make me understand or i’ll forget

January 23, 2024Leave a comment

First two-page panorama of 2024, click on the image to go to my Flickr page and see it bigger. In fact you can see all of my two-page (or more-page) panorama drawings in one album there, currently 218 of them and counting. Cast my mind back ten years ago, I decided to go a little bit overboard with the two-page panorama sketching, I called it ‘Panoramarathon’, sometimes I called it ‘Januarama’ or whatever because they were mostly in January 2014, when I was for some reason ridiculously productive. I’ve been looking back at some of those and even doing ‘ten years later’ versions, I’ll post that later. I have drawn the scene above more than once or twice over the years, usually from slightly different angles. This one shows the Heitman ‘Hog Barn’ on the left as always, with a bit of the South Silo, the Bike Barn occluded by trees, those standing stone thingies, that big leaning tree and on the right, the newest bit, that Chemistry Building wing whose construction I’ve been following in my sketches for the past four years. One change from sketches made over a decade ago is there used to be another big tree to the left of the big one there, it had a more interesting shape to draw, but was unfortunately in the way of the path they wanted to make so off it went to the big carpentry shop in the sky. I like all the colours. I know I draw these scenes over and over, Davis is not that big and I always say I’m bored of drawing everything again, but if I lived in London or New York I’d probably get bored of that too wouldn’t I. I like drawing the changes, as we’ve established. But it is January and all I do think about is going somewhere very far away with my sketchbook and no hurry or schedule, especially when there’s a lot on your mind you just want to plough it into a book that you’re filling, that’s where I put all my ‘stuff’, my sketchbooks.

Friday 13th October, 17 years later

October 26, 2023October 26, 20231 Comment

I said before that every day is Friday 13th these days, but at least the actual Friday 13th has a Saturday after it, I suppose. Halloween is coming up too; I am less interested every year, unfortunately. Remember that one year I drew loads and loads of Halloween stuff, had a Halloween party and drew the invitations, drew most of the decorations, we made costumes, I’ve not even got a pumpkin this year. Well, a very small one at work, on which I have drawn a cartoon of King Charles III with a pumpkin on his head, ‘God Save The Pumpking’. That sits on my shelf. We had a real Friday 13th a couple of weeks ago, and it was no less of a Friday 13th, so to de-stress a little I of course entered the sketchbook at lunchtime. I remembered back 17 (seventeen!) years, to Friday October 13th 2006 no less, a barely recognizable world away, when I also drew at lunchtime, and I had drawn the side of the Bike Barn, the first time I had ever drawn that building. That sketch is below. I wanted to draw it from the same angle, to see what had changed (obviously my sketching style has changed, though I still can’t draw bikes, that’s the same). Those taller trees are gone, replaced with much smaller trees. People now whizz by on those electric scooter things that so many people have now, silent platforms whizzing up behind you on the bike path. Still I think in 2006 I was definitely expecting actual Hoverboards by 2023 and we don’t have those yet, these are the closest thing. They may as well be Hoverboards. In the sketch above I’m drawing on Stillman and Birn Alpha paper with a Uni-ball Signo UM-151 in black-brown, coloured with watercolour. Below, well that was my first Moleskine sketchbook, and it was the ‘regular’ Moleskine paper not the watercolour stuff I have used since 2007, I didn’t know about that then. It wasn’t in the landscape format I’m so wedded to now, but I had seen so many sketchers online using this Moleskine sketchbook that I thought, right, I’ll try that too. And boy did it not work for me. See people would use it because it was popular, but nobody seemed to actually like it. The paper was too waxy, so most pens just couldn’t write well on it (I discovered several years later that the Uni-Ball Signo UM-151 in black actually works perfectly on it, it’s the only thing I’ve used that I’ve liked), and as for using watercolours, well forget it, you may as well be trying to watercolour paint on a jar of honey. Pencil was fine, but the paper is so smooth that there’s no character. It’s also very yellowy, which has its charms I guess, but that yellowy tinge when you scan it makes you feel a little ill. What pen did I use here? I think this was before I was using the Micron pens, so it was probably a regular old Uni-Ball from Office Max, those were good but nothing like as good as the UM-151 and didn’t perform well on this paper. (I tried my new fountain pen with fantastic document brown ink on this paper recently to see how that would be and that was not a pretty sight). For colours, I used the coloured pencils I would draw with that year. I had this set of watercolour pencils, but I’d already learnt that I wasn’t going to work so well so just used them dry. I liked it, but have never gotten on board with good coloured pencil use, that particular art avenue never opened up for me. Still, I really liked this sketch, and for a piece of observation and development this was an important one for me, maybe my best Davis sketch to date. A good feeling about a sketch can propel you to keep going, and this one definitely did that. You never know where it will all end up, so in the meantime just keep on sketching.

