sketching a rainy day in davis

April 26, 2024Leave a comment

Last month we held another Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl in downtown Davis, this time on 2nd Street. It was a really rainy day too, but we had a good turnout of sketchers not minding that. I sat beneath the shelter of the Varsity Theatre and sketched the Avid Reader bookstore, a local favourite spot (and where I worked a long long time ago). the rain was really hard, absolutely bucketing down. That was a busy day for me; I had woken up early and taken part in the annual Lucky Run, and this time I ran the 7k distance for the first time ever. Usually I run the 5k, but I wanted a bit more of a challenge. I’ve not been running as much and am definitely heavier, but I smashed that 7k and want to run more. I am aiming to go for the 10k by the Fall, so I had better get back to training, cut back on those milkshakes. Next week, maybe.

I went into Mishka’s Cafe to do a last sketch, and several of the other sketchers were there. I sketched the scene in my brown fountain pen, and had a big fruity smoothie (which took several straws to drink, because their plastic straws are a bit too weak to be used in their smoothies, I must remember to bring my reusable metal straw next time). Then we all got together afterwards to look at each others’ sketchbooks, there were some great styles on display.

I recently posted the next Let’s Draw Davis event which will be on Saturday May the 4th, so I made a Star Wars style logo for this one. Check out details at the Let’s Draw Davis FB page.

another march on campus

April 23, 2024Leave a comment

Here are some sketches drawn around campus last month, all different media, I suppose. Above, that’s the UC Davis water tower as seen from the Arboretum, very close to my office. I drew in brown fountain pen, and there was this little cat on the path. I like this sort of sketch. The redbuds were really glowing then too. I’ve been on this campus eighteen years now, I sometimes look back and think, funny how that happened. That building next to the water tower, the Earth and Physical Sciences Building, wasn’t even there when I first arrived, in fact I was there at the ceremony where they laid the foundation stone, my old manager insisted I come over to witness that. I’m glad I did, but I always regret not sketching the building that was there before, which was knocked down. I do remember sketching the empty space, back in 07 or 08.

There was this one day last month when one of my coworkers announced that there would be llamas on campus, over at the Quad, that people could go and have a look at. This caused great excitement, as it had been a very busy 2024 so far, and everyone needs more llama, less drama. So we all walked over there. I had my llama jokes ready. It was lunchtime so I thought, alpaca lunch. As we got there, it turned out there were no llamas to be found. I guess they hadn’t set their a-llama clock. Disappointed but not despondent, I decided to draw this interesting old tree, and sketched it in pencil before adding some watercolour. I sometimes wish all my sketching looked like this, it felt very free.

This one above was sketched in the UC Davis Silo, on another boring lunchtime. I haven’t drawn the interior of this building from this level for a number of years. I used to come up here all the time, years ago, it feels like something from another time, but it isn’t, it’s just a different end of the same time. I think I would wonder in those days how long we would be in Davis, where we might go next, but we stayed, and I took it upon myself to draw all the changes here over a long period. While it’s not my actual job, it’s kind of become my other job, and I don’t mind that at all.

And finally, a panorama that will remain unfinished. I was cycling across campus one lunchtime when I was hit with the thought of drawing the Chemistry Building, not the side that’s all being built (and which I have drawn a number of times), because the shapes the shadows were making as they hit the inset windows was really quite dramatic, you would have loved it. In the end I said sod it, too much detail, and focused on sketching that wicked blue and cloudy sky, which was pretty spectacular in itself, leaving the Chemistry Building to be nothing more than a big outline left to the imagination. Behind it though is another building called ‘PSEL’, the ‘Physical Science and Engineering Library’, which is not in fact a library any more but has been recently redeveloped to house space for several units, including my own program (in fact I’m on the building committee that manages it); it will see a name change at some point, though I can’t say for sure what that will be. There’s still work being done, and I have drawn the building before, but I’ll do a more proper sketch of it at some point, but I made sure it got into this sketch.

two of the usual

April 20, 2024April 20, 2024Leave a comment

After getting back from southern California, a couple of downtown Davis sketches, familiar looking, white houses with a bit of triangle, a tree casting a shadow, the standard Pete sketch. This is my beans on toast. The top one is on D Street, and the bottom one is on that stretch of 3rd opposite Newsbeat, and has popped up a few times over the years. This is already a month ago, the bigger trees are already a lot leafier. Here we are now in Spring. 2024 has been a bit of a slog already, but I have drawn a lot.

