sacramentalists

September 6, 20092 Comments

I went sketching in Sacramento yesterday; it’s been a while. The bus is 50 cents more expensive now. Not much else has changed though. I decided I finally wanted to draw that tall brick building downtown, I think it’s an elk’s lodge or something, and was excited when sketching out the perspective lines. However, this being downtown Sacramento, there are a larger than average concentration of street mentals per square yard, so I was distracted. As I was sat on my stool, one slightly agitated gentleman started screaming into an empty doorway at the brickwork, some nonsense about his “enemies in the drywall” and how they’re coming and what not. I carried on. But then he took residence in the middle of a large structure of metal poles and began yelling abuse at the universe in a variety of voices. I’m not really into that, and I felt a bit like, you know, I didn’t want to hang around such nonsense for too long, so I abandoned the interesting perspective sketch and traipsed up to Midtown to draw a wooden building, on the corner of 23rd and J, with a tree to the right and some blue sky. A typical Pete; it’s my equivalent of a three-chord song (but it takes considerably longer, when drawing every tile and slat).
Shame; you would have liked the brick building. Maybe next time.

flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly

September 3, 2009September 3, 2009Leave a comment

It was so warm and sunny on Saturday in the City. We went up to Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill (and like a nob I forgot the camera) to see the Labyrinth, before heading over to Fillmore Street to have lunch and look around the really cool shops they have there. My wife like ‘Seconds to Go’, a cool second hand store that is in the drawing above, and I loved ‘Paper Source’, a great store stuffed wit many different types of paper for all purposes; I bought some cardstock to make some cards of my drawings. They were very friendly in there.

I sat on the pavement outside Crepevine (where we had eaten lunch) and sketched the colourful street ahead of me. It’s a cool part of a very cool town. There are so mnay different neighbourhoods here. I could draw San Francisco for ever.

Also blogged over at Urban Sketchers.

bay windows

September 1, 2009September 1, 20091 Comment

We spent the weekend in San Francisco, staying in a suite at the enormous Hyatt beside the Ferry Building. The view from our enormous wide-screen window was incredible, the Bay Bridge and Embarcadero, and we had blazing hot sunshine on Saturday morning. We even saw Robin Williams at the Farmer’s Market. Naturally I chose to draw just a small segment of this view, looking out at the Bridge (above). Sunday morning saw fog roll in and add the familiar cool summer grey to the City, so I drew again, looking down at the perspective lines racing up at me.

Below is a photo I took on the sunny Saturday morning, the best part of the view (I never had time to sketch it), with the Bay Bridge rising above a light blanket of mist. What a stunning city.

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when the half light makes for a clearer view

August 15, 2009May 27, 20104 Comments

: parts of the process

When I was last in Villefranche-sur-Mer, the beautiful old Mediterranean port nestled between Nice and Monaco, I took this photo of Rue Eglise (having just eaten at that cafe and sketched the sea) and told myself I’d draw a picture of it when I got home. That was over six years ago. Yesterday I finally got the photo out and started drawing, because I was playing with perspective in my messy sketchbook (see the quick watercolour sketch below) and wanted something nice to draw.

One thing I recall is that Villefranche was where they set that film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. That’s a good movie. I especially like that Emperor Palpatine plays Michael Caine’s butler. I stopped off here on my way back to London from Aix-en-Provence, having been out here to visit some old friends and watch their play. I was flying from

a quick watercolour sketch

Nice that evening, and so I whiled away a few hours by the sea at Villefranche. The old town is especially nice. I’d love to go back there to draw.

Well, I will have to make do with my old photos for now, I’m too far away. I did a watercolour study, primarily to work out how the perspective lines worked. It’s messy and quick but I quite like it, and sometimes wish I did more of my sketch work like that, if only so I could get better at the technique. But I love drawing in pen too much! The version at the top is not the ultimately finished version – I will add some watercolour, if only just to tint it. But I like how it looks anyhow. I think it’s quite nice.

who ate all the pi’s

August 11, 2009Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned the Davis frat houses before, and I will mention them again, because I drew another one (or rather, a different part of one I’ve drawn before). There are lots of them, lining the streets just outside campus. they are currently pretty quiet, but give it a month or two and these places will be rocking out to the new academic year. Rushes, hazing, all of that fun stuff that comes with these strange greek-lettered clubs. Some frats are old, really old, while others cater to certain fields, such as law, or ethnic groups. The one below, Theta Xi, is presumably the frat-house of apprentice cab-drivers. However I still can’t find the house of the boating fraternity (Rho Rho Rho)…

If I had gone to university in America, I would not have been a frat boy. I would have gone to the parties though, for sure. I can’t help wondering if those greek letters are just an old form of textspeak, like Omicron Mu Gamma, Beta Phi Phi, or, from the society of proctologist comedians, Lamda Mu Alpha Omicron.