Seventeen years though. 2006! People talk about that time now in retro terms, which is scary, like we would talk about the 70s back in the 90s. This was the end of that long first summer I had spent in Davis. I spent a lot of time riding around on my bike, in the heat, listening to this one album by Belle and Sebastian that came out that year, I got a new guitar, I started drawing a lot, having started to discover other sketchers online starting to form connections (two years before we coalesced into Urban Sketchers, when we all had our own blogs and created Flickr groups, and before all the Social Media madness overtook everything) (except MySpace, that was still a thing for another year or so). That summer I went back to London for the first time since emigrating, and spent about three weeks there, just seeing friends and family, very relaxed, still young. 2006 as a time period feels so long ago. I don’t know how different Davis feels then from now, compared to how much London has evolved since then, for me obviously I’ve just been here longer, sketching everything. If I moved here now as opposed to then, it would probably not feel so different. The world at large though, that feels very different. In some ways better, in a lot of ways worse. I’m glad I was young when I was. In these days of constant information/misinformation bombardment it can be very stressful. I’ve always had a sketchbook to climb into, that’s still why I use it. I’ve changed – maybe. I’m just older, have a bit more confidence, have many years of work-work and sketchbook-work under my belt. I found a note I’d written from Friday October 27, 2007 (sixteen years ago tomorrow), the other day. It was in the pack pocket of that Moleskine, funnily enough, and I was clearly in a bit of a funk about being able to do anything, something I’m still familiar with. It said this:

“While scratching my unshaven chin and frowning at a pile of papers I came to a sudden conclusion today. I cannot write, only wrong. I make no art, only fart. I can’t compose, only decompose. My guitar is better displayed than played, at least by me. My sketching is sketchy, my drawing barely draws breath, and my painting ain’t. I can’t debate, only outdate; I can’t converse, only confuse; I can’t think, only splash ink. *I might feel different when I shave!”

I mean, all of that is still true, I still feel like that every now and then (and I always feel better when I shave and cut my hair). But it’s still a busy-October way of feeling. Too many Friday the 13ths.

do something pretty while you can

July 24, 2023July 22, 2023Leave a comment

To finish off the batch of sketching that I did in Davis between my UK visits, here are a bunch of lunchtime drawings from UC Davis of places that all kind of look the same. Some of them are the same place, just different sides of the building. The one above is the Bike Barn; the one below is the other side of it. I’ve drawn all these before, nothing to add really.

