to rest my eyes in shades of green

March 20, 2024March 20, 2024Leave a comment

I sketched this in my small Fabriano sketchbook, I really like using that one, especially with pencil. I have a larger one I might start using at some point. This is that bridge in the Arboretum that I’ve drawn a few times before, but not for a few years. I was heading downtown at lunchtime and it was a day of intermittent sunshine and clouds, just as I like it, but I wanted to stop and draw. I can’t get enough drawing done can I. I like this sort of sketch as I am just working quickly and scribbling, which makes it fun. March came in after a long long February and is already sweeping by fast, It will be April before we know it. And then another Summer, and another Fall, and another year over, until everything stops working. Look at the world while you can. I am still getting used to these new progressive glasses I got, which for the first week or two made me feel super dizzy, but that’s worn off a bit now. The ground is still a bit blurry but I am noticing that less, I suppose. My sketchbook looks clearer when looking down at it in poor light, such as indoors, while giving me a clearer far sight view. But it’s strange, and makes me feel tired. Everything makes me feel a bit more tired nowadays. I hoped that I’d be running a lot more, but I’ve found it hard to motivate myself there. I’ve been sketching a lot. I’ve been creating a lot of snippets of music, a few chords and a tune taped into the Music Memos app on my phone, the app my now-old phone keeps telling me will go away and I should transfer over to Voice Memos, but I like to keep my guitar chords separate from my random voice notes, plus in Music Memos it can generate a bass line or a drum beat behind it. I have a lot of tunes in my head now though, floating around waiting for me to finish them off, but I prefer a sketchbook of unfinished music than an actual thing. It’s not technically good, in any way, I’m not doing like big complicated riffs, more just a few feelings set inside a few chord changes. It’s how I used to do things when I had my little tape recorder, just recording whatever came out, sometimes it might be interesting, a lot of time just random nothing, and all for my ears only.

look who’s in Sactown

March 19, 20242 Comments

IMG_6432(2)

Here is some exciting news! The current edition of Sactown magazine (March/April 2024) features a whole load of my sketches from Sacramento and Davis, going back from 2007 up to 2023. The feature is called “Where the Sidewalk Starts” and to see it all, grab a copy from your local newsagent (if you live round here). Here’s the Sactown magazine’s website: https://www.sactownmag.com/. (My sketches aren’t on the site).

The funny thing though, as I was coming back from a short trip to Southern California last Tuesday (Los Angeles and Riverside, I’ll post all my drawings once I’ve scanned them, there are a LOT) I was walking through Sacramento airport when I saw a big screen outside a newsagent, featuring pages from Sactown magazine, including many of those with my drawings on! That was a nice surprise. There was everyone, walking past basically a big version of my sketchbook. Anyway, if you should pick up the magazine, it’s a really good read.

chemistry latest, almost nearly there

March 7, 2024March 7, 2024Leave a comment

The latest chapter in the construction of the new extension on the UC Davis Chemistry Building, it’s nearly ready. I was going to hold off on sketching it until it was all done, but the light was nice as the sun was going down after work this week, with a properly active sky, I stood up on the ledge at Roessler Hall for a more elevated view. I hope I can get a look around inside once it’s done.

armadillo music

March 4, 2024Leave a comment

Another two-page spread, though I didn’t reach the edge of the right-hand page. I went downtown right after work that day and the light was so nice that I decided to do a sketch, and decided to draw Armadillo Music. You can’t really see the golden pre-sunset light because I didn’t colour in the sky or the trees or any of the shading but I did colour in the record store, and the reflection of old city hall in the window opposite. That said, I wasn’t that happy with how the coloured-in record store turned out, and my initial idea to just colour in a few elements would have been the better choice in this case, but you live and learn. I got a cold drink from Newsbeat and stood drawing as much as I could, but stopped short of drawing more parked cars, I’m so sick of drawing those, they all look exactly the same anyway. The record store by the way is Armadillo Music, one of those proper part-of-the-cultural-fabric spots in Davis. I don’t buy records any more, or even CDs, but the existence of good record shops is vastly more important culturally to any society than yet another chain coffee shop. I don’t go out as much these days, but I really should go down there on evenings when they have live music or other events, they serve beer and get good numbers in. The band of one of my work colleagues has played there a couple of times, but I always seem to be busy. It’s on my wish-list to go and sketch an event there though.

