UCAAC 2014, part 1

May 20, 2014Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I attended the University of California Academic Advising Conference which was held at UC Davis. This conference was always held annually, hosted by a different UC campus each time, and I had previously attended the conferences in 2007 (Anaheim) and 2009 (San Diego). I hoped to go in 2010, however the UC had a big budget crisis and sadly, the advising conferences were cancelled for the foreseeable future. That was a shame, but nobody could afford to send staff on these trips like they used to. There was a mini-revival one year in Riverside, however this year 2014 marked the first year that the beloved “UCAAC” returned in full swing, and our very own campus was to be this year’s host. I however left it too late to register, and almost missed out. Fortunately though, I was at the last minute invited to attend as the “official sketcher”! Many great thanks to the organizers for extending this opportunity to me, I was incredibly honoured and took full advantage (and of course, learnt a lot about advising, this all being massively important for my day job too). I sketched quickly and productively, colouring on site as I went along too, using the smoother but thicker Zeta paper in a Stillman and Birn sketchbook.

Here are my sketches from the first part of the first day!

The Welcome Speaker was Carolyn de la Peña, American Studies professor and vice-provost and dean for undergraduate education, who opened the proceedings. I tried my best to write down some of the things she was saying while sketching her.

The first breakout workshop I attended was about graduate student recruitment (ever wonder what I do all day? That’s a really big part of it). It was called “Creative Strategies” and was presented by Melissa Woehrstein from UCLA. I enjoyed it, and asked questions, but it was just long enough for me to get this whole scene sketched. I did tell Melissa beforehand that I would be sketching, and many of the same people show up in each of my workshop sketches, many of whom I have attended meetings with for years. It’s always funny when they suddenly get to see you in your other guise as the sketcher, I kinda felt like as if Clark Kent wore his cape while sitting at his desk at the Daily Planet (actually he probably does, under his shirt, but that’s the best analogy I can come up with, not that I’m Superman or anything). Anyway hopefully it didn’t distract anyone, but everyone was very positive about my sketches which was nice. Plus I had a badge that said “Official Sketcher” (handwritten admittedly but still, Official).

More to come…

i’m really up the junction

May 9, 2014Leave a comment

Here is one from a month ago…getting there slowly… This is the junction of 3rd and A streets in Davis, at the entrance to the UC Davis campus. Imagine all the cyclists that come through here every day! Running through that Stop sign, barely dodging pedestrians, this is what Davis is all about. There’s a big second-hand textbook store across the street. My oldest friend sells academic textbooks, funnily enough, but he lives in Korea now. Here is the map, in case you are just not sure where this could be.

night cap

May 5, 20144 Comments

Have you seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier yet? Spoiler alert – it’s great. I’ve seen it twice. I’m quite a fan of Cap. I like my heroes to be heroic, and you can’t get more heroic than Steve Rogers. After the movie, I popped into De Vere’s for a couple of pints and to do some more bar sketching. I had spent the previous few days sketching manically at the UC Academic Advising Conference (sketches to be posted next) and well, I can’t really stop sketching. I wanted to sketch a different angle than usual and include a lot more people, but they all kept moving about, so in the end I turned and asked the group next to me if I could sketch them. Most of them had beards which is always a nice thing when sketching.

mrak

April 29, 20142 Comments

This is Mrak Hall. That’s “MRAK”, my dear autocorrect, not “Mark”. It is a big solid looking building on the UC Davis campus, the place where the administration sit, and make all the rules and policies we have to follow. I have sketched it before but not in a long while. I come here often to drop off paperwork and turn up a day early for meetings (doh!). In front there, on those two little hillocks (“HILLOCKS”, dear auto-correct…) are two of Robert Arneson’s Eggheads. This is called “See No Evil, Hear No Evil”, which was obviously named after a hilarious movie with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. The last time I drew them, they were located in a slightly different place, in fact they were pretty much where I sat to draw this picture. I sat on the steps of King Hall, whose extension forced the eggheads to move to the middle of the roundabout in 2009. In fact my last sketch is below, from 2007. That long ago?