Why do I sketch? I ask myself this all the time. Well not all the time, but every now and then. And I might have a different answer each time if anyone asks. The answer itself may evolve over the years, but the actual reason never does. Do I question myself, question my need to sketch all the time? Yep, absolutely. It’s why I like urban sketching symposia and sketchcrawls and those things, because it’s helpful to meet other people who sketch, learn why they do it, not feel so bad for needing to sketch all the time myself. Sketching does relax me, helps me stop and focus. It can frustrate me too, when I hit those walls of “all my sketches look the same” or “why can’t I make it feel a bit more effortless?” but sometimes when it hits exactly what you want it to and doesn’t take very long, I feel amazing afterwards and feel like I can accomplish anything. I do love drawing; I sometimes feel like I am too obsessed with it, when I get irritable because I’ve not been able to sketch, or if I have three pages left in my sketchbook but really want to fill them with something interesting, and not just of the same buildings near work or stuff around my house, or the living room. One of the reasons I draw is to capture a moment in time. “To remember, in case someday I forget” is how I have put it in the past. So with this in mind, all of these drawings from campus maybe reflect a bit of that. The ones above, look they look like several other sketches I have done of those buildings before. But what if next year they put new signs up, or replace all those flowers with bike racks? This sort of thing’s happened, and my old sketches show the area how it used to look. The one below has part of the under-construction new wing of the Chemistry building in it, already looking slightly different to how I drew it in the sketch in the previous post. It will look different again in six months. The are to the left looked different just a couple of years ago. This was also sketched on the first day of Commencement, the graduation ceremony days, and walking by in the left is a professor in their black professorial robes, you can tell what time of year it is because of that.

I do question myself though, what if I just stopped and told myself I didn’t need to sketch any more? Or not sketch as much, just sketch occasionally and not worry about filling up all these books? Spend more time thinking about other things. I do use the time during sketching to think though. I also listen to podcasts, audiobooks, music. When sketching the building below – K. Esau Science Hall, which I don’t think I’d sketched before – I was listening to the audiobook of Lockwood and Co (just finished that series, it was very good), and I finished this whole sketch in my lunchtime, and that felt pretty good. Besides, I sketch in my spare time so that I can keep my skills up, so whenever I do a drawing for money those skills just roll right back out. My style looks like me, I always try to make improvements or rather move towards how I want the drawings to look, while balancing the fact that this is how my eyes see, my hands draw, and often a drawing is reflection of how I physically and mentally am at any given moment. If I’m uncomfortable when I draw, it comes out. This world is a crazy and overwhelming place, so many issues and terrifying things vying for my attention, politically things seems to be dragging towards horrible again (or the horrible lot would have us believe), and I know there is good in the world, it’s just that I need to go into my sketchbook sometimes to focus my mind on what’s right in front of me.

I dunno. There may come a time when my hands go, or my eyesight packs in (on our way there, lads!), or the supreme court makes it illegal to draw pictures of fire hydrants, or whatever. I have not been active in the social media sketching groups, the Facebook groups and what not, though I post on the Instagram and still occasionally on that Twitter (and I still post all my stuff on Flickr like it’s 2007), I’m not all in with the groups any more. I just write and focus here mostly, like when I started, before Urban Sketchers. I’m less visible these days I guess, and I’m ok with that, I’m just getting on with the act of being a mostly-daily but always obsessed urban sketcher, telling my little stories, written to myself.

Next up, sketches and stories from the June trip back to England, as well as eight days in Scotland. I have more stories to tell. Then there’s a load of drawings from my day out in San Francisco last weekend, avoiding the heat, searching for the last few pints of Anchor Steam in the world. I’ll probably need a rest after wall this, but as it stands I’m still a couple of pages from finishing Sketchbook #47, and I like to finish a sketchbook in good time, so I can’t rest until it’s done. I need to catch up with the scanning though…

