flying there and flying back, again

December 30, 20243 Comments

Two more times up in the sky, going to London and back to San Francisco. The first flight was more comfortable, better legroom and an empty seat next to me, though I still struggled to get decent sleep. I always have to sketch on the flight, it does calm me, and gives me something to do. The entertainment system is good, though I rarely watch things on it, other than the flight map. I do watch stuff on my iPad, mostly I listen to my iPod, podcasts, audiobooks, music. I was re-listening to Fellowship of the Ring on the flight over. I hate these long flights, but they have to be done, since I can’t teleport. These days, I land at Heathrow and get the Elizabeth Line to Tottenham Court Road, before taking the Northern Line up to Burnt Oak, it’s a long journey all in all. The flight back (below) I was really crammed in, a full flight with very little legroom. I chose to sit in the middle (nobody moving past me to get up, like at the window seat) but it really felt squashed. On this flight though I was able to bring back my old guitar from London, and it didn’t cost me any extra, and just went into the overhead bins above other people’s bags (it’s pretty thin). I still had to draw, and in fact these flights back are also an opportunity to catch up on the sketches I didn’t get finished during the trip. So I spent a lot of time drawing, squashing in my elbows. It was a long flight, I was thinking about all I’d done, people I’d seen, people I’d not been able to see. It was nice spending a bit more time with my Mum. Unfortunately my Dad was in hospital for most of the time I was back, wasn’t doing too well, so I’m glad I was able to be there, it’s difficult being so far away. I started watching a film called ‘Hampstead’ which my Mum had started watching a couple of days before, and it looked ok, but actually was really dull so I turned it off. I don’t remember what else I watched, some Drive to Survive. I started reading a new book I’d bought, written by an old friend from university whose book signing I’d been to. My bag was full of mince pies and other food goodies for Christmas; I could have brought so much more back if I had the room. Anyway, bookends to another trip back home.

“cause I just wanna fly”

July 29, 2023July 28, 2023Leave a comment

Ok, I’ll start posting the sketches from my recent trip to England and Scotland (“Britain” as we call it, for the time being anyway). Let’s start with the bookend airplane sketches. You would think that I would be incredibly bored of drawing these views by now, and you’d be right, I am bored of drawing these views. Yet I still draw them, because when I fly I need something to relax me, and that is drawing my surroundings. I could watch some stupid film on the seat-back monitor, and get interrupted by the captain who wants to tell us very slowly that we can buy some useless duty-free rubbish from the flight attendants if we want, or maybe to not tell us about a pocket of upcoming turbulence that will make the plane suddenly plummet god-knows-how-many-hundreds-of-feet downwards towards Greenland (that happened on our flight back, and I’m still feeling it). I mostly just watch the map, to see where we are. I always download some things on my iPad to watch, mostly Get Back, but I don’t like to dive into watching something early on knowing that the flight crew will be serving us some marginally edible food an hour or so into the flight and I might miss out if I engrossed in watching my screen with headphones on. So I draw, it helps me calm my nerves a little. I do listen to a lot of podcasts while on the plane, and audiobooks. I don’t actually mind flying, I just hate the airport experience, and if we are all cramped into a plane with no space, I hate that too. The sketch above was done on the way over on my iPad, we flew via Seattle for some reason, late at night, and I think I only managed an hour of sleep at best, total, we were so cramped. On these flights, I only recline my seat a little, as to go back the whole way is not very considerate to those seated behind you, who then cannot move much. Still when we landed we were excited about getting to London, seeing family again.