Downtown Riverside

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024Leave a comment

And here then are the last few of my sketches from Riverside, southern California. I did consider joining the trip to visit the UC Riverside campus, so that I could add another UC campus to my sketchbook list, but then I thought, nah sod it. I’m sure it’s lovely, with its big concrete block clocktower from a 1960s British town hall in the East Midlands somewhere. I however was surrounded by lots of actually beautiful sketchable buildings surrounding the Mission Inn, even though it was in an apparent Diet-Pepsi desert. The sketch above though was of the dome at the rear end of the Mission Inn, from a relatively quiet street called Main Street, drawn on my lunchtime on day two of the conference. The previously blue sky had become a little cloudier. I was not that interested in my conference lunch, it was a little bit bland and tasted of nothing. Downstairs there was another conference going on for employees of a local fast food chain called ‘Farmer Boys’ (when I saw the sign I at first thought it said ‘Former Boys’) and their food sounded really good (something a lot of us say when we haven’t actually seen a menu, judging it by its logo alone, which is totally fair enough) (example, ‘Happy Eater’, a former roadside restaurant in the UK whose logo was a boy putting his finger down his throat, and the French chain ‘Flunch’, which sounds like the sound you make when throwing up your main course), but I didn’t think I could get away with sneaking in there to try it out. I wasn’t up for any bland conversation that tasted of nothing (“what campus are you from, oh right, Santa Barbara, what campus are you from, oh right, Berkeley” etc; let’s face it, I’m not much of a conversationalist) so I excused myself and made it look like I had to rush to a meeting, which I did, a meeting with my sketchbook.

It was the second time I’d drawn that dome, as I had also skipped out the day before toward the end of lunch to draw a quick one on the corner of Main and whatever street, 6th I think. The sun was shining bright and I drew from what little shade I could fund but I didn’t have much, so I drew fast and ran back to my next workshop. My lunch hadn’t been very interesting, and conversation a little awkward, and there was only so much of that iced water with a little bit of lemon in it that I could drink. The dome reminded me of Balboa Park in San Diego, where I’d sketched back in, I don’t even remember, 2009? I hope I’m better at drawing domes now. These Mission-style buildings and their ornate details can be a little hard. Actually the Mission Inn is a blend of many different architectural styles, and had a number of architects.

This building was a little bit easier and had a couple of small domes. I was not sure what the building was, and then a random man passing by asked me, “hey what’s that church?” and I said, “I was hoping you’d tell me”, but I wasn’t hoping that. It was after I started sketching this that I decided a visit to UC Riverside was not going to make my life complete. The sun was hitting it in a way to give it a golden feel, and when I’ve got light like that, I ain’t going anywhere. You can see the lamp-post thing in the shape of that really old bell from the Mission Inn, you see that all over the area. This building is actually Riverside Municipal Auditorium (not everything’s a church you know), and I was told by a person we will meet in the next paragraph that it was built as a memorial to local soldiers who were killed in World War One.

The building above was just across the street and most definitely a church. The amazing bell tower really stands out in the neighbourhood, although it sits among many interesting looking buildings and churches. It’s the ‘First Congregational Church Riverside’ and is pretty historic, according to the fellow that spoke to me outside it. He saw me taking a photo of the tower and told me that it was the oldest, er, oh man I forgot. You see this is why I have to write everything down, because I will forget otherwise. Ok, I think he said, this was the oldest Spanish-colonial-revival church in California and was built in 1913, though the church dates from 1872. “Ah, so not very old then,” I said. I think he understood that I was from Britain, so that made sense without having to explain, and it turned out that he had been to Britain many times. Anyway he told me some more of the history, which I have unfortunately forgotten, so you’ll just have to look it up online. The tower is ‘churrigueresque’, which means ultra-baroque and is obviously a word I found on Wikipedia. My wife told me that she thinks her grandma used to go to that church; my wife was born in Riverside but left as a baby. I definitely wanted to draw this, but had to get the right angle (and right amount of shade). It was warm, and I was thirsty, and water just wasn’t going to cut it, I wanted a nice cold Diet Pepsi, but as we have established I appeared to be in a Diet Pepsi desert with no convenience stores and honestly after quite a lot of looking it was feeling a bit strange. Then I remembered – there was a Farmer Boys restaurant a couple of blocks away, that I’d walked past when I arrived into town. I was hungry (having had a bland taste of nothing for lunch) and still pissed off from the “he used to be a redhead but isn’t now” comments made by total strangers pretending to be administrative management professionals, so that sounded perfect. So I got there and ordered what sounded like a really tasty fried chicken burger and a big Diet Pepsi, and they said well you can have the Diet Pepsi, but unfortunately because our machine isn’t working you can’t have any chicken. Sorry, your ‘machine isn’t working’? Is it a machine that makes chicken? Right well, that has put me off food for a while, Farmer Boys. So I just got an unnecessarily massive soda and went out to sketch the building above, stood next to a bus stop where a random local man was harassing or just talking to another random man; moments earlier the same random man had said something to me from behind which I hadn’t heard, and then followed it up with a louder “hey! I was saying hello to you!” in one of those aggressive ways random people like to talk to you. So I said, “Hello!” brightly, and I think he realized I was not very good at conversation and moved on to randomly talk to someone else.

