the sky’s the limit

March 23, 2010March 22, 20103 Comments

This is Maurice J. Gallagher Hall, one of the newest shiniest new shiny buildings at UC Davis. It’s home to the Graduate School of Management.

I don’t often draw such modernity. I was interested in giving it a go, a study in perspective, and decided that I’d leave the big blue sky blank. The sky is literally the limit. I’m not into management speak. I never give people a heads up, aka an FYI, vis a vis the big picture all on the same page. Sometimes I sketch small pictures on the same page though.

don’t let the sun blast your shadow

March 11, 2010March 11, 20102 Comments

I was outside Newsbeat, on Third Street, Davis. I don’t normally sketch standing up but the noisy trucks parked in front of me meant I couldn’t avoid it. I tried to lean against the wall, but I think someone had if not peed against it, then certainly left their scent there. There are smelly people in the world, I accept that. The fact I could smell it meant at least I was getting over my cold (although allergy season is apon me to re-block those nostrils). My pen didn’t like drawing at the funny angle of standing up, and protested. At least I had shade; it was sunny. But sunny is good, as it means I get to draw shadows of bare trees against cool little wooden buildings.

brick top

March 10, 2010March 11, 20104 Comments

Do you remember Bill the Brickie? UK people of a certain age might. No, he’s not like Joe the Plumber (whose name wasn’t even Joe), or Mott the Hoople (who wasn’t even a real Hoople). He was a cartoon segment on a TV show we had to watch at school that would teach us about building ‘-ing’ words (which conveniently enough were bricks). It was however the song that would accompany the cartoon that got stuck in my head, and the heads of countless other British kids, an annoyingly catchy ditty that won’t ever go away, ever. It was brilliant, we loved it. And it worked too; I totally know how to build ‘-ing’ words. Cheers Bill. I was thinking about that today. It has nothing to do with this drawing of course. Any attempt to link the two is futile; not even Bill the Brickie, with his little trowel, could do the job. This is Turner Wright Hall, one of the more colourful of the UC Davis buildings. Not a single brick on view. I could have waited until I drew a nice big brick building, but I couldn’t wait to remind the world of the morpheme-friendly bricklayer.

but i don’t like to talk about it, smashie

March 9, 2010March 9, 20101 Comment

There was a charity auction recently at UC Davis, raising money for the local Special Olympics and Boys & Girls Club of Sacramento, which was organized by the student-run group Challenge for Charity. I donated a small drawing of campus (above), which I copied from another recent sketch of the Bikebarn and Silo from Bainer Hall, and then framed. I gather it even managed to sell (but I don’t know for how much). All for charidee!

the stars of track and field

March 2, 2010March 2, 20103 Comments

The Capitol Corridor Amtrak train ride between the Bay Area and Davis is one of my favourite train journeys, not least because the big Amtrak trains are remarkable to travel in. I used to like the Eurostar, years ago, when I used to zip between Waterloo and Bruxelles Midi, but the last time I did it I was amazed at how uncomfortable and cramped I felt, compared to these big American Amtraks. It’s always nicer when you have a table though, so you can spread out your drawing materials. In these cases, it’s obligatory to draw. I usually draw some of the quick moving bird-filled Delta landscape, capture some of the shimmering reflection of the sky in the San Pablo Bay with its lonely shacks and forgotten piers, and the colourful factories and refineries that dot the shoreline around Martinez, Benicia, Richmond. Or I just draw the empty seats in fron of me, which is nice too. I had grabbed a bunch of Amtrak timetables at Emeryville station, ones for the long cross-country routes such as the Zephyr, which goes across the Rockies and over the Plains from here to Chicago, the Coast Starlight, climbing up the Pacific states from LA to Seattle, and the Sunset Limited, running along the hot southern US from California to New Orleans. I look at them romantically, longingly, having once before travelled around Europe on the railway tracks, with the Thomas Cook European Timetable as my Bible; it’s always been a dream to see America from the sides rather than from above.

