A street I like to draw is A Street. I know that sounds like a philosophical statement, but the name of the street is A Street, I’m not just referring to a street. I know that it’s probably been a couple of years since I said that tired old chestnut, but it makes me laugh and that’s what matters. I do love drawing this A Street though, because it’s on the border of downtown and campus, and easy to walk to from work. I have always been drawn to draw that lovely red house on the corner of Rice, especially in the autumn when some of the foliage is turning a similar colour. I’ve drawn it several times over the years. More on this building later, because I’m not done referring to how much I like its lovely rusty red colour, it really makes it stand out among a street of mostly white houses. This was the first page of a new sketchbook.

Further up the street is the Belfry, a building I have drawn several times as well. Maybe the building called the Belfry is actually the yellowish one on the left, a kind of religious place, but this interesting tower behind the fence looks belfry like and I love sketching it. I decided not to bother adding all the colour in this time, the pen drawing being interesting enough. I can see the slanting-to-the-right thing happening again, maybe that’s just the way I hold the sketchbook, though they do say you get more right-leaning as you get older don’t they. Ha ha.

I have drawn this building before, perhaps ten years ago. I seem to remember it was temporarily the home of the International Hillel house, before they moved back into their much larger and newly built building down the street. All those autumnal trees against that bright white, mixed with the terracotta tiles, this is an interesting place to sketch.

And then, I saw that the rusty red house I loved sketching looked suddenly blanched. They had painted it white! So this house now appears twice in the same sketchbook, in two different colours. Maybe this is their away kit. I mean, it looks good, but it looked better red, stood out more, felt more rustic. Each to their own I guess. I wish we could change the colour of our house, from its dull taupe, but that’s our local HOA I guess. Still, the stop sign stays its usual red. And that concludes our latest tour of A Street, Davis.