pacific heights

October 24, 20252 Comments

Here are a couple more from the end of May, we went to San Francisco for an overnighter, staying in Pacific Heights where I’d not really been before. I sketched the Vogue theatre on Sacramento Street before we went out for a nice dinner at Garibaldi’s. We were up here to visit the Disney Family Museum in the Presidio, where we went to a really interesting exhibit on Mary Blair, the renowened Disney illustrator who created a lot of the classic Disney artwork from the 40s, 50s and 60s, including the It’s a Small World designs for the Disneyland park. Afterwards we went down the Presidio over to the new park they built on the bluffs overlooking the Bay, some amazing views up there. I did a quick sketch but it was very sunny, I don’t like sketching in the sun. The next day, we visited the De Young Museum to see the Paul McCartney photography exhibit, ‘The Eye of the Storm’, full of his very personal photos of the early years of the Beatles on tour. That was absolutely incredible, one of the best things I have seen in ages. I got a large print photo of John Lennon with his acoustic guitar which I have framed on my wall, and a few other postcard size ones I will also put up on the wall. We enjoyed that exhibit a lot, and then had a longer look around the De Young itself, I’d never been there before. I like art museums, though ones like the De Young can be expensive to visit so it’s not something we’d do often. We did visit the SF MoMA earlier this year, first time in ages. They have the best gift shop. I do wish we’d had time to visit one of the big ones in New York like the Met, but another time perhaps.

mid October already

October 23, 2025October 23, 2025Leave a comment

It’s mid-October (well, nearly late October), and I have finally finished scanning and editing all the sketches from the summer and the start of Fall, and there were a lot. more than in any other year. In fact I would go so far as to say that it’s possible, no it’s absolutely certain, I draw too much. I can’t actually stop. It’s not like I’m not totally busy everywhere else in life because I am, sketching is the outlet, what I do when I try to make sense of the world. This year has been a year, every day it’s ten things after another. I’ve been reading more as well this year, probably in an attempt to get away from the phone or the iPad, not that it’s helped much. One thing I’ve not been doing as much is writing, I suppose I have to actually coordinate my thoughts when I do that. I used to keep a diary years ago but stopped. I kept a journal while I was travelling this summer for a couple of weeks, just so I remember everything at the end of the day, maybe it helped. Anyway, the weight of scanning all those sketchbooks is away with, and I will post them all here bit by bit, my summer travels to London, Poland, Berlin, etc and so on. Fall has started busily with meetings, work, trips to look at colleges, and a fun new thing I’m doing on campus which is a weekly sketching group for first year students, going to a different part of campus. I have also finally restarted monthly sketchcrawls in Davis (spurred on by this new thing) and am hoping that will be continuing (the next one is on Nov 15). I am also preparing for (with some nervousness) the 10k Turkey Trot run in November. For now though, a nice relaxing view of Community Park, sketched on a Friday afternoon after cycling back home from work, having been out sick with a cold for most of the week. The trees this week are now starting to turn autumnal colours, but there is still a lot of green. California looks beautiful at this time of year. I wonder if next year I will draw less? Maybe finally consider working on that book I’ve been thinking about. Next month will be twenty years since moving to Davis. I’m turning another big number next year. Anyway, here is the park near where I live. I’m just waiting for the sun to come up so I can go and have a run around here before work.

maybe someday I’ll make you understand

October 6, 20253 Comments

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!

San Francisco panorama from Nob Hill

September 9, 2025September 9, 20252 Comments

Hello everyone, I am very behind in posting because I was in Europe for a whole month (London, Poland and Berlin) and have an extremely massive amount of sketches to post, and I am still nowhere near caught up with posting the pre-vacation sketches – I have enough to last me forever, if you can keep up with them all. I draw a lot, that is for sure. It’ll never say on my gravestone “Here lies Pete, who didn’t draw enough”. Yet I always feel I need to draw more. Even since I got back little more than a week ago, I have been busy, running a 5k race (beating my time from last year) and then taking a weekend trip to San Francisco to watch Supergrass and then fly to Los Angeles to watch Oasis! I have hundreds of sketches to scan. In the meantime however I should finally post again here on my old-school sketchblog, and to get going again, here is a big drawing I did this summer (based on sketches I made back in February while looking out of the window of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco’s Nob Hill). It’s big, it’s detailed, it’s of a great city view, and I loved this one. I worked on it while my family were away in Disneyland and I was home alone for the weekend. Telegraph Hill there on the right, Russian Hill there on the left, Alcatraz (long may it remain a tourist attraction and National Historic Landmark), and Powell Street sweeping down to the bay. I liked the buildings on the left in the foreground going uphill like books lined up on the stairs.