anti-antiques

July 23, 2009July 23, 20092 Comments

That’s an antiques shop across the road there, on D Street in Davis. I don’t really do antiques; I’m sure they’re very nice, but I was put off them as a kid when forced to trawl through enormous car-boot sales and watch Antiques Roadshow on those long grey Sundays (that was presented by another Scully, though unrelated). Give me another fifteen or twenty years, I say, then I might be interested. Still, I’m sure there’s a lot of cool stuff to draw in there. But going into such a store and whipping out the moleskine isn’t my thing. There’s never enough space, people always want to look at the thing you’re standing right in front of, and I’m so shy I could never ever ask the shopkeeper if it were ok; no, it’s easier to just sit across the road and sketch from a safe distance.

sketchcrawl 23, SF: part 2, the mission

July 14, 2009July 14, 2009Leave a comment

After sketching City Hall, I BARTed it down to the Mission District. I love the Mission. It is actually illegal not to have a big burrito when you come here so I had one (it was ok, I’ve had better), and sketched this from the bus stop, at the corner of Valencia and 16th. The lack of sketching stool meant being creative with my seating choices, so the bus-stop was perfect. I always have to figure, when out urban sketching, that the odd street mental might come and start talking to me. As it happened, the random guy who started chatting to me this time (despite my headphones being clearly on) was actually very interesting, and an artist himself, and we had a chat about how drawing was really just a series of lines and choices. He also told me that Paul McCartney owned the rights to the song Happy Birthday to You. I didn’t know that. He probably made it up. I told him that when McCartney plays Beatles songs on tour he changes the lyrics of “When I’m Sixty-Four” to “When I Was Sixty-Four”. Of course, I made that up, but it could be true.

I strolled up 16th looking for another comfy spot to draw, and chose a really uncomfy spot on a narrow corner with negligible shade, in order to draw the Mission Dolores. Well, dolores means pain, and I suffer for my art.

I love drawing those powerlines, it’s one of the best reasons to sketch in the Mission. I don’t know if the One Way sign was put up by the Missionaries but it could be so (I will tell people it was, anyhow). Might make more sense outside a cemetary. Anyway, it was sunny, but windy, and so I held up the sketchbook for the obligatory handheld shot, and moved on towards the Castro. That’s the thing about Sketchcrawl, you just gotta keep moving. Well, I do.

More to come…

as june becomes july

July 1, 20092 Comments

Optometrists (opticians in the old tongue). They are always filled with hundreds of glasses you can’t imagine anybody wearing, let alone yourself. I bought a pair of glasses from here once, though I usually get mine from a different place in Davis. On that occasion, my one had no styles I liked, so I went here, and found one that I thought might suit me, a different theme for me. I called them the ‘half-Svens’ because they were kind of half like the Sven Goran Eriksson rimless style (they had half a rim). Normally I prefer the Fabio Capello style of specs. Anyway ultimately I decided I didn’t like them. They didn’t quite fit right; I did get them adjusted, at least slightly, but still no. So I went back to my old place and found they’d just started doing some great Fabio Capello type glasses. (For those who don’t know, I’m not talking about great fashion designers, I’m talking about foreign England football managers, who happen to wear trendy glasses). I didn’t really like this optometrist anyway. They weren’t enormously helpful, and were a bit disinterested, not even calling me to let me know they were ready after they said they would, whereas the service in the other place is much better. (Jeez this isn’t a consumer blog). However, they operate in a bloody cool looking building, very sketchable, and so I drew this today at lunchtime, on the first day of July. The second half of the year has arrived.

chipotle shoulder

June 23, 20092 Comments

Lunchtime downtown, sketched out in the heat (almost hit a century today). Had a burrito at Chipotle. That’s not my bike, by the way.

Have you noticed how everything these days is ‘chipotle’? Food marketers can’t get enough of it. I even saw some chocolate dessert thing somewhere that had chipotle in the title recently, presumably to entice ye who cannot get enough chipotle. I’m surprised automakers haven’t started using it to shift cars in these troubled times. “The new Chevrolet Chipotle, more fuel efficient than a Fajita and spicier than a Ford.”

a poem, a stink, a grating noise

June 9, 2009June 9, 20093 Comments

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”

– John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

We were in Monterey at the weekend. Down at Cannery Row (motto: “Yes, We Can”), where they pack souvenir shops in like, um, sardines, I sat and sketched since that day was also Drawing Day 2009. This gave me a contractual obligation to draw. Cannery Row (not in fact named after the actor Sean Cannery) was made particularly famous by John Steinbeck’s book about the place, that people pretend to know well when they go there even if it’s the first time they’ve ever heard of it (and to be fair, since bits of it are mentioned somewhere every few yards you feel like you’ve read the book, seen the movie and bought the fridge magnet). It’s funny how if a writer is associated with somewhere then they make sure to drum on about it as much as possible, like those pubs where Dickens/Twain/Kerouac etc drank (Dickens for one drank in every single pub in London, I’m surprised he was ever sober enough to actually get any writing done). Writers hold a special appeal to tourist boards. You never get areas devoted to, say, Joe Bloggs the stockbroker or someone.
The drawing to the right is of the beer garden of the Captain Bullwhacker’s pub (I think that was the name), which was heavily pirate galleon/British pub themed, and undoubtedly where Steinbeck once popped in to use the loo, maybe.