This old building is on 3rd Street in Davis, near the train tracks. I believe it is part of the Ace Hardware complex of buildings, and I’ve always wanted to sketch it because I’m drawn to the way the shadows hit the light, the corrugated metal, the general weather-worn feel, and also it’s an easy thing to draw. As much as I long for those big urban scenes, actually what I really like are views like this, where everything is a bit self-contained. As much of Davis seems to be slowly changing, upgrading, especially along 3rd Street (more on that in the next post), these older buildings are looking a little lost in the passage of time. I sketched in the shade on a sunny November weekend while leaning on an electric box. Those Fall colours are finally starting to come to life here in Davis.
islamic center of davis
Another Davis building along Russell, a bit further down from the International Center. This is the Islamic Center of Davis, a strikingly light blue structure just opposite some campus dorms. This building, opened in 2008, replaced one that was demolished in 2006. I can talk about those long-ago dates now and yeah, I was living in Davis then. That’s what ten years in this town does, it makes you a local, you get to see all the changes. That said, I don’t remember the building here before. I don’t come up Russell that often, but I have sketched this center once before, back in early 2010.
enter the international center
This is the International Center of UC Davis, under construction. I cycle by it each day, and have done since it was an empty lot. It’s at the edge of campus by Russell. Here is a website that shows what it will look like. We have a lot of international students on campus (I should know, I deal with a lot of their applications), but also scholars and indeed staff (I should know, I am one). This whole building is costing almost $30 million and will open by Fall 2016. I hope they keep that big pink sign of the man playing tennis.
I kept giggling at that sign about cross traffic not stopping. Presumably this means that polite traffic would stop?
There’s a lot of new building going on across campus right now. We need it to, with the student population increasing, especially international students. We are a growing university…
back to the bike barn
The UC Davis Bike Barn, all fresh and updated. I know, you can’t tell the difference, it looks like it has in every single one of my previous Bike Barn sketches, but look closely. There is a new window above the door, and the grey area is now painted red. I barely recognized it! Anyway, the Bike Barn might be the building I have sketched the most since moving to Davis ten years ago. You can see many of the rest by following this tag: https://petescully.com/tag/bikebarn/. I’m not going to show you all of the previous ones because I did that in my last Bike Barn post, but here are a couple for comparison…
pea green soup
While walking in the UC Davis Arboretum earlier this week, I was greeted with an unbelievable sight. The entire creek and Lake Spafford was a bright, grassy green. It wasn’t the water itself, rather the green stuff floating on the surface. It wasn’t a sickly green, rather a very healthy looking green. It looked like the fairway of a golf course. So I did a quick sketch, which is below. You can see it in the sketch above as well, though in patches the water is visible and reflected the sky. Those scribbly dark areas are shadows.
Just a little green. Or a lot of green. Anyway, the arboretum is a lovely place right now, with leaves turning autumnal colours and the change in the weather (pushing 90 a week ago, pushing 60/70 now). Ok, so back to the top sketch, this is a scene that I’ve sketched many times over the years. I watched this view change over the course of a few years, once per year, until it settled upon the current look, when I got bored and stopped. You will remember, I have been in Davis ten years now, and it’s not a big place, things will get sketched multiple times. This is King Hall, with Mrak Hall in the background. This used to be a view of Mrak alone. Here are the sketches; I really do feel like a sketch historian now…
2012:
2011:
2010:
2009:
2008:
2007:
Coming next: a new sketch of the Bike Barn, which I have sketched about two million times…
tercero
These are the Tercero Residence Halls at UC Davis. They are colourful, and still pretty new. In the background, the other UC Davis water tower (no not that one, the other one). I stood here one lunchtime and sketched in the shade, the weather still being really warm at this late-October time of year (it suddenly turned cooler this week, at last). Now as you know I like to showcase the changes in Davis, and this is no different, so below is a sketch from the spring of 2012 of these halls’ predecessor, already closed and about to be destroyed forever. Today, it is much prettier.
a davis decade
Ten years ago to the day, we moved to Davis. I remember, because it was the Fifth of November. We’re still here.
It was more than a month after we packed up and left London for California, staying with family in Santa Rosa until my wife found a job at UC Davis. We found an apartment in south Davis, and became Davis people. I started sketching Davis at a Sketchcrawl in December 2005 and while I took until the middle of 2006 to really get into sketching Davis, I haven’t really stopped since. Here are a few, sorted by year…
A decade is a long time. Seen a lot of changes, and a lot of stay-the-sames. The personal highlight of course was becoming a father in 2008, and my artistic highlight was I think my solo show at the Pence Gallery in 2011. So, I shall be popping open the Champagne and saying HOORAY DAVIS! (Actually, no, I’ll be having a cup of tea and playing Disney Infinity, but you know, you get the idea)
such a fine time, such a happy time
Not been posting as much this past week, but I have been sketching, and I will post a lot more in the coming week. The AYSO soccer season came to an end last weekend, I was coaching a very skilled team of under-8s, and while it was a lot of work, I’m really going to miss it! And so, back to posting my lunchtime sketches. This one is about a week and a half old, sketched downtown on 2nd Street past G, near the station. This little row of yellow buildings is very distinct, and is also the location of one bar/restaurant that I have not sketched inside, Our House. I’ve only been in there once, for a pre-dinner beer on a night out with other couples. I always thought that Our House would be a better located on R Street, somewhere in one of the middle blocks. The red door you can see here is to a piercing and tattoo place called Urban Body. I’ve sketched this row before from a different angle, years ago, and with its unusual angles it’s a but tricky but quite interesting.
