Poznań (Part 7) – Saturday Night

February 13, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

Before I knew it, the Symposium was coming to a close. I had a short rest at the hotel, and set out for the final big group photo. I have missed the final photo in at least two Symposiums and so was determined not to miss this one, and of course I very nearly did because I was walking to the wrong place. I figured it out in the end. Hundreds of us gathered in this big town square, Plac Wolnosci (that I had never been to before), and you can see the big photo on the Urban Sketchers site. After the big photo all the different sub-groups got together for their own photos, the Symposium Faculty, the Volunteers, the Poznan sketchers, the German sketchers, the Brazilian sketchers, the Californian sketchers (I’m in that group), the UK sketchers (I’m in that too but I missed their photo), the Antipodean sketchers (good contingent came from Australia and New Zealand) plus many more, all having lots of fun. My real group though was small, and we spent a while trying to gather us all together, we were the Last Remaining Originals from Portland 2010. There we are above – Elizabeth Alley, Shiho Nakaza, Liz Steel, Mike Daikabura, Kalina Wilson, and me. The only other Original who attended Poznan was Rita Sabler, but we couldn’t find her despite much searching. We took a few photos, and then I had them all do the ‘Brucie’ pose, (without explanation) as you can see above. Good game, good game, didn’t they do well. The more normal non-Brucie picture is below. By the way you can see the very first Symposium group photo on Liz Steel’s blog; fifteen years ago!

Once everyone started to disperse, the final Sketchwalk started. People got back into their ‘Sketching Zone’, we all have our Zone, before the festivities of the final reception would begin. I had been approached the day before by a local sketcher Martha, who asked if I’d be interested to give a demo or talk to some local sketchers. I didn’t really have time to arrange anything formal like that, but said if they wanted to come to the Sketchwalk I could show how I approach a drawing. So after everyone dispersed, they met me on the steps and it was just her, another sketcher, and her young son, and I let them watch over my shoulder while I drew the scene below, while I explained what I draw first, how I add people, perspective, little bit of paint in the sky. It was a fairly quick and simple sketch but hopefully I got my point across ok. Her young son sketched next to me and did a great job himself, and as I was sketching afterwards he came up and gave me his drawing! I was very moved by that, made my day. His mother Martha even left nice surprise of some Polish cakes at the Symposium hub for me, I ate them when I got back to London. So, I joined the rest of the Sketchwalk people at the end point and looked at everyones’ sketches, I was really impressed again by the amazing work from the Korean sketchers, it really is one thing to see these online and another in person, they blew my mind. Coming to the Symposia and seeing so many people out doing these incredible drawings really gives me that extra boost of motivation as an urban sketcher.

By the way, I drew that hydrant just before the big group photo, because I just had to draw another hydrant. I think it was at Stary Rynek, which by this point I was calling ‘Stary Stary Rynek’, but only to myself. That bobbly Moleskine paper makes the page look dirty, but it wasn’t, it;s just the way it scanned. You can see the same effect in the sketch below as well.

The closing reception of any Symposium is always exciting, because that’s where we learn the very secret location of the next Symposium. My guess would be a return to Asia, and since there was a big group from Korea I was convinced they would be announcing Seoul, which would be a fantastic choice. They really draw the announcement out (do I even need to say ‘pun intended’, that’s a given) but there is a lot of fun stuff before that. For example, there was a performance of traditional Polish music by a couple of classical violinists, one of whom was one of the local organizers of the Symposium. It was beautiful music, and as well as the musicians (above) I sketched a couple of sketchers listening to it below, Cecilia Novello from Argentina on the left, and Shari Blaukopf from Montreal on the right (I really enjoyed her workshop in Amsterdam). I sketched some others too, a few people in the row behind me, plus Eric Ngan from New Zealand who was on the USk Executive Board, and Dan Archer who is British and lives in Hong Kong, I chatted with him on the first day and he was very friendly, plus his work’s great. Anyway, the big announcement for 2026, the Symposium will be in…Toulouse! In the South of France! I was delighted to hear that; I’ve not visited Toulouse, but for me France (especially the South) is like going home. The day I met my wife (in Aix-en-Provence), she had just come back from Toulouse. That’s two European Symposiums in a row, a bit like 2018-2019. So I am hoping to make it to that Symposium, but you know, it’s very competitive to get in, I didn’t apply to be an instructor or give a demo or talk on time (early deadline, also very competitive) and summer 2026 is a bit of an unknown for me anyway, so we will see. I might apply to be the Correspondent, since I like going round drawing everyone anyway, but I wasn’t selected for Poznan, and that’s fine. Still, I reckon I’d be good at it, though July in Toulouse can be rather hot, and the World Cup is happening then…

I didn’t spend all my time sketching though, I mostly mingled and chatted to people, a number of whom I had no chance to see during the Symposium and people who I’d seen online but not met in person, such as Taria from Taria’s Sketchy Adventures, whose work is great, she is from England but lives in South Africa. I also chatted a lot with Fred Lynch and his wife, and caught up with Fabien DeNoel who I last saw in Lille. I spoke with a lot of people, and the food and drink was really good.

