on the corner, a break in the rain

January 31, 2024January 31, 2024Leave a comment

A rainy day, the showers stopped for a bit so I took a late lunch and drew the corner of A and 1st. I’ve drawn this corner a few times, they’ve painted this building a few times too. It’s some frat house, Zeta Psi. It’s a whole culture of American university life that we didn’t really have in British universities, not to this extent anyway. I suppose it’s important for stuff, parties on picnic day and beer pong and definitely no hazing. I’ve never been inside a frat house but I imagine it’s either like some gathering of the offspring of wealthy elites with secret codes and fridges of champagne and butlers, or it’s like the house in the Young Ones with bits of old mouldy fruit that talk to socks and Neil the Hippy burning his lentils while Rik the Peoples Poet plans the next protest against fascist pigs. The imagination is probably much better than the reality. You usually see all the new frat and sorority people out and about in large groups in Fall during their ‘Rush’, all dressed up in shiny clothes. As I sketched, the occasional jogger ran by, taking advantage of the break in the rain. I have not yet re-started my own running, I’ve been a little bit lazy on that front. I have the Davis Stampede coming up too, and need to prepare for it more. I had a lot on my mind this day, I often do, the world weighing down, hard to understand. One of the reasons I draw I think is to gain a tiny bit of control over the world around me, as if I can hold it in my hand, but maybe I’m over analyzing it, maybe I just like to draw because I really like drawing. This day was my son’s 16th birthday which was a scary thought too, and my own birthday is coming up soon which always makes me fill with a little dread. Every birthday I’ve had in my 30s and 40s has been spent over here, I’ve not had a birthday in England since my 20s, and those 20s seem like a very distant memory now. Ah well, we move along with time, it’s just not always that fun.

go tell it to the trees

January 31, 2024Leave a comment

It’s still January, if you can believe it. It’s been a productive month sketching-wise. I wonder what the point of it all is, all this sketchbooking, but then I remember last January, all those trees that came down, it’s not like the trees got rebuilt or anything, they are gone forever. The big old trees have really interesting shapes and textures at this time if year, when they are free of all those leaves that give us much needed shade in the hot summer, now they open up to provide light. So I am continuing in my documentation of these large living beings, they are worth a look. This one is outside California Hall, the new lecture hall built a few years ago (it’s in the sketchbooks), with the outline of Kerr Hall in the background. I keep thinking of that Pulp song “Trees” when sketching trees, and that album “We Love Life”, their last proper album as a band from back in 2001. That was quite a long time ago now, but it always makes me think of the year spent in Aix-en-Provence when I first heard it. I liked it a lot, but it’s more what the sound of the music brings me back to I guess, and I think of the chilly mornings walking my usual route to the Faculté des Lettres along streets with bare plane trees and the occasional dog poo, to teach my classes in English. The taste of a fresh poulet-frites for dinner. Completely different life, I can barely remember much of it now. Looking on Google Street View, it looks like the old ‘Fac’ has been demolished and replaced with a new modern building, which looks a lot nicer. No doubt if I’d been there, I would have drawn it all being knocked down and then being built. Looking at this sketch, that tall Kerr Hall behind was where my current department used to live before our new building (shared with Math) was built, just before I arrived. Time moves along, the trees just watch it all go by.

