two decades in Davis!

November 5, 2025November 5, 2025Leave a comment

Memor esto, memor esto, Quintum Novembris. Today is the Fifth of November, which is Guy Fawkes Night / Bonfire Night to us British, but to Americans it is just plain old November the Fifth. It is also twenty years to the day that my wife and I arrived here in the city of Davis, having moved to California from London a month and a half before. Twenty years! 2005 was a different world. Today was a very rainy Wednesday, out of character in this otherwise quite sunny week. I was not sure how I would commemorate 20 years in Davis. I thought about making a short e-book with 20 years of sketches. I started making a video showing 20 years of sketches over some easy-listening music, to be a bit like The Gallery from Tony Hart’s old shows (why did he have to keep the kids’ drawings, why? That’s why I never sent mine in.). I thought about making a poster like I did for 10 Years in Davis. I even started a very long post featuring 21 drawings from the past 20 years (2005-2025 inclusive, that’s 21, do the Math. s.), one drawing from each year, with a little story about that year. That was getting very autobiographical, more than usual, and so I stopped. I might still do that some time, though I don’t know if it does you good to be too retrospective. I might still do all of these things. Instead what I am going to do is time travel back to 2005, not November but December, to the first sketches I did in Davis. Yes, it’s amazing I went over a month without drawing but things were different in those days. I didn’t yet have a job, or any money, and spent my time going to the library to use their computer to get online and write my blog, or emails back home. My wife heard about this thing called ‘worldwide sketchcrawl’, and that there would be a meeting of sketchers one Saturday in December, and that I should go to it, get me out of the apartment. Good idea. I went to Mishka’s Cafe on 2nd Street (which was about a block away from the current Mishka’s), and was very shy but I did a bunch of sketches, in my 2005 style. The sketch above outside Mishka’s is the very first sketch I did in Davis; there have been hundreds and hundreds since. I don’t know who that sketching guy was, but a couple of the people on that sketchcrawl (Alison and Allan) are people I sketched with for years afterwards. I went down to Covell Commons and drew Borders (remember Borders?), then moved through the Arboretum for the first time, finding my way to campus which I had not yet really explored except for Shields Library. As the day went on I sketched by myself, I was very shy, and in the end I didn’t meet up with the others to see what we had all done, I felt oddly self-conscious. But I like this little group of sketches now. It was a little while before I did more sketching of Davis, it was a slow start, not really getting going again until mid-2006 (but then absolutely I never stopped). So to celebrate 20 years living in Davis here are those sketches from 2005. Borders is long gone, I’m better at drawing those bridges (but still get them a bit wrong), I don’t know if those mysterious sculptures at the back of TB9 are still there, and I’ve drawn the Eggheads many times since.

Anyway, I have officially been a Davisite for twenty years now. If you want to see the sketches that all came after these ones, most of them are in this Flickr folder: Davis CA. Happy Fifth of November!

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!

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.

a little more october in davis

December 17, 2024December 17, 20241 Comment

I have a bunch more sketches from around Davis to post, and then I can get to posting some of the sketches from my recent flying visit to London at the end of November/start of December. Christmas is coming, ain’t it guv’nor. Also wait until you see this year’s Advent Calendar. For now, some more Davis trees in front of Davis buildings. If I ever get to publishing this long-awaited book of my Davis sketches, it should be called ‘Trees In Front Of Buildings, by Pete Scully’. “So what do you draw, Mr. Scully?” “Well I draw trees, but preferably in front of buildings.” “Could you draw me a building without a tree in front?” “No I can’t do that I’m afraid, you’ll need to find someone else.” Everyone needs a theme. I still draw Fire Hydrants but I’ve kind of run out of new ones. The tree above, a gnarly one in the Arboretum, is in front of King Hall, the law school, and if you remember back to my old posts from the past twenty years I went through a stage of drawing the development of that building from the other side of the creek. That is actually going back a long time now. This one was drawn a lot closer up and from the shade of the Native American Contemplative Garden, which is an area of the Arboretum dedicated to the Patwin people; learn more about it at arboretum.ucdavis.edu/native-american-contemplative-garden. Just behind it you can see part of the old buckeye tree trunk that was left in place after it started falling apart a few years ago, and you can learn more about that here. I really like the shape this tree makes. They have such personalities, if you want to call it that. You might wonder why the trunk twisted this way and not that, what atmospheric elements led to this shape and not another shape, and is this true for all of us? Why am I like the way I am? Alright Sigmund let’s stop right there, stick to the sketchbook not the chaise longue.