And of course we cannot leave a new place without sketching its fire hydrants. These two were within a short walking distance from the Mission Inn (that is, a short walking distance for me, but a very difficult walking distance for the fire hydrants). Fairly typical specimens for Southern California. And that was it, those are all my Riverside sketches, not bad for a brief couple of days. There were other places I wish I had sketched – the Fox Theater looked interesting, but what I didn’t know was that was the first place in the world that showed the movie ‘Gone With the Wind’, which I’ve never actually watched much of; Tico’s Tacos, an amazing taqueria with all sorts of weird and wonderful sculptures and artworks all over the place, a literal urban sketchers dream yet I didn’t go there; and the UC Path Center which is in a boring concrete building in an industrial estate, but since UC Path (a new payroll system) has given us so much grief since our campus adopted it I think it only fair I go and sketch the place, or not. I don’t know I’ll ever be back so I think I made the most of my trip to Riverside, and then I flew back home from Ontario airport (which is confusingly not in Canada). I was now into my 50th landscape sketchbook, that is my 25th landscape watercolor Moleskine.

UC AMP 2024

April 18, 2024Leave a comment

I recently attended the UC-AMP conference in Riverside, a meeting for administrative management professionals in the University of California. I had been to the same conference last year in Berkeley, and for my own professional development it was an eye opener, and I came away with lots of new ideas and energy for my day to day job. It was around the same time as the Urban Sketching Symposium in New Zealand which I was missing (because it was in New Zealand), so I was feeling extra itch to sketch everything, but I have that anyway. In the end, I actually won the conference’s picture contest for a drawing I did on the Berkeley campus, so I won free registration for this year’s conference in Riverside. I’d never been to Riverside (my wife was born there, but based on her description it was never high on my must-visit list, which is a very long list), but the conference hotel was the Mission Inn, which I had always wanted to visit, and when I looked at it online it shot right up that list. See my previous post for the sketches. The opening reception for the conference was held in this courtyard and hall next to the big chapel there, a beautiful setting, though because I had not arrived right when it started the food was already gone, so I had some ice cream and a glass of wine. People were mingling about; I am not and never have been an ‘enter the room and start making friends’ type of person, I’m more of an ‘enter the room and start hiding’ person. Our name tags revealed our campuses, and when I heard someone from Davis going up to people from Davis and loudly squealing something like “OMG! DAVIS!” to gather them together I made more of an effort to be a bit more invisible. I didn’t see anybody I knew, though there were faces I think I recognized from last year. I really wanted to sketch the courtyard, it was beautiful, but I knew all I’d manage was a quick sketch, so I did the pencil sketch above in my little Fabriano book. The sun was setting, and my tummy was rumbling so I went and found the restaurant for dinner.

Naturally I could not help but sketch at the conference. Most of the reason is that I like to take notes at these things, since I’m here to learn ideas, but it becomes a fun kind of documentation. I used to fret about these things, because you can’t write everything down (boy do I try sometimes, I’m an avid note taker at meetings, it’s how I remember), and you want to be sure that you catch the important bits that at least illustrate the gist of their talk, but I’m better at listening out for those things now. I was drawing mostly with my Lamy fountain pen with the brown De Atramentis ink.