All the sketchers in the world were at the hotel bar. I nearly went home after the reception, but saw many familiar faces and went over to catch a last beer with them, joining Suhita, Liz, Paul, Omar, Uma, Joel, everyone sat around sketching and talking. I got to finally meet Peter Rush from Australia, who so many people had been talking about with his cereal box sketches. I sketched the group above with Omar in the middle, I didn’t know some of the people behind, but Andrew James from New Zealand who I’d met a few times on the trip, he’s in this twice, once standing up and once sitting on a very low stool. He told everyone a funny sketching story about a watermelon. I sketched some people in my brown paper book below, there’s Nick Patyczak again this time wearing a tie with pigs on it; there’s Taria again; there’s a woman whose name I didn’t catch; there’s Alessandro Britto from Spain/Brazil/USA, who said “you hold your stuff like a crazy person!” (yes, I do; Lapin called it “L’Incroyable Tenue du Crayon de Pete” back in Portland); finally there’s Andrew telling the watermelon story.

It was definitely bedtime after this, I was off to Berlin the next day. And so, that was the 2025 Symposium! We will see if I make it to Toulouse. If you are reading this and are thinking about going to a Symposium, well I’ll say you should do it and you will probably have a great time, it’s overwhelming, exhausting, and a lot for introverts like me, but it’s all about relaxing and meeting the other sketchers, we are all like that, and all learn from each other. I drew a lot, but if I wish I’d done anything, I wish I’d drawn even more other sketchers. The sketches of people in those quick moments are what makes the memories for me. They aren’t all accurate, not even 50%, but it’s what came out and it’s what I had time to record, and that’s what counts. Ok, one more morning left in Poznan, and then on with the journey.

Poznań Symposium – (Part 1) – Arrival

February 4, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

And so, finally to post my many sketches from the 2025 Urban Sketchers International Symposium in Poznań, Poland. I arrived by train from Gdańsk, a ride of about three hours across the Polish countryside, and I could tell Poznań was a much bigger city. My walk from the train station to the hotel took about twenty minutes, and I nearly got run over once, but it missed. I got quite lost walking from the hotel to the symposium hub, which was in the conference area of the Novotel Hotel, near a big (and very nice) mall, but I arrived in time to check in and get suddenly lost and overwhelmed among the hundreds of people. It was my first Symposium since 2019, that’s six years, and I didn’t see any familiar faces at first. I picked up my goodie bag (there were so many goodies this year), mooched around the Art Market, and eventually bumped into a few sketchers I met at previous Symposiums and chatted for a bit while looking at all the art materials in our goodie bags. (I still have stuff from Portland 2010 in my art cupboard!) I find myself extremely shy these days when in a big crowd, and nervous about meeting people I don’t know every well in case I don’t remember them, or them me, but we’re all sketchers and all a bit like that I think. I did see a few sketchers who I’ve followed online but hadn’t met yet, but was a little shy to go and say hello. So I went outside to start sketching, because that’s what we are here for isn’t it, before the big evening reception that would kick the whole thing off. I sat on the steps outside the hotel and drew this scene above, which lots of solo sketchers were also sat about drawing. It was a busy road looking over at an old brewery building that had been converted into a mall and entertainment area, and this would be the starting point for most of the workshops and sketchwalks. I had a Workshop Pass where I’d take just one workshop (with Fred Lynch, big fan), and just sketch free on the other days. The sky was interesting, the paper in my sketchbook however still horrible, and this was shown up when I pressed the Symposium stamp on the paper, it looks like a brass rubbing with a crayon. Still as I sketched I did see people I knew occasionally and got up to greet and hug, it’s been a really long time. I saw Liz Steel from Australia and Paul Wang from Singapore, both of whom I’ve known since the start of Urban Sketchers, and so we got our now traditional photo of the three of us, which we’ve done since Lisbon 2011.

I started sketching in my small brown sketchbook which I was reserving for the quick people sketches I knew I would do a lot of on the trip. I often keep a small ‘people’ book at the Symposiums. This is my opportunity to draw as many people as possible, and I’ve remembered sketchers years later just because I drew them. I’ve been drawn many times myself, I look very funny when I sketch. Below are Delphine Devoilles, who I didn’t know but is from Clermont-Ferrand (I’ve met a few sketchers from there), and Reham Ali from Egypt, whose work I’d seen before. They got to be my first sketched people of Poznań!

After this, I took a break at the hotel (first of all getting extremely lost in the underground car park of the mall; ‘flight of the navigator’ strikes again) before heading back over to the hub for the Opening Reception. That was a lot of fun, there was food and drink, and I got to see many familiar faces from past Symposiums. I wandered and sketched people, and the current Urban Sketchers leadership as well as the organizing team from Poznan opened the massive event. I was lucky to get a ticket. When registration opened, it was the middle of the night over here in California, and I was out of town with friends visiting from England, so my wife got online and was able to get me registered when it opened at 3am our time. Tickets sold almost immediately. I knew a lot of people who could not go, and many came to Poznan anyway to join in with the activities open to the public. This event was for registrants only, and it was revealed that of the 500 people who registered, more than half were first-time Symposium attendees. Only a handful of us were there at the first one in Portland (but we got together on the last day for a special photo). I drew Ronaldo Kurita, from Brazil, speaking to the crowd. My first few people sketches were a bit shy and fast, but I got into the swing of it eventually. I drew the tall German sketcher Stefan Günther who I had never met before, this was a good trip for meeting new sketching pals, though I was still shy to say hello to people I did recognize but had not met yet.

