Here are a couple of sketches from the North Davis Greenbelt, nearby to where I live. The top one was drawn one lunchtime at Northstar Park, on a day while working from home. It’s of the view towards one of the ponds, hidden by the rushes and the shuffling palm trees. They really do look like they are doing some sort of dance. The one below was drawn close to where I live, it was a Saturday and I needed to get some fresh air, but didn’t want to go too far from the house as I was quite enjoying some being-at-home-on-the-weekend time. I like shadows of bare trees against buildings, something you get a lot of in Davis in January. I like that we have the Greenbelt so close to us; unlike the Green Belt I knew from going to school in Edgware on the top edge of London (the London Green Belt is an area of land surrounding the city and stopping it from growing ever further into a massive sprawl, or that was the idea), our Greenbelt is a long series of park-like paths that connect all over the edge of north Davis. There’s another in south Davis. It’s great to take long walks or runs along them, and we really took advantage during the pandemic.

Though I must say, I’m getting very antsy for some sketching travel now. I don’t mean a regular vacation, I mean a sketching trip, where I go away to somewhere like a city on Europe and sketch for a couple of days solidly, before moving on to the next place. I’m getting the wanderlust again after too long being away from international travel; Davis is nice but I’d like to wander through Europe again. And Japan, we have twice cancelled our trip to Japan due to the pandemic, hopefully we can make it some time in the next couple of years. There’s all sorts of places I want to go. Still, the US is pretty great, and I’m glad we’ve seen a bit more of it over the past year. I really need a sketching trip though.