This is another tree in front of another building, though the tree is not very interesting, going straight up until it reaches a point where it goes off into two, a bit like the Northern Line. It’s in front of Boheme, a clothes shop I have drawn before and which looks like it has a newly painted sign, it always looks very colourful on this stretch of 3rd Street. There’s a car in front of this one too. This means it falls under the sub-category of Cars In Front of Trees In Front Of Buildings. Having a little bit of kerb painted red is another one in the Pete Scully Sketch Bingo. Sorry, I think you might spell it ‘curb’ over here. Well I’m not doing that.

Here’s another one, but this time without a car, though there is a red kerb, and a big knobbly tree with a very storylike shape. I have drawn this building a few times over the years, in different iterations as a frat house, but at the time of drawing this it looks like it is in-between fraternities, being empty and for sale and having some work done on it. No beer pong today. I stood beneath some shade across the street to sketch, being drawn in mostly by the big tree shape. As I sketched a bearded man approached me. I didn’t recognize him, it was my next-door neighbour and former assistant soccer coach, on his way to teach on campus. I hadn’t realized how much his beard had grown, so when I said “hello” at first while still in my sketchbook-focus, I honestly didn’t realize who it was for a few seconds. It’s funny how even people and things you are really familiar with, one thing changes or you see them out of context and suddenly you don’t recognize them. There’s something in the mind that plays tricks on us, but again that’s another one for Sigmund. I get it when I walk around London, and see things I knew for years but they are different. I’m different, I’m looking older, my hair is getting lighter, my waist is getting heavier. I’m still sketching.

let’s draw more trees

October 22, 2024October 21, 2024Leave a comment

My obsession with tree drawing led me to organize the first Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl of the 24-25 season, a gathering down in the UC Davis Arboretum on an unnecessarily hot morning in early October. I had been for a four mile run that morning, an unnecessarily long distance in preparation for the very unnecessary 10k I will run in the Turkey Trot this year. Speaking of which I need to get back into training for that, I had a vacation to Kauai in between and swapped running for fighting waves and sipping cocktails. The temperatures we had in Davis at the start of this month though were a bit stupid, well over a hundred degrees for several days on end, what sort of autumn do you call this. It has cooled off a little now and the weather is lovely, though the world at large fills me with dread, the election is coming. I really hope the thing I’m dreading doesn’t happen. I will bury myself in my sketchbook in the meantime. Anyway, we were there in the Arboretum, and I drew the bridge, the same bridge I drew on my first ever sketchcrawl in Davis back in December 2005. A very long time ago now, but it was the future at the time. I had to get out of the house, I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t know this town, I needed to start drawing again, and my wife spotted a posting for the worldwide sketchcrawl on DavisWiki or something, long before the world revolved around Facebook, and so out I went, shy as a coconut, started sketching at Mishka’s with some other shy people, the old Mishka’s a block away from where it is now, made it into the Arboretum, and kept going, I didn’t meet up at the end, I just kept drawing on campus, ended up at the library. You might say I kept going and never stopped. Anyway I always think of that day when I draw this bridge, a cold day, before I had even found a job, two months away from the end of my 20s, not even two months into my new life across the Atlantic. I still can’t draw the bloody bridge. Anyway, as you can see the creek has a little sluice in it (is that what they are called? I don’t know. Weirs, that’s it, not sluices.) which is part of the whole Arboretum waterway project I mentioned last time. Bit inconvenient for the ducks, they have to walk round. Good exercise I suppose. Don’t feed them bread. I stood beneath a huge overhanging tree limb while sketching, and leaned against it when I got tired, which after my four mile run was a lot.