There were a few women dressed in traditional looking dresses with massive (and heavy looking) floral headwear; these were the ‘Bambers‘ and are from Poznań. Well, as they explained, the Bambers were actually originally from Germany, from the city of Bamberg, but had moved to Poznań centuries before. In the early 18th century, this part of Poland experienced a terrible loss of population die to war and plague; in Poznań, the population had gone from 12,000 to 3,000. The Polish King Augustus The Strong (definitely a pro wrestler) invited families to settle in Poland, as long as they were Catholic (and especially if you wore massive hats made of flowers), and many families from Bamberg settled in Poznań and became known as ‘Bambers’. I think one went on to host the TV quiz show University Challenge many years later but I may be mistaken. The Bambers became very ‘Polonised’ (a new word I have learned, which means ‘assimilated into being Polish’ and has nothing to do with bees or indeed flowers, but I can see where you might make the connection). They are a very important part of Poznan’s identity and culture, and another reminder that every area in this big country has so many stories we might not know unless we go there.

I went around sketching some more people; above are Alexandra Rudneva (‘Barsketcher’) from Germany, who I had met briefly in Porto (she was in my sketchbook though I don’t think we spoke at that time), and Sybille Lienhardt, also from Germany, who I had met in Amsterdam and have followed her work since. I always enjoy meeting the German sketchers, there were a lot more at this Symposium being geographically so much closer, and I finally got to meet Detlef Surrey, the Berlin-based illustrator whose work I’ve been a fan of for years. I sketched him below. Also above are a couple of sketchers I’ve known for many years, Daniel Green (who I had already seen briefly in Gdansk) from Minnesota, and Elizabeth Alley, from Memphis, who I first met in Portland in 2010, another Symposium Original. It was really nice to catch up with them; I did sketch Elizabeth’s talk about her adventures in the Arctic which was so fascinating, I’ll post that later.

Above, Detlef Surrey (as I mentioned), he also gave a fantastic talk about his book which was all about sketching where the Berlin Wall was (I’ll post that later), and a local Polish sketcher Katarzyna Kostera (Kasia), who was volunteering at the event. There were so many volunteers, and they kept the Symposium running so well. Kasia noticed I was busy sketching and didn’t have a drink so offered to go and get me a beer with my drink token, which was a really nice thing to do, so I sketched her with her beer. The beer was very good, and the food was nice too, but the opening reception was soon over and I wandered home to bed, a long roundabout walk since I still had not found the shortcuts. I did however see this incredible fire hydrant on the way, and stood to draw that, and a German sketcher who had been at the reception stopped and talked for a while while I drew, but I didn’t catch their name. I felt pretty tired by the time I got home, and it was a busy schedule next day. Check back at some point for part 2…

Towers of Gdańsk

February 2, 2026February 1, 2026Leave a comment

Do you like towers? Gdańsk has plenty. When I got up from my late afternoon nap (getting old) it was already after 5:30 so I calculated how much daytime there was left to sketch as much as possible, and so here’s what I did. First I went through the big gateway at the end of Długa and stood by the busy Okopowa main road, looking up at the imposing tower of, er, that place I mentioned a couple of posts ago, Przedbramie ulicy Długiej. Well the bit in front, that’s the Torture House. It was not torture to draw though, I long to sketch these types of buildings. Not torture houses, I mean, just big impressive buildings with interesting towers and not too many windows. The sky was a delight; you don’t know how refreshing it is to come to Europe and draw these dramatic skies after so many boring blue skies in California. In Davis we either have months of blue, or a few months of fog with blue days in between, and relatively few of the sort of cloudy-blue sky days I grew up with. I like painting them, but they are more interesting when there is some cool city scene below them. Often I decided not to colour the buildings in (sometimes I colour those in later if I haven’t the time, or not if I can’t be bothered) but all of these were coloured there and then, to capture what my eyes were telling me. Poland, well this part of Europe in general, has some of the most incredible towers, not just church steeples but on the civic buildings the most, and I especially love the green copper towers, they remind me of the ones I saw all over Copenhagen when I first arrived there in 1995.

