beer and sketching after a long, long week

December 20, 2024December 19, 2024Leave a comment

After I was done with day two of the conference, finishing at about 8pm and exhausted, I walked downtown to grab some dinner and a couple of beers. Despite being tired I really needed to work out all the energy of that long long week into my sketchbook. I popped into the University of Beer, in a spot in the corner with a view that I have drawn before many years ago (2013), not long after it had opened. See below. I remember that afternoon, a hot day, and I was eager to practice my perspective sketching. Those older guys on the left were talking about Davis in the old days, the old bars that used to be there on G Street. They still had the long section of frost upon which you could put your glass to keep it chilled, but that seems to be gone now. And no more iPads with menus on! That seemed like a futuristic innovation back then but is apparently part of the dustbin of history now. To read the menu these days, you need to point your phone at a QR code, which means I have to read on my phone which is much smaller. So I’m sitting there looking over the rim of my glasses, even though I have varifocals, squinting to try and understand the ridiculous names all these beers have, looking for a nice normal amber ale. Back in the old days they only served beer too, but now they have all sorts of drinks, which is probably better for business to be honest, but the beer list is still long.

I ordered a beer and started drawing fast. I can draw quickly when it all starts coming out. As I drew, they started setting up for their Saturday night karaoke. It was pretty busy, that is a popular night out there I guess. People started singing, I didn’t always recognize the songs. I wasn’t tempted to have a go myself. I don’t mind a karaoke, historically, but I always like a stage. These ones where you are just in the corner by the door at the same level as people walking about would make me feel a bit odd. Not for me guv. Anyway, it was getting a bit loud, and I’d drawn very quickly and drunk my beer very slowly, but I wasn’t ready for the walk home just yet so popped by De Vere’s – sorry, not De Vere’s, it’s Bull’n’Mouth now, De Vere’s is in the past. I don’t go out much any more. They don’t do Smithwicks in there these days, and no Guinness, I think they are moving away from the Irishness of the predecessor pub. I drew a couple of quick sketches over a Bavarian beer, and made the long walk home for a long sleep. November was a long month.

sketching our annual stats conference, 2024

December 19, 2024December 19, 2024Leave a comment

Last month our department held its annual conference, this year title ‘Statistics in the Age of AI’. The conference is held in the memory of Peter Hall, one of the great professors of Statistics who passed away almost nine years ago now. This year we had many interesting speakers from around the country, plus several of our alumni came back to talk about the topic and about their own experiences working in Stats/Data Science in modern industry. We are of course in the Age of AI, and a lot of what was presented went way over my head. Despite all the years of being exposed to top-level statisticians, none of it has rubbed off on me, I’m none the wiser about any of it. I stopped learning maths at school at the age of 16, when I worked hard to get a ‘C’ at GCSE, which was the top grade available to those in my level two class. Yes it was a bit strange thinking back that a C was the highest grade available to me but I made my choice. I was in the top class for maths, but I was not very strong at it, I found the work confusing and frankly pointless, and I really didn’t like my teacher who scared me witless. So rather than go into my GCSE years struggling in the top set with the risk of being moved down, I requested to be moved into the second set, which would not only be a lot more manageable in terms of workload but the teacher was so much nicer, and I really learned a lot. The tradeoff was that I would not be able to get an A or B in the final grade. Since I was worried I’d get a D anyway, this didn’t bother me. I was usually top or among the top in that class (I was a bit like Burnley or Southampton or Sheffield United when they are in the Championship) and still remember working really hard at it, going to Edgware Library to study after school. When I got my C, which was a pass, I was well pleased and I put my calculator down and said, this is good enough. We don’t have to study maths beyond that age in England if we don’t want to, so I never did, let alone statistics. None of this really has anything to do with this conference other than I didn’t understand much of what was being said, but my job was to make sure the whole thing ran smoothly, so I was there all day from open to very late close, often by myself but I relied very much on the hard work of other staff too, lots of great teamwork, and keeping busy kept my mind off the world. I even got to present my poster of the faculty family tree I put together in the summer. It was nice to meet and greet people and make sure they were well fed. I wasn’t going to sketch as well but in those quieter moments I can’t help myself. So here are a few sketches of people enjoying what turned out to be a really nice event.

