and the seasons they go round and round

January 29, 20104 Comments

I draw this scene every six months, once in winter, once in summer. Each scene looks slightly different, and for more than just the changing seasons. This more than any other Davis scene is my ‘Mont St. Victoire’. (Incidentally I’ve actually climbed Mont St. Victoire, twice) I started drawing it one lunchtime a couple of weeks back, but ran out of time; then it rained solidly for a fortnight. So yesterday we had a day of sunshine, cold cold sunshine, and I got back out to finish it off. You’ll see it again in six months or so.

Anyway, here are the other ones. I can’t help myself:

Summer 2007:

Winter 2008:

Summer 2008:

Winter 2009:

Summer 2009:

long to rain over us

January 22, 2010January 22, 2010Leave a comment

The massive rainstorms this week have confined me to the inside world. I feel like a hermit. But you’re from London, they protest, you must be used to the rain. Yeah, it got me just as wet there too. So anyway, I’m still using bits of cut up enelopes to make my drawing look a little different. I had a few minutes over lunch to draw out of rain-soaked window, in poor visibility, in brown micron on an envelope that came from London, funny enough.

when saturday comes

January 17, 20104 Comments

Last time I drew this bar I mis-spelled the name as Froggies, so I felt I had to draw in there again to rectify my error. It’s actually ‘Froggy’s’. This was the corner of the bar that you couldn’t see in that drawing too.

People were gathered for the American football, the play-offs so I understand. There was ice-hockey going on as well. This is how they spend their Saturdays, and I can certainly understand. I popped into the Soccer shirt shop down the road to watch some Premier League as well; Chelsea were thrashing Sunderland (my own Spurs manged a 0-0 with Hull). This is what Saturday’s are all about, isn’t it? For us men. For so many years, my Saturday’s were about getting what I needed to do done by about 3pm so I could listen to the footy on the radio and watch the scores come in at 4:45 on the BBC videprinter (is that what it was called?). And then late in the evening, Match of the Day, my favourite show. These days, I get my football results as I wake up, via live internet updates on the BBC (and their updater is far more sarky than the man who reads the results at final score). So nowadays my Saturday begins with the footy, and I don’t really care about the other sports (nor the MLS, which is frankly rubbish). So, sometimes, I go sketching instead.

cyclepathic tendencies

January 13, 20103 Comments

If you didn’t know, Davis is a cycling capital. There are bikes everywhere, and I mean everywhere – especially just before and after classes on the UC Davis campus. they come from left and right and behind and probably from above and below too. They’ll cut you up, whizz through stop lights, pay no attention to other cyclists turning, and occasionally mash each other up around the roundabouts (which can be entertaining). Just this morning a guy cycling behind me flew off his bike at speed while turning a puddle-riddled corner. I noticed he had headphones in both ears (oooh, that’s against the law). You see a lot of people texting while cycling too. WTF? There is a bike cop on campus who gives cyclists the odd telling-off for riding in no-cycling zones, and occasionally cops will stop cyclists who actually do follow the rules of the road, and give them a reward for their good behaviour. It’s true, I read it in the paper.

Sometimes, with all these bikes, there is just nowhere to park. The owner of this red bike just chained their road-bike to a lamp-post. That was nice of them. It gave me something to draw at lunchtime.

lunchtime bells

January 11, 20103 Comments

My envelope-filled recycling bin overfloweth; I know how Jimmy Saville must feel now. Well not quite. Anyway the drawing continues, this manila envelope piece, cut out and glued into the moleskine, had three bells on it (pull the other one), the so-called US ‘forever stamps’ (in England they’re all called that, ‘cos it takes forever for your letters to get there). This is of course the Silo at UC Davis, today at lunchtime. It is still gloomy and damp here in California.

on a chinese envelope

January 8, 2010January 8, 20106 Comments

I wanted to draw on some different surfaces, try out some new things. I get a lot of mail from all over the world in my job, mostly from China, and my recycling bin is chock full of interesting looking envelopes waiting to be drawn on. So I cut one up, pasted it into my moleskine and drew the view from the stairwell today, the UCD water tower on a foggy January lunchtime. I don’t remember which university this envelope came from, nor do I read Chinese, but I thought the effect of the red writing looked really cool on the brown paper. Oh, and yes I know it is upside down.