This is the view down Ulica Długa towards the big town hall / museum of Gdansk building that I drew the previous night. It’s such a massive impressive building, I ended up drawing it three times from three different angles. It’s a popular and busy street this, always decked out in flags of the city of Gdańsk. I saw a number of historical photos of Długa, including one from after Nazi Germany invaded and Hitler paraded down here, with swastikas draped from these very buildings. I got many more reminders of those dark moments of history on this trip, especially while walking around Berlin, but the last time I was in Poland 27 years before I had visited Auschwitz, and that disturbed me so deeply, I never want to go back. Długa (Long Lane; Langegasse in German) was laid out in the 13th century and forms part of the ‘Royal Route’, but many of the big stone buildings are 16th century, though many were severely damaged in 1945 and rebuilt later. I stood out of the way next to a restaurant to sketch behind a lamp-post. I could have spent the rest of the evening sketching the old buildings along Długa but I wanted to go into the Old Town, and draw some more towers.

The tall brick tower above is called the Jacek Tower, and I stood next to a newspaper kiosk to draw it while the light was still good. It was next to a very ornate looking market hall that at first I thought was a train station, called ‘Hala Targowa’; on another day I would be sketching that place. Speaking of shops, one of the place I loved most in Poland were the Zabka convenience stores, which were everywhere. And I was well pleased for it. They always seemed to pop up just when I needed a snack or a cold drink, and it was while sketching this that I got what might be my favourite fizzy drink – Pineapple Pepsi Max. Those who know me know full well that I love a Pepsi Max, and I also loved Lilt, the pineapple and grapefruit drink that used to have those great Jamaican music adverts back in the 90s. Sadly Lilt is no more. However in Poland they have Pineapple Pepsi Max, and that may have been the discovery of the trip for me. Ok technically it is ‘Pepsi Zero Sugar’ like it was renamed in the US, but I still call it Pepsi Max. They have Mango Pepsi Max too, but that wasn’t as good as Pineapple. Anyway Jacek Tower (Baszta Jacek) was built in the 15th century as part of the medieval city’s fortifications, and you can still see a lot of bullet holes in the brickwork. ‘Jacek’ is Jacek Odrowąż, aka Saint Hyacinth of Poland, who was a priest and missionary in the 13th century. Yes yes I also thought about Hyacinth Bucket when I read the name, and that the tower was really keeping up appearances, ok that’s out of the way. Apparently there is a Polish phrase that goes, “Święty Jacku z pierogami!”, which means “Saint Hyacinth and his Dumplings!”, which means, well, it’s probably the Polish version of “Gordon Bennett!” or maybe even “I Don’t Believe It!” (wait, wrong show). I decided to draw this in pencil, but actually wish I’d gone for pen, like the other sketches I’d been doing. I was just really taken by the late evening sunlight still bathing the tower against the sky. Still, I wanted to press on and draw some more towers before dark. They were the only parts of the buildings the sun was still shining on.

The next two above were drawn in quick succession, very close to the Jacek Tower. The first one is the tower of the ridiculously tall Muzeum Nauki Gdańskiej (I had to concentrate writing that down), which was another big museum, this time of Science. I would very much have liked to spend some time in there and was ruing my limited days in the city, but life is only so long and I had a symposium to get to the next day. It was tall though. Actually I think the museum was just part of the building, as the tower was part of a large church called St. Catherine’s (or Kościół Rektorski Ojców Karmelitów pw. św. Katarzyny, and yeah I had to look that up because there was no way I was writing all that down in my sketchbook). There was a statue nearby of a famous 17th century astronomer and native of Gdansk, Jan Heweliusz (Johannes Hevelius). That statue and the little park it is in sit before the old town hall building (Ratusz Staromiejski) which houses the ‘Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury’ (I wrote that down from the sign above the door) which means ‘Baltic Sea Cultural Center’. My Polish guesswork is getting slightly better, it must have been the Pineapple Pepsi Max. The sky was absolutely positively going towards night-time now, so I headed back to my hotel for a brief rest before some night-time sketching (see my last post). I was satisfied with my sketchbooking, but there’s always more.

The next morning, after not sleeping very well (nice hotel, uncomfortable bed) I had planned to get a few hours of drawing in before my train, but noticed it was raining so had a lie-in. After a leisurely breakfast and a short workout in the gym I went out to stand in a doorway and draw the big old Ratusz Głównego Miasta tower again, this time from behind some pretty buildings. One place I didn’t sketch, the huge basilica across from my hotel, but it was so big I thought, leave it, next time. Givent hat it was 27 years since my previous trip to Poland there’s no knowing when ‘next time’ will be but the Pineapple Pepsi Max is a pretty big draw. I was getting a few raindrops on me while sketching this, so took my book back to my hotel room and painted it while sat at a desk, much comfier. Then I walked out to the train station, Gdańsk Główny. This was yet another beautiful building, though I was most disappointed not to find any Pineapple Pepsi Max in the building and had to make do with another less satisfying fizzy drink for my journey to Poznan. I am glad I arrived early, as it was a little confusing as to where my train would be leaving from, but I still had time to do a quick sketch of the station (below). I mean, I have sketched some train stations in my time but this one is pretty nice, from a tie when cities took real pride in how they looked to visitors. And that was my brief trip to Gdansk, now on to Poznan, and I should stop forgetting the little accent above the ‘n’ (I do have to copy-paste it every time, bloody WordPress editor not having the Special Characters button any more, and I don’t have a Polish keyboard). I told my mum and sister about Gdansk, and they must have been impressed because they came here themselves for a short city-break just after Christmas, taking the pirate ship, walking about the old town, and even getting a massive snowstorm that made everything look Christmassy (and presumably very slippery). I would come back to Gdansk, and maybe explore the shipyards and museums a bit more, but well, I want to go everywhere and draw everything.

