Let’s Draw Davis! July 9

June 7, 2016Leave a comment

“Let’s Draw Davis” is back! Join us for a sketchcrawl around downtown Davis on Saturday, July 9th.We’ll go from the Central Park near the Farmer’s Market and sketch in a group or individually as you prefer, heading downtown towards the E Street Plaza to look at each others sketchbooks.

DATE: Saturday July 9th, 2016

START: 10:30am, Central Park (at the picnic tables by the carousel)

FINISH: 3:30pm, E Street Plaza (by the fountain)

This sketchcrawl is FREE, and open to anybody at all, beginners or seasoned artists, anyone who wants to just get out and do a bit of drawing and meet others who like to do the same. All you need is something to draw with and something to draw on! (And maybe a hat, and sunscreen). And afterwards, if you like we can cool off in De Vere’s Irish Pub.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below!

Facebookers: Here’s the FB event for Let’s Draw Davis: https://www.facebook.com/events/581331518693535/

**I have been rather busy on weekends these past couple of years and had little time to organize these once monthly sketching meet-ups, but I felt that it’s time to start getting us sketchers together again! I plan to start organizing more in the Fall, likely on Sundays (those Saturdays belong to AYSO soccer these days…) so if you can’t make this one, stay tuned!

Pete

if there was a sequel would you love me as an equal

June 2, 20168 Comments

On the second day of the Long Weekend, in the morning while my son went to a birthday party, I cycled downtown for some pre-lunchtime sketching. Another panoramic two-page spread, as you do. I decided to return to First Street, which is a block away from the similarly named Second Street (I know, makes no sense). Here, outside the Natsoulas Gallery, a huge cat is being erected, covered in mosaic tiles, next to the already installed colourful dog on the corner. While sketching, a guy working on the structure came over and chatted with me about art (he draws stuff as well) (hello by the way if you’re reading this). This is turning into a most colourful corner. On the other page, the fraternity house of Theta Xi (no, sorry, no jokes about taxis today). This is a bit like a sequel (or a prequel, technically, being First Street) to the sketch from the day before. I should do a panorama of Third Street to keep it up, like. Maybe I will wait 30 years and then sell my sketchbook for billions to Disney and they can get J J Abrams to sketch it, but as much in the style of the Second Street sketch as possible, with a fire hydrant and a bit of lens flare, forgetting that First Street with its giant cats and midichlorians even exists. Or maybe not. It’s getting hotter, hotter, hotter. This weekend is going to be a scorcher. Time to get out of Davis…

why the panoramic face?

June 1, 20165 Comments

Long weekend here in America, which meant longer drawings. Ok, a horse with an injured tail walks into a bar. “Why the long weekend?” asks the barman. No, no it was a bank, he walks into a bank on a holiday. “Why the long weekend?” asks the bank clerk. Maybe not an injured tail, maybe his tail was all overgrown rendering it useless for whatever tails usually are for, hence not being as strong as his front end, for example. So a horse with a less strong, very hairy tail walks into a bank, while on holiday, and the bank clerk says to him, he goes “why the long weekend?” Maybe there’s nothing wrong with his tail at all, maybe he had just been in a race, and had originally been one of the front-runners (that’s a horse racing term) but towards the end he had started to tail off (that’s another one), finally just ambling over the line, not even trotting, just going really slowly, like he had no energy, maybe he was already thinking of his holidays on the beach, before finally he walked into a bar, I mean a bank, and the bank clerk who had been watching the race on the TV, he asks him “why the long, weak end?”. Or maybe, maybe the horse is Bryan Singer and the race is X-Men Apocalypse and I am the bank clerk and maybe I asked exactly that question after seeing that very movie, which I in fact did, not long after finishing this drawing that you see here. (You see I was going somewhere with all of that, I wasn’t just ambling on, or trotting). This is Second Street (though in my opinion, it’s first), Davis. I sat on the corner of F Street (which in my opinion is more of a B+) and drew this familiar scene. In the middle there, the Varsity Theatre, historic centre of the Davis downtown, right opposite the Avid Reader bookstore. I sat drawing for a couple of hours, drawing furiosuly with my uni-ball signo UM-151 brown-black pen, and doing some of the water color on site and the rest at home; pizza dinner awaited me. And then, X-Men. While it was not a bad film (it was not quite Batman v Superman level of “what-the”, there was no “Clark Kent gets into the bath with his shoes on” moment), and it had some good moments and good call-backs to the previous films, it really suffered in its storytelling. I know that sounds ironic given that I spent five minutes trying to tell a joke about a horse at the start of this post but my budget is a little lower. I just felt the narrative started to fall apart somewhere around the middle of the film. It doesn’t stand up to the other X-films. A few good bits – well X-Men The Last Stand had good bits too but overall gets a terrible rap (deservedly if we’re honest). Even “X-Men Origins – Wolverine” was a good idea, though Logan’s (spoiler alert) cameo in this is (spoiler spoiler spoiler) totally unnecessary, inconsequential and utterly shoehorned into the film (you might say it spoiled the movie). Still, Magneto saying “Who the fuck are you?” to Apocalypse was fun. Everyone knows I love Magneto. As I say though, the ending of the film was long and weak, and since it could be said (not by me, but I’m about to say it so I suppose it is by me) that Fox is flogging a dead horse, then that brings us nicely back to “Why did the chicken cross the road? To stop the rights going back to Marvel.”

Hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend.

building the pitzer, part six

May 30, 20162 Comments

It’s nearly done, the Pitzer Center, the new Music Recital Hall on the UC Davis campus. I’ve sketched this spot since it was the Boiler Building, and watched that old campus character get knocked into the dust, with this finally rising to take its place. It’s nearly done.

Here is the front entrance area, now fully glazed. This is what will greet visitors to campus for years to come. I’m looking forward to finally seeing performances there myself.

Below, a panorama using pencil. I was thinking about Florian Afflerbach that day, he would have enjoyed to sketch this building. It’s through him that I gained the interest in sketching buildings like this, and using them to really study perspective.

Here are the previous chapters: PART FIVE (Feb 2016), PART FOUR (Oct 2015), PART THREE (Aug 2015), PART TWO (Aug 2015), PART ONE (July 2015).

walker way

May 29, 20162 Comments

This is the back of Walker Hall, which will be redeveloped into the Graduate and Professional Student Center at UC Davis. The basic “E” shape of this building will remian and the front will be pretty much as it is now, but the interior and much of the rear will be radically altered. I am therefore planning to sketch it a few more times before the winds of change blow in. It’s not really used for much these days so a change is on the cards – another one. I remember when there were other walls in front of these, with cacti all along them, and then when they redeveloped this stretch of campus they opened this up into the walkway you see now. This will in fact be opened up further creating a corridor all the way down to the entrance Shields Library (visible in the distance there). Walker Hall was named in 1959 after H. B. Walker, who was chair of the Agricultural Engineering department. One of the things they will have in this new center are rooms that can be named after people (faculty, I presume). More information about the new center can be found on the UC Davis Graduate Studies website. I drew this one lunchtime this week, while listening to the History of Rome podcast.

get your rocks on

May 27, 2016May 27, 20161 Comment

When I first started working at UC Davis, my building was on “California Avenue”. There were a few buildings opposite, one of which was a wooden building in the same style as many others on campus (such as The Barn). I’d only just started obsessing about sketching buildings in Davis and said, yeah, I will sketch that some day. I never did, and then it was knocked down, and they started construction on a new building, one that the Geology Department would move into from their previous home in the Physics building. California Avenue is now “Crocker Lane”. Geology is now “Earth and Planetary Sciences”. Pete is now “40”. So, this week I finally got around to doing a sketch of the Earth and Planetary Sciences, aka “EPS”, building. It’s a nice modern building, and has an interesting collection of rocks planted around the outside. My son (who loves geology) enjoys going out and looking at them when he comes to visit my office. This is literally the School of Rock.

rails, whales and tales

May 19, 2016May 19, 20163 Comments

Recently I went to Santa Barbara for the UCAAC (University of California Academic Advising Conference). I took the train down from Davis, an 11 hour journey on an Amtrak which didn’t have wifi, but did have amazing views. For an eleven hour trip it went by quite quickly. Zipping past the ocean, I even saw some whales, poking their heads and their tails out, an exciting sight. I spent at least half of the trip in the observation train, which was bright and roomy, and so I sat at a table and sketched. What else would I do? Sketching on trains is a good way for you to practice perspective. Also to practice steadying your hand while everything is bumpy. I caught the train at 7am, the first time I had taken one of these Coastal Starlight trains in California. They go right down from Seattle to San Diego, passing by many cities on the way. There were people who were making the long trip, a few interesting characters, and the announcers on the train liked to give the occasional piece of commentary. We crossed the Delta, went down the East Bay, through the Salad Bowl, horseshoed around a massive prison outside San Luis Obispo, paraded down the rocky coast before finally reaching the palm trees and beaches of Santa Barbara. It was a big ol’ train, a goliath on the move. I’d take the trip again. I did another on the less-lengthy train journey between Santa Barbara and Burbank Airport a few days later, sat in a regular seat. I’ll post my Santa Barbara sketches next, as I’ve finally started scanning them. Santa Barbara has a lot of red tiled roofs.

sketching in a garden

May 18, 2016May 18, 20162 Comments

Last Sunday I once again took part in the Pence Gallery’s annual Garden Tour. I didn’t get to tour the gardens myself, but was a resident artist in one of the gardens, down on 4th street in Davis. The weather has turned hot, and so I stood in what shade I could shelter beneath and drew in a large Stillman and Birn ‘Alpha’ sketchbook. There were quite a lot of garden visitors that day, and I spoke to many about sketching, pens, and so on. Not being a big oil painter with a big easel I stood out a lot less than some other artists but I like to think I bring something different. It was an interesting garden, much less floral than others I have done, and more modern, a very interesting place to entertain; the owners have transformed it into a really pleasant and welcoming space. I sketched the views showing the house front and back, early and late afternoon, totally remodeled and repainted from what it looked like just a few years ago.