the same story as ever, just a little different

October 23, 20212 Comments

I took a little break in posting there; I’ve been busy, lot going on, plus my computer was making a noise like a tractor, so I wasn’t scanning any sketches, and I can’t write a blog post without a sketch, it’s like a crutch. I like writing though, it’s an important thing to do. I don’t do enough of it these days. November is coming up; I remember trying to do NaNoWriMo a couple of times, that didn’t last long. I don’t know if I have a novel in me. I just like to draw fire hydrants, I’m not that interesting. If I were a novelist, basically I would write the same story with the same characters over and over, but in each one you would see one or two small changes from the last time I wrote the novel, until eventually the thirtieth novel is completely different from the first. Wow, when you pitch it like that it sounds like a good novelist career plan. This view is a bit like that though. I have been drawing this view, from the steps of Bainer Hall looking towards the Silo and the Bike Barn (the most sketchable places within short walking/eating distance from my office) since 2007 and it has changed a bit each time, as has my style of drawing. This was drawn nearly a month ago, about a week into the new quarter of the academic year at UC Davis. Things are going well though, all these big classes in-person, everyone doing their bit to stay healthy, fully vaccinated and masked, no new spikes, at least not yet. Many staff still work at least partially remote. Students and bikes are everywhere, as they were in years past, though still feels a little quieter in other places. I like going in every day, though in addition to computer issues I’ve been having bike issue, so I’ve not been riding as much. I’ve been walking a lot though, totally smashing the ten thousand steps a day challenge. I’ve been coaching soccer in what spare time I have, that has been very battery-draining; our team has been winning though so that’s good, and we have a Halloween themed tournament next weekend which will be fun (our team costume is Spider-Man, and I love Spidey and the Marvel stuff as you know). I have been wanting to find some time to make another animation with the various Marvel Legos I’ve been collecting over the years, the last one I did was a couple of Halloweens ago, Dr Strange themed. I’ve been reading a lot of old comics on Marvel Unlimited – I love all the old X-Men stuff in particular – but I still love that old Fraction/Aja Hawkeye series, so I’m well excited about the new Hawkeye series coming on Disney+, seriously bro. I have been breaking out the guitar again for the first time in years, I’m still not any good at it but I don’t care, I like playing chords and remembering songs. I started getting back to the ukulele when we were in Hawaii in August, I forget how much playing music to myself is soothing on the soul, even if not on other peoples’ ears. But I have been drawing, still drawing, when I can. It’s never enough; I would like to be out drawing today, though I’ve decided to stay home and rest while rain finally starts to come down outside; after all these long months, we are at last getting some rain. I walked to work in the rain the other day, and it felt like home, felt like being back in London. By which I mean I was all romantically gazing at the grey sodden skies and taking in the breeze for the first ten minutes, and by the time I got to my office I was wet despite the umbrella, sweaty and grumpy, and wishing London was California. I am missing London right now though. It’s nearly two years since I was last home; this pandemic has kept me away too long. All I hear in the news and from friends is how depressing it is there right now, but I miss it, still. I am nervous about travelling international right now, in case I get a positive test and can’t fly back on time; things are just too busy. But do I want to stand on the embankments of the Thames and get depressing grey London rain down my face? Yeah, I do. Do I want to get on a packed tube train? Not really, no. Isn’t that the same London story as ever for me, just a few details changing over the years? Pretty much. So for now I draw Davis, and I’ve finally caught up on the scanning so I’ll post my newer drawings here soon, maybe with more interesting stories. Or maybe just the same stories again.

procreating

January 19, 2020January 19, 20201 Comment

Ok, let’s start this thing again. It’s been a long time since I posted my sketches properly, and it’s about time I caught up. I historically post sketches chronologically, never alphabetically, often autobiographically. However since my last posted sketches were from our trip to Disneyland in JUNE – over six months ago! – we’ve actually been to another Disneyland since then! – in fact my wife has been to Disneyland itself at least once since then – then perhaps I should just post the second half of my 2019 sketches in a nonlinear fashion. Like Pulp Fiction, or the middle episodes of every Netflix series. So let’s start off with something familiar. This is the Bike Barn at UC Davis, I have drawn it a million times, and this time it has those standing stones in the foreground. I drew it on a bright November lunchtime, with the sun in my eyes, glaring off of the screen. The screen? Yes, this was not drawn in the Seawhite of Brighton, or the Stillman and Birn, but on my new iPad, using Procreate. I have joined the Procreate drawing club, and I love it. I finally got a new iPad Air after years of using a 2014 iPad Mini. I was going to get the Pro, but the new Air is just as good and was half the weight. I made up for that by getting an expensive Moleskine cover for the iPad, so it looks like a sketchbook at least. Anyway I got the Apple Pencil and I love it, wow, it’s totally fun. I really like the other sketchers who use Procreate and digital devices (such as Rob Sketcherman, Paul Heaston and the brilliant Uma Kelkar who actually has a book about sketching with a tablet coming out next month, part of the Urban Sketchers Handbook, I’m looking forward to reading that). I especially like that you can watch back a video of how the sketch came together. Very useful for demonstrations. Still, I’m trying to get the hang of it, see what I like. I like using layers, that is very handy. The colouring part of it is very different to what I’m used to with real paint, so that’s something I am experimenting with. This sketch and the one below, the Crocker Nuclear Lab drawn quickly from my office window, were two of my first attempts at Procreate. I’ve got a lot I am figuring out and I am already getting used to some of the different brushes, but I can already see I am going to use it a lot more. In fact I drew this year’s advent calendar with it, mostly while sat on a plane back from England (I went to England in November).

