DC part 2 – Monuments and Memorials

April 30, 2025April 30, 2025Leave a comment

Time to explore Washington DC. On our first full day we were heading over towards the Washington Monument and taking a hike around that big lake, the one that Captain America was running around in Winter Soldier. I wanted to see the Massive Lincoln as well. This is the DC we see in all the films and on the telly. The Washington Monument (above) might not be a particularly interesting subject to draw, basically being a gigantic version of Cleopatra’s Needle the size of a skyscraper, but it’s a quick thing to draw so I sketched it while we rested our feet on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. It’s a long walk round that lake you know. I had wanted to get up and run around it saying “on your left”, but I’ve been a bit lazy with the running since my 10k last November, so I didn’t do that. The day started out quite cool, but it was sunny and warmed up to a very springing day, and my face even caught a bit too much sun. The cherry blossoms were maybe not as pink as my sketchbook page shows, but that’s how my eyes saw them, optimistically. Give them a few more days and they’d have been brighter, but right now they were just starting to bloom. The splashes of pink added some contrast to this serene and austere environment, and a lot of people were out wearing pink as well, I know a lot of people came here specifically for the blossoms. Incidentally I didn’t see anywhere near as many of ‘those’ hats as expected, at least not on anyone’s heads. Quite a few being sold cheap by street hawkers, but the only one I saw an actual person wearing was when a guy put one on for a selfie by the Washington Monument before quickly putting it back into his bag. Indeed. We didn’t go up the Monument (I’ve seen Spider-Man: Homecoming, that’s close enough for me) but it really is massive. I did get a stamp though for my sketchbook. I didn’t sketch the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, but I have to say I really loved that place. Jefferson’s statue is pretty huge, but no more lofty than the ideals and proclamations written around the interior of the building. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” When you are in there, you really feel it, like this is a monument to those great ideas themselves that Americans all know (or rather, should know), as much as to the man. We took a lot of photos, but we had a long walk yet around the Tidal Basin so we moved on.

I really enjoyed seeing the Monument to Martin Luther King Jr. It was a way past the FDR Memorial. This only opened in 2011, and shows a sculpture of Dr. King emerging from the rock, designed by Lei Yixin. The National Park Service manages all these (long may they continue, long live the National Parks!) so I got the little stamp. I sketched fast in pencil, we were getting hungry. There are many of Dr. King’s quotes around the memorial, great words such as “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It was genuinely inspiring. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere“. This monument was unveiled on the anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech which was of course given here in Washington DC at the Lincoln Memorial, and we were headed there next.

On the way there, we passed the Korean War Veterans Memorial, which was very poignant. On the other side of the Reflecting Pool was the Vietnam veterans Memorial, even more so. All the names of those soldiers who died in that conflict were engraved in order of when they fell, and gave me a chill. I didn’t grow up here, but as a kid in Britain the impact of that war was clear on so much American popular culture. We had a snack nearby, and finally went up the Lincoln Memorial. It is at the top of a steep staircase, looking down the long Pool towards the Washington Memorial and down to the Capitol Building; you know the view, it’s pretty famous. Inside is the massive statue of Abraham Lincoln, one of the most famous American Presidents. A lot of people were in here to get a look at him, sitting on what looks like Thanos’s floating throne. You gotta love Lincoln. Even without his big hat you’d recognize him from his beard. Inside the Memorial written on the walls are the words of his most famous speeches, the Gettysburg Address and the other one, from his second Inauguration. “With malice toward none, with charity for all…” It had been a long day. We decided to walk back to the hotel and rest those exhausted legs, and only stopped to catch a view of the distant White House far behind barriers and armed vehicles. I was glad for the deep bathtub, and for the hearty southern-style meal we had that night.