And if you thought that I was travelling to a new city and not sketching a fire hydrant…well you’re wrong, here is one I sketched right after drawing the first sketch in this post. It’s a tower after all. The hydrants here are tall and more like ornate bollards. Stay tuned for my sketches of Poznań!

Downtown in the Rest of July

October 31, 2025October 30, 2025Leave a comment

I spent all of July in Davis. Remember last year when I filled that accordion sketchbook with drawings of Davis in July 2024? I didn’t do one of those this year but I did draw a lot more downtown, because what else am I gonna do in my spare time. I have been reading a lot as well, but I am a slow reader. Anyway here are some more drawings of the corners and sidewalks of downtown Davis in July 2025. Above is the little mailing dispatch shop on F Street near the old City Hall, opposite the Paint Chip. I like to draw a two-page panorama because I have this idea of producing a book full of them, two-page spreads of Davis, volumes 1-3, show people the city they live in as seen at eye-level by someone who only barely understands what things do. I have been in here once actually, but I don’t like sending parcels much. For a little while years ago I would sell drawings online and mail them from the post office, which is a great place if you have no time at all but want to stand in line for up to an hour with other impatient people, only to get to the counter and realise you have the wrong customs form. I would print those online first too but it was such a time-consuming process, and then mailing would be so expensive, and the post office would only be open at inopportune times for me with work, I would just give up. I should have come here, much easier I think. I did mail some pictures earlier this year from the FedEx store, drawings not for sale but to be displayed at an event in London (for the centenary of Burnt Oak station) and it cost over a hundred bucks to send them via Fed-Ex. Thankfully the organizer paid for that, and it got there really quickly, but it’s why I tend not to ship stuff any more. These days it’s even harder with all the tariffs, all that unpredictability, and many places have just stopped shipping here entirely. I ordered a book from Germany that I couldn’t find when I was there, and the publisher said they couldn’t send it as the shipping company would not mail to the US due to the cost of tariffs. In the end they were able to send it a month or so later, but additional shipping costs ended up more than doubling the cost of the book itself. Good book though, but wish I could have found it in Berlin while I was there.

The sketch above was drawn on the same block of F Street, but a bit further up, outside the former Mamma’s, looking across the street to the Davis Cyclery. I usually use a different bike shop (Freewheeler) when i’m downtown with a bike issue, but these are good too I hear. I ride my bike everywhere. As you can see there is a gap there where a car was probably parked that I couldn’t be bothered to draw. I like riding a bike but have no idea how to fix a flat tyre. Or ‘tire’ as they say over here. I really wish I did, but every time I try I just fail so I pay someone else to do it. Thankfully we aren’t short of places in Davis within a reasonable walk-of-shame distance.

Raisin’ Canes fried chicken fingers on E Street, to my shame, I go here for lunch more than I care to admit. It’s so unhealthy, but it tastes so good. I just did a quick sketch across the street in the middle of July. The dog mural is interesting, but that used to be the sign for Watermelon Music, back when that shop was located here. The current location of Watermelon is right out on the edge of west Davis, fine if you drive but a bit long to cycle out there for a browse. I liked it when they were downtown, especially if I needed some guitar strings. That’s what downtown Davis is really missing, a musical instrument shop. It’s so hard for them though to stay in business, Watermelon has nearly gone completely a couple of times but the community really wants it to exist. I would go there more often myself if it were nearer. You take them for granted, the shops you like, and then they are gone.

This is a block down E Street, the Hotdogger. They sell, would you believe, hot dogs, and have done since before I moved to Davis. I don;t come here often (in fact only a few times ever, beside their stall at the Farmers Market) because I don’t generally eat hot dogs, not being much of a meat eater, though I have had their chicken hot dogs and they are nice. They won some award on a TV show a couple of years ago competing against other eateries in Davis (glad they beat Sudwerk, nothing against Sudwerk’s very nice beer but the food dish they offered up was ‘fish and chips’, and the ‘chips’ were actual American chips, ie crisps, which come on mate, we Brits mix some mad things up but fish and crisps? Mate.). I do like the Hotdogger’s chicken dogs, but the past two times I have had one, both times a bit of it dropped onto my shoe and left a stain I couldn’t get off. For that to happen once, fool on you, for it to happen twice, er, you won’t get fooled again. Seriously I can’t seem to eat hot dogs without dropping bits on my shoes, another reason I don’t eat hot dogs. Funny story, I drew this on July 14th (nothing to do with the Bastille) but in fact I had drawn the Hotdogger before on the exact same date, July 14th, back in 2012 – here is the post about that day. It’s fun to look back at history, 2012 feels like such a different age. Thirteen years between sketches – here is the original:

Enough reminiscing. Ok the next one is a few blocks up and one block over, on the corner of 5th and D, a building which houses ‘Empower Yolo’, I drew it on July 13th. It was hot. Have I drawn it before? Probably. It’s a house with a tree in front; two trees really.