every day we take another step

January 30, 2024January 29, 2024Leave a comment

Another Sunday where I pushed myself to get out of the house, during a lull in the January rain we have been having. The rain is nothing like last year when all the trees came down, but we’ve been getting some good showers to help grow the grass and keep the hills green. This panorama sketch is on 3rd St, on that stretch between B St and A St leading up to the entrance of the university. It was all refurbished several years ago with a big obelisk made out of bike parts placed in the middle, and several of those wooden cylindrical noticeboards plopped along the sidewalk. That had to be my foreground item in this sketch. My eye was drawn to one of the notices advertising a local band called ‘Mondaiji’, whose guitarist is a colleague of mine in the Stats department. They have been getting a number of gigs in Davis, I’ve still not been able to see them play but hopefully can some time. The other buildings in this view are ones I have drawn multiple times over the years, it’s not an unfamiliar view this. The white building on the left might be the oldest house in Davis, the Eggleston Home from c. 1870. Well, the Werner-Hamel house in south Davis is older (c. 1859), but if it’s just downtown I think this one takes the prize, though there are a few others from around that time still about such as the Cloud Forest Cafe building oon D St, also c. 1870. Remember when I did that centenary sketchcrawl back in 2017? Here’s the info and map: https://petescully.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ldd-map-handout-march2017.pdf. We should do that again. I like how this panorama turned out, even on a fairly dreary mid-January Sunday. It started raining again, so I finished the penwork, cycled off, and coloured in at home with a nice cup of tea.

sunday kickaround

January 29, 2024Leave a comment

While out one Sunday during a break in the rain, I noticed a load of men playing soccer on the field by the university. I’ve passed by them before and noticed a few good football shirts among them, this time I decided to watch for a bit, and since it’s been a while, I tried sketching the players in motion. I say in motion, I mean it wasn’t as fast paced and fluid as the old AYSO United games played by quick teenagers, and on a smaller field, but sketching with my black fountain pen I did still struggle to get the ink moving along into people shapes. This was a good test of that pen, not so much the brown ink but the carbon platinum pen which I have often shied away from while out and about, it was a bit of hard work. So I got my thicker Zebra pen and added some thicker more defined outlines to some of them, and that pen felt more comfortable. It’s funny, a couple of years ago I’d have probably felt I could join in and make an impact, but these days since quitting soccer coaching and not having a ball at my feet I shy away from it more. I had a kickaround with my son a few weeks back and my foot hurt kicking the ball, that had never happened before. I’m not completely unfit (though I’m taking my time getting into training for the upcoming runs I’m doing) but definitely a bit shy when it comes to sports. Many of the guys were younger but a lot of the guys were a good bit older than me. There was one bloke who was a bit shouty at his team-mates, even though this was just a kickabout he seemed to yell at them for not choosing the right pass or not switching play or whatever, though he seemed happy to lump it off the field. Still it was good seeing all the playing styles, but I just wanted to see the kits. One was wearing a white pinny but I could tell he had underneath the 2014 Spurs black away kit, an absolute belter of a kit which I do not have (but my son had when he was six, he wore it the first time he visited White Hart Lane). Much respect. Another guy wore the 2020 Ghana away kit, the yellow one, much respect to that because I have the white home kit from the same year. There were a couple of old Chelsea kits I think, a USA away from about five years ago, a cool black Mexico kit, a black and grey Warrior-era Liverpool shirt, at least one Italy training shirt, and one other football shirt that I did not recognize, which is always quite exciting to me, I think it was a Celta Vigo away kit but I could not be certain. Finally there was a guy in a kit I recognized immediately, the 2002 blue Arsenal away kit, the one with the funny geometric pattern on the front, with that dreaded name ‘Pires’ on the back. Dreaded because as a Spurs fan, Pires was bloody devastating for Arsenal and one of the reasons they were so annoyingly good back then. He had that little stripe beard under his lip didn’t he, which I actually also had in around 1999, because ‘the 90s’. It brought back some memories, seeing that name on a shirt. Anyway, it was fun watching some Sunday muddy kickaround footy.