I got up early next morning, and did some sketching before breakfast. It was raining a little, but not too bad. I walked back down to Capitol Mall, which was mostly empty, and stood in the middle with a great view of the Capitol Building. This was as close as I got, it is very big. Reminded me of the Capitol Records logo; also reminded of that bloody awful day on January 6th 2021, a low point. This place has seen some history, has it not. I took a couple of photos for passing tourists, but it was a pretty quiet morning overall. All around me there were the buildings of the Smithsonian Museum, our destination that day, and the thing I was most most excited about coming to DC for. You have to see the Monuments, but I was here to see the stuff, and I mostly wanted to see planes, spaceships and dinosaurs. More on that next time. But before we did, we stopped into the building below, the National Archives. I sketched from across the street until it started raining a bit more (then I finished it up later at the hotel), but we came in after breakfast to take a look at one thing only – the United States Constitution. And the Bill of Rights, that’s two things. The actual Constitution itself, and the actual Bill of Rights, housed in their own special rotunda decorated with paintings of the great acts, the signing of the Constitution and the other one, the Declaration of Independence, because that actual document is also in here. Three things, that’s three things we came to see. The ‘Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom’. We didn’t stay too long, you’re not allowed to spend time trying to read them, it was a little crowded and we needed a bit of air and some space, so we left and walked over to the National Air and Space Museum.

DC part 1 – the Federal Triangle

April 28, 2025May 1, 20252 Comments

And so, we visited Washington DC, the nation’s capital, for the first time. We had planned this about a year ago, before the Current Political Atmosphere (aka the Current Reality of American Politics, if we want acronyms), but we wanted to see some History. We took the DC Metro from the airport down to the Federal Triangle to find our hotel, which was right in the middle of History. The Waldorf Astoria was pretty nice – amazing what you can get with points – with top hatted men opening doors and asking us about our ‘driver’ (mate we came by tube), but was built into the old Post Office Building, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th. This place has real American History. It is also the second highest building in DC, after the Washington Monument – this is not a city of skyscrapers, more a city of lofty ideas. It was also the start of Cherry Blossom season – while most of them had not yet started really blossoming, the pink buds were starting to come out. Right outside the hotel was a statue of Benjamin Franklin, one of the most well-known of the Founding Fathers. I sketched him below, after drawing the hotel (above) on our first morning. We did actually go up the clock tower (properly called the Old Post Office Tower), which is a national historic monument (with a separate entrance outside the hotel) and admire the views across DC, though I did not sketch from up there.

I won’t post all my DC sketches in one go because it’s a lot of reading and writing, so I’ll just post these few and then we can take a sketched tour of DC after that, before sketching our way through New York City. Below is the view from our bedroom window. Our bedroom was pretty impressive, including a big chandelier and a very deep bathtub. The building across from us was the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building. This whole area is full of federal government buildings, all those ones you hear about constantly on the news. It reminded us very much of being in Whitehall. The IRS was next door to us. The FBI were around the corner.

I had to sketch at least one DC fire hydrant, for the collection, so I drew the one below opposite the hotel. I had been hoping that maybe the hydrants here had Abraham Lincoln style hats. We were very close to the Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was famously shot dead by John Wilkes Booth. I mean, if you are going to wear a big hat like that in the theatre. These days someone would film the argument and put it on Instagram for clicks and likes. This ended up being the only hydrant I drew in DC, but I did draw a lot of other stuff so join me next time to see some more.

across the country, by plane and by train

April 24, 2025Leave a comment

During Spring Break, our family took a trip across the breadth of the country to Washington DC and New York. For a few years now we have been using our Spring Breaks to see more of the USA, alternating between national parks and big cities, and this year we decided to visit ‘Our Nation’s Capital’ (as they call it here) and the ‘Big Apple’ (I don’t know if you’ve heard of that but that’s what they call New York). Of course when we travel I must also sketch, what else am I going to do, watch a movie? I did that too, and read a book (Agatha Christie ‘And Then There Were None’, which I finished on the train to New York). Above, the Southwest flight we took to St. Louis. I’ve not ever been to St. Louis, but we flew right over the big Gateway Arch, which was exciting, and then stopped at the airport to listen to the very different accents while waiting for an overpriced lunch. I can’t pronounce St. Louis, I never know whether to add the ‘s’ sound at the end or not, despite hearing it and being told, when I actually come to say it, my brain forgets and I choose the wrong one. A bit like whenever I need to plug in a USB, *every*single*time* I will plug it in the wrong way round first. This is called the ‘USB Law’, or the ‘St. Louis Principle’. We flew from St. Louis to DC, but I didn’t bother drawing that short flight, and caught up on some Agatha Christie instead.

