a hatful of silo

August 23, 2012August 24, 20126 Comments

Sketching has been sporadic lately, but I have been doing a little. Above is a quick lunchtime sketch at the Silo, UC Davis, where I often eat my lunch. On this day I sketched; other days I just eat, read, listen to podcasts, or in the case of yesterday I spent my time writing hilarious captions against photos of hairy pretentious bands in a local free magazine. That was fun. But anyway, this got me thinking about how many times I’ve sketched at the Silo – a LOT, I’ve worked at UCD for six and a half years now, blimey. So here is a selection of sketches of the Silo area from over the years.

(Above Left: March 2008; Above Right: April 2008)

(Above Left: Feb 2007; Above Right: July 2009)

(Above Left: Feb 2009; Above Right: Oct 2007)

(Above Sept 2010)

(Above Left: Feb 2010; Above Right: March 2012)

(Above May 2011)

(Above Left: March 2008; Above Right: July 2009)

(Above: Feb 2012)

(Above Left: August 2007; Above Right: Jan 2008)

(Above Left: June 2011; Above Right: May 2011)

(Above Left: March 2009; Above Right: Sept 2007)

(Above Left: Sept 2011; Above Right: Oct 2011)

Thanks for sticking to the end! This isn’t even all of them, and doesn’t include all the South Silo, Bike Barn, Outdoor Adventures ones, the whole Silo Complex. This represents a helluva lot of Grill’d Stuff’d Burritos.

in the middle of our street

August 7, 20125 Comments

On Sunday I had to get out to draw. I cycled downtown and stood on a bench (yes, stood, so I could see over the large vehicle in the way) on 2nd Street and drew a famiiar scene, but this time as a double-page spread in that lovely brown pen I have. I do like drawing these panoramas. This took about two hours, maybe less, stood in the shade on that bench. The funny thing about standing so high is that people don’t look over your shoulder quite so much. One other thing about sketching these panoramas is you have to scan them in two sections, stitch them together, and then they are so hard to post. If you want to see a bigger version, click on the image above. Below, you can see how big it is in real life. And the thing is, I intend to redraw this as a bigger and more colourful drawing.

Here is a close up of the middle section, for those who can read the tiny writing and are interested in the movie times…

little giants

August 5, 2012August 5, 2012Leave a comment

My wife and I went on a date night to see the San Francisco Giants last week, playing against the New York Mets. It was a long and interesting game, going into extra innings (unfortunately! We had a long drive back to Davis but stayed until the end, unlike many others). The Giants ended up losing 8-7, which was a disappointment, but it was a back-and-forth game. I quite like the Mets; they’re that New York team that isn’t the Yankees, and I always think of them fondly, as a bit like Manchester City (before they got all that money and won the league). I did try to chant “You’re just a small town in France!” but nobody seemed to get that one. We were sat in club level, and enjoyed garlic fries and beer and ice cream, and a great view. In club level they have an amazing display of Giants memorabilia, including the 2010 World Series trophy, along with historic bats and baseballs (I sketched one of the game balls from Matt Cain’s perfect game), and an intriguing series of ‘bobbleheads’, those odd reproductions of famous players which often get given away on special game days. I sketched a few from the World series year of some of the well-known players from then (all still prominent Giants). Those bobbleheads never really resemble the players they’re supposed to be – that one of Buster Posey is just well off-base, for one. It was a lot of fun looking at all that stuff, and I could have sketched all night, but there was a game to watch, and garlic fries to eat.

for the birds

May 11, 2012May 11, 20122 Comments

Last Sunday, I took part in the Pence Gallery’s annual ‘Garden Tour’, as one of the artists placed into one of the artistic gardens to make art while people looked at all the interesting garden features. The garden I was in was a particularly interesting garden – many very interesting plants (including an actual banana tree!), but also lots of architectural features that begged to be sketched. This one was my favourite, however, the wooden birdhouse. I actually sketched it twice (and will probably draw it a third time for good measure!).

I hope this terrace of bird houses is well used by our local feathered friends. I have noticed since moving to north Davis that there are different birds up here than in our neck of south Davis (which by the way was the only place in Davis where I’ve seen pigeons, hiding away). I’m not a bird watcher; I can tell a magpie from a pelican, but that’s about it. I know someone in Davis who is though, Pica over at Bird by Bird, check out her excellent (and mighty quick) bird sketches. I do like bird houses; when I was a kid we had one on a big pole in our garden that my grandad had made, but it had long been overtaken by wasps. Bloody wasps. Speaking of bird houses, you may be interested in seeing/buying one of these lovely hand-made unique wooden bird houses designed and built by my cousin Dawn. I was reminded of her when I was drawing this. Check out her other delicious work available on her Etsy store, ‘London Clay Birds’.

