This was sketched at last night’s Davis Civic Arts Commission Meeting, at the Council Chambers in Davis City Hall. I was invited by a colleague, Carrie, who is on the Commission to attend the January meeting, just to watch. Of course, watching for me means sketching, so I drew in my ‘people’ moleskine. It was interesting to hear discussions on the future direction of the art scene in Davis. Me, I just like to draw.
let’s draw davis!
It’s time for another Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl! January has been nice so far, weather-wise, lots of mild sunny days with bare trees, so great sketching weather. This time we’ll be starting at the Farmer’s Market, and finishing up at the Delta of Venus. It’s also the day of the 34th Worldwide Sketchcrawl, in which sketchers all over the planet get out and draw their cities and towns.
START: 10:30am, Davis Farmer’s Market (C & 3rd)
FINISH: 3:00pm, Delta of Venus Cafe (B St)
As always, this is free and open to anyone who likes to draw. All you need is something to draw with and something to draw on!
Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/301621166540875/
Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/letsdrawdavis/
Hope to see you there!
with a different tune to play
Decided on a looser, quicker sketch today, of the interior of the Silo at lunchtime, with a very thin pilot hi-tec C in my moleskine. First day of the new quarter, and UC Davis was a lot busier once more. I sure am!
round are way the birds sing for yer
I didn’t have to go far to sketch this. This is apartment complex where I live in Davis, though not this block. They just recently got a makeover from being white and grey, and now some blocks are green, some blue. Mine’s blue. I sat out on the central green to sketch this, and listened to a history podcast on my iPod. I’ve lived in this complex for, oh blimey, over six years now, in two different (but eerily similar) apartments. We do want to move. Our upstairs neighbour gets up very early (like 4 in the morning) and her floorboards are very, very creeky, and her shower very noisy. One of the other adjoining neighbours appears to turn on their shower (also very noisy) about thirty times a night, on, then off, then on, then off, every night. A previous resident upstairs used to walk around in ski boots, it seemed, while one former neighbour opposite used to vacuum at one o clock in the morning every night with their front door open, because well that wouldn’t disturb anyone. My favourite former neighbour was a guy who lived downstairs from our old place, really nice guy, he used to sing at the top of his voice all the time, even walking down the street, and he was a good singer too, I was honestly sad when he left. Not all neighbourhood sounds are so pleasant. Car alarms – for some reason people still have super sensitive car alarms and think they somehow don’t annoy people. As a society we no longer associate car alarms with actual car thieves; we have reached the stage where people hear alarms and think, I really hope someone is stealing that car because then the annoying alarm will go somewhere else. One alarm last year kept going off day and night, untended by its owners, keeping us and most of the other residents awake, to the point where we had to report it to the police. We were surprised when a nice officer showed up, and he investigated the errant alarm. He was quite the detective too, because he shortly came back to tell us he had identified the culprit: a peach tree. I walked out to the parking lot with him, and we did an experiment: I shook the tree, a peach fell, and bam – the alarm went off. Case solved. I tried to think of a witty joke that could work in peaches and breaches of the peace, but came up with nothing (couldn’t even get an impeachment joke in there). Shame it wasn’t an orange tree, I thought later, because it could have gone to a peel. Anyway, the cop, who was very friendly, went back to the station looking pleased to have solved this riddle, and the apartment managers took the possibly unnecessary step of cutting the offending tree down (you know, it wasn’t the tree that had its alarm switched on). Anyway, such is life in an otherwise quiet, neighbourhood apartment complex. Now, I think I’ll get my son some drums for his birthday…
Incidentally, the peach tree would have been in this picture, had it not been cut down, just to the right of the carport on the left. Good job; it may have spoiled the view.
be my gust
The wind was up today. It was like those swirling late autumn days from about a month ago. But most leaves have already been swirled, and now the trees are nice and bare and it’s perfect for sketching the buildings of Davis, because finally you can, you know, see the buggers. The last time I drew Old City Hall on F Street, there was too much foliage to contend with, and the shadows were just blobby masses, but now we get striking dramatic shadows, long and far-reaching even in the middle of the day. I love January. I’m always super busy (and super stressed), but at the same time super creative. I drew this at around 2pm today, after a big messy chicken burger at Froggy’s (Swiss and Shroomer, much recommended).
