Here is another one from July, drawn on 5th Street, the Newman Catholic Center building. There was work being done on this place and it’s large green area on the corner of C St, where the grass in front of the building had been paved over. I’m always drawn to triangular shapes, and the way that the overhanging shadows create an interesting contrast, and I like blue and old wood with character. I’ve drawn the building before (even drew it a few months before in April, from across the street. This is another panorama over two pages that I like to draw because I think, oh yeah this would be good in a book about Davis in that specific format, and as yet more than a decade after having the idea I have not published that book, but technically I am working on it because I keep doing more drawings, that’s the same as writing. I stood behind the picket fence, and you can see the top of it. I love a picket fence, it reminds me I am in suburban America, which twenty years later is still funny to me. I don’t love drawing picket fences though, it becomes tedious very quickly. Anyway I sketched not realizing the view would change very soon after and this would be the last time to catch it in this particular guise, I am glad I got the picket fence in.

Here it is in October, sketched from across the street. As you can see, it’s now a different colour, creamy, the picket fence is gone, even around the grassy enclosure which now has a more solid wooden fence. There are two metal structures (pergolas? I’m not good with architectural terms) in front of the building now to create some shaded space I suppose. I love drawing that tree, so I focused a lot on that. You can see the bench commemorating Natalie Coroner, the young police officer who was killed by here several years ago. The city just opened a new splashpad for kids in the down the road named for her memory.  And here is the sketch I did in April for comparison from roughly the same view across the street, stood maybe a few feet to the left, and a bit more coloured in. You can see the grass that was there (behind that picket fence, it takes a lot more effort to colour in the areas behind a picket fence). It is interesting to see how a place has changed over the course of just a few months. Here again is one of the reasons I sketch, the track the changes in the place where I live, even if I don’t always realize that’s what I’m doing, I don’t necessarily sketch places knowing they will soon change. 

And so we continue our journey through Summer 2025, and it’s really and truly summer when you hit the first of July. Davis is a bit quieter in July, with most of the students being away, but it’s not exactly a ghost town, and the lunchtime food spots were surprisingly busy. There’s a lot of summer activity here, and on campus the fiscal close period keeps all the financial-minded staff busy. On this lunchtime I ate downtown and then stood 2nd Street next to the Institute of Odd Fellows (IOOF; I always think it says “100F” as in degrees Fahrenheit, average temperature in a Davis summer. Or more. This summer was not as bad, as it turns out, at least with the weather, not so much with the political climate. I stood next to the Handheld Pie truck that is parked underneath the big mural, I have only ever had their pie once at the Farmer’s Market. I listened to a football podcast or an audiobook or something. They say as an urban sketcher you should never sketch with headphones on, because you want to listen to the environment and soak in the senses of the world around you, and yeah sure if I was going to somewhere exotic or new, but I know what Davis sounds like, I’m wearing my airpods. I have been inside the IOOF, once, for an AYSO volunteers’ event about nine years ago (I sketched it).

This is on 4th St, it;s a Law Office I think, I’ve drawn it before. Triangular house with, not a tree but a telegraph pole in front of it, pretty standard stuff for me. I used to wonder what I’d have been like as a lawyer, I used to think I’d be good at it, but I couldn’t handle the stress. I don’t like whiskey either, I hear they like their whiskey in a crystal decanter. When I was at school one of our teachers (Mr Dadswell) started a Law GCSE, a one year program for those who were interested, and I decided to sign up along with a mate of mine who ended up being far more interested in it than he expected and even (several years later) did some law as part of his degree program at uni. However I found myself bored almost straight away, learning about torts (which it turns out are not German cakes), and long words like jurisprudence and adjudication (I was more interested in the etymologies), plus some useful Latin phrases like Ultra Vires and Res Judicata, which meant nothing to me, though one phrase stuck with me forever and I still use it: ‘Volentia Non Fit Injuria’. Great phrase to bang out in a Cockney accent, “Nah mate, volentia non fit injuria, up yours innit.” I think I only ended up going to have the classes due to being busy with my art A-Level, and ended up giving up the Law GCSE after less than a couple of months, it wasn’t my thing. There were so many books, so many laws and precedents and trials to read. Imagine being a law student. People used to say, you could be a courtroom artist! We did visit Hendon Magistrates Court one time as part of the class to watch how proceedings happened, but it was a bit boring. I didn’t expect it to be like some TV legal drama, which I never found interesting anyway. I hated all those American law shows, with their good looking attorneys and their tense courtroom battles, “Objection!” “Overruled!” “No more questions Your Honor!”. I was never much into the British ones either, with their wigs and robes and confusing titles. I didn’t even watch Rumpole of the Bailey, though I liked Leo McKern, who wouldn’t. There was a daytime show called ‘Crown Court’ when I was a kid and it was so boring, I swear they used to put it on during the daytime just to bore kids into going back to school. It was actually a drama, but so dull and wooden I assumed it was just real events. I was never going to be a lawyer.

