like mercury rising

June 6, 2010June 6, 20104 Comments

Saturday was Drawing Day 2010, so I used it as an excuse to do another drawing (even though every day I find some excuse to draw something). I have wanted to sketch this interesting looking building on the corner of 4th and G Streets in Davis for some time now. It’s right next to Little Prague. There are i think several busineses are located in this building, one being the Davis driving academy or something, another being the gingerbread real estate co, or maybe I just imagined that last one. I sat in the shade opposite (90 degree weather has finally returned to this part of the world; 90 and rising).

tanks for the memories

May 30, 2010Leave a comment

The Dresbach Hunt-Boyer Mansion on 2nd Street is one of Davis’s historic old buildings, flanked on its left by an old tank-house in a little orange-tree yard – hang on, er, flanked on its right. It has been physically moved. I had heard that the local cafe Mishka’s was going to build a new space between the Mansion and the Varsity Theatre, which would mean bye-bye tank-house. Well, the tank-house has been moved, and is now plonked, literally plonked, right on the other side, looking a little awkward and not un-carbuncle-like. So while moocing downtown, I felt I had to sketch it, having forgotten to do so before. It’s not the first time it’s been moved, though; apparently it was relocated to the spot it just left some time in the 70s, from a bit further away. The magical moving tank-house. I don’t know if it will stay where it currently is.

all the world’s a stage

May 27, 2010May 27, 20109 Comments

The Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center, at UC Davis, is a huge performing arts venue. It’s a pretty spectacular looking building, but I’ve not been inside to check out any performances. One day I will. It’s on the same square at the edge of campus as this building and this building.Years ago, when I did a degree in drama at Queen Mary in London, I took an enjoyable course in places of performance (taught by Dr. Schoch, who would call me ‘Scully’), studying theatre spaces through the centuries, how they allow audiences to relate to the plays or shows, the urban semiotics of the building and how it fits in with its community. Visited at Shakespeare’s Globe, looked at Greek theatres, explored East-End music-halls; it was interesting stuff. I was personally into theatres-in-the-round, and by extension football stadia – I subsequently wrote a piece about the old (and soon to be demolished) Wembley Stadium, but from what I remember it was a fairly tired and so-last-century piece of writing. In my defence, it was the last century at the time, and I probably was tired. I did learn a lot though, reading Marvin Carlson and co, and in fact I still think of what that course taught me when I’m out sketching urban buildings here and there, because I’m always thinking about how each building is a performace unto itself, speaking to and defining its environment, and how each sketch puts that building or that scene into centre stage. Just in case you’re wondering about what goes through my head when deciding how to compose a picture.

Oh yeah… I have changed the layout theme of my sketchblog. New header, wider space for pictures, different colours, and easier to find those categorized things (though some much-needed reorganization still to be done). I like it. It’s long overdue.

on yer bike

May 21, 2010May 27, 2010Leave a comment

The Amgen Tour of California, the state’s biggest cycle race, is currently wheeling around the Golden State to much fanfare. I didn’t see any fanfare when the Tour came to Davis – starting one section here and ending in Santa Rosa – just a few TV vans left over on my way home.

But as I was having dinner downtown anyway, I decided I would draw the latest national tourist attraction to appear in Davis: the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, which occupies this building on B and 3rd. I haven’t been in, but I’m sure it is enormous fun. I imagine it’s like the Guinness World of Records, with exhibits such as the Cyclist Who Could Text and Cycle for Three Whole Miles Without Getting Into an Accident (lots of people try for this record in Davis), or the Completely Invisible Stop Sign (actually most of them are, apparently), or the Severed Head of Whoever it is Who Thinks Stealing the Light off your Bike is Funny (seriously, what low-life nicks a cheap bikelight?). If I ever go in, and find out that it’s not like that, I’ll be seriously disappointed.

beer and wine, i’ll be fine

May 14, 2010May 14, 20102 Comments

UC Davis does wine, I mean really does it. No, they’re not all winos, there aren’t lots of expensive fancy fashionable Napa style wineries around here, but this is the place where those vintners come to learn what the hell is going on with those grapes. The viticulturalists and enologists here are the top of the game, and they know their stuff. So now they have a shiny new complex and vinyard on campus to work with, the Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science. I sat out there yesterday lunchtime and sketched inside the courtyard’s Good Life Garden. More new additions are being, er, added to this complex, including facilities for the study not just of winemaking but beer-brewing too (I’m sure a few frat houses have their own micro-brew facilities already set up).

