in them thar hills of Sonora

June 7, 2021Leave a comment

Last weekend we went to Yosemite, for some hiking. Also some waiting in line in the car for ages to get in. It was going to be a very hot weekend after a hot week. I had been busy doing soccer tryouts every day, and it happened that our long planned weekend away in Yosemite coincided with picking the squad. Thankfully we got it done, with a fair bit of text and email back and forth between me and my assistant coach, who did all the legwork while I was gone. We had planned to go to Yosemite a while ago, because you need to make reservations these days, to limit the crowds. Plus we were staying at the Yosemite Lodge, which needs to be booked well in advance. It takes a long time to get to Yosemite, it’s full of long twisty roads, so we decided to stay the night before in Sonora, a historic town in the foothills of the Sierras. I had never been to Sonora; I didn’t really know anything about it, if I’m honest. so it was a pleasant surprise to find such an old town. It seemed very much like the sort of town that would spring up in the hills during the Gold Rush, you remember that, where they rushed with all the gold. Side note, I use to the think that Ian Rush was a historical time when people would go to Wales or somewhere and dig up nuggets of Ian, etc and so on. So I imagined Sonora as the classic frontier town, and since there were several bail bonds offices and criminal lawyers and courthouses and saloons, this was obviously true and this Burnt Oak lad was now in Cowboy Land. Sonora was in fact founded during the Gold Rush by Mexican miners from the Sonora region, and the town and area have been the backdrop for many films and TV shows, like the A-Team, Little House on the Prairie, and even Back to the Future III. On our evening stroll after dinner we passed by a few different bars, now that the CDC have said people can eat and drink inside no problem, masks were generally off and people were reveling. I didn’t go and revel anywhere, but if I did, I’d love to have entered with my mask on, and a cowboy hat, and have everyone stop talking as I stood in the doorway and walked slowly up to the bar. We stayed at the historic Sonora Inn, which we was once the Victoria Hotel (1895) before being remodeled in the Spanish style in the 1930s as the Sonora Inn. I drew in the bedroom after dinner (below), and down in the lobby there was an antique wall telephone like you would see in old Bugs Bunny cartoons or something. The woman at the front desk told us about the history, and we asked if it were haunted. “Yeah, it is, she said tentatively, as if to say “no it isn’t but I’ll say it is”, or maybe it was so haunted she didn’t want to reveal in case the ghosts caused trouble, I don’t know. I have an over-active imagination about ghosts and cowboys. Apparently though there were old tunnels underneath that connected to all the old buildings in town, and if they aren’t haunted then well I don’t know what is. For dinner, we ate at a pasta place (it is a shame that the chef did not also have imagination) and walked about the town. Outside one bar, a well-oiled man with a thick American accent heard my accent and called out to us, asking where I’m from. I told him, and it seemed he knew his England, and had gone to school in Cornwall. We didn’t stop to chat more, but we referred to him afterwards as the Cornish Cowboy, or the Pirate of Penzance, or the Bodmin Bronco, or Texas Truro, again the imagination running away with me like a stage coach pulled into a canyon by a pack of crazy mules. It would be nice to go there for longer and explore a bit more (if my cowboy obsessed mind could handle the excitement), but we only had the evening, and so I got up early next morning before breakfast to do some drawing (“I do my sketchin’ before breakfast…”), before we set off for Yosemite. Yee hah, varmints.