After a couple of days exploring Washington’s museums and monuments, we caught the Amtrak train from Union Station, finding ourselves cramped into large seats with no legroom, looking out of a small window as the marshy landscape whizzed by. This is an America I have not seen, the East Coast where there are lots of little states and big cities around large estuaries, very far away from our dry sunny California. I love a train, watching the landscape change and wondering what will come next. I finished reading Agatha (the butler did it; only joking) and sketched. We passed through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and then the skyscrapers started to come into view as we approached New York, my favourite city after London.

Well New York was fun, but it was time to fly back to California. Thanks to the magic of airline points wer were able to fly back in business class, which was luxury with those little compartments, massive screens, lie-flat seats (with no cushions) and metal cutlery. I sat in the compartment next to my 17 year old and watched Avengers Infinity War. I was going to watch Conclave but thought I should save that for when the Pope died, which unfortunately he did just a few days ago. A shame, I liked Pope Francis. The flight took us all the way to Phoenix, Arizona, and I was still excited by all of our wanderings about New York City. Lots of sketches to post soon.

And finally the last leg, Phoenix to Sacramento, after a couple of hours in a lounge at PHX. We had the bigger seats for this leg as well, and while I did sketch a bit I relaxed and watched another old film, Withnail and I. I’ve not seen it in years. We made it back to Davis tired and in need of a cup of tea and a long sleep, more adventures around the country. I’ll post all my sketches soon.

prehistoric jaws across the street

April 19, 2025Leave a comment

On the final day of March, the last two pages of that sketchbook (#54 in the official counting system, not including all the others) I drew two prehistoric creatures. Now I must point out, the sketches from San Francisco in my last post were done before this but are in sketchbook #55, as are all of the as-yet-unblogged sketches from our recent trip to Washington DC (where I drew more dinosaurs) and New York City (where I drew more everything), but I had two pages left of that last sketchbook so went back to add these two there. These lovely beasts with more tooth per square inch than the Osmond Family are found in the Earth and Physical Sciences Building, the home of the nearly-named-the-same Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, right across the street from where I work (in the Mathematical Sciences Building, the home of the separate departments of Mathematics and Statistics). I must point out that even I got the name of the building mixed up with the name of the department when I wrote my notes. I was at the groundbreaking ceremony for that building so I should know. I just got excited by the dinosaur, and who wouldn’t. This is the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex, and is part of the UC Davis Paleontology Collection. I have wanted to draw the beast below for quite a while but never got around to it, but when I heard that they had crowdfunded and bought a full-size replica Tyrannosaurus Rex skull, well the sketchbook came out right away. They have placed it in the stairwell for all to see, and is cast from the fossil called ‘Black Beauty’ which is on display in Alberta, Canada. When I read that, I could not get the theme tune to ‘Black Beauty’ out of my head. That was a great show. It’s not the first T-Rex I have drawn (I have sketched quite a few now) and not even the only one I drew that month, but it’s right across the street so I can sketch this one as often as I like. Installed in a case right below it is the Smilodon Fatalis (which I presume means ‘Deadly Grin’), the famous Sabretooth Cat. We used to call these Sabertooth Tigers, but the Lions and Leopards wrote in to complain. What a beast though. I have drawn a skull before, on my day out at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles last year, but not the whole skeleton. This one comes from the same place though, the La Brea Tar Pit in L.A. I would like to visit that place some time. I feel the need for another trip somewhere where I can spend all day sketching at a Natural History Museum. In DC, I spent most of the day at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, but did get an hour and a half among the dinosaurs on the way back to the hotel. Smilodons lived sometime between 2.5 million to 8.2 thousand years ago, give or take a day or so, between the Pleistocene and the Holocene epoch, in what we now call the Americas but in those days probably had some other name. There were three species of Smilodon – Fatalis, Gracilis and Populator – but possibly less well-known were the Frownodon, the Sadadon, the Angryodon and the Laugh-Emojidon.

