It’s always time for a fire hydrant. This one is outside our building on the UC Davis campus, and recently grew an unusual robotic arm, which is propped up by some metal leaning device, making it look a bit like Charlie Chaplin, I suppose. I do love drawing fire hydrants though. Recently I gave a talk to the Urban Sketcher Jacksonville group (via Zoom, I didn’t fly out to Florida), they were very friendly and we all did a drawing of a fire hydrant at the end which was nice. That was my demo, drawing a hydrant, simplest thing there is really. Other sketchers who are more typical art teachers probably do much more complicated demos, but I’m always very nervous drawing live (especially from a photo) so my demos usually feel a bit flat. I was able to talk to people about sketching which is always the most fun. I tried to avoid going all Rolf Harris with those “can you guess what it is yet?” phrases because ugh, Harris. Still, the hydrant we sketched actually had a fun little smiling face and seeing everyone else draw the happy hydrant made us all feel good, I think. Draw fire hydrants, they are perfect urban sketching material.