here comes the sunscreen

January 28, 20243 Comments

I probably should have posted this with my Maui sketches, but it was done after I got back. This is the special mineral-based sunscreen that it’s required to wear in Maui county, particularly if going in the ocean. The other stuff might be alright, but this stuff is supposed to be a lot better for the corals and stuff. I probably didn’t need the SPF 50 stuff, but you can’t be too careful I suppose, and I have had a skin issue in the past couple of years. The SPF 50 stuff is like thick bloody paste though, it’s so white and impossible to wash off, which is I suppose the point. In the evening after I had showered, I did surprise myself that I had a much more silvery stubble than I actually have, but it was just the sunscreen caught in all my bristles, despite a fairly robust scrubbing of the chin. I still think my ear caught a bit of sun, as it was feeling pretty sore on top after a swim in the ocean. I remember back to being a kid, back in the bad old days of the mid-80s, and being the only red-haired freckly one in my immediate family. We went to Spain, and back then what was considered sun protection was like factor 4, or factor 6 if you’re lucky. I wanted factor 10 but I swear everyone was just laughing at me. Half the time there’d be none whatsoever. It was called sun-tan-lotion because it was for exactly that, getting a sun-tan, it was little more than putting butter on before going into the oven. Fine for those whose skin turned brown, but not for the likes of me. When I was ten we went to Spain for the first time, to Ibiza, and I remember a few days in I had already been burnt so badly that I could not move, and had to lie in bed crying my eyes out in absolute agony. Cheers mum and dad! They would have to put that awful smelly calamine lotion on my skin to soothe it. Or natural Greek yoghurt! Yes they would put Greek yogurt on my sunburn. Of course I was always made to feel like some sort of freak for not wanting to go into the sun, and wanting to stay indoors in the shade in the hottest part of the day in Spain (you know, like the Spanish do). I remember a big argument with my mum about it on the second time we were in Ibiza, when I was 11, and I ended up staying in by myself and drawing football shirts, which was totally fine by me. My dad was not red-headed, but he would put practically no sun protection on at all, and then lie outside in the sun until he turned into a lobster. It was a different time wasn’t it, a different generation, and a very British/Irish thing to do. “Aren’t you looking well!” they would say when you came home burnt to a crisp. If you avoided the sun and tried not to get burnt they would laugh at you for being so milky white and say that you wouldn’t know you’d gone to Spain. Different times. Now I, the sun-avoider, live in California of all places! But in California, most people I know avoid the sun and do what they can not to be burnt by it, and they all seem to understand red hair and freckly skin is a lot more sensitive. I still get burnt, if I’m out too long, even with sunscreen and hats and long sleeves. Anyway this was a fun story.

Dreary January Sunday

January 27, 2024Leave a comment

One of those weekend days when it’s dreary out, and I struggle to leave the house. The only thing to do is go out and draw, but some days I don’t really want to draw any more of Davis, because I’ve done it all before. I had to get outside for a little bit though, or else I’d go mad, but I have to push myself out sometimes. It’s that January feeling. So I walked over to the park, and stood next to the Davis Arts Center, and drew that. It’s undergoing some refurbishments by the look of it. It was cold out, and when I’d drawn all the ink I walked back home to colour it in, and put an old James Bond film on the telly. I never watch James Bond, they all feel the same to me, but I fancied a bit of that silliness so I watched Goldeneye, for a bit of mid-90s action. Didn’t really spur me into much action myself though.

Walker Hall, ten years later

January 25, 2024January 25, 2024Leave a comment

I have been getting the ‘on this day ten years ago I drew this’ bug, because it’s a decade since my worryingly over-productive January 2024 set of drawings around Davis (I mean, January was always my busiest month at work, yet I had the energy to produce a lot of two-page drawings that month). It’s always a good moment to reflect on the changes. This week my then-six-year-old son became a sixteen-year-old son, which scares me to think how fast that’s happened. I’m working in the same department, just in a very different job, but I’m still plugging away with drawing campus on my lunchtimes. I’ve published two books since then, had a successful retrospective sketchbook show, been interviewed by the chancellor of the university, done a lot of travelling, and there’s been a pandemic in the middle. The world has been an ‘Interesting Times’ sort of place in the past decade, give me the decade before that any day. But looking at just one spot and tracking the changes, this view of Walker Hall above, the new modern Graduate Center in the historic refurbished building, is a good example. Regular followers will have seen my sketches of this building as it was slowly turned into the center that we see today, and many of my in-progress sketches are still on display in the lobby there, which is a massive honour (as a former grad coordinator I always maintained good relations with Grad Studies, and it was the previous Dean Jeff Gibeling who gave me the idea to draw the progress of the construction when it was first announced a decade or so ago in a meeting). I think I may have already known the future plans when I drew the panorama below, or maybe that was a little afterwards, but this view was always one I wanted to draw like this, and of all the panoramas I drew in January 2014 this one was my favourite. Now it has captures a moment in time that has passed. I liked the big diagonal shadow against the windows, and trying to convey the large E-shaped building using curvilinear perspective. It was drawn in the old Seawhite of Brighton book I was using then, while the newer one above was drawn in the watercolour Moleskine (side note, in recently comparing older scans to newer ones, I’ve decided I don’t like my current Epson scanner at all, I cannot seem to capture the right amount of clarity no matter how much I mess with the settings, unlike with my older (now long-departed) HP scanner. I’ve rescanned some older drawings recently and they don’t even compare with the older scans, regardless of 300dpi or 72 dpi. It’s subtle when they are small but I really notice it now. Time for a new scanner.) Anyway, this one above might put a final bookend to my Walker Hall series of sketches. It’s been a fun journey, but the building’s finished now and it should look like this for its foreseeable future. You can see them all in this Flickr folder.

