some time at UC Davis (summer 2022)

January 29, 2023January 29, 2023Leave a comment

As we catch up from last summer, here are some of the things I drew on campus. There was a lot of work done on the roundabout junction between the Silo, Chemistry and Bainer, so I stood behind the wire and drew the construction machines and the workers putting the street together. The standing stones in the foreground on the right have been there for ages, I’ve drawn them before, I’ve drawn everywhere before. It’s interesting to draw the in-between moments of these places, as they go from looking one way to another.

The next view is very close by, from a different angle, where there’s no work going on, and it hasn’t changed in years. I drew this one pretty fast; it was the difference in the high-summer greens that made me want to put it to paper.

Another one drawn on a super hot day while stood in the shade, this is an old campus building called TB-9, which sounds like the name of a protocol droid in the Star Wars universe, but TB stands for ‘temporary building’. I mean, astronomically or geologically it is temporary, as are well all and all our thoughts and fears and politics, but in this case, the building was born in 1958 and is now on the actual National Register of Historic Places, no less. So it’s probably not going anywhere, but it might tempt fate to call it ‘Permanent Building 9’. If you want to know more about this building, check out this article: https://www.ucdavis.edu/curiosity/news/historical-highlights-uc-davis-department-art-and-tb-9-1958-1976

This next one is primarily about the cacti in front of the Student Community Center, looking out at the Silo area. Another hot day, they all blend into one now. What even happened last August? It feels so long ago already.

A week or so later, while it was a sizzling 102 degrees outside (in the weeks that would follow, 102 would feel like a bit of an ice age), I sat inside the Student Community Center and ate lunch, and drew the lobby area. Among other things this building is home to the UC Davis Cross Cultural Center, and there are colourful murals inside. We hold our annual department holiday party here too.

And finally, the end of September, summer was over and the new Fall quarter had begun. So everyone was back, and we all got busy again, and the Silo area had new blue and yellow sun-shades over the tables. The academic year started. I still have a bunch more sketches from summer to post, from Davis and a few other places, and some from Fall too, but this was the summer on campus. Most of the staff in our department worked remotely except for one day a week, so I was there by myself for a lot of the time, but it’s nice when there are more people about again giving the campus its life, with all the students rushing about and bikes everywhere.

mechanical monsters

November 17, 2021Leave a comment

This behemoth of a machine was parked at the corner of our street last month during the seemingly endless roadwork project going on in our part of north Davis. There was no question, I had to sketch it. Look at this absolute beauty, this enormous street dinosaur robot creature. There was another one a little further down, I would have drawn them both but the wind was picking up. I imagined them battling in the street, the biggest robot battle since Sir Kill-a-Lot first killed a lot (little Robot Wars/Spaced reference there), those cones being their minions. One cone was stuck on the robot’s tail, those cones eh, they should make a movie about their japes. I do love a bit of detail though. It’s very relaxing to get stuck into a drawing like that. It was a Sunday afternoon.

roll up for the chemistry tour

July 2, 20202 Comments

The Chemistry Building at UC Davis is big, and I have drawn bits of it before a few times. This is the building that I have most often seen fire trucks outside of, unsurprisingly. I did notice last December just before Christmas that some new work was starting on this side of the building, and that the large concrete double-decker connecting walkway between two wings was about to be toast. So I stood on the little hillock opposite (no rhyming jokes please) and drew as the machines started tearing into it. This was page one of my sketchbook, which in the new numbering system is #36, a Stillman and Birn Alpha book.

