On Saturday, after a week of storms and rain and puddles, the sun came out and so did the sketchers, for the latest “Let’s Draw Davis” sketchcrawl. There were fourteen of us in all, and we met at the corner of 2nd and G Streets. The location of this crawl was along G street, which is a historic part of old downtown Davis, and makes for some properly ‘urban’ sketching. I took a while sketching the above scene, that big old white building on the northwest corner of G and 2nd, chatting to folk as they passed by. One guy I spoke to was back in Davis for the first time in 40 years, having lived there in the late 60s and early 70s, and so I was interested to hear about how Davis was back then, as he was interested to hear how I felt it was now. Below, a couple of international sketchers (from Spain and from Iran), both sketching the ‘Froggies’ bar opposite.

Above, an interesting iron fence nearby to Ace Houseware, plus a fire hydrant on 5th and G and the brand new bank building opposite. I didn’t sketch quite as much as I would have expected (and there’s one sketch of a phonebox I’ll post separately because I want to say some hilarious things about phoneboxes), largely because I was getting a little frustrated with my Micron pens, which don’t like the Stillman & Birn paper as much as I might have liked, at least not in the way I use them. I felt like I was wearing them down much more quickly than usual. Still it was good to get out and draw stuff, and I was amazed at how productive some of my fellow sketchers were. We all met up outside the Davis Co-Op at 3pm (which in hindsight was a long way to go for a fairly short sketchcrawl), and checked out each other’s books, which is always one of the most fun parts of the day.

Sketchbooks at the end of the day...

To see some of the other sketchers’ work, please go to http://www.flickr.com/groups/letsdrawdavis/, the Flickr group. The next Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl will be in May…date and place to be determined. If you can’t wait that long, this coming Saturday April 21 is Worldwide Sketchcrawl #35, in which hundreds or maybe thousands of sketchers across the planet will get out and draw their cities, and it sounds like there will be one in Davis too (I might make it the tail end, as I’ll be going to Picnic Day before that).

In the meantime, you may like to know we now have a Let’s Draw Davis page on the Davis Wiki, set up by fellow long-time Davis sketcher Pica (who produced the amazing accordion sketchbook above).