And finally, here is something that is not downtown, a hydrant I have drawn before on the corner of the Quad, UC Davis. I’m nearly caught up and will start posting sketches from England, Poland and Germany soon.

metal pipes of manhattan

June 3, 2025June 3, 20252 Comments

I can’t go to a new city and not record some of the hydrants and other metal pipes sticking out of the ground, can I. I have sketched a New York hydrant before (on a well-below-freezing day) but there is quite a diverse selection. However I am at the stage now where I see a movie or TV show set in ‘New York’ and I see the hydrants and I just know it’s filmed in like Cleveland or Toronto, because the hydrants are all wrong. I don’t care that much, but it’s like when an American Hallmark movie is set in Scotland and everyone has a fake Irish accent. Anyway, here are some of the ones I drew in New York. I liked the pipe above spouting out of the ground like a metal worm down on 23rd. The New Yorkers like to put stickers on their hydrants and pipes, it makes them look a bit more personalized, like your water bottle. The hydrant below was also on 23rd, sketched on a Chelsea morning. Nice to see the hearts around it, scrawled into the concrete. I saw that yellow ‘SK’ sticker on a lot of pipes around Chelsea.

This one covered in stickers and rust was on 6th Avenue, one of those hydrants you see with the two little poles next to it like bouncers, protecting it from errant cars banging into it. “Geddouddahere!” There was a pizza place near here where we ordered a massive New York pizza on our first night and ate it in the room, bloody delicious. New Yorkers know how to do pizza. Sorry Chicago those big deep dish pies were a bit much for me, tasty though they were.

This one above was on West 28th, sketched as I was walking out toward the High Line one afternoon. I like exploring the city, seeing what I come across along the way. This hydrant had those bouncers as well, but it also had a little metal X on its head that reminded me of a hot cross bun. Now the thing below, on the corner of 23rd and 7th, I drew on the way back, it’s obviously not a hydrant but is some sort of telecommunications post. I saw some others dotted around. Do they still work? Probably, but I just liked the look of them so I had to sketch one. “We are the Future” says the graffiti”. There’s that SK sticker again. It was busy here at this intersection, a lot of interesting characters about, I could have sat and people sketched for ages, but hydrant sketching is easier, and hydrants don’t complain if you get the size of their nose wrong. I didn’t see anyone famous, but I never do. My family did spot Michael Emerson – Ben out of Lost – on this very street while I was still sketching Brooklyn Bridge, out walking his dog with his distinctive little glasses on (on him, not on the dog). As big Lost fans this was a big deal. But that is just New York for you, and to paraphrase another former New York resident, not seeing famous people is what happens when you are busy sketching fire hydrants.

DC part 1 – the Federal Triangle

April 28, 2025May 1, 20252 Comments

And so, we visited Washington DC, the nation’s capital, for the first time. We had planned this about a year ago, before the Current Political Atmosphere (aka the Current Reality of American Politics, if we want acronyms), but we wanted to see some History. We took the DC Metro from the airport down to the Federal Triangle to find our hotel, which was right in the middle of History. The Waldorf Astoria was pretty nice – amazing what you can get with points – with top hatted men opening doors and asking us about our ‘driver’ (mate we came by tube), but was built into the old Post Office Building, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th. This place has real American History. It is also the second highest building in DC, after the Washington Monument – this is not a city of skyscrapers, more a city of lofty ideas. It was also the start of Cherry Blossom season – while most of them had not yet started really blossoming, the pink buds were starting to come out. Right outside the hotel was a statue of Benjamin Franklin, one of the most well-known of the Founding Fathers. I sketched him below, after drawing the hotel (above) on our first morning. We did actually go up the clock tower (properly called the Old Post Office Tower), which is a national historic monument (with a separate entrance outside the hotel) and admire the views across DC, though I did not sketch from up there.

I won’t post all my DC sketches in one go because it’s a lot of reading and writing, so I’ll just post these few and then we can take a sketched tour of DC after that, before sketching our way through New York City. Below is the view from our bedroom window. Our bedroom was pretty impressive, including a big chandelier and a very deep bathtub. The building across from us was the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building. This whole area is full of federal government buildings, all those ones you hear about constantly on the news. It reminded us very much of being in Whitehall. The IRS was next door to us. The FBI were around the corner.

I had to sketch at least one DC fire hydrant, for the collection, so I drew the one below opposite the hotel. I had been hoping that maybe the hydrants here had Abraham Lincoln style hats. We were very close to the Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was famously shot dead by John Wilkes Booth. I mean, if you are going to wear a big hat like that in the theatre. These days someone would film the argument and put it on Instagram for clicks and likes. This ended up being the only hydrant I drew in DC, but I did draw a lot of other stuff so join me next time to see some more.