Anyway I’m showing this one now because as of this week it is on display and for sale at the Pence Gallery’s annual Art Auction! I have two pieces in there this year, the San Francisco panorama and a drawing of the Primrose Hill Bookshop that I made last year (I did visit that bookshop again on my recent trip, bought a nice book by David Gentleman there, signed copy). You can find out about the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction on their website, pencegallery.org/events/art-auction.

You can also see the listings themselves at the Auction Catalog. My listings (and you can bid on them if you like!) are available to see here.

Anyway, I’d better start scanning the mountain of summer sketches, because Fall is about to begin…

Davis World Cup 2025

August 3, 2025August 3, 2025Leave a comment

It’s not May in Davis without the annual youth soccer bonanza, the Davis World Cup. I am on the committee for this tournament (I design the logos, medals, pins, t-shirts and I update the website; all the hard work is done by everyone else). The committee has had many of the same members for a number of years now so we’re a pretty efficient team; all our offspring have either aged out or no longer play regular AYSO to even take part in the tournament themselves; I last coached at the tournament in 2018 (with the Spurs!), and my own teenager last played the Davis World Cup in 2019 (for the Dawgs, they were a nice team with a great coach). Above, I sketched all the flags displayed outside the AYSO headquarters in Community Park. This is what I love about the Davis World Cup. Each team that applies (and they come from all over northern California, plus we always get a few from Nevada) gets assigned a country, and they get the flag of that country and are encouraged to offer their opponents little gifts or such associated with that country. So for example if you are Spain, you give a little keyring that says ‘Spain on it, or if you are Uzbekistan, you give a little keyring that says ‘Uzbekistan’ on it, and so on. Actually teams get way more thoughtful and creative than that, giving out candies or trinkets, when my team Spurs played we were assigned as Serbia, so I made little keyrings with ‘Serbia’ on them (along with information about the country and the Serbian alphabet, showing you how to write your name in Serbian). Fun stuff. I coached another AYSO Select team in 2020 (the Titans; I still wear the t-shirt as it was one of my best logos) and I was really hoping (as a committee member) to maybe be able to pick a country for our team, probably Belgium to give out chocolates, probably Ireland due to the family provenance of both coaches, but I really wanted Italy because I was hoping to have the team sing the anthem before each game, they have the best anthem. However, we never got that far because 2020 turned into the 2020 we know and can’t forget, so the tournament was cancelled that year (and I recycled the retro Top of the Pops style logo for the 2022 event). I enjoy making the logo, but I spend an inordinate amount of time faffing about with the design during the year before. I went this year for a more playful design again, using a similar kid-like graffiti style lettering that I’ve used for some of our old teams (like the ‘Duh’, the first AYSO Select team my son played on, coming 4th in the 2017 tournament at U10 level). I went with a ‘splat’ background full of flags, after my friend spilled some milk at a cafe in Nob Hill and I really liked the shape it made on the table. I’ll have that, I thought. So the logo below was born. It was a hit with the t-shirt vendor. I got very excited when I first drew the little cartoon water tower on my iPad, and abandoned the cartoon cow theme I was originally going with. Maybe I’ll resurrect that for next year, if I don’t go with a classic retro World Cup style again.

Some of the cartoon cows came back for the Keeper Wars logo though, as you can see in the sticker design below. This went through a lot of versions too, one of them looking like an explosion in hyperspace. One of the balls says “Footy Footy Footy” which is a reference to the Adam and Joe “Footy Song” from the 90s (watch that here). Keeper Wars is a fun tournament, though I didn’t make it out to watch it this year. While my wife did a lot of running around from field to field, I was at home a lot as the guy in the chair, to be on hand for any last-second website updates (which I had to do during that sketch at the top, but I only live about three minutes away by bike).