Armadillo’s old location was a couple of doors down F Street, and that’s where I first discovered it (back when I was still buying music), and in fact it’s where my first ever art show in Davis was held back in early 2011 (during the monthly ArtAbout), before even my solo show at the Pence. They were super nice in there, and really supportive of local artists and I’ll always appreciate the boost that show gave to my confidence. It was an exhibit of prints of my drawings, with the real sketchbooks displayed on the night, and there was also a live show by local musician Rita Hosking, who had just been touring in Britain and other places, she was pretty well-known, so there was a good crowd in the small store that evening. I had quite a few come to see me though, as well as a bunch of students from our grad program coming out to show their support. Here is a picture from that night:

Here’s the sketch I did of Rita Hosking and her band (it was January 2011 not 2010, I am useless with getting the year right when it’s January):

And here is a sketch I did of Armadillo back in 2013, the old location (opening a new sketchbook, so I decided to to put the big “DAVIS, CA” lettering there for some reason):

And finally, another one in 2017 of the current location, the only time I’ve drawn it:

positively tired on fourth street

March 3, 20242 Comments

More sketching downtown on the last weekend in February. This was done on 4th Street, and I guess I’ve drawn this panorama before several years ago, just from a little bit further down. This was done a few hours after I had run the Davis Stampede 5k, my third time doing that, so my legs felt a little bit cream-crackered after standing for a while with my sketchbook. I’m still well interested in all these winter trees, the shapes and the textures. My run went pretty well, considering I haven’t really had enough time to train since the food-and-drink-tastic Christmas break, with work being so busy and things just being a bit stressful, but I did alright and really enjoyed the run, though it was a few minutes slower than my last 5k. In fact since last weekend I’ve done another three 5k runs, and while I’ve still not cut out the junk food yet, I’m feeling like I can keep going to try and do the (gulp) 7k Lucky Run later this month. I’ve never run that distance before so I’m building myself up to it, and then I will work on getting to the 10k distance. Easy does it, I’m not going for marathons, but I am enjoying it while I can do it. Anyway, after getting as far as I could with this, most of the penwork except all those scribbles for the background trees and some of the colouring, I headed off to a local brewpub to rest those legs with a beer (the beer wasn’t very good though). I have quite a few panoramas in this sketchbook already, though I’m hoping to finish it this month and finally start landscape sketchbook #50.

the very hart of campus

March 2, 2024Leave a comment

Last weekend we held another meet-up of local sketchers as part of the monthly ‘Let’s Draw Davis’ sketchcrawls, this time in the very heart of the UC Davis campus, meeting up outside the immense Shields Library. I had worried it would be a pretty wet day, but in the end we had lovely sunshine. It was a short sketchcrawl at just two hours, enough for a couple of decent drawings for me; above, Hart Hall, one of my favourite buildings to draw at UC Davis, especially on a bright day like last Saturday. I was terrorised by a squirrel while drawing this (in so much as a squirrel can be a terrorist, it might be a bit of a reach to say that coming up to me occasionally saying “yeah come on then” in squirrel language amounts to terrorism, or just normal squirrel behaviour whenever someone sits next to their favourite tree). We share this campus with the squirrels, and as I know too well we are all competing for our little bit of space. I sympathized with the squirrel to be honest.

We had quite a turnout, a lot of students, local sketchers, sketchers from out of town. I drew my second in front of Shields Library, you can see one of Robert Arneson’s Eggheads there. Some sketchers are dotted around. It was a nicely bustling kind of Saturday afternoon on campus, not too busy but not quiet either. At the end we all gathered in a circle outside and did a show-and-tell of our sketches, some really nice diverse styles on show. I was however criticized in front of the whole group by one sketcher from out of town who complained to me that I’d chosen such an “inconvenient” location (“the middle of nowhere” they said) for a sketchcrawl, because it was far from the parking lot they’d parked at. It’s the heart of the campus, the main library, very much “the middle of somewhere”. I was a bit stunned. Oh well. Anyway the next Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl will be on March 23rd in the afternoon, this one will be downtown at Mishka’s cafe on 2nd street, easy enough to find. Though I will have just done the Lucky Run 7k race that morning, so I will probably be a little bit shattered, but still sketching.

a familiar sight, slightly different height

February 29, 2024February 29, 2024Leave a comment

Today is a Leap Day, isn’t it. It’s always exciting to have an extra day in February, but this February has felt longer than most other months so that extra day feels like a day too far. It’s a long winter quarter. I’m looking forward to my upcoming trip to L.A. to draw dinosaurs and not think about this campus for a couple of days. Leap Days are funny though. We all know someone who has a birthday on a Leap Day, there was a girl in my class as a kid who had that birthday every four years, to much amusement. I always thought it would be funny if instead of putting the extra day in February, it could be moved around a bit, so next Leap Year we would have a March 32nd, for example, or maybe for once we could start the New Year on the 0th of January. Imagine having that as your birthday. I always wondered too, what do dogs do? One of our years is supposedly worth seven dog’s years, so when do they calculate their birthdays, and do they get annoyed when people forget? Maybe that’s why they are always chasing postmen, they are looking for birthday cards. Such lofty thoughts go through our heads when looking out above the campus from the top of the stairwell at the Mathematical Sciences Building, my place of work since this very week in 2006. That was not a Leap Year, though the previous year was a personal Leap Year for me, when I made the Leap across the Atlantic and moved to America. I’ve been away from London a long time now. Anyway, as I finished work one day last week I saw that the sky was looking pretty dramatic, and the light was getting golden as the sun set, so I went up the stairwell a bit and painted the sky and the famous water tower, before drawing all the bits underneath. There’s the Earth and Physical Sciences Building on the right, and the rear of King Hall dead ahead just beyond the low Facilities Building. It’s a nice view, looking east.

