This is Kunst
from the pencil of young pete
I drew this 19 years ago, when I was just thirteen. 19 years ago!! The Berlin Wall was still up! Nelson Mandela was still in prison! George Bush was the new President of the USA! I was digging through my old drawings from when I was a kid recently and thought I should share them with you. I remember drawing this (I still use the 'mechanical' eraser I used in this very drawing, there's continuity for you!); I was a huge Beatles fan, and trawled the record stores and junk shops of London for old original LPs (plus a load of old albums my uncle gave me). Note how I've given Macca his real first name too. I did another version of it at 16 (below left), in 1992, with stronger values and less chin, but I prefer the first one for its innocence. I was doing my GCSE art in '92 and several of the other pictures below are from that time; below right is a watercolour copy of Cezanne that I did at 15 or 16, from a postcard picked up at the National Gallery - I used to go down to London most weekends to go to the galleries (and the record stores).  
Ten years later I ended up living in Cezanne's town of Aix-en-Provence, which is where I met my wife (and therefore how I ended up living in the US). Funny old world. Below is another from 16-year old Pete in 1992, an unfinished one of Jesus from some other painting I can't remember. An interesting choice for such an atheistic lad as I, but even though I'm A NonBeliever I know aestheticism sometimes trumps atheisim; years later I did a one-person art performance piece at university about being drunk on the underground, which ended up with me on a crucifix (supposed to be King's Cross). 
The pencil one below left is a pastorly Peter Cushing (looking more like the Crow Man), also from 1992. I seemed to have an easier time with light and dark values back then than I do now. It's from one of my horror-movie books; I was really into old Hammer Horror films (I have another sketch of Christopher Lee too), and in 1992 I wrote and performed an eight-song musical called "Dracula AD 1992" (an homage to the 1972 Hammer movie), which included such classic songs as "This Motel's Giving Me The Willies" and "Freshly Impaled Village Maidens". Below right: a later picture, 1995, 19 years old and obsessed with oil pastels. Doesn't look massively like me, but you get the idea. I didn't wear glasses very often back then.  
A little trip into young pete's world.
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still seeing davis
I bet you thought this series was over...well I said I'd make it to 24 and I will. This is number 21 of 24. I apologise for the hiatus; it was due to the recent writer's strike.
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E - A - D - G - B - E
My guitar, the hohner acoustic i've had for eleven years now, bought at macari's on charing crosss road in january 1997 when i worked at a chocolate shop on oxford street, been with me to several countries, now here in california. That orange plectrum attached to the strings there is the same one they gave me when i bought it, it's still the only one i'll use. The wood is matt, and browner than it looks here. I do have another fancier electric, but this is the one i grab the most. I played some soothing songs to my baby son today, he seems to like the sound and the shape of the guitar; one day, in the future, I will buy him his first guitar. He may even get this one. This wasn't my first guitar, however; my first proper one that worked (not including the bad car-boot acoustics i had) was a westone electric that my brother gace me, I loved that guitar, though it's clapped out now. I passed it on to my nephew just before moving to america. Boys and guitars, important allies. (purple micron .01, w&n cotman watercolour, moleskine watercolour paper)
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illustration friday: 'save' (or 'i've got a pocket full of pretty green')
I am so glad i scanned this before adding the wash. Yes, i added a bad greeny-blue wash to it, and it looks bad bad baby, bad as in not good mate. So while you might think that the theme for illustration friday 'SAVE' refers to the money supposedly saved here, it actually refers to the fact i saved this before going on to deface the original with sea-green. So there.
Don't go giving me evils! illustration friday
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april is the cruellest month
Sketched today at lunchtime, while on my lunchbreak, after eating lunch. Orange flowers by the arboretum, uc davis; that i believe is the law school there, that building type thing like. They love lawyers in america. If you're not a lawyer or a doctor, or maybe a cop, then you cant get into a tv show.
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got more bottle than united dairies
ian rush said that if you don't drink your milk, you won't even be good enough to play for accrington stanley.  accrington stanley? who are they? 
exactly!!!
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sketchcrawl 18: sacramento
 The 18th Worldwide Sketchcrawl took place on Saturday, and I popped across the Causeway for the midtown Sacramento version. Three other sketchers were there, at the Sutter's fort meeting point; none made it to the ending point, at the Streets of London pub on J street. It was the seventh time I've done the Sketchcrawl, and it's nice to know I'm absolutely not the only one out on the streets somewhere on the planet with pen and sketchbook. Here are my results (click on the images for larger versions):  
I went to the art store, and found my favourite sketching tool yet: a fold-up stool that easily fits into my small shoulder bag! Only $11. No more sitting on the dirty floor; it means I can sketch anywhere now (normally I find the comfy spot first, then choose what to draw). 
  sketchcrawl 18
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wrapped up in books
My wife's textbooks, mostly differing advice (of the 'swear-by-them/swear-at-them' kind), often unapplicable to your actual baby, same as any user guide really. What I really need to know is how to stop the yellow baby poo leaking from the back of the nappy and staining everything in sight. Of course, he thinks this is the height of hilarity. The answer may be to buy yellow clothes, or better still, black clothes, so baby can be cool (y'know, like his dad).
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from a more civilised age
I've been sketching for animation ideas, and this usually involves lightsabres (see my previous animationals), since getting photoshop (i haven't stepped up to flash yet...give me time) and am actually enjoying the pencil sketching much more than the 'finished' pen stuff, so here is the official seen-before-in-these-pages cartoon version of pete (doesn't actually look like me, but has red hair (not obvious here of course), glasses, and a black polar neck, so therefore must be me), wielding my jedi weapon with, ahem, grace. Below, on the left, is another sabre-wielder, a friend of mine; while i do like it, i still have much to learn. I call these quick sketched animations 'sketchimations'. On the right is another sketch. That one does not move.
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how i learned to stop worrying and love the A street
the jam sang that there was an A bomb in wardour street, well this is A street so i wonder if that means there's a wardour bomb? I hope not. Nobody would know what it was for one thing. Someone would paint it white, it would become another piece of Davis civic art, it would be on their downtown maps and part of the art walks, students would go there with teachers to say what they thought it meant, art professors would encourage graduate students to focus their PhD theses on it, it would become another quirky Davis landmark to celebrate with a fun-run and its own stall at the farmers market, some young inventive and pretentious local student band would write a twenty minute experimental piece about it, and the City would clash with the Campus as to who owns it, whichever side of the street it lay. Then it would go off, and it wouldn't be like a regular bomb, with explosions or smoke or any of that unnecessary nasty stuff, it would pour forth tofu or organic lentils or something equally hippyish, or perhaps it would emit streams of nightclub flyers and piss in the alleys, in other words the sort of thing you find in Wardour Street. The painting itself? Davis, as usual. I have done a lot of A St drawings lately. And what's been going on with the blog lately, yet another day of no-show, sounds like 20six is having issues with chinese spammers in the works. Apologies if you've tried to find me and i'm not there. Actually I've been ill too, even losing my voice.
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