that old autumnal feeling

December 19, 2024December 19, 2024Leave a comment

This will be part one of two posts showing autumn in Davis. It feels like autumn lasts a very short time in Davis, but it’s actually a good little while and unquestionably the most spectacularly colourful time of the year. I am loathe to call it ‘Fall’ as the Americans do because it’s more like an amazing Rise, admittedly before the actual Fall when leaves get blown off the trees in a dramatic way. I love that part too, after the winds and storms come laying the trees bare, it’s like Christmas morning when the floor is covered in wrapping paper. November though was full of colour. Above is on Russell Blvd, as seen from outside the International Center. It got even more colourful than this a week or so later, this is really the start of the deep reds and yellows. That building is the Cal Aggie Christian Association, I’ve drawn that building before, it stands at a good location at the end of California Avenue so I pass by it every day.

This one was drawn downtown on F Street, at the corer of 2nd Street, and those two gossiping trees were starting to cover the ground in bronze-red leaves. The mural is one I’ve never drawn before, it’s a painting of the Columbus Cafe in San Francisco and was made decades ago by a local artist named Terry Buckendorf, it’s one of the oldest pieces of outdoor art in the downtown. You can learn more about it on DavisWiki. Obviously I wasn’t drawing many details (poor eyesight from across the street) but apparently the people in the cafe were well-known locals from back in the day. I wonder if I’ll ever end up in a mural, standing in the background somewhere hunched over my sketchbook. I don’t think I could ever make a mural, making anything that big would scare the life out of me. There are some really nice murals in Davis though, many with a bit of local history thrown in.

This building above is the Physical and Data Sciences Building” (PDSB), which was formerly the “Physical Sciences and Engineering Library” (PSEL), renamed this past year. In fact I was in that renaming conversation, I won’t say what my bright idea was but we have a new name for it now, I’m still getting used to the acronym. It’s nice inside, a big shared spaced for various units involved in data science, AI, quantum math and physics and all sorts of other related things. I will be finally moving some of our people in there soon too. The trees on the left were turning brown, and I drew this at lunchtime outside the recently finished new wing of the Chemistry building. There’s been a lot of construction in this little junction over the past few years but finally it’s all coming together.

I am trying my best not to remember the fifth of November, but look, that’s done now. Here are people lining up at the polling station in the Veterans Memorial Center, which I sketched on the way home. I had a headache, it only got worse. However the one thing I never forget about the fifth of November, that is the day we moved to Davis back in 2005. Nineteen years in this town. I remember it well, moving into our little flat in south Davis on Cowell Boulevard, walking down to Nugget and picking up a beer to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, sleeping on an old uncomfortable futon because we hadn’t bought a bed (or a sofa) yet. Waking up at 1am to the sound of the ground rumbling, our first experience of those mile-long freight trains that pass slowly through Davis in the middle of the night; we were relatively close to the train tracks, and it was a sounds I got used to pretty quickly (I still find it funny that even where I am now in north Davis I still feel the ground shaking slightly in the night when they pass through). We are now in our twentieth year in Davis, which I never saw coming back then. You never know what’s coming. Though on this date, I kind of did know what was coming. Still I drew the scene above with that tree turning deep dark purple, before watching maps turn red. Time to keep on sketching.

The scene above is of the building known on campus as the ‘Death Star’. It’s an annoying maze of concrete that is easy to get lost in. This is the entrance of campus, and the Death Star (properly called the Social Sciences and Humanities Building) is home to the Letters and Science Dean’s Office; I drew this as a gift for the outgoing Executive Assistant Dean upon his retirement, to remember the place by. I often have meetings in that building, and I’m ok if they are in the same place, but when they change location I have to give myself an extra ten minutes or so in case I get utterly lost. I have not drawn inside the maze of that building much in the past, but it feels like being in an Escher drawing. Safe to stick outside.