After that, I was very thirsty (the one bottle of water provided for me was very, very warm), so I went to the pub to cool off. It’s nice to spend an afternoon drawing though. Just don’t mention the football. Glossed right past that.

This was the third time I’ve done the Garden Tour; see my previous results from 2014 and 2012. Images will be on display at the Pence Gallery at some point soon.

another changing corner

April 29, 20164 Comments

A couple of years ago I sketched the corner of 3rd and G when it was home to a much older, shorter building, which housed both my barber Razor’s Edge and the little shop called Tibet Nepal. See this post for example. Then the building was demolished, and replaced with this. It’s a bi taller, has more modern fittings, is pretty brown, and hoses a cafe which spills onto the street (with orange chairs) and I think another eatery of some sort. I sketched it one lunchtime last week and added another image to the endless list of Davis sketches. I think it’s about time I came out with some sort of Guide to Davis, but one entirely sketched, and written from a definitely Pete point of view. I know, I’ve had these ideas before, and I still intend to do a full on guide to the bars of Davis (“Davis Bar By Bar” the limited run mini zine had one volume and I never had time to print volumes 2 and 3). “A Davis Sketchbook” is something I have also long considered, I have enough material but time passes by so fast. Perhaps this will be a summer project. Or you can just look at all the posts on my blog that say “Davis“. It’s been quite the week for UC Davis. The Chancellor has been placed on administrative leave for a number of reasons I won’t go into right now (read the news…). I’ll just talk about this sketch. So this new building came in replacing an older building, and all those trees around make this spot very shady. Speaking of shady, it’s been quite the week for UC Davis, the Chancellor has been placed on administrative leave for a number of reasons I won’t go into right now (read the news…). Back to the drawing, I was in a hurry and so I kept certain elements pretty sketchy. Speaking of sketchy, it’s been quite the week for UC Davis…

bus stop inspiration

April 27, 20163 Comments

I stood at the bus stop on Third Street in downtown Davis. I hit the point recently where I have drawn all of Davis, literally the entire town. No that isn’t true, really, it can never be true, but sometimes it feels like it. I have drawn the building to the right before (actually that was a commission for the lovely couple who own it). I do wander about trying to get inspiration for a new sketch though and a lot of the time, nothing comes. That happens. You get uninspired. Everything looks so “common” and “everyday” and unworthy of recording again. I’m sure Paul Cezanne used to have days like that, “Oh not Mont St Victoire again, mon dieu” but he lived in Aix-en-Provence and unless there are Moleskine sketchbooks filled with his sketches of the Cours Mirabeau and the Dog People then I’m afraid he wasn’t really trying. Pull your finger out Cezanne! Mont St Victoire was like a comfort blanket for him, he’d get down, have a poulet-frites and paint the mountain again. It’s ok, I lived in Aix once, it’s a funny sort of town. More to sketch there than in Davis though. I have actually climbed Mont St Victoire you know, twice. I tell people this all the time like I discovered it or something, like I’m some big rugged mountaineer, Sherpa Tensing or someone. I walked up it, on the easy side, I didn’t freescale the steep side. Well, there are no mountains in Davis, but we do have this bus stop on Third Street. I wasn’t even waiting for a bus. I could tell you a great story about how I had twenty minutes to wait for the bus and I just whipped out the sketchbook and freescaled the Cezanne out of that blank page. The truth is I cycled there, and this wasn’t even my destination. I had no destination. It was lunchtime, I really needed to sketch, the final few pages of Watercolour Moleskine #14 had been blank for long enough and I had been putting off filling them until I had something amazing to fill them with. All I could find however was this bus-stop. It is a nice bus-stop, you have to admit.The incline on at least one of those metal poles is reminiscent of the incline on Mont St Victoire, if looking at it backwards. The moral of the story is if you have nothing left to draw, draw a bus-stop. YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE IT MIGHT TAKE YOU…

(Oh groan groan, and anyway yes you do, just look at the bus map. This line is on a loop anyway so if you want a rubbish bus metaphor it should be “drawing Davis is like the E line, you just always end up going back to all the places you’ve just been” or something)