Perfectly bright weather – but I underestimated the wind a little. Well, I didn’t really but I was still getting blown about all over the place. I sat on the sidewalk beside my big Alphabet Moon bag (I had just been there to buy a wooden railway bridge; so sad that it’s closing down, but all of Davis was in there today buying out the stock). This whole thing took about an hour and a half, in my large Canson watercolour pad, most ot the paint being done on site (the rest – the sky, the greenery – being completed over a beer at Woodstock’s around the corner while waiting for the bus, out of the wind).
they call me the roller
Beautiful day out today. I mean, freezing this morning, but very sunny by lunchtime, although a bit nippy. I just had to get out and sketch. Despite being ridiculously busy in January, I always enjoy sketching in this month. We often have mild, bright Januarys here. But I didn’t draw a street scene or campus view with the sun shining through bare, leafless trees, because I saw this, a little mini steamroller, sat on Shields Avenue on the UC Davis campus. What a beauty! I’ll draw sunny skies tomorrow. Today was all about steamrollers.
shine on alphabet moon…
Very sad news this first week of the year, our favourite local toystore Alphabet Moon has announced it will be closing this month. It’s come as a great “oh no!” to the people of Davis, parents and kids and others alike. The day after hearing the news, I just had to get over there at lunchtime and sketch the place for posterity. I must say I am gutted by this news. I take my son there most weekends, and they have toys out to play with such as the great wooden railway table. When I told him, he was none too pleased. It’s always sad to see local shops go out of business, especially toystores. Toystores are where you can find those things you never see elsewhere, you never knew you wanted. Buying toys online is not the same – for one thing it’s rarely cheaper, and two you can’t see the thing, pick it up, maybe play with it. Now everyone will have to go to Target or WalMart, and while they have a lot of toys they only carry the things that all the other big box stores carry, nothing unique. As Art Brut once sang, “Don’t buy your albums from the supermarket, they only sell records that have charted.” Toys R Us? Please, that place is depressing. They have a Thomas the Tank Engine set laid out as well, but you can’t play with it, all the trains are glued down. Small independent toystores are always better, and once they are gone they’re hard to bring back. But, as with everything, we’re all to blame. As more of us buy online, and we all do nowadays, more stores go down, both big and small, and that ultimately leaves us with emptier downtowns, and much less choice. Either way, the young kids of Davis will have one less fun place to go on the weekends.
first sketch of the year
Happy New Year! My first sketch of 2012; it was a very mild and sunny day, and after taking a short power nap (yes, a power nap, after which I ate lunch, which is for wimps) I cycled over the freeway overpass to sketch this little fruit store on Mace Boulevard, Ikeda’s Orchard Fruits. This is the very edge of town, the easternmost part of Davis. Well, there is some more south of the freeway that stretches out further but it’s the easternmost point of Davis north of I-80. I guess.
Anyway, here’s to more drawing in 2012…
that was twenty eleven
And so 2011 draws to a close.
I was afraid that the world would be ending tonight, because my calendar has no more days in it after December 31st, but I guess I’ll just get a new calendar tomorrow (see, Mayans?). This has been a very busy year, and it still seems so weird to be talking about twenty-eleven, which used to be just a year so far into the future, and now it’s over. I’m fully expecting hoverboards sometime in the next few years.
Anyway as some sort of retrospective, here’s a run-down of what I did art-wise this year:
January: ArtAbout at Armadillo. I exhibited some sketchbooks and prints at Armadillo Music in downtown Davisas part of the 2nd Friday Art About. This was a great evening, with music by the popular country musician Rita Hosking (who lives in Davis). I also got written about in Davis Life magazine by Walking Bob Schultz.