This was my last drawing of the day, I’ll post the rest of my drawings soon. It took about half an hour, and I drew it in uniball signo um-151 brown-black pen on the Stillman & Birn ‘delta’ paper. That is nice paper, very thick, sturdy.

it’s not easy being blue

March 8, 2012March 8, 20122 Comments

You have to laugh at Chelsea. It would be easy to say their managerial office has a revolving door, but it’s more like a revolving cashpoint. It reminds me of the Crystal Maze, that bit at the end where you are in that air cupboard and have a minute to grab as many bits of rapidly flying silvery paper as possible before your time is up. Actually it’s not like that in the slightest but I like the image. Longer serving managers like Ferguson, Wenger, Moyes (that’s it, by the way) must look at Chelsea in the same way that oak trees look at human beings, with their fleeting brief lifespans, but still strong enough to cut them down from time to time. The fabulous wealth that their Russian owner brought them means that instant success is an absolute (which basically means winning every trophy in your first couple of weeks or you’re fired). Even Ancelotti, who won them their second double, was booted out less than a year later. The double used to be really really hard to win, and double-winning managers were revered for decades later (Nicholson, Mee, Dalglish). Now it’s like, well you couldn’t even win the Champion’s League too? You’re useless! All of which hiring and firing becomes very expensive for Chelsea. This is Andres Villas-Boas, who lasted about two thirds of a season. He’s only 34, look at him. He was a manager for one year before coming to Chelsea, winning a load of stuff at Porto before shifting to the Bridge for a ton of Siberian cash. Now he’s out the door also with a ton of cash, and while part of me feels bad for the guy – he’s young, still learning, and needed to be given time to change that aging cliquey team around – but really I think he’s not been harmed too much by this whole affair, he has full pockets now, and when even top-drawer managers with very successful careers can get axed at Chelsea (Ancelotti, Mourinho, Scolari) it doesn’t hurt his reputation as much as you’d think. Andre, I hope you to either a smaller club, or even back to Portugal, and spend a few years really working on a project, making it successful, building up a bank of respect and a catalogue of trophies, and then when Chelsea, many more managers and revolving doors and millions of pounds and failed players down the line, will look back up at you and shout “save us!” you will whisper, “no…”

the forgotten pump house

March 6, 2012March 6, 20121 Comment

Down by the Putah Creek bike path in south Davis sits an old pump house (or perhaps it is a barn for really tall horses), which in six and a half years of living here (wow! that long?) I have never drawn. Until now. It reminds me a little bit of the Shrieking Shack. I needed some fresh air after spending all day in with a sore throat, and the weather outside was warm and spring-like. This is nearby where I live. It is a peaceful spot, a nice place for a Sunday stroll. Next to here is the Woodbridge nature area, home to all sorts of birds and bats and bugs. There are a lot of bugs out right now, biting away. This was drawn in my gamma Stillman & Birn book, with the brown-black uniball signo pen.

don’t start me talking, i could talk all night

February 25, 20126 Comments

Last night’s talk at the Avid Reader went very well, a lot of people came (many thanks to all who came!). I spoke for, I’m not sure, an hour and a half, maybe two hours? It was nigh on half past nine when I left anyway. I introduced the new Urban Sketchers book, ‘The Art of Urban Sketching’, spoke about Urban sketchers as a group, as a philosophy, how it all started, and I think I may have made some sense occasionally, stringing my planned talk together like I string my sketchcrawls together, if you know what I mean. I talked a bit about my own sketching, how and why I do it, and passed around some images of Davis that I’ve drawn. Quite a few familiar faces were there, for which I was very thankful! I even signed some books; nice to see so many people with the Urban Sketchers book, I hope they’ll be as inspired by all the other sketchers as I am! I read from the book, the manifesto, the profiles of certain artists, showed some of my favourite images in the book (several of them were by Luis Ruiz, including his one of Malaga’s now-closed oldest bookstore, Libreria Cervantes, which was very relevant being talked about in an independent bookstore, although the Avid Reader is doing pretty well these days and is in fact expanding into the former space of the recently closed toystore, Alphabet Moon, three doors down the street). I tried to talk a lot about urban sketching to Davis and cities like it, how we as urban sketchers are recording a place’s history in personal ways; I was pleased to meet another artist who had also painted the Davis Lock and Safe building, for example. My throat was getting pretty dry by the end of it.

So after the talk, I popped over to De Vere’s for a cold beer. All of this talk about drawing meant I was just itching to pick up a pen again, so I went straight to the bar and started sketching, and sketching, and sketching. I lay down a wash of browny-yellowy-orange first, to represent the bar’s light, then draw over that in my black uni-ball signo pen. I couldn’t represent the bar’s noise though – where last week’s Little Prague outing was defined by very loud music, this was deifned by very loud talking. It got packed quickly, and you couldn’t hear any music, but quite often people were yelling over each other at the bar. I however kept inside my bubble, and didn’t really mind; I had done all the talking I could that night, and now was my quiet time, in a barful of noise (that’s livin’ alright).

…but some of us are looking at the stairs

September 22, 2011September 22, 20113 Comments

Lunchtime, and I decided to draw this building (back of North Hall, UC Davis) again, having done some of it last Saturday. This time I used to uni-ball signo brown-black pen on creamy Canson paper. It makes it look almost wintery, doesn’t it. Your eyes can decieve you, don’t trust them (I heard a wise man say that somewhere, far far away). This week, though they are calling it Fall, Summer is giving us a last hefty whack, with temperatures in the upper 90s and low 100s. Some days it’s too hot to draw. On this day, I found a nice spot in the shade. I always do though.

realm of the giants

June 30, 2011Leave a comment

Another drawing on Moleskine sketchbook paper with my lovely uni-ball signo um-151 pen. This is AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, current World Series champions. I didn’t go to a game, my wife did (and they won!), but she took photos for me to do some drawing from.

shades of earth

June 18, 2011June 19, 20112 Comments

Had about fifteen minutes or so yesterday lunchtime to to a quick sketch, so popped by the Arboretum to use my wonderful new pen. I scribbled some paint on the paper first, the typical Davis colours, and it was a fun exercise. This is a quiet time on campus, when the students are all gone and the sun is out and strong.