The talks were pretty good, although I didn’t come away from day one with a great deal of enthusiasm or particularly new ideas, unlike the previous year. It was more generic work conference stuff in many ways, and even the breakout I attended didn’t really get me going. Partly though that was because it was using a TV show that I’ve never seen as reference, Gilligan’s Island, though I understood the gist of what was presented I didn’t necessarily agree with the categorizations. Also, I came away not feeling particularly happy, because after dividing us into groups based on characters from the show, I ended up being in a group based on someone called ‘Ginger’, and the presenter made some comment that there were no redheads in our group, to which I said that I respectfully disagreed. While he acknowledged, oh right, other members of my group, people I did not know, decided to take it upon themselves to say I wasn’t, or that “no, he used to be!” and event “he said he used to be redhead but isn’t now”, which I did not say, but now a loudmouthed person has declared to the group that I had. “What? I didn’t say that.” I said, before another woman in our group said “No you used to be, but the stress of working for the UC changed that”. I mean, how fucking rude? This was in front of people. I was ready to argue, but that wouldn’t have been very administrative management professional of me would it, but I was not happy. My hair, which I keep really short anyway (shaved to #1 on the sides), is much lighter than it used to be even a few years ago, but I’m not all faded yet, and still obviously a redhead, just not the idea that someone else has we should look (which is basically how I looked at 11), but either way, that having been an important aspect of my self for my whole life, especially growing up when it is simply put the main aspect and all anyone ever comments on (and I get the idea that’s definitely more true for growing up in Britain than over here), and it’s not just another hair colour, there’s a very real skin identity in there (cf, my own higher risk of skin cancer). It’s not something I particularly wanted a debate on, but frankly I felt that for a group of people who have been patting themselves on the back during this conference on how great they are with people, it was a bit shitty to then make comments about someone’s hair colour in front of a large excited group. It reminded me of Edgware School, but instead of a gobby rabble making the class laugh at the fact I have ginger hair*, now a more grown-up and professionally dressed group of no less gobby people were doing the same in reverse. (*I actually actively avoided the word ‘ginger’ in my life because it had always been used to insult me, until I found the David Devant song ‘Ginger’ which was all about us and very much on our side). Anyway, after that I wasn’t feeling particularly in a mind to socialize so I ditched the afternoon and evening social activities and went and did some really good drawing instead. I enjoyed the second day’s talks quite a bit though, in fact the first presenter Steve Yu gave a talk about body language and public speaking that I definitely took things away from, plus a few interesting phrases. “How you do anything is how you do everything” was a good one. I don’t know what it was, but I came away from it with a “yes, I can do that” feeling. I went to one other talk about Influencing which was really interesting, by Crystal Petrini, though I ended up just writing down all the points but it did make me think about my own place on our campus and how I navigate the various relationships to try to get things done; not easy, often quite a challenge.

There were other talks I didn’t have time to attend, and the big group parts where they presented during lunch about the conference organizing committee and other stuff, plus a huge presentation on Oracle which I only caught the last fifteen minutes of, but by this point I was done and had to fly back home. They told me the 2025 one will be at the Hyatt Embarcadero in San Francisco, a place I’ve stayed at a few times, so I might go to that one. I have some more Riverside sketches to show you in the next post.

at the Mission Inn Riverside

April 16, 20242 Comments

A month ago I was in Riverside, southern California, for a conference for work. The conference itself was at the nearby conference center, but the official hotel for it was the historic Mission Inn, which I had heard of many times, but wow, what an amazing place. I knew I’d want to sketch the whole thing, but I was a little blown away by it. It might be the most interesting hotel I’ve ever stayed in architecturally (even the one I stayed at in Amsterdam, and the Coronado in San Diego). It’s a historic landmark, the largest building in the Mission Revival style, and one of the official Historic Hotels of America. It was a popular hotel with presidents (especially Republican ones), and Richard Nixon was actually married his wife here, the Reagans honeymooned here, and JFK even stayed here (so it’s not just Republicans). Bette Davis married there too, in 1945. There is a Presidential Bar area, with portraits of past presidents associated with the Inn, and loads of old photographs on the wall.

My room was nice, with beautiful historic details, overlooking the main entrance. I got up early on my first morning and went out as soon as there was light to get some doughnuts, and then sketched the entrance before the conference began, the sketch at the top if this post. In my free time away from the conference, I wandered the hotel’s corridors and passageways, it’s like a maze with all sorts of unusual places to discover. The sketch above was high up on one of the highest levels (though not the highest), with a clocktower and flowers everywhere, overlooking the beautiful courtyard. I enjoyed sketching this, though the sun was going down and I had to colour most of it in while sat at the hotel bar (listening to all the people striking up conversations with each other). This place is an illustrator’s dream.

I did spend some time in the courtyard, when I ate a delicious dinner (Cioppino, I can’t resist it) in their restaurant under a beautiful setting. I did have to try to sketch, but there was no way I could draw the whole setting, with the fountain and the flowers. The food was great, and I had tiramisu for dessert, before going to explore the hotel a bit more. I had skipped the afternoon activities of the conference – going to look around UC Riverside – to sketch more interesting buildings near the Mission Inn, and I’d also missed the evening activity – one group went to the Cheech museum, another went on a pub crawl – so I wasn’t feeling very sociable, and I got to exploring the hotel a bit more with my sketchbook. It’s not every day I get to come somewhere like this.