the 100th picnic day

April 28, 2014Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago, UC Davis celebrated its 100th annual Picnic Day. One hundred! Click on the images to see larger versions (or you could hold your face close to the screen, though I wouldn’t advise it). Picnic Day is a UC Davis institution, the largest university open house in the country, attracting thousands of visitors to such attractions as the Doxie Derby, Battle fo the Bands, the Chemistry Magic Show, and, er kittens. Yes, we waited for half an hour in line to see kittens, only to find out they were now cats (they were probably kittens when we started queuing). Four cats, just sitting there doing nothing, two of which were asleep. Yet massively popular. My six year old wanted to see nothing else. The first thing we watched however was the Parade, the annual march of bands, bikes, floats, the occasional political candidate, which was as fun as ever. We sat down outside Shields Library to watch it, when I started painting, but broke my water jar (as described in a previous episode). I added the rest of the colours at home.

This second spread was sketched at the Battle of the Bands. I went home with my family, already tired after the excitement of the cats, and had a rest before heading back in to see the famous band battle. I’ve only seen it once, briefly, but I don’t really like crowds. I am getting better at sketching in large numbers now though, but nonetheless it was tricky. I stood at the top of the slope leading down to Lake Spafford, on the banks of which were gathered the bands themselves. Now these aren’t your guitar-hero indie-beard bands, oh no these are the colourful marching bands, and boy is this an event. The bands come from universities around California. The idea is that each band takes turns playing a song, and then by the end of the day (or night), the last band standing, the last one that has not exhausted all its known songs, is the winner (and I’m told it’s always the UC Davis Aggies). It is crazy, and chaotic, but it all works, and those musicians really keep it up for hours and hours. On the left there is a dancing tree from Stanford. I finally left during a long bit in the middle where all the bands came together in groups of the same instrument, and placed themselves around the crowd in a kind of promenade-theatre fashion, playing a continuous jam (I left after 45 minutes and it was still going on) in a variety of poses. Definitely a Davis event to be experienced at some point in your life.

And this was all. In nine years this is the most Picnic Day sketching I have ever done.

days of future fast

April 23, 20142 Comments

This is Fast Mart, on the corner of B and 2nd in Davis. I think it’s called that because you go there when you don’t want to be tempted to eat anything. Or maybe this is where Quicksilver shops. I’m not sure, all of these stores have similar names after all (like Kwik-e-Mart). In actual fact, if you look closely, the store is called “Fast and Easy Mart”. This is what happens when you get mergers, Easy Mart was probably bought out by Fast Mart like when Sky bought BSB (that’s pretty obscure reference for you, people not living in Britain twenty years ago), resulting in “BSkyB”, or as it’s more commonly known, “Sky”. I’ve never liked ‘mart’ as a shortening of ‘market’ either, as another word for ‘shop’ or ‘store’, though we don’t really use it in everyday conversation, “I’m just going down the mart, want a tin of pop?” Still, it’s a place to get a massive fountain soda on a hot day. I like what is above the store though, the sculptures of the musicians. “The Lamplighter Players”, they are called, sculpted by local artist Tony Natsoulas. This little shopping strip is sometimes called Lamplighter Square. The clock behind them must be wrong, because I sketched this during my lunchtime. Perhaps they are located three hours into the future? Either that or my eyesight is going (which it is, but thankfully my optometrist is just across the street). No map this time folks, just have to imagine it, or go there yourself.