Finally, to end Part One, this bright yellow tree is outside the International Center, in the courtyard next to the space we hired for our annual Peter Hall Statistics Conference. I sketched this as I was looking out of the window from the registration table. I did a lot of sketching those two days, but I’ll post those separately. I can’t say I really understood any of it, but the colours outside were dazzling. Part Two coming soon.

a little more october in davis

December 17, 2024December 17, 20241 Comment

I have a bunch more sketches from around Davis to post, and then I can get to posting some of the sketches from my recent flying visit to London at the end of November/start of December. Christmas is coming, ain’t it guv’nor. Also wait until you see this year’s Advent Calendar. For now, some more Davis trees in front of Davis buildings. If I ever get to publishing this long-awaited book of my Davis sketches, it should be called ‘Trees In Front Of Buildings, by Pete Scully’. “So what do you draw, Mr. Scully?” “Well I draw trees, but preferably in front of buildings.” “Could you draw me a building without a tree in front?” “No I can’t do that I’m afraid, you’ll need to find someone else.” Everyone needs a theme. I still draw Fire Hydrants but I’ve kind of run out of new ones. The tree above, a gnarly one in the Arboretum, is in front of King Hall, the law school, and if you remember back to my old posts from the past twenty years I went through a stage of drawing the development of that building from the other side of the creek. That is actually going back a long time now. This one was drawn a lot closer up and from the shade of the Native American Contemplative Garden, which is an area of the Arboretum dedicated to the Patwin people; learn more about it at arboretum.ucdavis.edu/native-american-contemplative-garden. Just behind it you can see part of the old buckeye tree trunk that was left in place after it started falling apart a few years ago, and you can learn more about that here. I really like the shape this tree makes. They have such personalities, if you want to call it that. You might wonder why the trunk twisted this way and not that, what atmospheric elements led to this shape and not another shape, and is this true for all of us? Why am I like the way I am? Alright Sigmund let’s stop right there, stick to the sketchbook not the chaise longue.

This is another tree in front of another building, though the tree is not very interesting, going straight up until it reaches a point where it goes off into two, a bit like the Northern Line. It’s in front of Boheme, a clothes shop I have drawn before and which looks like it has a newly painted sign, it always looks very colourful on this stretch of 3rd Street. There’s a car in front of this one too. This means it falls under the sub-category of Cars In Front of Trees In Front Of Buildings. Having a little bit of kerb painted red is another one in the Pete Scully Sketch Bingo. Sorry, I think you might spell it ‘curb’ over here. Well I’m not doing that.

Here’s another one, but this time without a car, though there is a red kerb, and a big knobbly tree with a very storylike shape. I have drawn this building a few times over the years, in different iterations as a frat house, but at the time of drawing this it looks like it is in-between fraternities, being empty and for sale and having some work done on it. No beer pong today. I stood beneath some shade across the street to sketch, being drawn in mostly by the big tree shape. As I sketched a bearded man approached me. I didn’t recognize him, it was my next-door neighbour and former assistant soccer coach, on his way to teach on campus. I hadn’t realized how much his beard had grown, so when I said “hello” at first while still in my sketchbook-focus, I honestly didn’t realize who it was for a few seconds. It’s funny how even people and things you are really familiar with, one thing changes or you see them out of context and suddenly you don’t recognize them. There’s something in the mind that plays tricks on us, but again that’s another one for Sigmund. I get it when I walk around London, and see things I knew for years but they are different. I’m different, I’m looking older, my hair is getting lighter, my waist is getting heavier. I’m still sketching.

voting at the VMC

November 6, 2024Leave a comment

In a word, ‘bugger’. I have more words, but that will do for now. Remember remember the Fifth of bleedin’ November, indeed. I went to bed early last night rather than watch all the news coming in, as the constant noise about this county or that county was doing my head in, and I was getting a massive headache. I could see what was coming. I did fall asleep, for a bit, but woke up several times and in the end could not stay asleep, so here I am. Here we are. Anyway, I got off the bus yesterday to walk past the polling station at the Veterans Memorial Center in Davis, to have a look at democracy in action. This does hearten me, and the line was long. Sometimes you win, other times you lose. This time though, well, ‘bugger’. More words are available, but I’m not adding to the noise. I don’t think I’ve drawn this building before, the VMC, yet its near my house. Evening was already creeping in so I didn’t draw this all there, just a quick outline. I already did a sketch the same day, at lunchtime, and I have a whole load of sketches to post still, from our recent trip to Kaua’i, and all the ones in Davis since then, but I just wanted to post this one now. Bugger.