The sketch above was of a little courtyard in front of the large chapel, where we had the conference’s opening reception the evening before. The sun was already set, though this was the first day of Daylight Savings in the US, but the courtyard was pretty well lit. Still, I was starting to get detailed out by this point so kept it simple enough. There are a few other urban sketchers I know who I’d love to see draw this. As I got back to my hotel room, I sat down at the little desk and looked up, and there was a painting of that exact scene made from the same spot, which made me smile.

There are a lot of ‘things’ to sketch all over the hotel too, if you like drawing objects. I just wanted to draw the old bell, because everywhere you go in Riverside you see the symbol of this mission bell everywhere. It’s really old, of Spanish origin, with the year ‘1247’ inscribed on it, and is considered ‘the oldest bell in Christendom’ (you don’t hear that phrase much these days), and was bought in London by the hotel’s founder, Frank Miller. There is a statue of Frank Miller, holding a parrot (sorry, it’s a macaw) near the entrance, and I had to sketch that. There was a detail of two macaws on the lobby floor also (I didn’t stand there to draw that, I took a picture and drew it in my sketchbook, but was a bit half-hearted with it).

On my last day, I did a bit more sketching before I had to go to the airport, what I really wanted to do was go up to the top floor and draw the highest tower. There is so much there, and a lot of staff busying about keeping the place beautiful. I drew the sketch below, with the hills in the background, intending to colour it in but by that point I was done, and had to fly back home. I do have a lot of other Riverside sketches to show you, as well as my conference sketching, stay tuned. Also coming up, lots more Davis sketching, lots of Utah sketching, I have been busy this year so far. I draw a lot. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to visit this place (and it was a work trip too, professional development). One thing I will say though, it seemed like it was impossible to just get a bottle of Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke like anywhere. You can buy a soda at the bar, sure, but there weren’t any vending machines like in many other hotels, and even around the hotel I couldn’t find any convenience store with bottles of Diet Pepsi (I really needed one while I was out sketching) anywhere, it was really strange. That’s my small complaint. Otherwise, yep, nice place.

a plate full of pancakes at the original pantry

April 10, 2024April 10, 2024Leave a comment

I had a lie in on the Sunday; well I woke up very early (even after the time change) to watch Spurs v Villa through the corner of my eye, but I fell back asleep when it looked like it wasn’t going anywhere (actually we ended up winning 4-0, best performance of the season). I needed the kip anyway, and was still feeling a little full from the pre-bedtime burrito I bought at the food truck across from the hotel. So it was pushing lunchtime when I finally went out into the world. I thought I might do some drawing around downtown LA before heading to Riverside, but my main goal was to eat at The Original Pantry. I first saw this place way back in 2010 when I sketched it but didn’t eat there; I came back in 2017 with my mate from England, but the line was so long we decided to go to Denny’s (and waited even longer just for our food), so I’ve wanted to come back for ages. The Original Pantry opened its doors a hundred years ago in 1924 and boasts to have never closed its doors since its open 24 hours a day (I don’t know about during the pandemic). It’s a proper classic little diner with excellent food and beloved by locals. I absolutely didn’t mind waiting in line because I knew I’d be hungrier by the time I got in, and I could sketch the line while I was out there. Their website does say they want peoples’ stories from being in line. So I stood and whipped out my little Fabriano sketchbook to draw my wait (see below). However, I hadn’t been there for more than about three minutes, when one of the staff came out to check the size of each party going in. Since I was by myself, they already had a seat at the counter for me so I was led past the long line, some of whom were saying “oh man you’re lucky!” to me (I resisted the urge to say “see ya later suckers!” but I did feel excited at being called in to eat). My seat at the counter was close to the very hot cookers, but there were other locals eating there and reading their papers, it felt pretty awesome. I didn’t fancy a big lunch, but I ordered a plate of their famous pancakes, and wow that was a big plate of pancakes. I couldn’t even finish it, it was so filling. My stomach (and my soul) well satisfied, I got up and went back outside, and finished off the sketch of the line that I had started (below), before heading across the street to draw the full scene (above). That sketch above took me about an hour, but it was nice standing on the corner of the street in downtown LA, it’s a bit different from Davis.

The last time I stood there sketching was in 2010, my wife and I were visiting Los Angeles for our anniversary, though she had a work event in DTLA that day so I spent the day exploring. The hydrant drawn in that old sketch is now different, and I stood at a slightly different spot of the corner. It’s not actually the corner of Figueroa and 9th (9th is the street on the other side of the main road) but at the junction of Figueroa and James M. Wood Boulevard (the stretch of 9th was named for local labor leader James M. Wood in 1997). Anyway I wanted to show this sketch here again, I always liked it.