This second sketch is on the flight back (we were flying through LAX this time), when we were similarly squeezed in, and I was feeling pretty sick. About ten minutes into the flight, the young fellow in the seat in front decided that he needed to recline his seat the entire way. Not only did this give me zero room to be able to lean forward and get things from under my seat – physically impossible, and I’m of average height – but also made it impossible to see the seat-back screen which does not adjust any more, and impossible to put anything on my tray taller than a small plastic cup (not my bottle, certainly not my iPad), and if I wanted to read my magazine I would have to hold it close to my face (which let’s face it I have to do anyway these days, my eyesight is so bad). His girlfriend in the seta next to him only reclined half the way and my son (who is now almost as tall as me) had no problem. So I politely asked the guy if he would mind not reclining the whole way, but may just 50%? Nope, he didn’t want to do that. This was ten minutes out of Heathrow, we hadn’t eaten yet and the lights were definitely not turned off for sleepy-time mode. “It’s just I have no room if you put your seat back the whole way.” “You can put your seat back too,” he said. “But I don’t need to; it disrupts the person sat behind me, and it still doesn’t give me any more room to lean forward to get things from under the seat.” “It’s the same for everyone,” he said, refusing to budge or acknowledge my point, adding “the person in front of me has their seat back,” which I could see was not in fact true. “Mate this ain’t a game of dominoes,” I said. “It’s not ‘the same for everyone’ because people generally respect the other people around them. I’m not saying don’t recline at all, but just halfway.” It was like the guy was on my lap. I’m not actually sure why they make the seats in these economy areas recline as much as they do, using seats from a time when there was much more legroom. Airlines have tried to squeeze passengers more and more in recent years, no wonder there is so much air-rage. On other economy flights they either don’t recline at all or just a little. Either way, be respectful innit. I feel like flight attendants should announce at the start of the flight that passengers should be considerate of their fellow cattle, their fellow battery hens. As I tried to move to get my bag, I’m sure my legs must have knocked the seat in front a few times, which I try not to do but dude, really. Eventually though, he relented, and moved his seat forward a bit more, with some quiet grumbling, and in a way that was very much like he was deciding that he was more comfortable further forward, nothing to do with me. So I had a bit more room to breathe, which was good because I was still sick, and very much losing my voice. I started a sketch early on this flight, and you can see that we were still only over Scotland by the time his seat went forward again, and I could put my lukewarm Pepsi Max on the seat (British airports – it might be nice if you occasionally refrigerated your cold drinks, thanks very much). I might have had eleven hours of that. I drew this in my little Fabriano Venezia sketchbook. We eventually got to LAX after what felt like a series of Andor (slow and painful and full of boring characters, and still not actually at our destination when the whole thing was over), and flew on to Sacramento after a long walk along not that busy road with the very narrow sidewalk that runs a ring through the middle of the airport. I will say though the immigration guy when I landed in LA was very friendly. We landed at Sacramento and got one of the worst Ubers ever, a smelly car driven by this stoner dude drinking a Big Gulp who played awful music and kept telling me about his trip to London in like 1999 and how he never saw any green space at all, “London has like no parks” (even after this journey I’m like, mate you clearly weren’t in London if you saw no parks or trees). I could still barely hear after the planes had messed up my ears, and I just wanted to see the cats, get to my bedroom, fall asleep. But even as we went up our pathway dragging our suitcases and sweating in the shock of the Davis heat, I could barely hear the Uber driver calling me from his car, and I was nearly in the house when I noticed him. What did he want, had we left something? No, apparently we hadn’t closed the door the whole way getting out of the car, in my exhaustion from that horribly long journey I hadn’t noticed. Rather than just get out and close it himself and drive on, he just sat there drinking his Big Gulp and waiting for me to come back, and open and close the door again more firmly, which I did. Honestly, I really just wanted to not be around people for a good while.

Well we got our wish because next day we all got progressively sick, and so we tested and sure enough, Covid had finally got us. So we stayed home all week, not seeing anyone, ordering food in, and tried to recover from our vacation. July 4th fireworks came and went, I nearly joined the cats hiding under the sofa. But even if the air travel itself was stressful (and that includes flying from Inverness into Luton, my least favourite airport, and the post-midnight Uber ride from there back to London), our trip overall was fun, and we saw some amazing places, many of which I sketched. So I’ll post all those next. Despite all of this travel fun, I actually can’t wait to go and visit somewhere else. But as I’ve said before, it’s always nice to finally get back home, even if it’s to 100+ degree weather.

flying back home again

July 21, 2023July 19, 2023Leave a comment

Here is yet another in-flight sketch. You’d think I’d be bored of them by now (I am, actually) but drawing on a long journey does help me to relax. I’m so sick of flying and airports, but it’s the quickest way to get to the place 5000 miles away that I need to get to, since teleportation doesn’t exist. As on the flight over, I had the whole row to myself and the legroom was alright (very unlike my more recent flights to/from the UK). I was able to add more detail to or finish off some of the many sketches I’d done on this trip, and it was pretty smooth all in all. I drew this in the small Fabriano Venezia book, I love using pencil in that book and will try to use pencil a bit more, to do something different to the pen thing the whole time. It was a productive trip, I went back to places I had not been in many many years, put them in my sketchbook, saw people I’d not seen in years, but at the end of it I really wanted to get back home. I love going home to London, but I really love coming home again to California. I’m really lucky I ended up here.

a farewell to dippy

January 2, 20179 Comments

Well the New Year is here and I am still posting sketches from November. I know you just can’t get enough of 2016. These are the sketches I did on our brief sojourn back to London over Thanksgiving. It was a week of family fun more than sketching outings (I did most of my UK sketching in the summer) but I managed a few. Above is a sketch from the Natural History Museum. My son really wanted to go there to see the geology exhibits (he loves rocks and minerals) and we wanted to see our beloved Dippy one last time before he is removed from the main hall and replaced with a whale skeleton. Dippy, for those who don’t know, is the giant Diplodocus skeleton in the Hintze Hall. Dippy’s been in the NHM for over a century and has been in that hall since I was a little kid, when I would go there all the time with school or my big sister; I do love the Natural History Museum. Well Dippy is leaving! This very week in fact. They are replacing Dippy with a large blue whale skeleton that will hang from the ceiling. Dippy will go on a tour of the UK (see here for details). My son and I found a seat in an alcove to sketch, but we couldn’t see the whole Dippy so sketched what we could see.