and i’ll sing in your ear again

June 5, 2021Leave a comment

Last Year when the pandemic hit, De Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis took the difficult decision to shutter up, focusing on its Sacramento site, temporarily until the pandemic eased. Well, in California at least we are at that point now where more and more people are getting vaccinated, and we are preparing to All Go Back To Normal*. Last weekend we were in Yosemite (sketches to come) where they are allowing people in with reservations only to stem the crowds, and after waiting nearly two hours in line to get in after a two hour plus drive from nearby Sonora, we parked several miles away from where our first hiking trail began due to lack of spaces, and waded through throngs of people on a steep narrow trail to look at a bit of a waterfall among large groups of people all trying to take photos of each other (and it’s fine for strangers to touch each others’ devices now). The Mist Trail is so-called because of the mists of sweat from the hundreds of other hikers, not from the waterfalls. It was a hot, hot day, we were tired, and we gave up and hiked back to the car. But more on that story next time. This was the first day of June, I was working on campus in the morning for a bit, the weather was ridiculously hot. I had to cycle downtown to pick up a drawing from the Pence (the Covent Garden drawing I had done for their ‘garden-themed’ show, it hadn’t sold). Anyway, as I pulled into D Street I noticed my bike tyre was getting low. When I came back out, it was completely flat, so I wheeled it over to Freewheeler on 2nd Street, and grabbed some lunch on E Street. I then noticed that De Vere’s across the street looked a little bit different. They were busy finishing off the shiny new paint job, going from black to red, a new look for the reopening which I was told would be happening this week. If you have followed my sketchblog over the past decade you will know how much I like this pub, I’ve drawn it many times. I really like their pub chips, served in gravy. So I did a drawing of it. I stood in the heat waiting for my bike to be fixed up, and when that was done I cycled home to work the rest of the day, finishing off the pen and colours later on. I’m well pleased for them to be reopening, I hope business is good, and can’t wait until I get back for some pub chips, a paint or two, and an actual interior sketch of a pub for the first time since before This Whole Thing. Last weekend in Sonora we did eat inside for the first time, at a pasta restaurant that was not busy (and going by the food wasn’t much of a pasta restaurant either), and yeah I’m still a bit anxious to go inside a pub, it’s been so long, but something about seeing these guys repainting and reopening made me feel pretty optimistic. It’s been, well not an easy week, news of other people I know losing family members in other countries to Covid, plus just being so far away from my family in England, my dad’s birthday was this week, it would have been nice to be over there but it’s still very hard travelling (on top of the restrictions and the quarantines and the expensive required non-NHS tests, I’m still not comfortable about being stuck in a plane with lots of people for eleven hours and then stuck in line at Heathrow for more hours). I’ve been generally feeling exhausted. But signs of optimism make me feel good, and when I’m up for it, knowing I can get some pub chips and a pint or two is pretty nice, maybe with a comic from Bizarro World next door, like I used to. I hope the reopening goes well.

all this talk of getting older

May 24, 20216 Comments

I have been drawing all of my sons shoes since he started wearing shoes, and I have been drawing them in two little books, one of them was a tiny Moleskine Cahier in which I drew entirely in black pen, no colour, and then when that was finished I started Volume 2, in a ‘Handmade’ brand square sketchbook in which I started adding some colour to the drawings. As the shoes have grown in size, the drawings have become smaller as I have tried to fit them onto the small square page. Now I have finally started to just let them cross over onto the other page, so I can draw them longer. The lad’s feet are only getting bigger. The shoes above are his latest soccer cleats (football boots), fairly lightweight Nike shoes, not like the sort of thing you’d get in my day. He plays soccer a lot better than I did in my day though. He’s been injured for a lot of the past six months, so has not had as much opportunity to play, but we got these a few months ago as his feet are of course growing. He’s at the age now where growth will come rapidly; when I was his age I did all of my growing all at once, and I’m not much taller now then when I was 13. (Although my shoe size has gone up in the past couple of years, for some reason, I didn’t know that was a thing but it is). Watching him grow up, especially during this pandemic year, definitely emotional for me as a parent, and especially looking back at the growing shoes over all these years. You spend a lot of your life in your shoes, they literally take the weight of your world.

These three I have drawn recently are quite functional in nature. The blue and white Nike shoe is for soccer; this next one, the very comfortable looking Merrell shoe, that one is for hiking. We recently went on a hiking trip to Utah, and we plan to do more hiking in the future, so we all got hiking shoes / boots at REI before the trip. These were the ones we got for my son, though I don’t think we got these at REI but they were bought online with many others that got returned until we found the right ones. Shoes are annoying like that. When I got mine I tried them on, yep these are nice, I’ll take them. It’s because I hate trying on shoes. When I was his age, my mum would take me to so many shoe shops and make me try on so many shoes and I hated, it wasn’t like traumatic or anything, I just really disliked the whole trying on shoes process, and the smell of shoe shops, I just wanted in and out as soon as possible. I’m still the same. These days ordering shoes online is harder because you have to order several to see which ones fit ok, they are all a bit different, and you have to send them back. Still it’s good to get the right ones. Hiking boots / shoes are really padded and comfortable, and I love the design of these ones. Hopefully we get a lot more hiking in before these ones are outgrown.