Eating pancakes wans;t all I did that day. My hotel stay also gave me entry to the Grammy Museum a bit further down the road. I didn’t have a load of time before I needed to catch my train but I figured it would be fun to look around, and it was. The only sketch I made in there was of Michael Jackson’s jacket from Thriller, because we used watch and dance to that video so much when we were kids. I enjoyed the hip hop sections too, there was a lot of history there. It’s not a very big museum but was worth seeing, but I had a train to catch to I headed off to Union Station.

I had hoped to arrive a little earlier and spend some time sketching Union Station, but as it was I was able to take my time, and a very helpful young volunteer showed me the right ticket machine and the way to the platform, he was a university student who apparently helps at the station because he is so into trains; I understand, me too. I’ve been thinking a lot about taking a great train journey lately, one of those that goes across the country taking several days, with time to sit and think and read and get into adventures. Well maybe not adventures. Would I get bored? Probably, but I’d be moving towards somewhere. A couple of those long distance trains stop in Davis (the Coastal Starlight and the California Zephyr) so who knows, some day. As it was, I took a 1.5 hour regional train across the LA metropolitan area and into what’s called the ‘Inland Empire’, to the city of Riverside. And of course I sketched on the train.

the rest of my Saturday, from USC to DTLA

April 7, 2024April 7, 2024Leave a comment

After the day at the Natural History Museum, the sun was starting to think about setting. It was a nice evening in South Central LA, around Exposition Park, and some fans were starting to arrive for the LAFC game that evening. I’d thought about going, because former Spurs captain and club legend Hugo Lloris now plays for Los Angeles, and I wanted to see him in goal, but I knew I wanted to go back to the hotel and have dinner at the downtown indoor Market. But before I got on my Metro back, I decided to take a look around the USC campus right opposite. South Central LA is famous for all sorts of stuff in popular culture, not least the gang-type stuff, but its home to USC, the University of Southern California (sometimes referred to by other Californians as the ‘University of Spoiled Children’ because it’s a rich private school, that’s what I was told), and it’s a pretty nice campus. I didn’t wander too far, I had wanted to go over to the film school where George Lucas (among many others) had studied, but instead I stopped next to this lovely fountain and looked out at the Bovard Auditorium building. There were graduating students in deep red robes taking photos by the statue of Tommy the Trojan; the USC nickname is the ‘Trojans’ (like UC Davis are the Aggies, UCLA are the Bruins, UC Santa Cruz are the Banana Slugs…) and the college football team is famous. As well my guy George Lucas, USC’s other famous alumni include Neil Armstrong, John Wayne, Frank Gehry, and former F1 Champion Phil Hill, plus loads of other famous people I’ve never heard of. It was nice to sit and sketch on a quiet campus. I like to draw other university campuses when I can, since I spend my days drawing every bit of my own campus. I drew only one other thing there, which was the statue below found near the entrance, a little dog called ‘George Tirebiter’.

George Tirebiter was apparently a little shaggy dog who was a beloved mascon for the Trojans back in the 40s and 50s. He would come onto campus and chase cars, biting their tires, and became so popular that the students would take him to the Trojans games in a limousine (yes a limousine, at USC) and lead the marching band onto the field wearing little sweaters and hats, and once biting the UCLA mascot ‘Joe Bruin’ on the nose. The statue was created by Michael Davis and erected in 2006, and people were stopping to take their pics with shaggy boy George. For some reason, little googly eyes had been put on him.

I went back to my hotel for a quick rest, then headed over to the Grand Central Market for a bit to eat. I’d walked through there once before several years ago and thought it might be a good place to grab dinner and maybe draw a bit. It was so busy! A very popular place on a Saturday evening. I eventually settled on a little fired chicken counter called Lucky Bird, and had what may have been the spiciest chicken sandwich of my life, stuffed with jalapeños. It was delicious, but wow it was hot. I didn’t end up doing any sketching there, but had some amazing ice cream and then headed back to the hotel. I didn’t fancy sitting in my room (though it was a very nice room) so I popped over the to the pub across the street, an Irish pub called Dublins. It may have had an Irish theme and name, but it was very much an old school hip-hop night, with a DJ playing some really cool old stuff from the 80s and 90s, and an accompanying MC in a glittery shirt walking about the bar with his mic really livening the place up, it was great. There was a good atmosphere in there, the staff were friendly and the drinks were great. My hands though they got to keep on drawing so I relaxed with the music and sketched what was in front of me, the bar itself, though it would probably have been better to sketch the people and the pub as a whole, this is all I could manage to focus on. I did chat a little to other people and enjoyed the music, before heading back to the hotel (grabbing a burrito from a street van on the way, I do like late night street food in LA). Spurs were playing early next morning, but I was having a good Sunday lie-in next day, before heading to Riverside. All in all, a nice Saturday in downtown Los Angeles.

