Here are some images of Davis. This triptych of downtown places – the City Offices, the historic City Hall, and the Amtrak station – was commissioned by the City of Davis to bring to South Korea, to the city of Sangju, our ‘sister-city’ in Korea. There it was presented last week to the Mayor of Sangju, Yeong-seok Kang, by the vice-Mayor of Davis, Josh Chapman, heading a delegation from Davis visiting Sangju to strengthen our civic and cultural ties. That was posted on Instagram. I had a very short time-frame to do it, and so worked on it most of one Sunday (after a Saturday afternoon scouting the locations downtown), plus a couple of early mornings and a late evening or two, and getting it all done just in time for its trip to Korea. Quite an honour to be an artist representing my city in another country (well my drawing is, not me in person), maybe some day I will get to draw Korea. I’ve seen quite a few international sketchers I know sketching out in Korea the past couple of weeks, such as Paul Wang and Sylvain Cnudde. My oldest friend from London, the mentioned-in-previous-posts Terry (Tel) who now lives in Japan, he did spend a few years living in Korea selling books and getting into adventures, he said the food was very spicy. One of my favourite footballers of course is from Korea, Heung-min Son, our beloved Sonny, and I always get a “Come on you Spurs!” from Korean students in Davis when wearing my Tottenham shirt. So I’d love to go and sketch there someday; I don’t know Sangju though, the sister city of Davis. My son tells me that the High School sends students there on an exchange trip each year. (Funny enough I was his exact age when I did an exchange trip to Austria back in 1991). Still, I’m so busy with work right now that I could not have gone with my drawing to Korea, the academic quarter is a bit too busy. I learned that the next Urban Sketchers Symposium will be held in Buenos Aires next year, Argentina (land of my other heroes Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa), I had thought of attending or even applying to teach a workshop or lecture (which I’ve never yet done at a Symposium, mostly because I’m not confident anyone can really learn anything from me), but it’s in October, so I won’t plan on going, it’s always an awkward time. I missed out on Auckland in April this year due to the tricky timing. I do always long for a sketching trip, but at least one of my drawings flew across the world this past week!