back to nob hill

April 18, 2025Leave a comment

I went down to the city for a couple of days, as my friends James and Lauren were visiting from England for their 10th anniversary, and we met up for a fun day and evening to celebrate. They married here back in 2015, which history books will tell us is a different historical period, and I came down from Davis to spend a really fun day with them which included a few drinks with locals at Rogue in Washington Square. Nowadays we have self-driving robo-taxis going around San Francisco, and Rogue is long gone, but we ate at Fog City Diner, went to look at the few remaining sealions and walk around the Musee Mecanique, before visiting the old historic bars of North Beach, ending up with a trip to the Tonga Room, classic SF history. The next day after they went to the airport for the next part of their trip I spent the Saturday sketching around the city, mostly around Nob Hill where we had stayed. I sketched the view above, which I have done a couple of times before (a very long time ago – this one in 2006, and //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js” data-wplink-url-error=”true”>this one in 2011 – I’ve been here a long time now). Cable cars rumbled by, tourists took photos and waited on the corner for their robo-taxis (the Waymos; I took my first Waymo ride the day before and it is very strange sitting next to an empty seat watching a steering wheel turn by itself). It was quite sunny. When I came down the day before the morning started off pouring with rain, but it cleared up by lunchtime, I had good luck with the weather. We had just had a really nice filling breakfast and a walk back up the very steep hill.

When we were up here in Nob Hill for my birthday the month before we had such a great view from our hotel room (see that blog post to have a look, it was incredible) that I didn’t want to go out sketching the area during our rest time, so I caught up on that this time. The scene above is in the square in front of Grace Cathedral. I stood in the shade of a tree to draw this fountain. There are lots of little dogs off leash around here, people come and let them scamper about, meeting other dogs, they have a great time. Mostly small dogs with well-off Nob Hill owners. I took a little while drawing this; it had been a very fun evening before and I was feeling a little hungover, but full of sketching energy. Not as much energy as those little dogs though. I sat on a bench to add the watercolour, so I could put my paint set next to me, and after a while soon found that the dogs and their people were gravitating towards the fountain to chatter and smell each others bums (I’ll not explain who was doing what). Which was fine but the dogs were getting very excitable, and some would come over to me to see what I was doing and see whether my paints were lickable. One larger dog put his snout right into my Winsor and Newtons (that’s the brand of paint I use, not some Cockney euphemism) and I had to be like, whoah there. Its human owner came over and I assume apologized (I was listening to an audiobook at the time) but then decided to shield me from further canine interruption by standing right in front of me, which you do when someone is obviously drawing don’t you. More dogs and owners joined the dog and owner party, running around yapping and sniffing bums (again my memory is fuzzy as to who was doing what), and then put of nowhere an excitable Cavalier King Charles Spaniel jumped onto the bench and landed on my paintbox, knocking over my little jar of water. I had a dog like that growing up, ‘Soppy Dog’ (her real name was Lady) so I have a soft spot for them, and didn’t really make much of a fuss other than a Marge Simpson style “hmmmmm” and frown. The embarrassed dog owner quickly got them away and probably apologized (I was listening to an audiobook), and the crowd of dogs and humans started moving somewhere else. None of this affected my painting of course but I thought, this will be a funny thing to write about when I post this, instead of ‘it was a nice day and my tummy was feeling yesterday’s beers’.

I had the day to myself, it was Saturday and I wasn’t in a hurry, so I found another spot in the shade and drew the panorama above looking up at the Cathedral. I had intended to draw the whole lot in, maybe even do the rest later, but I did get a bit bored so just drew as much as I could and coloured in the bits that stood out the most. I wondered what it would be like to live on Nob Hill – you need to have a dog, apparently – and deal with these hills every day. I like a hill but even I’d feel a bit exhausted at the thought of going up and down them every day, so I probably wouldn’t leave the area much. It’d feel like some village, I don’t think I’d enjoy it. I didn’t go into Grace Cathedral this time (not now you have to pay a lot to enter – sod that, it’s nice but not exactly Westminster Abbey), but remember years ago when I illustrated their Christmas Concert official program, two years in a row? That was fun, I got to go to that concert both times, once with my wife and once with my mum. Well over a decade ago now, time flies.