That was how I ended that brief jaunt to San Francisco, with my visiting friend from England. One last sketch to share, from that morning at Fisherman’s Wharf, while the skies were falling in big wet buckets outside, I was indoors at the Musee Mecanique, one of my favourite places in the city. I’ve sketchblogged about this place before, a year ago in fact (note the Amtrak train drawing also at the top of that eerily mirrored post), but it’s always worth showing again. Remember these arm-wrestling things you used to get at fairgrounds? I always hated them personally, but couldn’t resist drawing this one.

mission accomplished

February 26, 2010February 27, 2010Leave a comment

Last weekend in San Francisco, continued… After another stop at a trendy cafe, we walked up the slopes of Mission Dolores park to enjoy the incredible views over the city. I stopped to sketch the tower of the Mission school yet again, while behind me pit-bulls tried to mate with chihuahuas (please, I know what the offspring would be called, don’t go there). We left that image behind and walked up Church, and towards the Castro district, where I drew the corner of Market street while my friend searched for a 3-day Muni pass (he’d been looking everywhere, with no luck). He did find one eventually, at a magazine kiosk on Castro Street (I noticed one magazine had what looked like Cristiano Ronaldo on the front, but, um, it wasn’t about football). Why you need to know all this I don’t know, but it’s a fun enough story, and means I get to call this entry ‘mission accomplished’, rather than ‘mission impossible’, which is what I thought I’d call it at the time. To be continued…

pull the other one

February 19, 2010February 20, 20103 Comments

Old Town Sacramento has lots of candy stores and saloon doors, but it also has a big railway heritage – there is the railway museum and an old steam train that chugs up and down on weekends. Not so on quiet Thursdays. My friend is visiting from the UK so we swent down there to talk Back to the Future III and do some sketching. That’s him there, Simon, on the right. I didn’t draw the bus transfer ticket, though you know I would. I sat and drew a yellow Union Pacific train engine, which had a logo on the side which we found amusing: “America, We’re Pulling For You”. A family of tourists came up while sketching and took my photo (that’s not it below, by the way). That’s the second time that has happened on this same spot, funny enough.

white house experience

February 16, 2010February 17, 20105 Comments

Pancake Day was a success. In otherwords, I had pancakes, proper pancake-day pancakes with lemon and sugar (and one with nutella). My two-year-old excitedly shouted ‘pancake day! pancake day!’ and giggled as I flipped the pancakes up in the air from the pan, but he wouldn’t even eat a nibble. Ah well. I often say that Davis, my current home city, is flat as a pancake, and it is. But it has some nice old houses, like this one on 1st Stret – I have wanted to draw it for ages, and so today at lunchtime (70 degrees warm folks, not bad for winter) I got out and sketched it. I just love that big roof, it’s so ‘America’, it’s so ‘Not Burnt Oak’. I don’t know if it’s a frat house. There are so many on this row I wouldn’t be surprised. Either that or it’s from a horror movie.

does that star-spangled banner yet wave

February 15, 2010February 15, 2010Leave a comment

First Valentine’s Day, then President’s Day; what next, Pancake Day? (Oh yeah, it is, tomorrow… I promise, this is not a food blog, I won’t post photos of my lovely scrummy proper pancake-day pancakes, they’ll be eaten too quickly)

So anyway, Pres’s Day, I got out into this gorgeous Californian February weather (69 degrees and sunny; how’s that snow, everywhere else?) and cycled about a bit, slowly and aimlessly, before settling on the corner of C and 5th to sketch Newman Chapel (I have drawn it before, a few years ago). there was a flag, as there were on many of the streets, so I added it to the frame. It’s funny, I’m not into the whole flag-waving business, flag-fuelled patriotism, in whichever land, and yet I have always been obsessively interested in flags of all countries. Vexillology is one of my favourite subjects, I can’t get enough of it. That, and football shirts, so I’m already gearing up for the World Cup. Anyway, there I am below, giving the post-sketch analysis with Moley #5. David Devant was on my headphones, though I’d spent most of the sketch listening to Joni Mitchell, and I think it shows.

window olympics

February 12, 2010Leave a comment

The Vancouver Winter Olympics opening ceremony is opening ceremoniously as I type. Well, actually it was three hours ago; even though we are in the same time zone here on the West Coast, we have to watch it at the TV hour that the East Coast dictates (they get to see it live, while we have to avoid twitter feeds). I’d like to go to Vancouver, I hear it is very nice there. In fact every commercial break is another advert for British Columbia to convince me. I’ve always wanted to go to Canada; I lived briefly with a couple of Canadians while in France (one of whom was very good at magic tricks). Well, the place isn’t going anywhere, so for now I’m in California.

None of this has anything to do with the sketch, which I did today at lunchtime, at the Silo. Sometimes, when it’s Friday and you haven’t sketched all week, you just look out of the window and draw.