Here we are again on 3rd Street, outside Dunloe Brewing. I have been in here a few times, usually a mid-afternoon beer on a Saturday after some sketching, though I don’t really enjoy beers that much these days, so many are just so hoppy or bitter, I am losing my taste for them. So whenever I’ve been in here, I don’t think I’ve finished my beer. I like the place though, it usually has a welcoming atmosphere, though the decor is very minimalist brewery, it’s built so you might strike up a conversation with people. Big tables for finishing off those sketches too, though I didn’t pop in after drawing this one. The fourth of July, most people on campus got off early. I enjoyed drawing the brickwork, and that big tree as well, which hides the vanishing point so people can’t check if I’m getting my perspective right. This was a bike shop years ago, I do remember coming in and getting new handle grips here once. I can never get those on, you have to push really hard and I’m just not that hard.

I’ve never been in this store either, it’s called ‘Yesterday’, on the E Street Plaza. There have been a few things here in my time in Davis, none of which I’ve ever been into. The old Avid Reader kids book store used to be next door, 20 years ago, when I first worked there I had to help move them out and rearrange all the books in the upstairs section of the main store on 2nd Street. That was less interesting than it sounds, but I remember I had a nice co-worker to talk to. I stood next to the Basin Robbins store on E St – been in there a few times, I like a milkshake every now and then, more so this year, it’s been a tough year – and bumped into my old friend from the Soccer and Lifestyle shop while I sketched, we talked about football shirts obviously and our trips abroad, he’d been to Italy, told me about the places in the Cinqueterre that I would definitely love to sketch, and we talked about the brand Kelme that used to make Real Madrid kits in the 90s and now make Watford’s shirts. I think Yesterday is a clothes store, I would see quite a lot of teenagers going in there, they like fashion, the teenagers. And that haircut they all have now, the one where it’s a bit curly at the front and shorter at the sides, they love that, the teenagers. When I was a teenager I was into football shirts, drawing, and guitars, so a bit like now. I didn’t have too long to sketch so kept this minimal, and did not finish off later and colouring-in later.

This is one of those trees that goes very bright pink all of a sudden, a bit like me when I get embarrassed for not knowing the names of any of these trees. People do tell me as well, but I forget.  I stood on the corner of 2nd and D one lunchtime and drew this tree, outside a frozen yogurt place of which there are so many in Davis (I’ve not been in this one). Yogurt, I spell it ‘yoghurt’ of course. It’s nice, but I don’t eat it much, not when there is Baskin-Robbins milkshake nearby. In fact this is very close, on the same block, as the first sketch in this post so it’s like we have come full circle, which is not easy on a grid system where everything is square or rectangular. Sketching every part of downtown feels like a sketch safari, except if I was on a real safari I’d be a bit useless at identifying anything, “there’s one of those big cat things with the spots, and over there is of those big grey animals with the long noses and the ears, and look there’s a stripy horse thing, I call it a Zebra but you would call it a Zeebra, oh no wait it is a horse standing next to a fence, never mind.”