I walked further down the Hill along Bush Street, and could hear people drinking and partying. Lots of people in green, it was St Patrick’s Day weekend, and there was a parade going on, and not far from here some big street party with live music echoing up the hill. I wasn’t in green (I was in blue, St.Patrick’s actual colour as I boringly point out to uninterested people every year, even though St.Patrick probably didn’t wear navy blue polyester with a big ‘AIA’ and a little cockerel on it). I stood in the shade and drew the Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires, deciding to sketch in pencil to be quick. I’ve meant to draw this church for years. I think there is an Institut Français around here, because this little quarter has a lot of French stuff, I remember my wife telling me about this when we first came over here, she came here while learning French (we met in France, see).

Which brings us to the next sketch (above) which is the Cafe De La Presse, on the corner of Grant and Bush, a French style cafe I’ve enjoyed for years. When I say enjoyed I mean I have eaten there probably two or three times in the past 20 years, but I don’t live locally so that is quite regular. Last time I had some lovely eggs benedict with smoked salmon, which I also ate that same morning somewhere else (and looking at this makes me think of that taste, big fan of the smoked salmon eggs benedict) (and yes, when I see the word eggs benedict I do think of Dirk Benedict, ‘Face’ from the A-Team who drove the best Corvette). More and more people in bright green with big silly hats, just what St. Patrick would have wanted (actually he did like a big silly hat, he ‘mitre’ worn some himself). I couldn’t draw this all there and then because the day was pressing on (get it), so I did all that brickwork and colouring in later on the train.

Speaking of the train, I did this sketch here on the Amtrak coming down to the city the day before, I guess I should show my work. I have to keep that pen moving.

While this one above was a very quick sketch I made at the Saloon in North Beach on Friday afternoon while watching this band play with my friends James and Lauren, before we went to Specs for some good chat. There’s no more Anchor Steam on tap, more’s the pity, but it’s a great city for a beer and a catch-up.

As I walked back I passed where a lot of the music and partying was happening, a block party just off Grant. It was a paid event behind security so I didn’t go in but I stood by the edge and did some people sketching. I was looking out for interesting football kits, there were some, plus a couple of rugby kits. Back in Irish north west London we used to have some fun St.Patrick’s Day parties as a kid, I grew up on the Irish music back in the 80s and most of what I learned on guitar was from a book of Irish folk songs we picked up in Willesden or Southport or somewhere. If my grown-up self didn’t feel so much of this was a bit cheesy I would probably have really enjoyed getting my Irish shirts on and getting all festive, my Mum would certainly have loved it. So I stood and sketched like a good urban sketcher, or maybe like a plain-clothed officer at a party in 1980s Cricklewood, and laughed that the band went right into ‘Come Out Ye Black And Tans’, which now makes me think of that episode of This Time with Alan Partridge. “Double-O Feckin’ Bollocks!”. I had the old Irish music of my youth in my head now, and felt like getting home and spending the next day singing the Wolfe Tones and Brendan Shine. Time to get back on the Amtrak bus and train to Davis, another good weekend in the city.

