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.