into the valley

April 23, 2014April 23, 20141 Comment

I am catching up, slowly. This is another one from UC Davis, Valley Oak Cottage, over at the Arboretum’s Headquarters. It’s a stones-throw from where I work (admittedly quite a big stones-throw, and no, campus health-and-safety officials, I don’t throw stones around to determine distance). Another one where I stood and drew all the ink on site but added the colour in later. I’ve had to do this a lot lately, rather than paint on site, because of three very important reasons. First, lunchtimes are limited and my level of detail is increasing. I do love drawing so much that the colouring in is just an afterthought. An important one but not as important to me as drawing on site, getting all the perspective in there, etc. I do prefer to add the colour from real life but I’m not all that with paint anyway. So basically, if I have a short amount of time I have to prioritize, then my priority is inkwork first. Also my sketchbook, the Stillman and Birn Alpha landscape, is bigger than I used to use and bigger sketches take longer. Second, lately I have actually been enjoying doing big complicated sketches in the daytime, and then having something to colour in at night while watching television. It’s like I’m drawing myself a colouring-in book. You have no idea how satisfying it feels. Actually its better when I draw superheroes rather than trees and buildings, but it’s still fun. Third, I actually lost my favourite little waterjar, then one I used for years, and then a couple of weeks ago I broke my only other favourite small waterjar, the back-up one, sketching at Picnic Day. It smashed all over the kerb, just before the marching band arrived, scattering broken glass all over where we were sitting, good job there Pete. So I need to get a new little jar, and then I can paint on site again. My previous experiments with waterbrushes didn’t really pay off for me. So there you have it. I must say though, it’s Spring and all the leaves are back, and, meh, I don’t like drawing foliage.

that pretty house on F street

April 21, 20141 Comment

I cycle up F Street a lot, on the way home from downtown, and have passed this historic Old North Davis building for years. “Must sketch that someday,” I always said to myself. I believe it’s a dentist’s office, but it’s a lovely period house in a neighbourhood of nice old wooden houses from a century ago, two blocks from the Co-Op. If I could draw the entire area all in one book, I would (hint hint, there’s a commission idea, City of Davis). Actually there is already an impressive book about the area, written in 1999 by John Lofland (the pdf of which is online at oldnorthdavishistory.org). This building is the Anderson-Hamel home, built in 1903 by the man who would become the first mayor of the newly incorporated City of Davis, John B. Anderson…but it was not built here. It used to be downtown, but in the 1940s the house was moved five blocks north to make way for a new drugstore. Old houses move around in Davis, it’s not particularly uncommon. Some have even moved since I have been here. It can be disconcerting but I dare say the houses themselves don’t mind all that much.

Here is the map. As I sketched this building, I listened to a history of Captain America. Kind of appropriate, in a way.

the gunrock

April 5, 2014Leave a comment

Continuing the theme of these similar looking buildings on the UC Davis campus, this is the Gunrock Pub, part of the Silo complex where I have had lunch so many times. It used to be called the Silo Cafe, or the Silo Pub, but now it takes its name from Gunrock, the equine UC Davis mascot. This, like the others, was furiously sketched over a lunchtime with the colour added in afterwards. I’m filling this S&B Alpha landscape sketchbook fast.

you know that i gotta say time’s slipping away

March 24, 20146 Comments

Haven’t drawn a two-page panorama since the end of January, and now trees have leaves, which means drawing a lot more foliage. Now here is a difficult building to sketch – “Third and A”, on the corner of 3rd and, surprisingly, A. Two imaginatively titled streets equal an imaginatively titled building, yes, but an imaginatively designed building it is. I have never in all my time in Davis been able to attempt it. You can’t really see it properly; the trees block its shape, it goes in and out bringing unusual shading, and you can’t really fit it comprehensively onto a page. What’s that Pete, a challenge did you say? So I did my first two-page spread in the Stillman & Birn Alpha landscape book, sat outside on a Sunday afternoon while the rest of the family went to a kids birthday party miles away. I had all afternoon to sketch, so I took all afternoon to sketch. Over three and a half hours! Actually it may have been more than that, all said. Sure it was a LOT of observation. There was a LOT of detail. I also added the colour on site. I was hurting afterwards. Still, I am very pleased with the result, and while it’s a lot of detail, it was what I was after. And now I have finally checked this building off of my Davis must-sketch list, and keeps the brown wooden buildings theme going in my current sketchbook. Here are some close-up views for those of you who don’t have a zoom feature in your non-mechanoid eyes:

I am always busy at this time of year, from January to early April, and yet every year I find I have a burst of sketching activity, which then tails off as the trees lose their leaflessness, and we move into the Spring Sneezing Season. I have a little time left, but those leaves are a-growing, that pollen is a-coming.