In other news (other news!) yesterday was also 19 years to the day since we moved to Davis. I have been a Davisite for 19 years. I need to think of a way to commemorate 20 years, next year. Another exhibition? A book? Right now, I just need some sleep.

last tree of the book

November 2, 2024Leave a comment

One last tree for the portrait-format Moleskine, final page of the sketchbook. That format fits drawing trees really well. I’ve gone back to the landscape format Moleskine now, but I’ll use the portrait books again. I’ve thought about having two sketchbooks on the go at the same time, one in each format, but that means carrying two around with me, and that’s a bit silly. This tree, along with the one behind it, is on University Avenue as it meets Russell Boulevard. I loved the texture and character of the tree. The trees still had more of a late summer feel to them, whereas now a few weeks later we are fully in autumnal mode. It even rained last night, quite a lot too, the first day of November. The rest of the year is going to start barreling in now. And in a few days is that day I’ve not been looking forward to, you all know the one, and I have been trying to bury the level of dread and anxiety I’m feeling about it. Whatshisname is going to bloody win. I don’t like even thinking about him. Expect a hell of a lot of furious drawing as I try to block out all of the noise. Running too, I have this 10k in three weeks and I’m not exactly as ready as I’d like. I think I imagined I’d lose more weight, but Halloween candy keeps magically appearing. The mornings have been a bit too dark for running before work too, so that’s pushed my runs to the weekend mornings (I don’t run evenings after work), but the time change is this weekend so that should help with that. I have been pushing my runs longer, I did 4.5 miles easily last week, slower pace but felt good, and I’m easing those distances a bit further each time. The run is the annual Turkey Trot, I usually do 5k but am pushing myself to go further this time. I haven’t decided which football shirt I will wear; I thought about getting a Galatasaray shirt (for the Turkey connection) as I always liked their kits, and when they beat Arsenal in that final years ago while I was living in Belgium (the Arsenal supporting barman turned off the TV and took it away, while the Galatasaray supporters in my kebab shop across the street started celebrating), but I don’t have one. I will probably just represent N17, and wear a classic Spurs shirt.

like a video game

October 29, 20241 Comment

Here is the view from my window at work, the ongoing seismic retrofit project over at Jungerman Hall, UC Davis. That’s where the Crocker Nuclear Lab is based, with its large cyclotron, whatever that is. I enjoy a bit of construction on campus (I heard someone say that ‘UCD’ stands for ‘Under Construction Daily’) but it gives me something interesting to draw and document. The zig-zagged scaffolding reminded me of Donkey Kong, which I used to play with my brother and uncle when I was a kid, making Mario run up the girders jumping over barrels to reach the Princess held captive by Donkey Kong. A simple game, but my older brother would play it for hours and hours, long after I had gotten bored, trying to ‘clock’ it, that is get so high a score that the counter went back to zero. He would sit at the end of my bed playing it until about 3am, sometimes with his mate and my uncle. We had Donkey Kong Jr too, which was similar but involved a little gorilla dude climbing up vines and getting cherries and bananas and avoiding scorpions or something. These were very basic days, computer games have come a long way. We played it on my ColecoVision, which was an unusual game system but for the few games I had it was quite brilliant. Not many people round our way had computer game systems at the time, though the main one was the Atari. I had previously had an Atari-like system called the Philips, which had some good games and extremely simplistic graphics that nonetheless excited my imagination, especially the one where you had to pilot a little spaceship through a field of colourful pixels that represented asteroids (I think it was called Asteroids). It was no Atari though, and everyone wanted an Atari. My neighbours had an Atari, and we loved the game Pitfall. Then I got the ColecoVision, which nobody else had at all. I got it for Christmas, I don’t know who my dad got it from, but no kid I knew ever heard of it, and they used to laugh at me when I would tell them about it. The thing is, the games on it were a clear upgrade from the Atari, especially Turbo, a racing game which had a special steering wheel and brake pedal that you would plug in. It was brilliant. There was no big joystick or modern games controller, rather there was this keypad that looked like a huge phone with a toggle on the top, plugged neatly into the system. Games came in these robust plastic cartridges filled with technology (if the game would not load properly, you just blew inside them and they magically worked), a bit like the later Nintendo and SNES games. Coleco games were not easy to come by though, you would not see them in the shops. Maybe in a second hand shop you might find one, but it was hit or miss if it worked. But we had Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr, and basic as they were, no Atari game came close to those. Those games were played to death in our house. I don’t know what happened to our ColecoVision in the end. There was only so much fun you could extract from the four games we had that worked (the other was I think was a Smurfs game that was truly terrible and impossible to play). It might be still in the loft, or maybe we sold it at a car-boot sale. When my little sister got the Nintendo Entertainment System one Christmas, and Super Mario Bros came along, well that was that. My brother and I would have to wait until she was asleep and sneak in to play it silently on her little TV late at night so not to wake her up. The NES killed the ColecoVision, Mario killed Donkey Kong, and when the SNES came along with Mario Kart, that was it for poor old Turbo. The old days eh.