There is work going on around the other side of the building too. So in early January I stopped and drew that one lunchtime. Chemistry, I was not a fan of that subject when I was at school. I didn’t like Bunsen Burners. Our teacher was ok, a bit grumpy though, used to say things like “I don’t care if you pass your exams, I’ve already passed mine,” and I was pretty so-so with the subject. I like Physics a lot more, I just wasn’t very good at it. Whereas I didn’t like Biology much, and yet I used to get really good grades in it. They all used to even each other out like some sort of science equation with chemistry being in the middle, Bi + Ch – Ph = PS. That looks really unsciencey. One thing we used to enjoy (and so did most of you) was coming up with molecules using the letters in the periodic table to make rude words. Science can be fun. Fluoro-uranium-carbo-potassium for example, or Polonium-Oxide, etc and so on. Surprisingly I ended up getting C overall in GCSE integrated science, and that was my non-starter science career done with. You can’t go on to be a scientist after that. I loved Michael Faraday, read lots of books about astronomy and the solar system, and watched Young Einstein a bunch of times, but I guess when it came to chemistry all I brought away was remembering the formula for Potassium Permanganate, KmNO4. Oh well. Now I listen to science podcasts and watch science TV shows and feel like I know loads about science but chemistry was always a bit beyond me. Honestly it was the Bunsen Burners.

I drew this drill using the iPad. It was there with all the other machines by the Chemistry Building. Brings me back to school too, back to CDT class. Craft Design Technology. What Americans would call “shop class”. Drills, sanding machines, moulding plastic, building cogs, circuits and conductors, and all sorts of things I have forgotten. Again I was not super good at it except in the bits where I could draw. We did do one project in the third year though where we had to design a moving vehicle with a rubber band and some wooden sticks, and I made this triangular designed race car (obsessed with race cars, Formula One is back this weekend!), using a kinder-egg plastic shell as the front wheel. We had to race them. Guess who won! Yes amazingly I did. No idea how, total fluke, but I hung up my engineering boots that day.

Here is another with the iPad, back round the side where the walkway used to be. I like using the iPad for those skies. You put them on a different layer. Working in layers in ProCreate is really handy.

And then finally, the same view as in the first picture, and this happened to be the final page of Sketchbook #36, rounding off the book with a view from the same small hillock (oi, watch it) as on the first. And this was also my first outside sketch in three months, after the shelter-in-place was lifted. As things start to get worse, it looks like the little bit of reopening that we have seen will now be scaled back. I’m not going out much to draw these days anyway, spending my lunchtimes at home and not really going out on the weekends, so I have started looking online again and drawing London tube stations, because why not. 2020 is totally Ruthenium-Boron-Bismuth-Sulphur-Hydrogen. See no wonder I got a C in Chemistry.

big mechanical monster on campus

November 12, 2013November 12, 20132 Comments

If you had to come back as a monster machine, this one is about as badass as you can get. I can’t believe I just used the word ‘badass’ because I’m not twelve, but really there aren’t many other available words in our lexicon that can describe this thing quite as well (and it’s anatomically accurate too, the big chainsaw thing being at the rear). I saw this machine near Shields Library on the UC Davis campus, I believe its purpose is to open up the Earth’s core and tear out its soul; either way when you show up for work in the morning this is the machine you want to be playing with. Give this one a parking ticket, I dare you, I double-dare you. When you absolutely positively got to rip up every piece of sidewalk on the street, accept no substitute. It looks like something out of Robot Wars. I sketched this in the Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook, with a micro pen that has seen better days.

bring it on down

December 6, 20124 Comments

Back to the old Boiler Building, and the machines are really tearing it down now. The whole east side has been turned to rubble, leaving a sad, draughty, haunted shell. A small crowd of people with young, construction-machine-loving-aged children (you know the age, parents!) to see the mighty mechanical dinosaurs at work, and to wave goodbye to a historic part of UC Davis. Back at work, I spoke about this sad demise of a much-loved campus sight to some of the professors who have taught there for the past few decades. “Where’s this, then?” they said. “Boiler Building? Is that downtown somewhere? Don’t know that one.” Well, I’ll miss it. Even if I too had no idea what it was for until recently.