I had rushed out of the house and not brought anything to drink with me, no water or anything. I thought about going back downtown to get something, but thought, I’ll be fine. I walked through the shady Redwood Grove looking for something to draw and came across the old tree stump lying on its side. The way the light was hitting it made it look multicoloured, though it was white as a bone. It reminded me of an old skull, maybe of a styracosaurus, and I had drawn a real styracosaurus skull in Los Angeles earlier this year, on my day-long dinosaur drawing adventure. I might need another one of those. I was getting thirsty by this point. I did have another sketch in me but needed to find a drink. None of the nearby buildings on campus were open on the weekends for me to see if they had vending machines, the shops were too far, and my own building with its well-stocked vending machine was a bit too far a walk. So by the time we were all done sketching and met up at the end to look at each others’ work (and there were some very nice sketches done) I was parched. I wasn’t even hungry, I just went straight to Newsbeat and bought two cold drinks, and drank them on the way home.

It was busy downtown, really busy. Newsbeat had a lot of customers, and there were a lot of folk walking about. It’s a good sign for downtown Davis that. The building owners just need to stop putting business rents up to unsustainable levels as that is bad for small local shops, shops the community needs. We really don’t need another boba tea or fro yo shop. Anyway, there were a lot of people about, and it was hot, and I wasn’t hungry so skipped eating lunch and went home. On the way back I noticed this tree on E Street, in the Old North area, and just had to draw it. I only drew a bit of a it though, and finished it off at home because I was feeling hot. It’s lovely isn’t it, it looks like some wise old monster that might control your mind if you aren’t careful. Well not mine. I went home and took a nap, and dreamed about styracosauruses, probably.

the empty lake

October 21, 20241 Comment

The UC Davis Arboretum is currently undergoing some major work to the waterway, an ambitious project called the “Arboretum Waterway Flood Protection and Habitat Enhancement“. I don’t know what it will look like in the end, but right now, it’s jarring to see the big serene Lake Spafford completely drained of water. Like seeing the man behind the curtain. Now I know how deep it is. The ducks probably aren’t too happy, but we’ve all got to have work done on our homes. Round our way the painters have been painting all the condos, coming in the yard and scaring off the spiders. I’ve drawn this lake many times over the years and now it’s empty, for the time being. I’ll be interested to see how this all turns out! So of course I drew it, at the end of September. I’ll be back down to sketch it again. “Waterway to have a good time.” We did hold a sketchcrawl in the Arboretum at the start of October, I’ll post those later. For now, more September trees.

another march on campus

April 23, 2024Leave a comment

Here are some sketches drawn around campus last month, all different media, I suppose. Above, that’s the UC Davis water tower as seen from the Arboretum, very close to my office. I drew in brown fountain pen, and there was this little cat on the path. I like this sort of sketch. The redbuds were really glowing then too. I’ve been on this campus eighteen years now, I sometimes look back and think, funny how that happened. That building next to the water tower, the Earth and Physical Sciences Building, wasn’t even there when I first arrived, in fact I was there at the ceremony where they laid the foundation stone, my old manager insisted I come over to witness that. I’m glad I did, but I always regret not sketching the building that was there before, which was knocked down. I do remember sketching the empty space, back in 07 or 08.

There was this one day last month when one of my coworkers announced that there would be llamas on campus, over at the Quad, that people could go and have a look at. This caused great excitement, as it had been a very busy 2024 so far, and everyone needs more llama, less drama. So we all walked over there. I had my llama jokes ready. It was lunchtime so I thought, alpaca lunch. As we got there, it turned out there were no llamas to be found. I guess they hadn’t set their a-llama clock. Disappointed but not despondent, I decided to draw this interesting old tree, and sketched it in pencil before adding some watercolour. I sometimes wish all my sketching looked like this, it felt very free.

This one above was sketched in the UC Davis Silo, on another boring lunchtime. I haven’t drawn the interior of this building from this level for a number of years. I used to come up here all the time, years ago, it feels like something from another time, but it isn’t, it’s just a different end of the same time. I think I would wonder in those days how long we would be in Davis, where we might go next, but we stayed, and I took it upon myself to draw all the changes here over a long period. While it’s not my actual job, it’s kind of become my other job, and I don’t mind that at all.