(not) a cottage in the woods

October 23, 2024October 23, 2024Leave a comment

It’s a funny building, this. I have drawn it before of course, but I like this one a lot. The G Street sign being the only bit of colour reminds you that this is downtown and not in some enchanted glade in the Black Forest. I have never been in there (Bubble Belly, I think they do baby clothes) but it’s such an unusually shaped building. I stood outside Jack in the Box to draw it. It was that time of the month that was still really hot. Now things are finally cooling off (it’s 81 degrees today, which for us is positively autumnal), and it’s nearly Halloween for which I will not be dressing up. I never do. I like the spooky decorations everywhere though. I’ve often thought that in the spirit of the spooky season it would be funny to write in the letters “HO” in between “G” and “ST”. We could go further along the spooky sign changes: add “EA” on the B Street signs, “ORE” on the F Street signs, or “POOKIE” on the S Street signs. Or to be completely non-scary and a bit pointless, “RMRE” on the A Street signs. Or maybe add “HRI” on the C Street signs, maybe followed by “MAS” to keep it holiday themed, as they say. You get the idea. I always liked the end credits of the Simpsons when they would do the Treehouse of Horror specials and change the names of the cast and crew to silly scary versions. It’s something a lot of people do now. I’m Pete Scary at this time of year. Or Pete Skully. I was trying to Halloween-ize the F1 drivers names in the US Grand Prix last weekend, with your Pierre Ghastly, Lance Troll, O-scare Piastri, Jaws Russell, that sort of thing. I don;t know, I find it hard to get into Halloween as much any more. There was that one year where I went a bit crazy drawing loads of Halloween stuff, decorating our whole whole with hand-drawn Halloween decorations, and we had a fun party for the kids from my son’s pre-school with these really detailed invitations, I was so into drawing bats and spiders and vampires. I suppose it’s just in the past now. Some of our neighbours go all out with the Halloween stuff, with so much stuff. We will probably carve pumpkins, though I prefer to paint on them now, they don’t go mouldy so quickly, and it’s a lot easier. Anyway, this building looks like it could be a witch’s cottage in the forest, but it’s not, it’s just a clothes shop on G Street. Or maybe that’s what the witches want us to think…