And below, here are some of the medals, pins, stickers, coins and the committee t-shirt. The medal came out particularly well this year, it’s my favourite one yet. If in doubt, always add some stars, that’s my design rule. Splats don’t always work.

Here is how the t-shirt logo looked, as sold by the on-site vendor. So cool seeing so many people lining up to get them. It was cool to see someone running in one of my older shirts from 2022 the other week. What’s even cooler is when I see people wearing an AYSO or DWC shirt I have designed and I show them the original concept drawings on my iPad.

And here are pins from the previous World Cups I have designed. I love this year’s one, I kept the pin just black and white.

Another May in Davis

July 24, 2025Leave a comment

Time to start catching up on posting my sketches, so here’s a few more from the month of the May. In the grand story of this blog, which effectively is my diary of living in Davis for all to see, it’s good to have things in order as much as possible, though the dates may not always follow one another directly. I’m not trying to tell a story out of sequence, this isn’t Pulp Fiction, though I do use a lot of Pulp Fiction references in my daily life, especially to my wife who gets them, as opposed to my teenager who definitely doesn’t. You have to be from the 90s. The 90s is My favourite version of Pulp Fiction though is the one I saw on TV in America many years ago, which had some additional scenes not in the original release, and also hilariously replaced as much of the swearing as possible, because American TV doesn’t like a swear word. Not simply muting the odd f or sh but literally replacing the words with something else. I remember they changed the odd “mf” to “my friend” or even “mama sucker” (!), but the best bit was that famous scene in the diner at the end, where Jules is yelling at Tim Roth “Tell that funky babe to chill! Chill that funky babe out! Say Babe Be Cool!” Speaking of diners, here’s one that we would swear by. This is the Black Bear Diner on the corner of B and 2nd. I drew this one lunchtime while walking back to campus, and I was taken by that sky. I stood under a tree for a bit of shade. We would go there for breakfast after doing the Turkey Trot or other runs. We’d take our son here when he was little for pancakes. I like their breakfasts (though I don’t eat bacon, ‘cos I don’t dig on swine. I wouldn’t eat the filthy mama sucker). I love their cinnamon roll french toast, covered in lashings of warm maple syrup, enough calories to last you through the winter.

This is next to Cloud Forest Cafe, with the Mustard Seed in the background. I was drawing this at lunchtime, drawn in by all that red, contrasted against all the green leaves, which you just have to imagine as being green here. In fact letting yourself imagine all the green rather than paint it in makes the red stand out a lot more. Red and green are not great next to each other (especially for those with colour vision deficiency). That said, the main reason I didn’t paint the rest is that I ran out of lunchtime and had to get back to the office. One man who had been sitting outside the cafe watching me did say to me that I should draw the building across the street, which I had actually never sketched (but have done so since). This is a more interesting view though. The red phone box is away to my right just off the page. I’ve drawn that a few times.

This one at the corner of E and 4th I did colour in. I sketched after work, it was a hot afternoon but times are stressful (work, politics, the endless news and noise cycle) and I really needed to sketch. I always need to sketch but these days more than ever. In fact I have done a lot more sketching in 2025 than in 2024. On the chart I keep I’m up to about where I was in mid-October, and it’s only mid-July, and I have a full sketching trip still planned. Almost like I need to draw to keep my mind safe. As I sketched, a man walked past wearing one of those hats, you know. He also wore a bum-bag (they call them fanny-packs here but I can’t call them that because it means something else where I’m from) made out of an American flag, so clearly going for a certain look. I don’t remember what the t-shirt said, probably something to ‘own the libs’ or whatever. No, I wasn’t gonna sketch him. I focused on listening to my audiobook instead and tried to catch the different greens on the trees. I was using a new sketchbook by this point of the month, a Hahnemuhle watercolour book, 200 gsm, I had never used one before. I like it, it’s slightly slower on the pen but not by much (I notice it when I am trying to do lots of scribbles, seems to feel like more of an effort than in the Moleskine), and it takes the watercolour really well like the Moleskine does, and more comfortable than painting in the Seawhites. That store on the corner, “Why Not Boba” is one of many boba shops that apparently the world needs so many of these days. I remember it used be where ‘Mathnasium’ was, I can’t remember what they did there but used to imagine it was a place to do mental gymnastics, but half the world are experts in mental gymnastics these days. I have never had boba tea, it’s probably nice but I won’t try new things. I’d probably make some poor Boba Fett joke that has been done a million times and walk out ashamed.