And finally, these are his New Balance running shoes. I got running shoes myself a few months ago and definitely notice the difference than what I was running in before (though I’ve not run much in the past month, whoops). Unfortunately due to an ongoing injury he’s not been able to run much since we got them, but they are so comfy he wears them as his regular shoes and they are at least nice to walk in. They look cool as well. That’s a very curved heel, that gives a lot of support down there. And these are the latest shoes in the series. Them feet are growing fast…

walker hall latest

May 23, 2021Leave a comment

Another one of Walker Hall at UC Davis; this one was going to be a panorama, full colour, but I stopped and never finished. This is the brand new Graduate Center, which if you’ve been following this blog you’ll know has been built into the newly renovated historic Walker Hall. It’s all finished now, except for some bits in front of the building, and there are even staff working inside now, albeit at the limited no-more-than-25% capacity. I was even given a special personal tour of the building a few weeks ago, which was really exciting; the last time I’d been in there it was a demolition site, I wore a hard hat and was told to be careful I didn’t fall into big holes in the floor. It’s lovely in there now, I can’t wait until it’s properly opened up for the graduate students. I will do a proper ‘final’ sketch of the whole building though they have planted these trees in front, which will make it a bit harder to see until all the leaves fall off; might look nice in the Fall actually.

Davis Arts Center

May 22, 2021Leave a comment

This is Davis Arts Center, which is really close to where I live in north Davis. I popped over to the park at lunchtime and drew it from a high grassy verge, underneath a tree, while listening to a podcast about the car industry in Coventry. I’ve drawn a two-page panorama of the Davis Arts Center before, quite a long time ago, when the leaves were different colours and the building was painted differently too. I need a sketching vacation, one like where I’d go to a city for a few days by myself and just wander about drawing everything. It’s been too long. This is also the longest period I have ever had without going home to London. That is tough, I miss London. It’s still not easy to go there from the US, with quarantine and expensive testing when you get there, plus long waits to get through Heathrow. I’m feeling very unrelaxed right now. Drawing helps, though even drawing feels a little stressful at times, if I’m short on time or if I’m running out of things I want to draw; sorry Davis, I need to draw somewhere else for a bit. I finished this at home after drawing all the penwork, I can’t see it from my house but it’s close enough.

old metal bones in dusty sunshine

May 14, 20211 Comment

UC Davis is a huge campus. You look at the map and you see all the buildings clustered around the bit that hangs off the edge of downtown Davis and you think, yeah that’s a decently sized campus that, yeah you need a bike to get about, but it’s not massive. And then it’s pointed out that what you see on the map is like looking at a camel and only seeing the humps. Or going to a Barcelona game and only watching Messi. Or eating a 99 ice cream but not eating the wafer cone. Actually it’s not really like that, I just really want a 99 ice cream cone. A 99 is a soft-serve vanilla ice cream in a cone but with a chocolate flake in it, popular in Britain. It’s very hot in Davis this week and one of those would be nice. But it’s not like a map of UC Davis, unless the cone part is really far away from the flake part. The point is, UC Davis is much bigger than you think. We are an agricultural school, and to do that you need lots of fields, and space. Cycling around campus this week I have compared it to a game of Carcassonne, do you know that game? I’m a little obsessed with it. Several roads on the main part of campus are currently blocked off due to ongoing construction work, which makes cycling around quite a journey of discovery, but I do always think, “my opponent put that there to stop me from completing my city! Where will my meeples go?” So, campus is actually huge. In fact it’s so huge, we have our own airport. We are the only UC with its own airport. Useful for the crop-dusters, you see, and there are plenty of those. Side-note, until I moved here I did not know what a crop duster was. I’m from London, not really a thing, not really a big farming city. So when Han Solo says that travelling through hyperspace is “not like dusting crops, boy” I honestly had no idea what he was on about. I had images in my head of someone going through fields of maize with a little cloth wiping down everything. Similarly when I was a little kid I used to think skyscrapers were called that because they had people on the upper levels poking brooms and rakes out of the window to, I don’t know, get rid of clouds? I still have actual drawings from when I was six showing this obviously wrong and stupid misconception. With crop dusters I was 29 when I moved to America so it’s entirely conceivable that if I’d stayed in London, I’d still assume farmers would go out into the fields with little feather dusters and cans of Pledge. Also, what crops did Han Solo think Luke was dusting anyway? He was a moisture farmer in a desert. It’s literally all dust. Han is from Correllia, not really a big farming planet.