walk this way

December 23, 2009March 9, 20103 Comments

The last of my sketches from the trip back home to London. Burnt Oak, Middlesex, to be precise. Well Middlesex doesn’t really exist any more except in post codes, it’s part of Greater London these days – it has been wiped off the map (in the non-Ahmedinedjad sense, or maybe that is what he meant?). Anyway, this was the view out my bedroom window all through growing up, the orange-bricked houses and narrow tarmac pavements of the typical working class council estate. Those trees in the distance, that is Watling Park. Now I am in the distance again, back in California, far away from all the snow and chaos, and I haven’t done much drawing yet. But tonight, for the first time ever, I will attempt to make mince pies. Merry Christmas!

angels on silver strings hang from above

December 21, 2009Leave a comment

After spending some time among the wild stones of Highgate Cemetery, I strolled through the park and back up to the village and sat in the middle of a traffic island, sketching the Angel Inn. Yup, another pub drawn. It’s a nice, warm pub with a good atmosphere and nice beers. I didn’t have the time (or energy) to draw the inside – some other occasion maybe. I would sometimes pop in here when I lived on Hornsey Lane, just down the hill. When I came out of the Angel Inn, the Sun had long since flown and the pretty garlands were zigzagging down Highgate Hill.

I hear there is a lot of snow in London these days. Have they learned to grit the roads on time yet? I remember back in, ooh, ’04 I think it was, the second annual Arctic Blast that caught us all by surprise (by giving us three days’ notice), and how my boss gave me a lift back from Finchley to Crouch End, bypassing the strangled traffic on the main iced-up roads by cleverly taking the back streets, but then having to navigate through stranded cars and sliding buses down Highgate Hill. It was like something from the Winter Olympics, but in extreme slow motion. Pretty scary. Highgate is a very steep hill.

frame thy fearful cemetery

December 21, 2009July 15, 20244 Comments

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images
(T.S Elliot, ‘The Waste Land’)

I love Highgate Cemetery. They used to say there were vampires here, many years ago, but surely they would all have book deals by now. I haven’t been into the famous boneyard in a long time but really wanted to come and catch some sketches here. Or one at least, while the sunlight was still good. I didn’t bother with the main paved routes but dove straight into the thick overgrown muddy paths, where not a single grave is standing straight, and ivy covers the moss-green stone tombstones of someone possibly famous who you’ve never heard of. Everyone is here to see Marx, of course, the tourists from China who all had to study his works at college, snapping a photo next to the bearded tomb; I tried to sketch it but it looked like Santa. I took photos of the cemetery myself – who couldn’t? – and one of them is below. As for sketching, I enjoyed hiding among the dead and drawing the above. I was out of the way. There was one other person I think who appeared from time to time, stealing photos between the stones, but otherwise all I could hear were the crows. I was eager to include the entrance ticket (four quid to get in, by the way) on the page but forgot to account for the red writing contrasting with the greens and greys. It didn’t stop me.

prince charming

December 20, 2009December 21, 20092 Comments

It wasn’t as grey as it looks. It was a bright cold morning (with a chance of scattered showers turning cloudy later in the day), and so after a morning spent christmas shopping in Edgware I popped back down to Burnt Oak Broadway to do a sketch of a building I’ve always quite liked, but a pub I’ve never actually entered: The Prince of Wales (just known locally as the Prince). I thought it would make a nice drawing, since I’m into drawing pubs these days. Naturally, standing on the open street like that I kept my eyes open; I grew up trying hard not to stand out too much around here (not easy for a gawky red-head kid who held his pen in a funny way). I didn’t have to worry, nobody cared, no hoodies shouting “oi!” I quite like drawing Burnt Oak, in fact. You grow up there thinking about how grim it feels but there really is a lot of interesting stuff to draw.