This scene is just a block away, corner of 3rd and E, looking up towards Chase Bank which is right next to Why Not Boba. I kept thinking of jokes about Bank Bobas, “hands up this is a bobbery”, but none of them were very good so kept them in my head. I decided not to colour this in, the decision was based on the fact I couldn’t be bothered. Or boba’d. The bank sign has the ‘E’ obscured, so it just says Chas. This reminded me of Chas’n’Dave. That made me think, Chas’n’Davis. I could come up with Cockney Chas’n’Davis style songs about Davis. I started with a new version of the classic ‘Rabbit’, but with ‘Boba’. “Boba-boba-boba-boba-boba-boba-boba-boba…” “You got more Boba than Nugget…” but none of it really made sense. I tried the Margate song. “Daaaaahn to Davis, you can keep yer Farmers Market, I tell that that I’d rather have a pint of boba tea down Davis in the rain.” That works slightly better, the old Courage Best words coming in, but it doesn’t rain much in Davis. I tried one of the Spurs songs. “Ossie’s goin’ to Picnic Day, His Doxie’s in the Derby,” yeah that doesn’t work. So I gave up on the whole Chas’n’Davis idea, it was rubbish. Can’t mix Cockney culture with Davis culture. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner. That’ll do, more Davis sketches to be posted soon. I can’t stop drawing.

crème de la crème

July 17, 2025Leave a comment

I like the little alleys that connect E Street to D Street, between 3rd and 2nd, there are little shops and cafes and narrow passages to explore. It’s a charming and shaded quarter and behind the Mustard Seed restaurant is this little store called Crème de la Crème. The lady who runs the store came out and was talking to me, she liked the sketch and I think she had heard of me and seen my other work, and she lent me a chair to sit on while I sketched. I sat for a while but ended up having to stand again, as I was losing some of my shade, and sitting changes my perspective very slightly. I appreciated the gesture though. Sometimes when I am sketching on the street I do wish someone would come along with a chair. That happened once in the Castro in San Francisco, someone just brought one out from their house for me, which was nice. I remember once in Whitechapel in London these teenage lads saw me sketching, it was a really hot day, and they decided to get me a drink from the shop, a cold bottle of Coke. I was very touched by the gesture and even drank some of it, but I don’t like Coke (I prefer Pepsi Max). I never forgot that though, it’s funny how little acts of kindness do stick with you. Anyway, I have sketched this store before, but it was a very long time ago, back in 2011 in fact. I think it was on the day of a Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl where I was focusing on the interstitial spaces of downtown, those areas between the streets, which are always fun to explore. That sketch is below. There is a lot more foliage around it now, the little plant pot with ‘Bonjour’ on it is still there, as are the little table and chairs. I don’t see the sign that says “Live a Good Life” any more, but I like to think that in between 2011 and 2025 I have lived a good life, so I guess I have done what it said. 2011 feels like such a long time ago. I was thinking about the early years in Davis, well before 2011, the other night and about how much I have changed and also how much I have not, because we all grow as years go by but we also shrink, in ways we might not notice. I’ve become shyer in recent years, more likely to hide away than I used to, even from people I know. I haven’t organized a sketchcrawl since last Fall, though I am planning to start organizing sketching events again this Fall. Areas like this are good places to sketch and explore. I might go back and draw from a different angle.