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We also visited the Harry Potter tour at the Warner Bros Studios, at Leavesden, just outside London. We are big Harry Potter fans, and my son read the books and saw the movies this year for the first time so it was an exciting visit to go and see the real sets where they were filmed. We only had time for one sketch (so much to see! We could have been there all day) so I sketched the entrance to Dumbledore’s office while he drew the big pendulum thing. I got a Gryffindor scarf. According to the Pottermore website, my son and I would both be in Gryffindor (my wife got sorted into Slytherin!). We went there with my mum, sister and nephew, and it was a really fun family day, I do recommend it.

One other place I was eager to visit was the new Switch House at the Tate Modern, the new tall extension to the gallery on the South Bank. It only opened last summer. My son kinda enjoyed the gallery (we saw both my books in the shop! But he was more excited about the tiny Slinky he bought) but was nervous about going to the tenth floor observation deck. When we were up there though he loved it, and again we sat and sketched the view. This is now my favourite spot in London and I will definitely come back with a few hours on hand to do a big detailed panorama. It was amazing there. Here is what I did sketch, of the view across the Thames to St. Paul’s Cathedral:

The scene below is of drinkers at the very intimate pub off Trafalgar Square, The Harp. I came here with my friend Roshan, as they do good beer; one day I’d like to sketch the whole bar. As it was, I sketched these happydrikers while Roshan popped to the loo. Less-than-five-minute people sketching!

And here is Burnt Oak tube station, in the area my family live (and I am from. Looking as it has ever done. I was going to finish this, but I wanted to get back and have a cup of tea, and never finished it at home.

One last sketch, which is of course the in-flight drawing on the Virgin flight coming home. It was one of the newer planes, and unlike in the summer, this time I didn’t get completely squashed up and have a bad back for several weeks afterwards. Which was handy. Farewell again then my London, until next time!

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need a little time to rest your mind

August 3, 20163 Comments

Transatlantic travel can leave you feeling cramped up for days. Well, it does now I am 40. I don’t remember it happening so much when I was 39, a few months ago. Ah well, a week of non-stop sketching and wandering both London and Manchester clutching sketchbook to my body in that peculiar way that I do probably added to the effect somewhat. I have not started all the scanning yet from the many sketches I did at the Urban Sketching Symposium in Manchester (July 27-30), as well as the Sketching Wren’s London sketchcrawl (July 24) and the Let’s Draw London sketchcrawl at Trafalgar Square (July 23). Here though are the sketches in transit, starting with the Virgin Atlantic flight to London from SFO. As usual I barely slept a wink, my knees being squashed against the seat in front. I love flying Virgin Atlantic, but their legroom in Economy truly sucks.

Virgin Trains on the other hand had pretty good legroom, and the train up to Manchester was a very pleasant journey. I sketched again in the “Lapin” Miquelrius notebook and listened to music from Mancunian bands while the countryside whizzed by.

On the train back from Manchester I sat by the window and sketched a much larger panorama; I had taken Paul Heaston’s workshop in Manchester and realized I do need to stretch that curving perspective a lot more. While I do love a bit of the old curvilinear as you know, I don’t stretch it quite so often as I might, and it’s a good game to play.

And in this last one, the squashed flight back to California. I watched Force Awakens as you can see, and Civil War (while wearing my Captain America hoodie). I also watched Zootopia, or rather, “Zootropolis” as it is called for some reason in the British release. Stay tuned for the sketches from England. There are a lot of them…

up above the streets and houses

August 1, 2013August 1, 20134 Comments

Whenever an urban sketcher flies he or she is compelled to sketch the plane. You’re sat there for hours inside this huge metal perspective trick, usually with little else to occupy your mind than movies you don’t really want to see. Our flight to London was mostly ‘night-time’ (lights out for sleeping, though daytime outside), but I did get the sketch in, while my son coloured in a superhero colouring book that I drew for him. This year, trans-Atlantic flights are a LOT more expensive than they’ve been since I moved out here, so we flew Virgin Atlantic, who are slightly more expensive than United, but are about a million miles more worth it. The flight itself was smooth and pleasant, the cabin crew helpful and amiable, and the entertainment system, as always with Virgin, was top quality, though I didn’t watch anything myself other than an Alan Partridge special. The food was very tasty, and plentiful. It was cramped of course, as all these flights are (I love how at the end they make you walk through first class, to show you what you could have enjoyed if you had just been a little richer). As you land, the Virgin crew come around and give you sweets, and not just any sweets, but Love Hearts. Virgin is the best.

Compare that to our United experience in 2012. Ouch. I vowed never to fly United again – rude, uncomfortable, poor entertainment (tiny screens, terrible movies), lack of food (by which I mean they ran out of everything except beef, which I cannot eat), rude (by which I mean the cabin staff slammed the beef dish onto my tray and told me I had to have it, and had no right to complain – all I had said was “no chicken or vegetarian?”), the plane felt like it was falling apart, rude, the obnoxious smell of the toilets wafting through the cabin and – most of all – rude. I don’t like flying at the best of times, but Grrr, United. I don’t want no beef. I put their rudeness down to the fact that City had just pipped them to the League. At least it got my drawing energy fired up, as you can see from last year’s sketches.