my train of thought

February 24, 2024Leave a comment

Last weekend I took an afternoon at the California State Railroad Museum. There was a big rainstorm coming in and I thought that’s a good place to spend a rainy day. It ended up not raining until the evening, but I still got to draw a lot of trains so that was nice. I also got the day before some new glasses, these ‘progressive’ lenses, that are better for up-close at the bottom (ie, when looking down at my sketchbook) and better for distance up to, however they are also blurry looking down at the floor or in my peripheral vision. It takes getting used to and it’s making me a bit dizzy. Anyway I wanted to try out drawing in a lower light environment like this. It was frustrating at first, and I tried to switch back to my other glasses, but my up-close was not as good in low light. anyway I soldiered on, I had engines to draw. The one above I drew in the brown fountain pen ink, it’s one of the first big locomotive engines you see in the museum. Seeing these remind me of the plastic train set toys I had as a kid, that looked nothing like any train I’d seen in England, but I imagined them barreling across the vast American West. They can be a bit complicated to draw, stretching the observation skills a bit, but my strain was really in the new glasses as much as anything. (Also I’ve never liked drawing wheels).

I walked about looking at it all, the history of the West before me. I’m really into trains and always dream of making a long train journey, like the California Zephyr (which stops in Davis as well as Sacramento) heading out towards Chicago. I read Murder on the Orient Express recently and became obsessed with those really high-end trains as well, looking at videos online of the super expensive train routes to exotic places. Silly. I do love a train journey though. We used to come to this museum quite a lot when my son was very young, a toddler, and look around before making a beeline for the section with all the toy trains, that was the best bit. We got rid of his old wooden train tracks and trains and bridges a long time ago, I used to love setting those up myself. Those were fun moments. He was really into Thomas the Tank Engine, as were most kids weren’t they (and it used to bug me when people over here would say “Thomas Train” like seriously, do you even watch it?). Ringo didn’t do the voices over here, and the Fat Controller was called “Sir Topham Hat” in America, which is probably a bit nicer. For the panorama sketch above, I sat on a bench in the main atrium and drew the scene as best I could, I was already getting quite tired. There were families with their young kids excited about the big engines, and on their way to play with all the toy trains, that was us a long time ago.

Th train engine I drew was this one, the Virginia and Truckee No. 18 “The Dayton”. I am not much of a trainspotter and cannot remember all the models and information. It’s an impressive engine this though. When I was a kid there was this trope that kids wanted to be a train driver (by the 1980s I think that was the sort of thing your grandparents would say), but I always wanted to be a train passenger, it’s a more reachable ambition. There was also (and still is maybe) the image of the trainspotter in their anorak, people still use the word ‘anorak’ to describe anyone sufficiently geeky to be uncool, with their thermos and their thick glasses. I mean, I’ve always been in the anorak camp myself, I wander about with a sketchbook drawing whatever, and I love to draw things like trains because they represent the human spirit of discovery and ingenuity, curiosity and story. Imagine if we had gone straight from the world of wagons to freeways and not had that great idea of train travel in between? The world is better for the train.

“you carry on ’cause it’s all you know”

February 22, 2024February 23, 20242 Comments

Here are a few downtown sketches from last week. Above is Pinkadot, a clothes shop I’ve never been in (not really my style), next door to Baskin Robbins, which I have been in once or twice. I really like their milkshakes. One thing about milkshakes, they do make a stressful day/week/month feel that little bit better. It’s still only February! 2024 already feels like it’s been going on for about six months, and March, one of the busiest months, isn’t even here yet. I am going on a short trip to Los Angeles in March though, which should be nice, I’m going to a conference for work so it’s business and professional development, but as well all know that will also mean a lot of sketching. Hey, do you see that butterfly on the wall next to Pinkadot? That’s you that is. Sorry, old TV catchphrase alert. It did make me think of the song by The Jam, ‘The Butterfly Collector’. I think I’m like a butterfly collector, in my own little dream world, collecting sketches of places. I love that song.