Kaua’i part 2 – Poipu, Kōloa, Chickens and a Comet

November 15, 2024Leave a comment

Not a bad view. This was what we saw from our hotel room on Kauai, where we stayed near Poipu Beach. I had these new Arteza paints which were a selection of ocean blues and so this gave me a chance to play with them a bit. The pool below was nice, the ocean just a few steps away was not bad too, though it was definitely a bit wild. I like hanging out in the ocean, but it was like Man vs Wave out there, and quite a physical struggle. I was on guard for rip currents too. And sharks, let’s face it, watching a bunch of shark attack documentaries on the plane ride over was a good way to get paranoid. They are hilariously made though. “Could this rash of shark attacks have been caused by the radars from a nearby military base? The evidence seems conclusive. Or is it?” Nobody ever asks the sharks. They’d probably be like, “Humans taste good, Surfboards taste good!”. Still I was taking no chances, and didn’t swim very far. There were a lot of really good surfers out there, on some pretty powerful waves. I could watch the ocean for hours, and especially from a view like this. I brought my ukulele, and strummed away, it always sounds better with the waves.

Not far from Poipu is the little town of Kōloa. We went there for dinner one evening at the Kauai Island Brewing Company, which is apparently the westernmost brewery in the world. The beer was pretty good. We came back on another day to have lunch at one of the little food trucks dotted around town, and while my wife looked around the shops I sketched the big monkeypod tree at the junction. I’ve been so obsessed with tree drawings lately, I had to get at least one of these amazing trees into my sketchbook. I couldn’t really do it justice, but hopefully you get the sense of how tropical and overgrown Kauai feels compared to the more developed islands to the east. Right next to it was this fire hydrant as well, and so of course that had to go in. Then we went for a delicious all-natural shave ice.

Right, so anyone that’s been to Kauai will know what I mean when I say there are chickens EVERYWHERE. You might see some running about on the other islands and it’s like, oh isn’t that cute, wild chickens. On Kauai however they are literally all over the place, everywhere you go, chickens, roosters, baby chicks, all minding their own business. You get used to them really quickly. I sketched a few. While eating lunch in Kōloa a bunch of them were running around the picnic tables; in Hanapepe they were even getting up on the tables and sitting next to me, even while I was eating chicken. This is their world. The rooster is all the fridge magnets and stickers; by the way, Kauai, not every shop has to have its own sticker. Even liquor stores have their own sticker. I spent a lot on stickers at the Talk Story Bookstore, I tend to go overboard. So I got a few souvenirs with Kauai Chickens on them too. In fact there was a little shop in Kōloa called Kauai Chickens which was more of a fashion brand. We spent a few, er, bucks in there.

It was our anniversary trip (one month after our actual anniversary) so we had a lovely dinner at a restaurant called The Beach House, which was you can imagine was right on the beach, dining at sunset, amazing food and those delicious ‘Monkeypod Mai Tais’ that we love. We got to have photos on the little lawn overlooking the ocean, and then after the sun went down, and just before dessert, we got the best surprise – we saw the Comet. You know the one, the comet that was over the earth last month, “Tsuchinshan–ATLAS”, which apparently comes around only once every 80,000 years. A bit like Spurs winning a trophy. Historically comets are portents of some global doom, but thankfully nothing has happened since then that might indicate some sort of impending age of catastrophe. Still, looking over the ocean, we got an incredible view of it, which my wife with her slightly-newer-than-min phone was able to capture really well. What an amazing view. We went out the next evening by our hotel with a couple of cocktails to look at it again, and it was funny looking at everyone else’s photos of it online, especially those in Davis where it was definitely at more of an angle, while here much further south it was almost pointing straight down.

Comet Kauai

a morning up and down the castro

June 28, 2024June 28, 2024Leave a comment

Last month I took a sketching day down in San Francisco, taking the long train ride down from Davis with the entire catalogue of Belle and Sebastian in my ears (two days after having seen them live in Oakland). It was one of those days when I just needed to get out alone with my sketchbook and my feet, I have always needed those days for my mental health, and though it feels like I need them more and more, more and more I have no particular aim for such a day, and more and more I decide to just stay at home and rest rather than expend a lot of energy in just wandering and filling my book. However I am usually glad when I do, especially if I explore a few more streets I’ve never seen. This day was aimless for sure. I got up very early, took the early train out of Davis, stepped off the connecting bus in San Francisco and went down to the BART station still with no idea where I was actually heading. North Beach? Mission? Inner Sunset? In the end, I jumped onto a MUNI metro which whisked me quickly up to the Castro. I always like sketching up there. As I got off the tram, a man seated nearby started yelling random homophobic slurs out of the door, not at me or anyone in particular, but at the platform in general because this is the Castro, and I’m sure it made him feel better about his life, even though it made everyone else remember the world is still full of homophobic wankers like him. It was a foggy day when I emerged onto Harvey Milk Plaza, so I got the sunscreen out and layered up. Yes, I’ve been burnt too many times in this city by not realizing that those rays come through that fog, even if it feels a bit chilly and a bit gloomy. The sky had a glare too, so I wore my sunglasses for a bit, which again looks a bit odd in the fog but I’m squinting otherwise. The Castro theatre was covered up, a shame as I sketched a panorama of it eleven years ago and wanted to do the ‘eleven years later’ sketch. Ten years? Where does all the time go. I also sketched it fifteen years ago on another sketchcrawl. So I looked over to where the streetcars stop outside the Twin Peaks cafe, which I have also drawn on my little wander up here two years ago, though from the other side.