let’s draw more trees

October 22, 2024October 21, 2024Leave a comment

My obsession with tree drawing led me to organize the first Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl of the 24-25 season, a gathering down in the UC Davis Arboretum on an unnecessarily hot morning in early October. I had been for a four mile run that morning, an unnecessarily long distance in preparation for the very unnecessary 10k I will run in the Turkey Trot this year. Speaking of which I need to get back into training for that, I had a vacation to Kauai in between and swapped running for fighting waves and sipping cocktails. The temperatures we had in Davis at the start of this month though were a bit stupid, well over a hundred degrees for several days on end, what sort of autumn do you call this. It has cooled off a little now and the weather is lovely, though the world at large fills me with dread, the election is coming. I really hope the thing I’m dreading doesn’t happen. I will bury myself in my sketchbook in the meantime. Anyway, we were there in the Arboretum, and I drew the bridge, the same bridge I drew on my first ever sketchcrawl in Davis back in December 2005. A very long time ago now, but it was the future at the time. I had to get out of the house, I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t know this town, I needed to start drawing again, and my wife spotted a posting for the worldwide sketchcrawl on DavisWiki or something, long before the world revolved around Facebook, and so out I went, shy as a coconut, started sketching at Mishka’s with some other shy people, the old Mishka’s a block away from where it is now, made it into the Arboretum, and kept going, I didn’t meet up at the end, I just kept drawing on campus, ended up at the library. You might say I kept going and never stopped. Anyway I always think of that day when I draw this bridge, a cold day, before I had even found a job, two months away from the end of my 20s, not even two months into my new life across the Atlantic. I still can’t draw the bloody bridge. Anyway, as you can see the creek has a little sluice in it (is that what they are called? I don’t know. Weirs, that’s it, not sluices.) which is part of the whole Arboretum waterway project I mentioned last time. Bit inconvenient for the ducks, they have to walk round. Good exercise I suppose. Don’t feed them bread. I stood beneath a huge overhanging tree limb while sketching, and leaned against it when I got tired, which after my four mile run was a lot.

I had rushed out of the house and not brought anything to drink with me, no water or anything. I thought about going back downtown to get something, but thought, I’ll be fine. I walked through the shady Redwood Grove looking for something to draw and came across the old tree stump lying on its side. The way the light was hitting it made it look multicoloured, though it was white as a bone. It reminded me of an old skull, maybe of a styracosaurus, and I had drawn a real styracosaurus skull in Los Angeles earlier this year, on my day-long dinosaur drawing adventure. I might need another one of those. I was getting thirsty by this point. I did have another sketch in me but needed to find a drink. None of the nearby buildings on campus were open on the weekends for me to see if they had vending machines, the shops were too far, and my own building with its well-stocked vending machine was a bit too far a walk. So by the time we were all done sketching and met up at the end to look at each others’ work (and there were some very nice sketches done) I was parched. I wasn’t even hungry, I just went straight to Newsbeat and bought two cold drinks, and drank them on the way home.

It was busy downtown, really busy. Newsbeat had a lot of customers, and there were a lot of folk walking about. It’s a good sign for downtown Davis that. The building owners just need to stop putting business rents up to unsustainable levels as that is bad for small local shops, shops the community needs. We really don’t need another boba tea or fro yo shop. Anyway, there were a lot of people about, and it was hot, and I wasn’t hungry so skipped eating lunch and went home. On the way back I noticed this tree on E Street, in the Old North area, and just had to draw it. I only drew a bit of a it though, and finished it off at home because I was feeling hot. It’s lovely isn’t it, it looks like some wise old monster that might control your mind if you aren’t careful. Well not mine. I went home and took a nap, and dreamed about styracosauruses, probably.

the empty lake

October 21, 20241 Comment

The UC Davis Arboretum is currently undergoing some major work to the waterway, an ambitious project called the “Arboretum Waterway Flood Protection and Habitat Enhancement“. I don’t know what it will look like in the end, but right now, it’s jarring to see the big serene Lake Spafford completely drained of water. Like seeing the man behind the curtain. Now I know how deep it is. The ducks probably aren’t too happy, but we’ve all got to have work done on our homes. Round our way the painters have been painting all the condos, coming in the yard and scaring off the spiders. I’ve drawn this lake many times over the years and now it’s empty, for the time being. I’ll be interested to see how this all turns out! So of course I drew it, at the end of September. I’ll be back down to sketch it again. “Waterway to have a good time.” We did hold a sketchcrawl in the Arboretum at the start of October, I’ll post those later. For now, more September trees.