A few more from June 2025, more buildings in Davis with a tree in front, and some without. Above is the restaurant Pizzas and Pints, which I have never eaten (or drank) at, but I have drawn it a few times, including while it was being built. It’s on the corner of B and 3rd opposite the Bicycling Hall of Fame (which I still haven’t visited, except to use their toilets; as previously discussed, I can’t draw circles, so I shy away from drawing bikes. I like trees though. I quite like pizzas, and pints, but obviously not enough. As I drew one of the people who worked there came over the street and asked if I was drawing the building. I think they wanted me to come in and show them when I was done, but I didn’t. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was tired; it was Flag Day and I could feel myself flagging. So I went for a milkshake and rode home. It was Father’s Day the next day, I was tired, in fact I was Dad to the world.    Enough Dad jokes. A few days earlier I did a lunchtime sketch a bit further down B Street, this is part of the Aggie Inn hotel. Triangle, tree, view straight across the road, looks like one of my sketches. If I sound repetitive and predictable, it’s because I very much am. Who’d want to be innovative and exciting? Not me. I’m not really a brand. Maybe I should consider being a brand. I don’t wear a distinctive hat, or have a catchy web-name.  I wear football shirts a lot. I hold my pen in a funny way, that could be my brand. I don’t want to be ‘The Davis Sketcher’. I’ve never liked when people call themselves “The [Insert place name here] Sketcher” when there are definitely other sketchers who sketch that place too. Maybe call yourself “A [Insert place name here] Sketcher”. Some people probably earn the ‘The‘, sure, but it’s pretty arrogant, so no I’d never call myself ‘The Davis Sketcher’. Saying it like that makes it sound like ‘The Boston Strangler’ or ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’. Maybe ‘The Fire Hydrant Sketcher’, or ‘The House With a Tree In Front Of It Sketcher’. Imagine that book. After about thirty houses with a tree in front of it you’d be thinking, I can’t wait for the fire hydrants book, when is that coming out. Anyway hold onto your hats because here is a building without a tree in front of it. There are a couple of bushes but that isn’t the same thing. This is just at the edge of campus on 1st Street, down the road from the Aggie Inn actually, part of a child development center I think. I liked how the shadow made an interesting shape underneath the awning, and the telegraph pole in the background. This was an after-work sketch I think, judging by the length of the shadows. It’s the shadows that interested me most here, and those are the bits that change the quickest, so I drew those in before much of the other details. I stood next to a bin while sketching this, I remember it was a bit smelly, but I was able to rest my paint set on it. If I ever write a ‘How-To’ guide at the back of my Book of Sketches I’ll point out that if you stand next to a bin you can rest your paints on it, but you might have to hold your nose. Top tips.

Here is a different view downtown, to prove I can mix it up a bit. I stood in a little bit of shade on 3rd St and drew Crepeville across the street. I like Crepeville, they do good food, though I don’t eat here often. I do eat out in Davis, I make it seem like I don’t, I just tend to always go to the same places a lot, I don’t mind being repetitive and predictable. This would have been a Monday, the first Monday of Summer. The First Monday of Summer sounds like a terrible album name. Summers are full of hope and dread. As a kid they were great, no school for six weeks, no homework or playground politics, maybe going away somewhere warm like the seaside, or maybe somewhere cold like the seaside. Staying up all night reading fantasy gamebooks, mostly for the illustrations. Playing outside with the other kids in the street, until parents or big siblings shouted us in for dinner. Eventually you’d have to go back to school and wear the uniform and eventually you get bigger and leave school and do something else with your summers, which for me was travel to other countries as soon as I had any money in my pocket, and eventually I got older, got married, moved to California, got a job and drew everything in Davis in my spare time for twenty years. That about sums it up. Twenty years in America, as of last month, twenty years in Davis as of next month. I feel like I should commemorate it in some way, maybe write a book full of drawings of houses with a tree in front, or a bush, or maybe even a lamp-post.

And finally, Community Church, which sounds like a card from Monopoly but isn’t. I’ve drawn this one a few times too, it’s a good one to come back to from time to time. Another place I’ve never been inside, actually. I’m not a religious person but I do love a bit of church architecture (when I say that I sound like one of those football blokes who says, “I’m not an Arsenal fan, but I bloody loved Dennis Bergkamp, he had the deftest touch I’ve ever seen”, which sounds like “I’m not a Catholic but I bloody loved Pope John Paul II, the had the deftest wave I’ve ever seen”). I really like sketching cathedrals, especially old ones in Europe, I’ve always wanted to do a tour of them, with a big sketchbook and I don’t know, an artist fellowship to pay for all the hotels and a publishing deal. ‘Gothic Cathedrals With a Tree Outside Them’. I was commissioned once to draw a cathedral, and they came back and said it’s great but can we lose the fire hydrant in front, to which I said absolutely not, I’m The Fire Hydrant Sketcher, ain’t I. That would be an Ecumenical Matter. I did actually have a grouping of framed prints of my cathedral sketches going up the stairs at one point, I am getting quite a collection now.