Ok, it is suddenly October, and it’s time to start catching up I suppose! I am still scanning my sketches from summer – I just got to the end of Poznań, moving on to Berlin now – while still also sketching loads since my summer trip. How far behind am I in posting my sketches to the sketchblog? Well I’m coming back to the rest of the sketches from May, there is that. These are from the areas that are not quite downtown. Above, a sketch of a house with a tree in front of it in Old North Davis, on the 600 block, which is described in John Lofland’s book as having “romantic character” (he was quoting an Enterprise article from 1980). It is a lovely tree lined block. I was sketching in old north Davis yesterday actually, another old house from Lofland’s book with a tree in front of it, surprise, and I’m looking forward to all the trees turning to Fall colours now, especially along B Street. This end of May though, with summer just around the corner, full of promise, but also knowing that the annual hot weather is about to start punishing us. A little bit earlier in May I sketched another of those frat houses you get around campus. I have never been inside a frat house, I imagine they are all like 1980s college movies. I don’t know, fraternities and sororities belong to a different world than the one I inhabit, I suppose I like to keep that professional distance, just drawing the buildings and maintaining the mystery. We don’t do that in British universities, the whole frat thing, but even if they did it would again have been outside of my world. Not because I’m a working class lad from Burnt Oak who wouldn’t go for any of that nonsense or because I have a deep distrust for old-boys’ clubs and secret societies and all that silly ‘hazing’ (which by the way I’m glad to hear is well discouraged these days). No it’s because I would not be able to resist ‘mistakenly’ calling them ‘fart’ houses at any opportunity, to the point that no farternity would ever let me be a member if I keep calling them fart houses. Also making funny names out of the fart house names, like ‘Theta Xi’ being the club for cab drivers, or ‘Rho Rho Rho’ being for boat racers, or ‘Fee Phi Fo Fum’ being the club for giants. ‘Eta Pi’ for bakers, ‘Pi Eta’ for renaissance sculptors, etc and so on. I would not take it seriously, and no pun is too low. I am like the Dwarves of Moria when it comes to looking for puns, I will delve so low that I would awaken the Balrog, though I would probably call him a ball rag and tell him he can’t pass (“balrog? more like ‘ball hog’, right? Cos you don’t pass, yeh, you just hog the ball oh never mind, fly you fools”). Twenty years now I’ve been here chuckling at frat houses, but I’m still sketching them.

And finally, a tree in the Arboretum that has fallen over. I don’t know when it fell over but it’s not getting up again any time soon. It will not get rebooted. There is a pun in there somewhere, but you really have to look for it. ‘Boot’. In America they call the ‘boot’ of a car a ‘trunk’, and as you know trees have trunks, so it makes sense if you think about it. Ok fine. I liked the shape it made like the arch of a bridge, it would make a nice arch for people to have wedding photos under if they were so inclined, if they were members of Robin Hood’s Merry Men or something. On the right there you can see the legs of the UC Davis Water Tower, and on the left is a little bit of the EPS Building. I stood across the stream to sketch this, stood in the shade as is what I recommend, and wondered about the state of the world, and the country, while looking at a fallen tree. Anyway.

So I will be getting back to scanning my summer sketches, and wondering if I will ever have time to write all the stories that go with them. I will limit the puns and silly jokes if I can, that should save me some time, and try to actually remember stuff that happened, I did write a diary while I was in Poland which was a helpful way to keep track of the symposium, so it’s not just all in the sketchbook. I only really end up writing it here as a way of remembering stuff anyway. June and July in Davis, August in London, Poland, Berlin and back to London, September in Davis, San Francisco and the big Oasis show in Pasadena, and back to Davis. In the meantime as well as the usual busy start to the academic year I am also teaching (well, leading not really teaching) a first year students’ group getting them out urban sketching this quarter, which so far has been great, today we sketched Eggheads, and next week we will sketch trees on the Quad, just getting them out observing Davis. And then there’s the rebooted Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawls which will start again on Saturday October 18 in Central Park (FB event details here) and I am planning to keep going monthly with hopefully a renewed energy after my summer of sketching. I have done more sketching this year than any other year; even up to mid-August I already overtook my sketching totals from 2024. It’s almost as if urban sketching is a huge distraction from the real world events and a way for me relax in the face of constant stresses. Anyway I will be caught up soon, and then get back to more regular posting. Writing also de-stresses me more than it distresses me, though I usually need some quiet to do it. I’m also running again, and training (off and on) for the 10k in November. Oh bugger, that’s next month.

Also, both my pieces in the Pence’s Art Auction sold, both a few weeks before the auction closed, a nice surprise. Hopefully they went to good homes. Ok they are just drawings, not puppies. I went to the event and had a glass of wine and some nibbles, and left to get a milkshake to celebrate, because last week it was exactly 20 years since we moved to California, 20 years since I left London and started a new life out here. Next month it will be 20 years since I moved to Davis. That is a lot of drawing, my old pedigree chum, a lot of fire hydrants, a lot of houses with trees in front of them. And there’s more to come!