And finally, a panorama that will remain unfinished. I was cycling across campus one lunchtime when I was hit with the thought of drawing the Chemistry Building, not the side that’s all being built (and which I have drawn a number of times), because the shapes the shadows were making as they hit the inset windows was really quite dramatic, you would have loved it. In the end I said sod it, too much detail, and focused on sketching that wicked blue and cloudy sky, which was pretty spectacular in itself, leaving the Chemistry Building to be nothing more than a big outline left to the imagination. Behind it though is another building called ‘PSEL’, the ‘Physical Science and Engineering Library’, which is not in fact a library any more but has been recently redeveloped to house space for several units, including my own program (in fact I’m on the building committee that manages it); it will see a name change at some point, though I can’t say for sure what that will be. There’s still work being done, and I have drawn the building before, but I’ll do a more proper sketch of it at some point, but I made sure it got into this sketch.

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.

The Arboretum in December

December 19, 2023Leave a comment

Back in October I sketched this view of the Arboretum (which is where that big old Japanese Zelkova tree used to stand before it started splitting in two, and was eventually removed; I drew that too). Back in October it was starting to turn autumnal; that red and green tree was still yellow, that orange tree and yellow tree were still green. At the start of this month I sketched it again to show the colourful changes. Of course none of this makes sense if you are watching this in black and white, like the BBC audience on Boxing Day in 1967 attempting to make sense of Magical Mystery Tour. In the past couple of days we have had a lot of rain and a bit of wind, and it probably looks a bit less leafy now, I should go and check. December is moving along fast, we keep opening those windows on the advent calendars, the Christmas chocolate actually keeps multiplying despite my best efforts to eliminate the threat by eating it all, and I am halfway through my six mince pies. We haven’t started on the panettone yet. 2023 is wrapping up its presence, 2024 is on the horizon and I’m not looking forward to that. I have a bad feeling about it. I think we should just skip 2024 and maybe 2025 too, and go right on to 2026 and watch the World Cup. Enough of that sense of foreboding, I’ll just keep on recording the changing of the seasons in the sketchbook, and try to keep a little optimism. The Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook itself is nearly over, just a couple of pages left, which I will complete by Christmas, or Boxing Day maybe, which they don’t even have over here. Getting to the end of a sketchbook is a great motivator to keep on drawing. I have done a lot more urban sketching this year than usual, way more than in 2022, and I can’t imagine 2024 will have as much but we will see. The Urban Sketching Symposium is in Argentina in 2024, but I won’t go because it’s in October, no good for me. I’m going to organize more sketchcrawls. Explore more. Take more sketching risks. Or not worry and keep drawing.

the arboretum in october

November 4, 2023November 3, 2023Leave a comment

More brown De Atramentis ink sketches, this time from different lunchtimes in the UC Davis Arboretum, at the end of October 2023. This October has been long, and I’ve been feeling super exhausted a lot of the time, mentally, physically, metaphysically, geographically, mathematically, you name it. I also got my Covid and Flu shots for the season, one in each arm, so it was hard to sleep on my side for a couple of nights. I’ve not been exercising enough, and the stress of the world at large is creeping in. It’s good that we have the Arboretum here at UC Davis, a place to go and relax for a while among the trees and greenery. I sat on a bench out overlooking Lake Spafford, where that tree used to be, and sketched. It was sunny, and the foliage was colourful.

On the next day I also sketched in the Arboretum, on the little path near our building, in sight of the water tower. It’s a nice view this. A very nice view, once you commit it to paper. Draw where you live. This is a nice part of campus. A lot of people on their lunchtime walks, getting their 10,000 steps in, while I let that brown ink jump all over the page. In the lunchtime sketch below, I think it may have been working a little less well for me in places, but I did discover that if you draw directly onto watercolour paint (dry, not still wet), you can’t get a thin exact line as it will expand to create thicker lines, though it does come out that bit darker too. I’m still getting used to fountain pen sketching, and this ink in particular, but it’s fun to experiment. The Arboretum has many bridges like this.