make me understand or i’ll forget

January 23, 2024Leave a comment

First two-page panorama of 2024, click on the image to go to my Flickr page and see it bigger. In fact you can see all of my two-page (or more-page) panorama drawings in one album there, currently 218 of them and counting. Cast my mind back ten years ago, I decided to go a little bit overboard with the two-page panorama sketching, I called it ‘Panoramarathon’, sometimes I called it ‘Januarama’ or whatever because they were mostly in January 2014, when I was for some reason ridiculously productive. I’ve been looking back at some of those and even doing ‘ten years later’ versions, I’ll post that later. I have drawn the scene above more than once or twice over the years, usually from slightly different angles. This one shows the Heitman ‘Hog Barn’ on the left as always, with a bit of the South Silo, the Bike Barn occluded by trees, those standing stone thingies, that big leaning tree and on the right, the newest bit, that Chemistry Building wing whose construction I’ve been following in my sketches for the past four years. One change from sketches made over a decade ago is there used to be another big tree to the left of the big one there, it had a more interesting shape to draw, but was unfortunately in the way of the path they wanted to make so off it went to the big carpentry shop in the sky. I like all the colours. I know I draw these scenes over and over, Davis is not that big and I always say I’m bored of drawing everything again, but if I lived in London or New York I’d probably get bored of that too wouldn’t I. I like drawing the changes, as we’ve established. But it is January and all I do think about is going somewhere very far away with my sketchbook and no hurry or schedule, especially when there’s a lot on your mind you just want to plough it into a book that you’re filling, that’s where I put all my ‘stuff’, my sketchbooks.

January’s gonna January

January 20, 2024Leave a comment

How’s January going for you? Actually no, don’t tell me, Januarys are rarely fun. I mean, ours started in Maui so that was fun, but then you have to come home and get on with January. I like being busy, it helps when there is a lot to do and keep organized with. We’ve so far not had the massive wet and windy storms that we suffered last January, in fact there has been a decent amount of blue sky weather so I was out a lot in the first couple of weeks doing some sketching, all those January shadows. Here are some from downtown; above, the building on the corner of C and 3rd, not far from my optometrist (where I spent a lot of money before Christmas ordering new glasses, my most expensive ones yet because my eyesight is getting so bad, still waiting for those). As I write, it’s just after 3 in the morning, and the rain is coming down outside. We are expecting big storms this weekend, wet and windy, hopefully we don’t get so many trees down like last year. We had planned to go up to the mountains this weekend, but the weather will be bad. So we’ll stay inside watching movies and drinking tea and hot chocolate, I mean there are worse things. I’ve had an issue with one of my teeth that’s made this week pretty annoying; the visit to the dentist will mean more expensive visits to the dentists, so the next few weeks I’ll be anxious about that. Back in London my dad’s been in hospital since Christmas so that’s been a big worry, I just heard he is getting out now thankfully, but I’d still like to try and get over there soon. And globally, well there’s never good news these days is there, it just feels like the world is spinning the wrong way sometimes. Work is picking up; its’ faculty recruitment season, and our campus also launched a new financial system we have spent years preparing for and are now struggling to get to grips with, a classic ‘did it really need changing to something far more complicated?’ moment. At least it keeps us busy. Anyway, we all keep pressing on. I’ve been drawing a lot, but there’s nothing new about that, even if it’s a lot of the same places over and over. Draw your little part of world to make sense of it.