Newcastle finally win a trophy

April 15, 2025April 14, 2025Leave a comment

Football news now, and Newcastle United have won a trophy for the first time in my increasingly long lifetime. Yes it is hardly believable but it happened, they beat league-leaders Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final, and beat them well. I had to sketch it. I am not of course a Newcastle fan, having no connection to the Northeast myself, but one of my oldest friends Simon is a long-suffering Newcastle fan, Gateshead born but grew up in north-west London so shares my accent. We just assumed they would never win a trophy, after so many near misses. Look, I’m a Spurs fan and we get stick for the whole trophy thing, but our trophy cabinet is like Real Madrid in comparison. Spurs have won trophies, just not lately. When is the supposed cut off point? Did football start in 2009? We could easily say, Chelsea hah, they don’t win anything, they have no trophies, because I’m just counting from 2022, football started in 2022 after the pandemic, but that would be ridiculous. Football isn’t all about trophies, most teams don’t win them and people still support them. I’ve had a bloody QPR fan jeer at me because Spurs ‘don’t win trophies’ but I bloody well remember beating them in a cup final. So yeah I’m pleased for Newcastle. Of course, I’d have preferred a Newcastle v Spurs final, and for Spurs to win it, but we got twatted by Liverpool in the semi-final. We are having a pretty crap season, down in 15th or maybe it’s lower now, but still in the Europa League (just about) so our Aussie manager Big Ange Instead keeps his job for now. Probably be gone by Easter. The whole trophy thing is a bit laughable. I’d love to win one, but it’s not the be all and end all. West Ham won one recently, good for them, they sacked that manager too and are still crap. We were amazing between about 2015-2020, and that team should have won the league in 2017, but it wasn’t to be, it doesn’t stop that team being the stuff of legends in my mind. That Champions League run, woof. Newcastle in the mid-90s, also the stuff of legends. Not only did they have some of the best kits, but their fantastic manager Kevin Keegan (who I actually met in Charleroi in Belgium when he was England manager) had players playing the most entertaining of football, all passing and crossing and scoring fantastic goals in baggy shirts, your Ferdinand, Ginola, Asprilla, Andy Cole in the early days with the Asics kit, then Shearer later on. No defending whatsoever, except big Charleroi-local Philippe Albert booting balls away, I loved it. (Incidentally Charleroi is another coal town that plays in black and white stripes and wins absolutely nothing). They were everyone’s second team, well except for Sunderland fans. I remember when they played Spurs and our fans were singing “you’re just a small town in Scotland!” and the Geordies replied, “you’re just a small town in Arsenal!” Fair play. So well done Newcastle, you’ve got your trophy, your first domestic one since the 50s. Now we’ve got to get one too.

Chemistry, finally

April 14, 2025April 12, 2025Leave a comment

Here is my possibly final drawing of the now completed new wing of the Chemistry Building at UC Davis, drawn a month ago, when the bare tree still gave a good view. I’ve been sketching this for a long time now, since before the pandemic started and the old walkway between the two wings was still there and about to be demolished. I’ve been in at least one meeting inside already and it’s a lovely modern space. I like what they have done with the courtyard. I drew this after work when the sun was shining and it wasn’t too cold. In the foreground are those standing stones, a piece of public artwork whose name always eludes me (if only I would just look it up, but that requires effort) (ok fine, it’s Steve Gilman’s ‘Stone Poem’ from 1982, I looked it up; you can read more about the outdoor sculptures around UC Davis in this handy guide by the Manetti Shrem). So this concludes my drawings of this whole construction, on to the next one. I saw a new building with interesting curves being built out on La Rue near the sports grounds, problem is I never want to cycle over there, but it looks like a good piece of construction to observe so maybe I will sketch it.

You can see all the sketches I’ve done of this construction (and others of the Chemistry Building over the years) in my blog posts with the tag: petescully.com/tag/chemistry. Or in this Flickr album, without all the accompanying waffle.

the two cats

April 13, 2025April 12, 20251 Comment

Sometimes you have to draw the cats. Fortunately they do enough lying around in one place for long stretches of time that it makes it easier. I drew in my little Seawhite book, using pencil and watercolour, a good way to draw a cat or two. The top one is called Whiskers. He is a bit smaller than his brother Sawyer, who is below. Sawyer is cuddlier. Whiskers likes my desk chair and will often try to trick me off of it. He is lying in it in this sketch. Sawyer loves the couch, and also his perch looking out the front window, where he was in the sketch below, though here he was staring intensely towards the back door in case anything interesting might happen there. Overall they are good cats, they fight a little but mostly are partners in cat-crime, and make sure each other’s ears are clean. They sometimes hiss and growl at each other when they see this one particular cat come into our yard. I can’t pretend to understand cat politics. It’s probably like human politics, which I also can’t understand. Two boy cats who get on well enough, maybe have different views on the placement of the kibble bowl but otherwise share well, then another boy cat who acts all sweet on the outside seems to wind them both up until they fight each other, no I can’t see any parallels to human politics at all. Still it’s nice having cats around, they add a few more personalities into the house, and they keep the mice away. I’m just glad cats don’t have mobile phones, they’d spend all days watching videos of cats, and it would have the opposite effect that does on humans. They would have to watch videos of humans doing what humans do, yelling at each other on planes or whatever, to calm themselves down. Cats, what are they like.

