually drawn in since 2017, and sketched in both my usual brown pen and those black Nero pencils that I got from the Symposium a few years ago, both the soft and hard versions. I used a bit of watercolour to add in some tones.