Anyway, during this pandemic our offices have been closed and we’ve been working from home, but mail still has to come in and be picked up, and our campus Mail Division is located right on the outer rim of the university. If there’s a bright centre to the campus, it’s on the road that it’s farthest from. I needed to collect some checks for an urgent visa application for a new scholar so I cycled all the way over to the Mail Division building, while big tractors rumbled past me on the road, and loaded up my bike with several weeks’ worth of mail and packages, all strapped with elastic onto the rear basket. Opposite Mail division, near the entrance to the UC Davis Airport on Hopkins, there are a bunch of old farming machines, iron skeletons of ploughs, old small tractors, all plonked by the road among the long yellow grass. I’ve always wanted to draw them, so while I was on this long round-trip I thought, well why not now. I didn’t draw the whole thing there as I was busy and had things to do, and I could waste time with my pens when my chores were done. So I finished it off at home later. This is some sort of farming instrument, but I don’t know what it’s called because as I say, I’m from London and the only farms I ever knew were Chalk and Broadwater. I like the the words “On Your Left” were written on the side, it reminded me of Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson. Like I said I finished this off at home, and while I drew I watched “The Crystal Calls”, which is about the making of the Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance show, one of my favourite things ever. This seemed appropriate, as much of the program was about how the puppets and props were put together and used, and this looked like the framework of the Skeksis carriage. I want to go and draw the other old metal farm things, but it’s a very long way to ride out to. Maybe next time I get the mail.

positive latitude

May 12, 2021Leave a comment

This is Latitude, a dining hall at UC Davis which opened last year. I first drew it just before the pandemic. I was on campus recently and cycled past this on the way to or from my weekly Covid test, and really wanted to stop and draw the unusual shape. I like the name Latitude. If it were a 1980s band it would be called L’Attitude. If it were at a higher elevation we might call it Altitude. “With a latitude like that you’ll go all the way round the world”. Etc and so on. This was drawn the end of April; it’s the middle of May already. How did that happen? I mean I know literally how, but these days time runs in bizarre directions. I genuinely got the day wrong last week. I contacted someone at work to see if they needed me to sit in on a meeting in case they need extra reference information which I like looking up, and they were like, um that was yesterday. I’m like, why was it a day early? Then the penny dropped. I get that a lot now. You do too, I bet. Years ago I turned up for a meeting with the dean a day early. I’m sat there in the meeting room getting my notepad ready, nodding pleasant hello at those coming in, people I didn’t recognize, thinking this is weird, where are the usual lot. The dean came in, sat down and looked at me, confused. Yes, wrong meeting, my one was the next day. Ironically it turned out that my department chair at the time had done the exact same thing the week before, turned up a day early, same meeting room. Well we like to be ahead of the game in our department. So, Latitude was closed for most of 20/21 but opened up this spring, and features a menu of international-themed dishes. I should eat there some time, it sounds nice. When I’ve been back on campus I’ve still been eating at the Silo, and in fact earlier this week I had lunch there and even sat indoors, the first bit of indoors eating in well over a year. Apart from dinner at home obviously. A little bit of normality sneaking back in. I can’t wait until I can finally go down the pub, sit at the bar and sketch with a pint, and not worry. That’d be nice.