mammal bones at the NHM-LA

April 6, 20241 Comment

I drew more than dinosaurs at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. I explored as much of the place as I could (I was there all day after all, I wasn’t going anywhere) but when I saw the big mammoth, well, that was going in the sketchbook. I suppose technically it’s not a woolly mammoth because there’s no wool on the skeleton (and it was probably more of a hairy mammoth than woolly but I’m not going to, er, split hairs) (people kept saying “there’s a woolly mammoth!” but I wasn’t going to take them to tusk, etc and so on) (I was there a long time, my head ran through all the punning possibilities and decided none of them were worth it). I drew in fountain pen and was there quite a while; I considered adding some paint but it was a fairly white environment (ice age feeling I suppose) and I just couldn’t be bothered by the end. It was a magnificent display though, not every day you get to see mammoths. I have never visited the La Brea Tar Pits but I hear they have found some amazing skeletons of mammoths and other prehistoric creatures there, and still are; that’s a future visit right there.

Speaking of famous prehistoric mammals, there was the skull of a Sabretooth Tiger – sorry, ‘Sabretooth Cat’ as this one was more correctly called, they weren’t really tigers, the Smilodons – and I had to sketch that. The size of those incisors! I mean were they really necessary? I guess they were. What an impressive gob. I can see him hanging about outside the tube station shouting, yeah come on then you mug, getting into fights, all that. No wonder they went extinct, probably a bit too mouthy for their own good. There were excited kids looking at this while I sketched saying “wow, a sabretooth tiger!” without reading the sign that said it was a sabretooth cat and that you shouldn’t call it a tiger because science, but I wasn’t going to take them to tusk. Hang on I used that one already. It would be funny if we recreated one from its DNA and it learned to speak and said, “actually mate I’m ok being called a tiger, that’s fine.” Anyway tigers or cats, I like these a lot, but it f this is a cat I probably wouldn’t argue with it if it begged me to turn the bathroom taps on for it.

Next up, the Ground Sloth, every good Natural History Museum needs a Ground Sloth and I always draw them. This one was upstairs above the Mammoth and I loved the way it was standing, like an old end of the pier stand up comedian. I imagined him in a smoky Lancashire croak saying stuff like “I tell you, my missus, she says to me you’re so lazy you may as well be extinct, go and get a job, I says I’m a sloth! That is me job. I tell you she wears me down so much I’m a ground sloth” etc and so on. Catch him at your nearest Pontins (also going extinct). Now the one I drew from the London NHM (12 years ago) was actually a Megatherium which is a larger kind of ground sloth, living from the Pliocene to the Holocene, this one is a Nothrotheriops Shastensis (“that’s easy for you to say,” says the northern comic to much mirth), much smaller and living in the Pleistocene (“the missus tells me I can’t play with that stuff, it gets all stuck in the carpet” says the comedian, to a little confusion from his audience, forcing him to explain it, which didn’t go down well; “By gum you’re so slow, I thought I was the sloth!”). Perhaps though the Megatherium and the Nothrotheriops could form a double act, like all the old northern comedians used to do, Little and Large has already been taken by two other dinosaurs, so maybe ‘The Two Sloths’, ‘Megatherium and Wise’, ‘Good Sloth Bad Sloth’, I don’t know I’m a sketcher not a northern comic double act agent. They would have been long cancelled by now anyway.

Moving away from old bones and bad comedians, the gemstone and mineral section was pretty impressive. I sketched a few colourful ones with interesting names (the green one was surely Kryptonite) (I’ve always wondered about Kryptonite, did that planet explode because it relied too much on Kryptocurrency, was General Zod one of those Krypto-bros who don’t stop going on about it and was expelled to the Fandom Zone? So many questions). there was one room, a vault with tick walls and huge metal doors and security guards, that contained incredibly valuable gemstones of well over 100 carats each, it was like looking at the Infinity Stones. My son used to really like gems and minerals when he was younger and we’d spend more time in the geology sections of the NHM than the dinosaur sections, so I’ve drawn a few stones before, but this was a fascinating room to explore.