march on campus

April 12, 2025Leave a comment

No, this isn’t a post about a march happening on campus. That’s what you might call a clickbait header, albeit a weak one where you’re not actually trying to bait a click. This is literally a post with some of the sketches I did in March (the month) on campus. Ok it is not all of them, but a few stragglers to fit into one post because I don’t feel like giving them their own posts. Also, it’s not just campus, there’s a sketch or two that are from downtown. So the title is not only clickbait but misleading. I’m getting the hang of this internet lark. Above is Young Hall, or part of it anyway, as seen from the MU across the street. I don’t like drawing bikes, but it’s a necessary exercise on this campus. Above, the Bike Barn and the Silo as seen from the shade of the Chemistry Building. Do i get bored of drawing the same things? Sometimes but mostly I don’t. I draw them from slightly different places, at different times of the year. You could argue I never draw the same thing twice, because either it is slightly different, or I am. Looking back to October 2006 this view was one of the first I ever drew on campus. I hated drawing bikes even then. 2006, what a long time ago now. I moved to America in 2005, twenty years ago; what a long time ago that feels, especially now. Twenty years. A lot has happened in twenty years, but I’m still drawing in sketchbooks.

It was raining a bit, but I had to sketch this fellow yelling outside the MU, preaching some nonsense about machines being sinful or whatever. It reminded me of the being at school. No I didn’t go to one of those schools, but me and my friends formed a band and did a ‘gospel’ version of one of my songs for a laugh, with completely off the cuff gospel style words like we would see people do outside the tube station with their tambourines. I still have the tape somewhere. I thought of my old mate Hooker singing, “Repent your sins he said to me! I did exactly that and now I got a double chin!” I think about that a lot. Fifteen years old, we would sometimes get on the tube with our travelcards and go down London, and encounter all sort of characters about the streets and stations that would make us laugh, and they would inevitably end up in our songs. There was one guy who would stand near Oxford Circus and yell at the top of this voice, “Did man make the Sun? No!!! Did man make make the Elephants? No!!!” over and over, this became a staple catchphrase for us at school. We’d be in the canteen, “Did man the Beans? No!!!” and so on. Life was simple at fifteen, uncomplicated. Funny to think back but within another fifteen years of then I had moved to America and started a new life, and there is longer between me moving here and now than was between me being a cheeky fifteen year old at school and flying across the Atlantic to live in California.

Ok, off campus we go. This is Third Street, downtown. Come on I’ve drawn all these before. I’m not that imaginative. As I say, I’m drawing it at a different time of our lives. This was March 13, 2025. Remember March 13, 2020? I bet you do. And look where we are now. I don’t want to think about where else we might be going, there’s enough sleepless nights. But that was five years ago now. Five years! That’s a long chunk of time. Personally I’m still not over the stupid ‘Imagine’ video with Gal Gadot and friends singing to us all over Zoom. You know what I learned recently that I didn’t know at the time in the pandemic, back in England they were calling it the ‘Panny-D”. When I say ‘they’ I don’t mean ‘everyone in England’ or even ‘most people’ but I heard people referring to it as the “Panny-D” and I became just a little bit less British. I asked my friend James about this, he was visiting California recently with his wife, and he said yes people were saying that, and also using the phrase “Hanny Sanny” to refer to Hand Sanitizer. “Hanny Sanny”. This is on the same level of speech as “Hollybobs”. I left England in 2005, and I swear the longer I’m away the more my own version of English is going to sound like something linguists might discover people speaking on Roanoke Island, some throwback to Elizabethan times. I’ll go home and talk and to them I may as well be saying “Marry, nuncle, prithee ’tis a privy” or whatever gobbledegook. I used to study evolving English, and I take the view of embracing language change, but “Panny-D” and “Hanny-Sanny”? Load of old pony if you ask me.