life on the other hand

May 10, 2021May 10, 20211 Comment

I mean, this is my main view a lot, looking over the top of my iPad, on the couch, a can of Pepsi Max (sorry, Pepsi Zero Sugar), my knees. We saw all the drawings of my house a year ago (see petescully.com/tag/uskathome/ for some of them). I was having a bit of a tough week, touch couple of weeks, I think we’ve all been getting a bit like that, but there are days when you just want to focus and get the head straight. I wasn’t sleeping too well, and on this day I got up super early and started doing some work. By lunchtime I was already exhausted again, so I sat on the couch while Paris St. Germain played Manchester City in the Champions League. That was the first leg, when PSG had a great first half but fell apart in the second. I liked James Richardson’s description of the game, that “Parisians were losing their heads like it was A Tale of Two Cities, which in a way it was, the worst of the halves and the best of halves”. I wish I could have thought of that. I think of funny things sometimes but I forget them, and other people do too. Sketching often helps, it’s where I go when I need to go somewhere. That was the case at every age. I like drawing on the iPad to just mess about. I use Procreate to draw, but I use Notability a lot to write notes with, and doodle like I would on a notepad in a meeting. Constantly doodling. Ahhh, I need a sketching trip, a proper trip where all I do is go around by myself drawing everything, but right now even the thought of it exhausts me.

another world, another time

May 8, 2021Leave a comment

I’ve drawn this before. I’ve always thought it looked like a magic portal. Where would it go? This sculpture is actually called “Shamash” by Guy Dill, and was made in 1982. I’ve always wondered. 1982…I always say that my memory pretty much goes that far back, although I know I have memories from earlier, flashes really. In 1982 I was six, and I remember some things from that year clearly. The FA Cup Final replay, Spurs v QPR. I remember my older brother Johnny, who was at the game, came back from Wembley shortly before our neighbours, who were also at the game. We are spurs fans, they were QPR fans. My brother went to every home game at White Hart Lane in the 1980-81 and 1981-82 seasons. So my brother got the Chas’n’Dave songs on his record player, “Tottenham Tottenham, No One Can Stop Them” and “Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley”, turned up the volume full blast, hung the speakers out of the bedroom window, and waited for the neighbours to get home. Everyone in the street came out, not to complain, but also to watch the QPR neighbours get back from Wembley. It was all good fun, we were a pretty close street. I do remember the Royal Wedding, Princes Charles and Lady Di, and that was 1981. We had a street party. Us little kids running around waving flags and everyone’s dinner tables lined up in the middle of the street with sandwiches and fizzy drink. There were games, and I distinctly remember my dad winning the “dad’s piggy-back race” with me on his back. I do have vague memories of the 1981 FA Cup Final win, the great Ricky Villa winning goal. I certainly have even earlier memories, I remember my Grandad, and he died in 1980. All I remember is him at his house on Blundell Road in Burnt Oak with my Nan and my uncle Billy, and I remember when he was ill, before he died. He was from Belfast. I have an old photo of him with me sat on his knee when I was about two, I’ve had that photo all my life. I have other memories from 1980. I had a small part in a BBC TV serial called “A Little Silver Trumpet”, and I remember going to the big round BBC TV Centre every day, I remember the sets, having greasy make-up put in my hair, I remember going to film in Brighton, I remember them just letting me draw and they just filmed me drawing, holding my pen in the same funny way. I have even older memories than that, I definitely remember visiting my Dad in “the Big House” which was where he lived until I was 4, and he’d always get a milk and a Yorkie bar. I remember walking around Burnt Oak with my big sister Jacqui and going through fields behind the houses with stingy nettles. I remember my uncle Billy taking me to see a film at the pictures that might have been Spider-Man. Memory is a funny thing, there are so many photos in albums and stories from others of events I have not really any memory of, but these things I always remember, things that belong to me. I’d say that from about 1982 though, when I was six, memories become a little clearer. I remember getting stuck in the snow with my mum down in Hendon, and it took a long time to get home, and we had oxtail soup when we did, and to this day I think of that when I taste oxtail soup. I remember that was the year we got central heating in our house. I remember getting chickenpox that year. I remember cutting up my pyjamas and pretending to be the Hulk, and getting into trouble because “my days of being the Hulk are long gone”, whatever that meant. I remember seeing pictures of the Falklands War on TV. I remember reading all of my brother’s Beano and Roy of the Rovers comics. I remember in 1982 going to meet The Tweets (the ones who wore bizarre bird heads and did “The Birdy Song”) with my friend Daniel, and I remember they wore big leathery gloves and did not talk. I even have a photo of that meeting. I remember my uncle Billy singing Come On Eileen in our kitchen. I remember playing in the sandpits at Welwyn Garden City. I distinctly remember going to see the Dark Crystal with my Dad and my next door neighbour Barry, and dropping all of my popcorn when Fizzgig appeared. At school the next week my friends all played Dark Crystal. “Another world, another time.” I am still obsessed with the Dark Crystal (I loved the recent Netflix series so much). 1982 was the last year when I was the youngest in the family, my little sister Lauren being born a year later. In my life 1982 was a really long time ago, and this sculpture has been around since that year. I’ve drawn it before. I’ve always thought it looked like a magic portal. Where would it go? Back to 1982? I mean, at least Spurs won a trophy that year. I always forget not to write posts like this, those “I remember when I was a kid” posts, but I suppose it’s part of getting older isn’t it, trying to keep remembering. Another world, another time.