This is Mishka’s Cafe, next to the Varsity. I don’t come here very often (not really a coffee drinker) but I do like their smoothies. Mishka’s is a Davis mainstay, but when I first moved here, the cafe was a block down the street. It was at that cafe that I first joined a ‘sketchcrawl’ back in December 2005, a long long time ago. I drew this when it was threatening to rain. We have had a lot of rain lately, those atmospheric rivers, but we need it. Those drought years were not fun either. This building is located where the old tank house used to be, years ago. I have spent well over a third of my life in Davis, in fact I’ve spent almost two thirds of my adult life in Davis, in fact you could say I’ve spent all of my actual grown-up life in Davis, but even that is up for debate. Time just keeps moving on, and that’s that. “And you started looking much older…” I’ve got that song in my head now. The Jam do fill me with joy, but also sadness, they remind me of my uncle Billy who passed away a few years ago, who used to play me his Jam records in his bedroom when I was a kid. As I write, on this day five years ago I was in England for his wedding, the last time I saw him. I think of him a lot.

And finally, the Varsity Theatre, that classic Davis landmark I have drawn loads of times. I don’t go inside very often, in fact the last film I saw in there was Jojo Rabbit. I don’t draw it from this angle much, it’s dramatic feels slightly overwhelming to me for some reason. Oh, everything feels overwhelming these days, drawing in a sketchbook is much less overwhelming than the rest of the world. I’ve been playing my guitar quite a lot lately, that’s a stress reliever. I keep dreaming about getting another, though I don’t need one. Well there’s one I want, but I quite like just wanting it. I find I have been trying to find the right sounds lately. I’m not a technically good player, I don’t do all the fiddly stuff, I am more about the rhythm and the chord changes. I have not written a ‘song’ in years and years and I don’t really want to start doing so again, but I cannot help myself coming up with little micro-pieces, whatever comes into my head, and quickly recording them on my phone. I will go back in later and listen to them, all about 30 seconds long each, and I always feel surprised at how much I like those little scraps when played together. Some are a bit pants, but they are like little thumbnail sketches of music, only for me, no words but occasionally some random lyrics thrown over to make a melody. Not for anyone’s ears but mine, just how I like it, little butterflies only a few chords long.

trees before the super bowl

February 21, 2024February 20, 20242 Comments

I really like drawing two-page panoramas, as you have probably realized, but the format of my blog is not super conducive to looking at them. It shrinks them to around 600 pixels across, making it a bit too small. You can click on the image of course and see it in full widescreen glory on my Flickr page, and without all the fairly tedious accompanying text. I feel the need to write a few things down here, very self-indulgently and only occasionally caring about ending sentences, but over there I’m like Silent Bob. I could change the format of my blog, but I really like this format, it works for me when I’m reading through it. I’ve looked at other layouts, but they’re all a bit bloated, not for me guv. For me it’s still 2007 in terms of blog formats. That time went by fast. I wish my eyes still looked like they did in 2007. I’m glad Spurs don’t play like they did in 2007. Anyway, back to the drawing. This is in old North Davis, corner of 7th and B, on a bright Sunday after my birthday (whatever that is) I got out on the bike for a bit and sat at a table outside a school and draw the scene above. It was the trees that drew me in, especially the two on each side, which were textured on these dark orange-brown leaves wrapped around their trunks. I was fascinated by those textures, and I loved the shapes of the bare trees behind. It’s what I appreciate about this time of year, right before the blossom and the buds. I sat there quite a while, until it was time to head home and watch some of the Super Bowl. It was already halfway done by the time I got home, but I didn’t really watch it, until late in the game, and that’s only because it was the San Francisco 49ers and they are my wife’s family’s team. We watched it with the Spongebob commentary and graphics, because it was a bit more fun. It was annoying how often they cut to Taylor Swift, who is the most famous singer in the history of the world at the moment (I have as yet been unable to convince my family that she is a descendant of Jonathan Swift, and was named after former England manager Graham Taylor, which is why she has songs called “Do I Not Like That” and “Can We Not Knock It”). We had listened to a whole one of her albums in the car ride back from Truckee, and I swiftly fell asleep. I’ve got nothing against Swift though, she is alright, seems like a good person. I just didn’t want the team her current boyfriend (I think he’s called Chelsea or Millwall or something) plays for to win though, because we were cheering for the 49ers. Actually I didn’t really mind. People watch the Super Bowl for the adverts anyway, that’s what they say. Tottenham have as good a chance of winning the Super Bowl as the Premier League. More maybe, since they play NFL games at our amazing stadium in N17 (which I learned is the most northerly stadium ever to host an NFL game). I was disappointed at the end though, even though it was one of the most exciting and thrilling ends to a game in history, when the Subaru advert just pipped the Geico commercial at the last minute to take the W, as they say here. Sports are funny, you win Bowls, Cups, even Wooden Spoons, you could end up with a whole kitchen set. Chance would be a fine thing, following Tottenham.