It’s been a while since I posted, so you’re probably wondering how UC Davis is doing. UC Davis is doing fine, it’s been getting some new buildings, and renovations, and I’ve been drawing those. Walker Hall is still being refurbished, it’s nearly done. I’ve been drawing that too. I even sketched it on the iPad last week. One of the best things about the iPad, one of the absolute greatest things, I don;t have to scan the drawing afterwards. It’s right there digitized already. I do have a new scanner, faster and quieter, but I’m still getting the hang of the lighting settings on it, there are always shadows near the crease of the book that I have to edit out afterwards, as best as I can. None of that with iPad sketching. Having just scanned half a year’s worth of sketches this past week, that is a big bonus.

Sketching Sustainability – Cool Campus Challenge

April 19, 20191 Comment

Last week, I co-led a couple of mini-sketchcrawls over a two lunchtimes called “Sketching Sustainability“. Here are my sketches… Above, the UC Davis Eco-Hub. Yes, part of the saem building as the Bike Barn, I have sketched this building so many times. You could say I recycled an old subject. The aim of this sketchcrawl was to draw things that promote sustainability on campus. The Eco-Hub obviously does that, so does the Bike Barn, because Bikes. However I did not know that the orange flowers in the foreground are also part of a sustainability thing, which is that the thing they are planted in is actually something that is designed to catch rainwater so that it doesn’t just go away. You can tell I’m not an expert, but it was explained to me and I thought it was cool. Below, some super quick cyclist sketches. I gave a quick demo on super fast people sketching. These were all very quick, just a few seconds of scribble, plus a few splats of paint.

Below is Nick Linda, a student in Sustainable Environmental Design who is also a tour guide. He introduced the theme of Sustainability at the start of the sketchcrawls. We didn’t have many people come, they were small groups, but people still did a lot of sketching. It’s part of the Cool Campus Challenge. We are trying to once more be the ‘Coolest Campus’. I know, I know, we already are, but in this case it’s do with with environmentally cool. Again, UC Davis should breeze that (pun absolutely intended, hey it’s me), but apparently Irvine won it last year so we have to show all the other UCs who is really Cool. Here’s a link to the Cool Campus Challenge: https://www.coolcampuschallenge.org/. By the way this sketch of Nick took about a minute and a half, I had to be quick because it was nearly my turn to speak. The main organizer was Camille, I didn’t sketch her, but she had made a whole bunch of sketchbooks for participants, or anyone who would like to join in, along with pencils and sustainable sharpeners (nail files! I’m going to use it as a sharpener now). I’m also going to stop using my pencil sharpener to cut my nails, that has been very painful.

Below is the Student Community Center, whee we started and ended our sketching. It is a Platinum LEED Building, which is very good (my building is Gold, which is also good, but this building I guess is just better). This is the rear. I sat down low on my tiny super-lightweight fold-out sketching stool.