Not Short For “Triceratops”

May 6, 2021May 6, 2021Leave a comment

This here is the Tri-Co-Ops at UC Davis. I have drawn it before (haven’t I drawn everything in Davis before?) but this one was done on the iPad using Procreate, drawn so that I could show the step-by-step as a demonstration video on the UC Davis Sustainability Sketchcrawl on Earth Day, not a real sketchcrawl because it was virtual, done over Zoom, but a sketching event anyway. The people who took part, I am not sure how many there were (nor did the organizers show their drawings after), they were then invited to draw along while I did a live sketch of a wheelbarrow (also from the Tri-Co-Ops), talking about the process as I went.

I drew that on the iPad too so that I could share screen. I recently did my staff evaluation at work, and one thing I did not put down as a skill I have learned is proficiency with Zoom, because even though I’m much more of a master at it than I was a year ago, join the bleedin’ club mate, what d’you want a medal? I have done the thing where I set m phone up as a camera to share that over Zoom, angling it down above the desk so people can see me draw (I did a workshop last year where I did that) but the connection kept freezing, my wifi wasn’t too strong in the bedroom desk where I was giving the workshop. I had considered doing a live sketch on site, setting up a tripod and Zooming direct from the UC Davis campus like a proper old-school live roving reporter, like Danny Baker, but with hopefully fewer train-station arguments. (Danny Baker fans will probably remember that clip, “Don’t you DARE talk to me like that!”). The campus wifi wasn’t strong enough though to Zoom outside for an hour where I wanted to sketch, so I didn’t do that. So, I sat at the relative comfort of my desk at home, with the cats and a cup of tea.

Here’s the video. Now I’m not sure if you can actually view the video in this blog post, but if you click on that image it will take you to my Flickr page which hosts it, and you should see the video there. I tried to approach drawing it digitally as if I were drawing it in my sketchbook, blocking with a bit of pencil then diving into the ink, finishing off by colouring it in. It’s not exactly Bob Ross, or even Tony Hart, and it’s just the drawing coming into shape, no words by me. I have thought about doing a step-by-step video, narrating as a I go, but I think it wouldn’t turn out as well as I would like, and you’d probably hear me saying “oh bugger!” and “oh bollocks!” a lot. Or maybe just saying “err…” a lot.

As it happens, when I did the virtual sketchcrawl last year, they recorded it and put the video on YouTube. So, here’s the video of me sketching a bike in 2020, early in the Zoom era. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MKklfPxnU4 . Not exactly my best drawing, but it’s always harder when people are watching! And I managed to avoid saying “bugger” or other popular British vocabulary, but I do say “err” and “umm” a lot. And very few silly jokes!