september sketchcrawl at the silo

September 16, 20122 Comments

Yesterday we the sketchers of Davis met at the UC Davis Silo, my usual everyday sketching spot, for the latest ‘Let’s Draw Davis!’ sketchcrawl. There were about thirteen of us all in all, familiar faces and new sketchers also. I love meeting new fellow urban sketchers, but it is especially fun seeing people draw the same things that I sketch on my everyday lunchtimes, in new and different ways. I started by spending a long time drawing this wing of the Silo in brown pen. My son was there sketching with me in the morning; he’s a sketchcrawl veteran now. It was another warm day, so it was nice to sit in the shade. UC Davis is quiet this weekend, but this week thousands of students will return or start their new journeys in Davis, and the craziness begins. I can’t wait of course, being a busy and exciting period of work for me, but at the same time it’s nice to savour the quiet moments when I can.

There’s also a lot of last-minute construction work going on on campus too, it seems. This work machine was parked near the Silo and just begged to be sketched. I drew this in micron pen and coloured it in watercolour. I don’t know what ‘MF’ stands for but I can hazard a guess (it reminded me of “TFU” in the robot wars episode of Spaced).

My last one of the day was a fairly quick one of the back of Hart Hall, and I decided to make it a bit livelier by splattering paint all over the page for a bit of texture. After this we all met in the shade outside Shields Library and looked at each other’s sketchbooks, and talked about pens and paper and methods, which is always fun. The next one will be in October, on the date of the worldwide sketchcrawl; details to come at some point soon!

having a dig

May 4, 20121 Comment

Another lunchtime sketch; taking a risk with my allergies flaring up like 70’s trousers, so kept it quick, a drawing of a digger outside work. I used the hi-tec c in the stillman & birn gamma book. The workmen came along as I was getting near the end, and were kind enough to let me finish before driving the digger away.

will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

March 10, 20123 Comments

These student housing halls over by Tercero on the UC Davis campus, Pierce Halls, are currently being demolished. I was kindly informed about this last week so raced over this week to capture them before they vanished. I found a quiet spot up a stairwell outside the demolition zone, and listened to the “football weekly extra” podcast (who seemed convinced that Spurs season was also under demolition). I’m glad the big digger stayed still for me, parked like a big mechanical yellow dinosaur awaiting its prey. I can imagine all the student tales from all the years that students lived here. When I was at university I didn’t live in the halls, and while one part of me felt I was missing out, I’m glad I didn’t. I did spend a year living in the student halls while teaching in Charleroi (la Vigie), which was noisy to say the least. I have no idea about American halls though, other than in the movies. Anyway, whatever the hidden histories, they’re all being knocked down now and buried in the rubble.

they call me the roller

January 6, 20122 Comments

Beautiful day out today. I mean, freezing this morning, but very sunny by lunchtime, although a bit nippy. I just had to get out and sketch. Despite being ridiculously busy in January, I always enjoy sketching in this month. We often have mild, bright Januarys here. But I didn’t draw a street scene or campus view with the sun shining through bare, leafless trees, because I saw this, a little mini steamroller, sat on Shields Avenue on the UC Davis campus. What a beauty! I’ll draw sunny skies tomorrow. Today was all about steamrollers.

i’ll be digging lumps of gold

July 2, 2011July 1, 2011Leave a comment

Another one for the boy. This Big Digger was parked on the UC davis campus on Thursday lunchtime, and I sat in the sunshine, lathered in sunscreen, beneath my big black shady hat and sketched it. The fields are the usual end of June brown, despite Tuesday’s shock out-of-character deluge (end of June Brown? she plays Dot Cotton doesn’t she?). We say brown, but it’s yellow ochre, more like gold. California is the golden state after all. I was going to sketch the Robert Mondavi Institute from beyond its vinyards (next week) but this industrial brontosaurus just roared out to be sketched. How could I resist? Drawn with micron pigma 05, coloured with watercolour, on the last day in June. Wow, already June has become July…not long until a certain international symposium..!