“Beer and Wine, I’ll be fine“, that phrase comes from a friend of mine who vehemently claimed it to be true, and then after downing a bottle of red plonk and a few pints of amber nectar, spent the rest of the night disproving his theory in the toilets of the Dublin Castle in Camden Town. Don’t mix grape and grain. I wonder if any of the high-tech labs are working on similar experiments. No need, mate – just go down Camden, innit.

lock stock

April 24, 20104 Comments

The pollen count is high, very high, but I braved a trip to the outside world today and cycled downtown to draw Davis Lock and Safe on 3rd st. It’s a different sort of look for Davis than the usual buildings I draw, but every bit as interesting, and right by the railroad tracks; I have wanted to sketch this place for a while (I always say that).

the sun bends light

April 11, 20104 Comments

And so we continue, post 1001, another curvilinear sketch of a UC Davis building: the Walter Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center. It’s right opposite this building, which I drew a couple of weeks ago.

“I am an alumni,” is a phrase I hear all too often here. “No you aren’t,” I reply, “you’re an alumnus.” It is incredible how many highly educated people don’t actually know this, or think it matters. Maybe it doesn’t, maybe the language is changing and we should let it change, even stop using all latin-based singular words. But if you’re tring to get across that you actually are one, “I am an alumni” makes you sound like you aren’t. You wouldn’t say, that is a mice, I am a men, I just ate a bananas.

Anyway that’s quite enough prescriptive grammar for a Sunday morning. Besides, I’ve always been far more David Crystal than Lynne Truss. I’ve just had to suffer Spurs losing an FA Cup semi-final in extra-time, which isn’t fun. I want to point out that I drew this with a uniball vision micro pen, I’ve used them for years but almost always draw with my pigma microns or copics, because of better ink and finer lines. However, the nibs on those always run down quickly in my watercolour moleskines, which is frustrating, but the nibs on these pens last for way longer, an the ink is pretty black and does not bleed; just something to consider in future pen choices.

a learning curve

April 7, 2010May 27, 20101 Comment

I had a pen in my bag I’d bought in London, a uni-pin fineliner I got in the big Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road, and wanted to run it down. I have wanted to draw the Shields Library on campus for a while but never found myself a good angle. I have also wanted to mess about with curvilinear perspectives for quite some time but have not done so. Until now; I sat at lunchtime in the shade among the bicycles opposite the library and started drawing. I’ve made it look like a baseball stadium or something. It is a very big library, and very well stocked. It was my destination of choice when I first moved here, way before I started working on campus, when I was just coming off from my Master’s back in the UK, where I had gotten quite used to spending hours locked away in the polished silence of the Maughan Library on Chancery Lane, or the high-up dustiness of Senate House. As a medievalist and germanic philologist I enjoyed the privelige of being in those quiet parts of the library that nobody went to, because usually nobody else was studying what I was studying (similarly I had little problem with borrowing books). I’ve not dusted off those books in some time.

I showed this to my two-year-old, and he was immediately impressed that I’d drawn a picture of a bicycle. He’s one for the small details (bit like me).

droit au but

March 30, 2010March 30, 20102 Comments

Target, in Davis. A controversial place in this town. It has only been open for about six months, but a few years ago it required a very narrow win in a city-wide vote for building to be approved. Target played hard-sell, appealing to the underwear buying public, college students and suburban moms alike, as well as sugaring the pill for Davis’s famed environmentalists by building the greenest Target building ever built (or something), but they faced some fierce opposition – Davis, with it’s anti-big-box tendencies, is not a town to mess about with. Downtown independent businesses banded together and fought the proposal, fearing (justifiably, given the story in so many other American towns) that the arrival of large big-box stores on the edge of town would destroy this small city’s downtown, and with it, its character. There were arguments, oh boy there were arguments, bitter bloody spit-in-the-street-and-call-you-elitists arguments. The underwear argument for one. The fact that there was already a new Target opening up the road in Woodland so another one was unnecessary. The whole creating new jobs thing (with the counter-argument that if it forced other stores out of business it would take away jobs too, and then the town is dependent on its big box store for employment, and if said store goes the way of Woolworths…) And then it was back to the underwear argument again (just where can you buy socks in Davis?).

But in the end, Target prevailed; with their national wealth behind them they had been able to spend sixteen times what the downtown stores had been able to muster up. And so here in 2010, here it is, green Target. And despite my love of and support for independent stores, I do go there when I have to, because it’s there. But personally, I don’t buy socks. I wait for Christmas.

the sky’s the limit

March 23, 2010March 22, 20103 Comments

This is Maurice J. Gallagher Hall, one of the newest shiniest new shiny buildings at UC Davis. It’s home to the Graduate School of Management.

I don’t often draw such modernity. I was interested in giving it a go, a study in perspective, and decided that I’d leave the big blue sky blank. The sky is literally the limit. I’m not into management speak. I never give people a heads up, aka an FYI, vis a vis the big picture all on the same page. Sometimes I sketch small pictures on the same page though.