January is flying by. That is, if that flight is a plane going to the other side of the world which is delayed and redirected to the wrong airport and you lose all your luggage and there’s no legroom and people in front of you keep reclining their seats the whole way even during dinner and you have to sit next to someone who watches movies on their iPad without headphones and there’s non-stop turbulence. Januarys are gonna January, but do they have to January like this January? It goes on and on and on, and then when you think it might be done, it goes on even more. This particular January feels like it will go on for about four years (if we are lucky), but I keep telling myself, these times too will pass. They will get worse, and we will look back on them like some sort of golden age. This January has been horrible for California, with the absolutely devastating wildfires in and around Los Angeles, I’m in shock thinking about it. We have had no big fires up this way thankfully, but this has been the driest January I remember. It’s been cold but not too cold, and we have also had a lot of wind but nothing like what was down there. The rain may finally come next weekend, but after the fires it brings threats of landslides. All these thoughts do make me appreciate places as they are, and I have spent a lot of this month burying my head in the sketchbook to make sense of the world, and going around Davis to catch up on drawing it all. The older houses around the Old North Davis neighbourhood in particular. As mentioned in previous posts, I have long been a fan of John Lofland’s book about the area and sometimes carry it with me as a guide to the historic buildings, especially if I need context for drawing them. The house above, which is on the corner of 5th and E Streets, is one I have drawn a number of times over the years. I like triangle shapes, and sometimes there are nice shadows from the very tall white-barked trees. According to Lofland the house itself is known as the Tingus Home and was built in 1936, for George and Constance Tingus. It’s across from the Fire Station, and traffic from the busy 5th Street rushes by. I remember many years ago I sold a print of a sketch I did of this building to a local company who had done some work not on this house but on the red-bricked one next door, which was visible in the drawing. It’s in this one too, but it definitely deserves it’s own drawing; see below. It’s known as the Granucci home and was also built in 1936 (for J.F. and Annie Granucci), but in a more distinctive brick which is not very common for houses here.

It’s lovely, but the sketch is a little inaccurate; I drew it over a couple of days, doing outlines on site across the street and adding in details and colour after (it was cold, I was losing light; I spent more time outside on the one above) but I failed to spot that the roof is not actually that big. The tall part is from another building at the back of the original small house, which you can see if you look at the picture above. My poor eyesight didn’t catch it, and I didn’t notice when adding colour from the photo I took. I had already scanned and posted it to Flickr before I saw the mistake. So in my sketchbook, I tried to correct it by adding a more distinctive line between the roof roofs, though it didn’t exactly line up. I never re-scanned it so that version stays in the book for now.

This is the third one along this block of E Street, and while I drew from across the road because I liked the shape of the big tree and the shadows it cast, the house itself is an artistic wonderland. I would love to draw that all some day (I am not inclined to be sketching over people’s fences), but it’s a really nice yard to walk past. It does appear in Lofland’s book, not named, and the old photo looks a little different to this. I love the red paint of the building now.

Finally, the same block but the other side of the street, this old house was known as the ‘Arnold Home’, as according to Lofland’s book, it was the house of a Math professor Hubert Arnold for half a century, and he collected over many decades an incredible collection of artistic ceramics which were then donated to the Crocker Museum in Sacramento.

I’ve a load of drawings from this January to post. Constantly drawing in my spare time, continuing my quest to document the landscape of this city where I have ended up spending the last nearly twenty years of my life, is my attempt at keeping myself away from the despair of January and all its news. At least it’s sunny.