Here is the first sketch I did in Eastwood while I waited for our car to have its service. I sat in a little pop up coffee shop to sketch this. Apparently Supersam (in the background) is a popular restaurant known for its international comfort food and Filipino-American fusion dishes – but not by me…I’ve never heard of it!
I had to rush this sketch a bit. Captain Haddock loves to sleep on this rather chewed old pizza box – so who needs a cat bed? Having old pizza boxes (plus cardboard boxes and bits of paper he has picked out of the bin to play with) laying around the house, doesn’t do that well for the ambiance though!
I can’t compete with the master but on this Sunday it seemed like a good day to sketch the swimming pool for the nth time (a phrase I am using regularly as I repeatedly sketch the same things). Having struggled a bit with this one – I feel it’s kind of heavy handed on the water – I might have another go….or several more goes using different(ish) materials each time?
I was thinking of David Hockney when I went for a walk to get some exercise. In this part of Acacia Estates, where we live, it looks like DMCI the developers are planning to build even more housing. As soon as I saw this digger (in my favourite colour) I thought I should sketch it. I cleaned by TWSBI pen to do this one but the ink still seemed to come out grey!
I have been a fan of David Hockney’s work since I was a teenager – I remember my school art teacher took us to a showing of “A Bigger Splash” a 1973 biographical documentary film about his breakup with his then-partner Peter Schlesinger. I have followed his work ever since then….so sad that he passed away, but what a legacy he has left!
According to a couple of Google image searches this is a Lanzones (Lansium Domesticum) tree – a type of mahogany tree. Lanzones fruits are round like large grapes, but with a tough skin and juicy segments inside. It appeared on our balcony, out of nowhere a few years ago, then killed off the bamboo that use to grow in the same pot, and is now huge. Apparently fruit eating birds (like a Bulbul) probably ate the fruit from a nearby tree or garbage bin, then perched on our railing and crapped out the seeds into the pot! I pruned it a few days after this sketch to make it a bit more manageable (lopping the crown completely off)…by some miracle I didn’t kill it, and it is now starting to grow new shoots below where I cut off the trunk.
For this sketch I just drew the first thing I saw – for the nth time – while I chatted to my my mum using the MyTello app (which is a great replacement for the long lost Skype).
I sketched this at the end of a quiet day having finished the assignment I’ve been working on. I just sketched the foot stool with a blanket on it – which of course was what was in front of me.
After lunch, on this day, some of us went to the Presidential Car Museum (for the nth time). This car was used by President Manuel Quezon and General Douglas MacArthur. A few visitors to the museum seemed more interested with my sketching than looking at the cars…someone commented that it was so nice to see elders getting out and enjoying their passion…that made me feel really old!
I decided to just do quick sketches of people when I joined @UskQuezonCity for our sketch-walk. The first one of three separate people was done when I arrived early and went to get coffee. In the skate park perhaps I should have tried more to capture the action?
At the skate-park
Anyway, the last one was done from a shady spot below the park, of the sketchers using umbrellas to keep the sun off – it was roasting hot with all the heat radiating off the concrete.