April: Artery show ‘8×8 Small Is Great’. I contributed one piece for this group exhibition at local art co-op The Artery, ‘Miscellaneous Details’, and it sold! I went by to do some sketching and met more great Davis art folks.
May: ‘The Revengers’, background art. I drew some pictures for my actor/director friend Simon Nader in London who was staging a play called The Revengers. The ‘Avengers’ themed drawings were part of the background of the set.
July: Urban Sketching Symposium: in July I flew to Lisbon to meet up with nearly 200 other urban sketchers from across the globe (all continents represented!) to take part in the 2nd International Urban Sketching Symposium. Lisbon’s an incredible city, and I learnt so much from being around all the other urban sketchers whose work I have admired over the years. And there were lots of fire hydrants!
August: Pence Gallery Art Auction. I contributed a drawing of the UC Davis Arboretum for the 2011 Art Auction (and it sold!).
August: Dr. Johnson’s House cards were produced (on sale at Dr. Johnson’s House museum in London). The kind folk at the Johnson house sent me a pack of the cards, they look great!
November: Davis Library display. I exhibited sketchbooks and drawings in the display cabinet at the Davis Public Library for the month of November. That was fun!
November: ArtAbout at the Avid Reader. I displayed some sketchbooks and prints at the Avid Reader bookstore in downtown Davis for the 2nd Friday Art About, on 11/11/11.
December: Grace Cathedral Christmas brochure. I illustrated the cover for Grace Cathedral (San Francisco)’s Christmas Concert brochure and program, and was invited to come and see one of the shows.
December: Pete Scully, Urban Sketches upstairs at the Pence Gallery. Saved the best one for last, my first solo exhibition at a proper gallery, and it went really well! The artist reception on Dec 9th was especially fun. Many thanks to everybody who came to see my work, and especially to those who bought my drawings.
Sketchcrawls / Let’s Draw Davis: We held ten ‘Let’s Draw Davis’ sketchcrawls this year, in every month except March (rained off) and December (too tired!). January’s was the most popular, with thirty people coming out to sketch. We were also featured on Aggie TV. In October our downtown sketchcrawl was featured on the front of the California Aggie. We’ll be continuing them monthly in 2012, starting with the next worldwide sketchcrawl on January 21st – details to come soon! I also went to San Francisco in April for the Worldwide Sketchcrawl, sketching the Mission District, and of course took part in the Worldwide Sketchcrawl in Lisbon in July.
Sketchbooks finished in 2011: These are the sketchbooks I completed this year. I still have several more on the go…
Travels: I went to a few places in 2011. Las Vegas in February, Oregon in July, London in July, Lisbon in July, Monterey in August, and San Francisco several times.
What did I learn in 2011? That I can find time to do anything, but that I can’t do everything. I have lots of plans and ideas! This has been a very busy year.
Art goals for 2012? That would be telling. What is expected for 2012? First of all the new Urban Sketchers book, ‘The Art of Urban Sketching’ will be published on February 1st so be sure to get your copy (I’m on pages 30, 46 and 281). As for the rest, well let’s see what the year brings!
Happy New Year 2012, may it be prosperous and happy for all.
absolutely J street
Some more sketching from yesterday’s afternoon in Sacramento. Above is St.Paul’s church on J Street, in Midtown. I had thought about sketching the cathedral downtown, but decided in the end to do something a little smaller and homelier. I sat opposite, outside the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, and listened to the most recent Art Brut album (confirming my view that it’s really not as good as their previous ones). I sketched for just under an hour before moving on up J Street.
I ended up sketching this building above, which is home to the French Cuff Consignment boutique. They have one of these in Davis (everything in Sacramento has a double in Davis, it seems; I keep expecting to bump into the mirror-version of me, crouched over a moleskine) but it’s not in as cool-looking a building as this. A little sun peeked through the clouds giving some faint shadows so I drew those in.
Drawn on the second last day of 2011. If I don’t get around to posting my 2011 retrospective tonight, then Happy New Year everybody!
petescully 