And finally, well I can’t resist drawing these bins can I. Recycling is of course very much part of Sustainability. By the way, I have to say I’m glad I don’t work in Sustainability, because typing that over and over is quite tiring, it’s a long word. It’s hard enough for me to always be typing Biostatistics, my spell-corrector now just corrects it to the typos, I’ve done it so often. But I think perhaps Sustainability should use a smaller word, more carbon-neutral, easier to type out. Anyway! This was a fun thing to be involved with, great to raise awareness of Sust-y, I learned a few things myself and met some nice people. Many thanks to Camille and Nick for organizing it!

bike barn victoire

September 25, 2018September 23, 20184 Comments

More from campus. See, what I do is I work, I go out some lunchtimes and sketch, and then I work, then I go home and eat dinner with my family and look at things online and read and chase cats and sleep. I’ve been in Davis for a quarter of my whole life, so naturally I will draw things again that I have drawn before. Many times. Many, many times. Fecking loads of bleedin’ times. I lived in Aix-en-Provence years ago, before I was drawing as regularly as I am now, and I used to joke about Cezanne getting up every day thinking, right, what shall I paint today then? And he wanders about Cours Mirabeau and Rue des Cordeliers and sits himself down with a poulet-frites and an Orangina and goes, oh ok I’ll paint Mont St Victoire again. I’ve only painted it like 500 times already. And sometimes on weekends he will be like, maybe I’ll pop down to Marseille on the bus and paint the Vieux Port, and then he’s like, nah I can’t be bothered, I hate that walk from the bus station down La Canabiere. This is why we have so many St. Victoire paintings; I know the feeling, Paul, I feel ya. I was pretty much always busy when I lived in Aix, well nowhere near as busy as now and I wish that I had drawn more. I did start drawing again there, my flat-mate Mike from Canada and I started a ‘Wall Of Art’ in our kitchen, silly really but it was a fun place of expression. It started when I bought some oil pastels and sketched him having a drink at a cafe. I should find that and post it here, it might be a bit more interesting than my current crop of Davis sketches. Anyway, this is the Bike Barn. I have drawn this building so many times now (see many of them in this tag: /bikebarn). I suppose it’s my St.Victoire, it’s about the same shape (though I have never climbed on the roof, I have climbed to the top of Mont St.Victoire, twice).

You know what I just realized? I’ve never drawn Mont. St.Victoire from life. Maybe I should go back and do that sometime. But ONLY if Paul Cezanne comes here and paints the Bike Barn. It’s only fair.

more campus vignettes

June 30, 2018July 1, 2018Leave a comment

Ok I am pretty caught up with the scanning so here are some more lunchtime campus sketches, packed into one post. Above is one of the oldest buildings on the UC Davis campus – North Hall. It’s 110 years old. This is the side of it, facing South Hall.

Here is the Bike Barn, as seen from the South Silo, next to one of the food trucks that frequent the Silo area these days (or during the academic year anyway).

This is the rear of the Enology Lab Building, just off California Avenue. It looks uninteresting but is the sort of thing I like to draw.

This is a tree outside the Arts Building.

The rear of Heitman (formerly the Hog Barn), with the south Silo behind it. I have taken a lot of staff development classes here in Heitman.

And the view of the Bike Barn from afar, once more. I have sketched this scene so many times over the years, but this time at a slightly different angle. That’s the front of Heitman there, with the South Silo behind it. Right now, at the end of June, the Davis Heat is here again. A hundred degrees and rising, with a hot wind blowing. Onwards with the World Cup knockout stage…

don’t matter what i do

August 14, 2017August 14, 20173 Comments

Long hot summer ain’t passing me by, though I’m trying to pass it by. We went over 40 days of 90 degree weather, many of them being in the 100s. I drew this over the course of three lunchtimes, each one where I ate at one of the food trucks at the newly remodeled Silo area. I drew this from the shade of a tree, and you can see the whole area in front of the Bike Barn has been totally renovated and changed, it looks different from the way it did previously (see this post from 2015 which shows sketches back to 2011). Sketching in the heat is something I should be used to in Davis, but more and more it puts me off. Maybe because I have drawn everything in this town and on this campus (maybe not everything, but it feels like it), maybe I have sketched so much this year already that it feels like a chore sometimes (you go through these lulls), maybe I just don’t want to leave the house (I have discovered the joys of creating stop-motion Lego animations, it’s fun). Maybe I have been spending too much time drawing MS Paint illustrations of this year’s football kits (no, NOT ENOUGH time!). Maybe it’s that whole thing where you go to Italy, and nothing else seems quite as interesting afterwards, and you just yearn for more travel, more places. Maybe, I don’t really know. Maybe you’re the same as me, we’ll see things they’ll never see, you and I are gonna live forev-eeeerrrr…