I had no plan of action for exploring, so I walked a block down Castro and up 18th Street, not towards the Mission but uphill. I liked this building opposite, and the little shop ‘Five Star Truffles’, so that’s what I sketched. The old Victorian houses round here are so interesting. Further up I sketched this pink and blue house below. That’s a lot of steps to get into your door every day, after climbing a hill, a common feature on these old houses, people must be pretty fit round here. I like wandering about here though because the people and places you pass by, you do get a strong sense of local community. The area is most well known for its prominent gay community, though this does feel like an area whose residents take a lot of pride in their neighbourhood, and you see that a lot in San Francisco, even in the face of busy city streets and exorbitant pricing-out of communities. The idea of communities in large cities has always fascinated me, especially the idea of evolving communities. I’m just back from London, and you still see it there in some places, while others it feels like have no community any more. It all depends on perception I guess.

The house above was drawn quickly in pencil just because I liked the shape of it, the turret and the huge round window and the long curving stairway. I was already on my way to lunch when I drew it. The building below though was an amazing find, an enormous mansion on Douglass Street, which was a trek to walk up to, looming large over the treetops as the morning fog burned away. An impressive number of turrets and shapes, I bet this place is a world of stories. I sketched one of the little lions out front as well. To draw this I needed to be in the shade of a tree across the street, but for some reason I decided to sit and sketch, not on a stool (I pretty much never bring a stool out these days, as I always stand to sketch), but sat on the sidewalk like in the old days. Remember when I’d sit on these San Francisco streets cross legged with my paints next to me? Well this time when I got up I must have hurt my back, because it got increasingly bad throughout the rest of the day, noticeably so after I ate my lunch (which was a pasta dish at the old Spaghetti House on Castro, a place which looked interesting but I was the only customer, at lunchtime). My shoulder bag felt heavy the rest of the day and I felt like I was hobbling about. I’m sure it’s because I sat on the ground for 45 minutes, though all the urban hillwalking with my bag on my shoulder did not really help as much.

And here is a fire hydrant that was on the corner of Douglass and Caselli near that big mansion. I like these old SF hydrants with the round nobs on top. I wandered up hill and down admiring all the big old houses and little shops, and after my lunch (which was nice, albeit a little lonely) I walked (in some pain) towards Church Street, remembering there was a bookshop there that I visited once. It was gone now, and my back was hurting, I needed to sit down again, so I jumped on literally the first bus that came along, and wasn’t even sure where it was going. Wherever it was headed, that’s where I’d go next, I guess.

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.

a day up in the snow

February 20, 2024Leave a comment

A couple of weekends ago we went up to Truckee, in the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains a couple of hours’ drive from Davis. We don’t get snow down here in the valley, but with all the weather at this time of year there was a good dumping up the in the Sierras, and we wanted a change of scenery. It’s colder, but it’s beautiful up there. We headed to the Jax by the Tracks Diner, which I drew when we were last up here at the end of 2020, when you couldn’t go inside because we were still in that Covid era. We went inside this time for lunch, and had delicious milkshakes. My ‘sexy chicken sandwich’ was nice, but I wish I’d got something else. I didn’t sketch inside, but we had a nice view from our table through a window of the lovely old building across the street, the River Street Inn, so I started a sketch of that. I knew I wouldn’t finish it, what with trying to get through my ‘sexy chicken sandwich’ (honestly I kept hearing Ruud Gullit’s voice in my head talking about the ‘sexy football’ his Newcastle team would play, only for it to be not very good and he dropped Alan Shearer) (I think it could have done with a bit more sauce, the fried chicken was a bit dry) (in the sandwich, not the Newcastle team) (but that too). My wife and sun’s lunches were delicious though, and I couldn’t get enough of that milkshake, that was worth the trip. I drew as much of the building as I could, but decided not to finish off once we got outside, so I did the rest from the photo I took from our table. I liked how tall the hydrant was, I think the snow can get suddenly really deep up there. The very first time I ever went there, back in the start of 2006, I was gobsmacked at the depth of the snow. I took a picture of a snowdrift outside a house, and it was only when I saw a long thin aerial poking out that I realised there was a car buried underneath. I was told it’s the snowiest part of the contiguous United States, just a couple of hours up the road from our snowless town.

We went and explored the main street of Truckee, all the little shops, trying not to slip up on any bits of ice, and I drew a slightly shorter fire hydrant with the snow around it. Afterwards we drove over to the Donner State Park, to walk around in the snow for a bit, and along the lake. the snow was quite deep up there, and we had our snow boots, but it wasn’t too cold. We weren’t up there too long, I did no snow-sketching, and it was a long drive back downhill to Davis, but at least we saw some Sierra snow in 2024.