The first weekend of the new year, I popped out on my bike to sketch downtown. I had decided in 2024 I would draw at least once every day; yeah even with my productivity that’s not happening. I draw more than most as it is. Still I went down C Street next to Community Park and sketched the side of Community Church, it looked good in the sun. After that I cycled over to the bit of 3rd Street just over the railroad tracks, in the old east downtown, ‘Trackside Center’, and drew the scene below. I thought they were going to redevelop this whole place, that might still be in the works, talked about for a number of years now. the lovely chocolate shop is still there, but not much else. I like having that signage in the foreground, that’s one of my motifs I guess. I have not drawn a fire hydrant in the foreground for a while. This is because I tend to stand when I sketch a lot more than I did 10 or 12 years ago.

Here’s another, from D Street a few days later, the weather starting to get cooler and cloudier, another ‘2 Hour Parking’ sign in the foreground. I stood outside the Pence, looked up toward Mustard Seed and Cloud Forest Cafe. The house on the right has been many things (I even exhibited some drawings there years ago when it was an artists’ studio) but is now called ‘Wines in Tandem’, that’s what the sign says anyway. Wine is nice, I don’t drink much of it though. My wife’s mother brought a nice bottle for thanksgiving and we had some during dinner, but never finished the bottle; it’s still there in the fridge, because we can never finish a bottle of wine. Never had that problem when I was 22, student parties and so on. I’m a lightweight now with wine. I’m a lightweight with beer too really, but it’s a bit easier on me. I never liked drinking spirits, but I do like a nice cocktail, and we had a few in Maui swimming in the pool. And there in the middle of the sketch is the red phone box, famous in Davis, symbol of my old home country. When my son was very little we would come downtown on the bus (the “real bus” he would call it) and we would pretend that the red phone box was like a rocket ship, and go to Saturn and look around, and then come back to Davis. Those were the days. One of my earliest downtown sketches was of that phone box, back in the summer of 2006, and I’ve drawn it many times since. Lego just came out with a new red phone box set that I am going to have to get, to put on my shelf at work with my other London Lego sets. If only that phone box was a real teleporting ship, I’d use it go go back to London more, I do miss that big annoying wet crowded expensive old city, even in January when I know it’s at its worst. Davis is a nicer place to be in a month like this, no doubt, but the storms are coming in. Every year has a January, the Monday morning of months.

the helpful cat

January 18, 20241 Comment

I worked from home for a couple of days after getting back from Maui, just before the new academic quarter began. I don’t think anybody wanted this quarter to start. I’m still in two minds about whether I want this year to start. You cannot stop the progress of time, hold it back though we try, it keeps on crashing through. As my old boss in Finchley two decades ago used to say, “What I can do?” We just get on with it. I had a companion while working at my desk, our cat Whiskers who likes to keep us company whenever any of us work from home, he needs to be right there supervising. He’s a pretty quiet supervisor. I definitely prefer working from the office, but taking a day from home every so often can be nice, and oddly more productive with no (human) interruptions. My laptop screen is pretty small though, and occasionally a cat will sit across the keyboard. Here though he was just keeping the laptop case warm for me, a useful task. He and his brother were very happy we were home from Hawaii. We arrived back after dark, and it was pouring with rain. I always unpack my clothes right away when returning home, it’s a habit of mine (yet when I do laundry and hang up my wet clothes in the bathroom, it can be a week or so before I put those clean clothes away after they’ve dried, it’s funny). I drew Whiskers in pencil and watercolour.