Finally, this is the Davis Tower, I know it’s not much of a tower but that is what it is called. It’s down by the train station, I assumed it was like an air traffic control tower but for trains, but that is probably just my imagination, which as we have established is not very good these days. It was a Friday morning, pissing down with rain (I have to add ‘with rain’ in case you might think it was pissing down with wee), and I was taking a vacation day to visit my aforementioned friend James and his wife Lauren who were in San Francisco to celebrate their tenth anniversary. They were married there ten years ago that week, I was the only witness, and wow has time flown by. Ten years, blink, that’s happened. This was also the week that saw the tenth anniversary of Terry Pratchett’s death, my beloved Pratchett whose books I devoured as a teenager and twenty-something. I have recently been listening to the new Discworld audiobooks, stories I have not read in decades now, and right now I am re-reading ‘Night Watch’ for the first time in over 20 years, and loving it. I love an audiobook, because I can listen while I am sketching, but when I finally sit and actually read a book I take my time (I’m a notoriously slow reader) (well not ‘notorious’, I’m not like a villain or anything who tortures people by reading stories really slowly) (I just write them out slowly in blog form haha) I can do all the voices in my head, or aloud if I’m on my own, and really dive into the world. Anyway, I stood out of the pouring rain and drew this while waiting for my train, and this was the first page of a new sketchbook. There’s always a first page to a new sketchbook.

the market and all its people

April 10, 20251 Comment

This has been quite the week for the markets. Now I’m not an economist, but in the words of someone I used to work with many years ago, ‘Jesus, Lads’. Speaking of markets, I do like to sketch a market. People amble along slowly, making them easier to draw, sometimes standing about to chat. So on this one Saturday at the Davis Farmers Market I got a lot of quick people sketching done, as you can see below. It’s good to loosen up and draw like that. The world is made up of people, a diverse mix of backgrounds and thoughts and ideas and dreams, but we all need to eat. I sat at a picnic table and drew the scene above of the Farmers Market, the trees of Central Park Davis showing signs of spring while still waning out of winter. These types of scene sometimes overwhelm me but you just keep them simple. Trees on top, triangles next, heads and scribbled bodies, then all the stuff a feet level like those concrete walls, with a few vertical tree trunks dividing it all up. As I sketched, a couple of very young kids came and sat at the table and exclaimed to their mother, “Maman! Il fait de la peinture!” I guessed they were French and said “Salut!” and showed them all my book. Their mother was actually American, and told me they used to live in France, and were going to be moving back over there, to Lyon. I told them to look out for the great puppet theatres there, and also if they want to get into urban sketching, the huge Urban Sketchers France national ‘Rencontre’ will be held in Lyon this June. I won’t be going to it, though I did go to the ones in Strasbourg and in Lille. I’d love to sketch Lyon though. The last time I was there was in 2002 with my wife before she was my wife! Great food there, and of course puppets.

Here are all the people sketches I did on that morning/early afternoon, using a brown Pitt brush pen and watercolours. People passing by, people stopping to chat with each other, some mixes and matches (this person’s head, the next person’s body), even a dog and some musicians. You know what is coming up, Picnic Day. It’s this weekend. Perfect opportunity to get out and people sketch. Then I remember I don’t really like Picnic Day much, it’s too busy and overwhelming; I might stay away this year. I went last year, it was hot and there was a lot of slow walking about. I don’t mind the market though. I’m trying to think, what other markets have I sketched, other than the Davis Farmers Market? I sketched Portobello Market last year and the year before. I’ve sketched Borough Market, of course. I’ve sketched the San Francisco Ferry Building Market a few times. I sketched the Market at Place Richelme in Aix last summer, on a rainy morning. I sketched the big covered market La Boqueria in Barcelona. And yes, I’ve even sketched Wall Street. I prefer a proper street market. I have a wish-list of other markets I’d like to sketch. Places where people gather.