answers on a postcard

August 29, 2016August 29, 20162 Comments

Well, what else has been going on on the UC Davis campus this summer? Building work, hot days, Delta breezes, summer sessions classes, and lunchtime drawings in a post-Manchester-symposium sketching-energy spike. Actually more of a pre-UC Davis-Design-Museum-Sketchbook-Exhibition sketching sketching-energy spike. Yes, my sketchbook exhibit is opening next month, it will be called “Conversations with the City” and will run at the Design Museum in Cruess Hall from September 19 to November 13. So exciting! See http://arts.ucdavis.edu/exhibition/conversations-city-pete-scully-urban-sketcher for more details. I will be displaying sketchbooks ranging from 2006 to 2016. The exhibit is Curated by James Housefield and Tim McNeil of the UC Davis Design Department, and I will also be giving a talk about my urban sketching work (and why you should keep a sketchbook) on Thursday October 6th, from 6-8pm. I will place an announcement in the sidebar on my website, but if you are in Davis then do come by!

In the meantime…here are some recent sketches of UC Davis. Above, the South Silo, undergoing a major refurbishment and upgrade of that whole area. New eateries will be going in, the paths will be widened to create a new vista, already we have seen some big improvements (despite the removal of an old funny-shaped tree, which was kind of in the way – it’s easier to cycle around Bainer now). You can see the oft-sketched Bike Barn there too on the right. It will be fun to see how different it all looks here. Below, part of the same building, still functioning despite the big renovations next door, the UC Davis Craft Center. I drew it one lunchtime before taking a Diversity training class in the building opposite. I added the paint later on.Not a lot of shaded spots to sketch this view from but I stood beneath a small tree.

Below is Nelson Hall, which is home to the Della Davidson Performance Studio. It’s on Old Davis Road, next to the Arboretum, and this used to be called the University Club. Last time I was in here was during the UC Davis Centenary celebrations (2008-09); in fact I took my new staff orientation here a decade ago. I’ve been on campus a long time now. I always felt like these little snapshots of Davis were my ‘postcards’ being sent back to those I left in England, so they can see where I live now. After almost eleven years in California there have been a lot of these postcards…

This building below has been on campus a lot longer: TB9, aka Temporary Building #9. It’s long been an arts studio and home to decades of ceramicists such as Robert Arneson. Fun story, first ever sketchcrawl I did in Davis (Dec 2005) I ended up outside here, sketching sculptures in the back yard area. Recently, TB9 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places – see the news announcement – due to its importance in art history. About time I sketched it properly then huh! It is right next to the Pitzer Center so has cropped up in the background a few times. With the Pitzer Center no longer being a big closed off construction site I was able to get stand off the road and get a better view without being run over by trucks.

Even older still is Wyatt Pavilion Theatre, below, a decent-sized performance hall built in 1907 (that’s right, 1907! Here is some history and info). I came and saw a play here a few years ago, Richard III; I really should go and see more theatre. I do have a degree in Drama you know. Ah that explains a lot I hear you say. Well it was French and Drama if you must know. I actually did a fair bit of foreign language acting when I was at college, though usually in German. Acting in German is way more fun; you get to do Brecht!

See that blue poster on the wall of the Wyatt? That is actually advertising my exhibition! Among other things, my that is at the top, which is exciting. So anyway, come and see my “Conversations with the City” when it opens, and take a peak at my sketchbooks. I hope you like it.