turning the wheels
It was time for another bar sketch. After a Saturday of AYSO soccer, pirates versus knights battles, Disney Infinity super-hero smash-downs and the occasional lightsabre duel, I headed out in the evening to do some drawing, read some comics and have a few beers. I love being a grown-up. Since I have a new book out (available right now!) in which I talk extensively about drawing bars in low light, I felt I should add to the sketchbook a little more, so I popped into the City Hall Tavern, which I last sketched two years ago, to again attempt their bar area with the bicycle wheels on the ceiling. Ice Hockey was on the TV (they just call it ‘Hockey’ here; similarly they say ‘cubes’ instead of ‘ice cubes’, ‘cream’ instead of ‘ice cream’, and ‘stares’ instead of ‘icy stares’ whenever I make this joke). They get so aggressive and fighty in Ice Hockey. For a game in which you are essentially just skating around trying to hit a small disc that won’t stop moving, players seem to get unusually angry, angrier than in most sports. Perhaps it’s because they dress head to toe in armour and carry huge sticks, it brings out the medieval warrior in people. Maybe the sport needs to change its image a little, and rename itself ‘Nice Hockey’. Ok, from now on I am calling it ‘Nice Hockey’ in the hope that it catches on. And those stares I get when I do will be called ‘Nice Stares’. So, back to the sketch. I sat on the opposite side of the bar to when I last sketched this bar, for a slightly different angle. I follow City Hall Tavern on Twitter, and I notice that they are using one of my sketches of their bar as their header image (I think I said ok to that), but they have removed whatever was on the screen and replaced it with an actual shot from a real basketball game. Hmm, no, not really a fan of that. Replace it with a shot of Harry Kane scoring for Tottenham, maybe, or of Jose Mourinho huffing as Chelsea lose again, perhaps. Anyway, I tried a couple of different beers, one was a Gose Wheat beer (tasted like Strongbow), the other was a Sudwerk Aggie Cruiser, which was nice too. Lots of people were coming in drinking cocktails as part of some local bar crawl event that was happening. By the time I was done with my sketch, all the City Hall bar patrons were standing and chatting and dancing, and so I popped down to De Vere’s for a comfy seat and one more wheat beer to read a couple of comics (“the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” if you’re interested, and it’s great) before walking home.
Here are my previous City Hall Tavern sketches (inside only; I’ve sketched the outside building since way before it was a bar):
July 2012
October 2013
January 2012
fit for a queen
This used to be the Dairy Queen. Long-term readers (hello by the way!) may remember that I drew this before, back in its DQ glory days. As you can see, it looks a little different now. A couple of years ago, the DQ finally closed its doors and sold its last chicken strip, but rather than lose the building entirely for something new, glassy and nondescript, an architecture firm called Indigo took over the space and did something creative with that very distinctive wavy roof, creating a modern but unintrusive structure. They have described it as a “Bioregional Building”, which sounds like they’re taking a word, remodeling the word, keeping the word’s roof and making a new, modern eco-friendly word (in other words yes, I don’t know what “bioregional” means). Indigo (Hammond and Playle) explain their process for rebuilding the old Dairy Queen into a modern energy-efficient and “climate-adapted”office space on their website. As well as this award-winning structure they have also created an adjoining space which, “clad in corrugated metal alludes to the agricultural vernacular of California’s Central Valley”. It all does look very nice. Not however as strikingly red as its predecessor, but surely a lot healthier. Here are my previous sketches of the Dairy Queen, the first from 2011, the second from 2013. I actually sold both of these drawings, the first was part of my 2011 solo exhibition at the Pence Gallery. I learned that the Dairy Queen in Davis was very popular, despite it never appearing to be that busy. There was something all-American about Dairy Queen (I mean ‘is’, because it still exists elsewhere). When I was asked years ago to sketch something ‘American’ for an old university friend in the UK who had an American husband who missed the USA, I chose to sketch the Dairy Queen. The one in Davis was beloved as a place to take the grandkids for a treat (people who have grandkids have told me), and my wife used to stop off here for an ice-cream on the way to picking up my son from pre-school. Alas, Davis Dairy Queen is no more, but we still have its roof.
I did sketch the reconstruction process of course, back in July last year. I think it all turned out rather well. But I never did try their cake…
petescully 