seven/four

July 11, 2025July 11, 2025Leave a comment

I may be up to about May with my late posting of sketches now but here’s another one from April, back on good old April the 7th, which as you all know is Independence Day in the America. The 7th of April, when everyone gets out their fireworks to scare the cats and dogs, they have hot dogs and crisps on the barbecue, and watch the foot ball, Tom Cruise’s birthday. I like celebrating Independence Day over here in the US because as you know, we don’t have one in Britain. We are kinda responsible for everyone else having one. When people here ask if we have anything like April the 7th I say, well our Independence Day was the day the Romans left. (I say ‘we’, my family’s all Irish, we grew up singing the Wolfe Tones.) I don’t really like fireworks, and I don’t eat hot dogs, and can take or leave those big corn on the cobs, but it’s fun seeing all the adverts for deals on big trucks. I used to like it though every year going up to Oregon to visit my wife’s grandma, whose birthday was the day before, and all the family would be up there, it was nice. I’d go off on the bike to Jacksonville to sketch the old buildings, then we’d have beer and barbecue outside, all the kids running around, good times. As with the rest of America we always celebrate April the 7th much later, usually in early July around the 4th, it’s traditional, probably because the weather is better and kids are out of school. You have to wait much later for the fireworks though because it has to be dark, unlike on our Fireworks Night in England, the 5th of November, when it’s dark at around 4:30 and fireworks go on for hours. My dad liked to set off some fireworks in the back yard, everyone did. I liked a sparkler, but was really careful not to pick it up by the wrong side after it went out, I never scarred my fingers but my mind was scarred by all those public service adverts about that. I remember coming through the park and some other kids shooting rockets at us from milk bottles, me and my friend running away past the tennis courts to escape. Fun times growing up in Watling Park. I’ll not forget my first November 5th in America (which over here is not until May the 11th), as it was the day we moved to Davis, and someone on TV said that November 5th was like “England’s version of July 4th”, and so I told people that yes that’s the day the Romans left. “Look to your own defence,” the Emperor Honorius told the Britons, adding “et memor esto, memor esto, quintum Novembris!”, before buggering off to fight the Visigoths. Leaving us to deal with those bloody Angles, Saxons and Jutes, comin’ over here, inventing our language. (I say ‘us’, my ancestors were all in Hibernia, probably) Anyway, this year we sat in front of the TV a lot, watching the new Captain America movie where he has a fight with the Red Hulk for some reason, and then we watched the brilliant Hamilton, from which I have learned so much American history. After visiting Washington DC and seeing all the old monuments, decorated with the very lofty ideals the nation was founded upon, and seeing the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, seeing the MLK monument and the big Lincoln on his chair, seeing the Reflecting Pond where all those civil rights marches happened, and the Washington Monument (that I know so well from that Spider-Man movie), and the poignant war memorials especially the Vietnam Memorial, and despite everything going on right now it gave me a definite feeling of pride for the country I’ve chosen and what it’s supposed to stand for, even if for some reason they celebrate 7/4 in July and not in April. I sketched the living room as we watched Hamilton (my walls aren’t blue but it seemed like a good colour to repaint them in this sketch), and our Easter basket is still there because you know it was April, and my telecaster is there for when I’m asked to play the National Anthem. And then we went to watch the fireworks from the Green Belt with all the other local families. You can hear the echo against all the buildings in north Davis, and then after the very large display ending the whole show, the car alarms all start going off. It’s not Independence Day until the car alarms go off.

celebrate davis 2025

July 10, 2025July 8, 2025Leave a comment

Every year the city holds an event called ‘Celebrate Davis’, in which loads of local businesses and organizations put up stalls at Community Park, food and drink vendors, musical performances, and then a firework show which scares our cats (we live nearby). This year they didn’t have the fireworks, much to the pleasure of the neighbourhood pets, instead having a big drone show. There was a little train for the kids to ride on, plus an inflatable forest. There was also an exhibit of classic cars by a local group of auto enthusiasts, and that’s what I was going over to sketch. It was really hot out, and I was feeling tired, but I like to sketch old cars, even though they are difficult, it’s a good challenge. I drew this blue Chevrolet ZL1, and was chatting to the owner for a bit. The car folk were a nice crowd, and very willing to share a story about their cars with people taking a look. I also drew the one below, a Chevy Camaro SS, but just quickly in pencil so it’s just the outlines, I decided not to ink and paint it.