After going to draw the T-Rex having a chat with the Triceratops (see my previous post) I called time on the museum, and popped over to the California Science Center to have a very brief look before they closed. I drew this one plane, got a cold drink, and left as it was all closing up. All in all, a good day sketching old things. I wouldn’t have minded visiting the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition at the Science Center, displaying models of many of his inventions, but another time maybe. I know I would boringly have been taking everyone to tusk for saying ‘Da Vinci’ instead of ‘Leonardo’, and they’d have been saying “you mean taken to ‘task’ surely” and I’d have been like “look it was a call back to a previous joke you weren’t there for, I’m not a sloth you know.” It was a long day, though of course, I wasn’t done sketching just yet. Check back soon for more LA…

Dinosaurs at the LA Natural History Museum

April 4, 2024April 4, 20242 Comments

Part of the reason for taking a weekend in Los Angeles before the conference in Riverside is that I just really wanted to draw dinosaurs. I’d never been to the LA Natural History Museum before, but we had visited the California Science Center next door about six years ago when we went to look at the space shuttle Endeavour, so coming here had been on my wish list for years. As you know I’m a massive fan of the Natural History Museum in London, the superb building in South Kensington I have been going to since before I could even draw, one of my favourite places in the world. Well Los Angeles has a pretty cool one too, which beautiful architecture, lots of engaging exhibits and an abundance of dinosaur displays. Unlike the NHM in London it isn’t free to get in, but since the California Science center next door is free I don’t mind that. My plan was that if I had time or ran out of dinosaurs I would go there to draw planes. One of the last displays I drew here was the one above, the Tyrannosaurus Rex in combat (or conversation?) with a Triceratops,

It is actually the ‘Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County‘, and opened at Exposition Park in 1913. After a chat with one of the docents in the rotunda as you enter, where they have a statue of the three muses in a beautiful naturally lit space, I found the dinosaurs and started drawing the one above, perhaps my favourite dinosaur, Stegosaurus. By the way I’m sure I’m not alone in that ever since Jurassic Park I have to stop myself pronouncing ‘dinosaur’ as ‘Daano-sow’ like the little DNA cartoon character does. Yes, Jurassic Park is one of my favourite films, and no, I really don’t like the latest ones. Anyway I have always loved Stegosaurus with its big mohawk of bony plates, a punk vegetarian with huge spikes on its tail. I drew with my brown inked fountain pen. There was an Allosaurus behind it that you can just about make out creeping into view. It was getting busy, but not too crowded, a good amount of people for a museum crowd. I’ve sometimes been at the South Ken museums when they are mobbed, especially the Science Museum on a weekday with the school groups. This was just right, I’d say. I got down there as early as I could, I had aimed for opening time but was delayed by the LA Metro. I had packed snacks so I could make it through the day, I was well prepared.

There were three ceratopsian skulls side by side in a display cabinet, huge things though surprisingly narrow, a Triceratops, a Styracosaurus and this one, an Einiosaurus found in Montana. I was less familiar with this one, probably because the books I was reading when I was learning dinosaurs had left it out due it not yet being discovered. I really loved its downward curving nose horn, like a massive can opener.

In the same hall was found Thomas the T-Rex, along with a couple of smaller specimens, one clearly a baby Rex. You have to love the Tyrannosaur, I don’t think any other prehistoric creature has had such a popular grip on the public imagination. At once the greatest villain and greatest hero, its massive head and jaw always outweighs the tiny little arms with two tiny fingers. I drew another T-Rex, Sue, at the Field Museum in Chicago last year. The big one here is called Thomas the T-Rex. This made me think of Thomas the Tank Engine, which always gets mis-named by Americans as ‘Thomas the Train’ (or even worse, ‘Thomas Train’, which I’m convince people only say to wind me up specifically). Thomas the T-Rex is not a cheeky little blue engine from the island of Sodor, but I wonder if there is a Gordon the Gallimimus or a Percy the Protoceratops or even a Fat Paleontologist character in this story. It’s been a few years since we were in Thomas-world. This was a tricky dynamic scene to sketch though, and I had to really observe where I was putting all those little bones. But this was why I was here! I’d been in this one room for a long time already, so I went to explore the rest of the museum. There was another hall full of big dinos, and I wasn’t sure I’d have time to draw them all (including a huge Ticeratops), but I couldn’t resist this T-Rex skull. As I drew, one of the staff complemented me on my drawing and asked if I was a paleo illustrator. No, I just love drawing dinosaurs! While I was drawing the scene at the top of this post, I did see another artist sat on the floor in an archway drawing the same skeletons. I didn’t go over to take a look, but it is always good to see another sketchbooker with the same idea.