I also drew the old red fire truck that was out in the main field. I grabbed a beer at the little Sudwerk stand (the guy selling me my beer recognized my accent as British and said he was a soccer fan (a fan of “the PreMEER League” as they say here) and I asked who. He said with a little embarrassment “Manchester United”, even after the terrible season they had been having, and I said not to worry, I am a Spurs fan and we have been even worse, but we’ll beat United in the Europa League Final (and we did). I stood and sketched the fire truck, going quickly in pencil. I like drawing things like this because it’s not just about the sketching, or the recording of an event, or even that I like fire trucks (though my teenager has long since outgrown the toddler-era delight of them, and I used to draw them back in those days for their amusement), but it’s like figuring out a puzzle, working on a bit of perspective, this goes there, that goes there, it all comes together. I sketched fast, my beer in its plastic cup was at my feet and likely to either be knocked down by the kids running around next to me, or invaded by ants who love a beer. (Do ants love a beer? I know that fruit flies like a banana but I’ll have to check on ants. I know they like the cat food, and if I leave the Nutella unguarded even with its lid on our kitchen becomes like Ant Glastonbury).

There was live music too, and while waiting for my wife to come over and join me for the drone show I sketched the band that was playing, they were very good. I think they were called ‘Immediate Spank’ and the best sketches I could get were from a distance and very very sketchy, as you see below. I was quite tired by this point, and focused on shapes and colours, the atmosphere. It’s quite fun drawing like that, but it’s also pretty much all the detail I could see. Interesting band name though. The sort of name I would forget and call something else, Immersible Tank or Immaculate Wank or something. Coming up with a band name is hard. The only band I’ve been in was at school, and we were called Gonads. That was my idea. Actually I was briefly part of another band at college which rehearsed a few times but never played, they called themselves the Lemon Sharks, but I didn’t really get on with them, I wasn’t a very good guitarist (they weren’t exactly Top of the Pops themselves) and my mates were not impressed by them, so that doesn’t count. Gonads on the other hand was chaotic fun, and we delighted in getting booed off stage every year at the big school variety show. I wish I could go back in time and sketch us, but I’d probably die of embarrassment.

And then we watched the Drone show, which was a first for Davis I think (did they have it last year? I don’t remember). We saw the drones rise from the field like an army of robots in a sci-fi film. We are very much in the future now, the idea of something like this did not exist when I first moved to America. They formed into the logo of the City of Davis, and then slowly formed into a series of other Davis related shapes – bikes, double-decker buses, a large deformed frog, it was fun guessing what was what – plus some logos of sponsoring businesses. It was fun, I enjoyed it. The fireworks are not completely going away, we still had them on July 4 (my cats hid under the couch), but this was a creative new addition to the event. After this, we took the short walk home. It’s nice living close to these events.

views of the campus (with flowers)

July 8, 2025July 7, 20254 Comments

A couple of months ago I completed a commission meant as a retirement gift for a senior administrator on the UC Davis campus, and I drew the view above of Mrak Hall, seen from the UC Davis Arboretum, with more California Poppies (and other colourful flowers) in the foreground. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I walked over there in the morning before starting work to map it out, and also get some photos of the building in good light with a nice reflection in Lake Spafford, and then drew it all properly at home. (I might even be in the drawing myself). I hope they liked it, I enjoyed making it. I’m not doing a lot of commissions at the moment due to being generally work busy, but I like ones like this. Besides I had just done a special retirement gift for a distinguished professor in our department, which was actually two drawings in one. The first one (see below) was another view of the Arboretum, looking over at Mrak from a different angle. I had drawn that one before and used my old photos and drawing as a reference, because I wanted to include the tree next to the water that was sadly removed a couple of years ago (and is missing from the drawing above). Of course, I wanted to frame it with colourful flowers, of which there are many in the Arboretum.

And for the second half of the piece, I drew a panorama of our very own building, the Mathematical Sciences Building, also bordered by flowers which aren’t actually there. The drawing might have springtime blooms, but I used photos and a sketch I had done in winter, because I didn;t want the building to be blocked by all the green foliage on that big tree. The big tree next to it fell in the big storms a few years ago, so I am very grateful for the continued shade of this tree, but it’s nice in winter when you can see through it. I’ve spent a lot of my life in these locations now. I’ve been in Davis nearly 20 years, an achievement in itself. Maybe I will have a party. Ok I’m not doing that, but maybe I will have a commemorative sketchcrawl in the Fall. In fact it was in December 2005 that I went on my first sketchcrawl in Davis, and I have been drawing it ever since.