This weekend is the Davis Art Center’s annual Holiday Sale, a big and popular event at the DAC featuring art, crafts, jewelry and many other lovely hand-made products. They are also selling cards with a selection of my Davis sketches on them, which look great! I came by this afternoon during a lull in the stormy weather (having spent the morning getting very muddy chopping down a Christmas tree), and after watching Beckham’s last game for LA Galaxy (they won the MLS Cup). After perusing the stalls, I whipped out the sketchbook and drew a scene in the main atrium. It was bustling with people, a friendly family atmosphere. If you are in Davis, tomorrow (Sunday Dec 2) is the last day of the Holiday Sale, so why not pop by and check it out? The Davis Art Center is on the corner of F St and Covell, by Community Park.
Tag: davis
will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
I can’t get enough. I’m not obsessed or anything. Here is the UC Davis Boiler Building again, still in the same state of deconstruction as in the previous two sketches. It’s looking so sad and beaten, yet triumphant as well, as though it’s saying, come on, do your worst. Another demolition machine has lined up beside it now, like a warrior preparing for more hyperbole. I drew it from the back this time, another angle, in fact the same angle as I drew it from in August, this one here:
It was sunny today, too. I just didn’t show you the blue sky. It just didn’t seem appropriate.
one of our dinosaurs is missing
No, this isn’t my bedroom when I was a teenager, this is another view of the old Boiler Building on the UC Davis campus, currently under demolition. It’s the same gaping hole I drew the day before, but I wanted another angle so at lunchtime yesterday I pottered over and sketched away. Sometimes destruction can be beautiful. You can make out the silhouettes of big metal pipes inside the building still, though it looks like the scene of an escaped dinosaur disaster. I can imagine KCRA 3 news now, “Alert on the UC Davis campus as a nine ton T-Rex escaped from the old Boiler Building yesterday, police are conducting a thorough search but have been warned not to use pepper-spray,” or something. That probably is how they would report it, after the weather, and after the traffic reports, which as you know on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is all people care about, the ‘Busiest Travel Day of the Year’. “More on that escaped Tyrannosaur later, now back to Richard on I-80”, “Thanks Kelly, well the traffic has been backed up for hours here, and, oh wait is that a T-Rex? We’re getting confirmed reports from LiveCopter 3 that a big rig has been overturned on I-80 by a dinosaur, well at least traffic will start moving a bit faster…”
And back to the imagination. Happy Thanksgiving folks. I hear T-Rex tastes like turkey (a species which roams freely on the streets of Davis) so if you catch one, there’s meat for everybody.
space travel’s in my blood
Here’s a sketch I did one lunchtime this week, of the old phone box and Mustard seed restaurant in downtown Davis. There’s no phone in the phone box, it’s just a bit of anglophile decoration. They lock the door now, which is a shame, as me and my young son always used to stop by and pretend it was a rocket ship, and we would go inside and fly off to Saturn, and maybe stop off on the asteroid belt, before coming back to Davis again. It’s good to get off the planet, every now and then.
I sketched this in the watercolour Moleskine (#11) with that uniball signo um-151 brown pen I love so much.
autumn at the art center
(click on the image for a larger version)
Last Sunday was the November “Let’s Draw Davis” sketchcrawl, in the conveniently-located-across-the-street-from-me Community Park. Since it had been prophesied to be a cold day, only a few of us showed up, greeted by crisp autumn sunshine and blazing fall colours. after a very quick ‘people’ sketch or two I set to work on a panorama. The previous Friday evening I had attended a fun event at the Davis Art Center called the ‘Arty Party’, in which there was lots of drawing, some drinking and eating, and I even won a game of Pictionary, a game I’ve not played in a couple of decades, surprisingly. It was nice to get out and be social and talk to people about art, and in fact they will be selling some cards of my drawings in their annual Holiday Sale (Nov 30-Dec 2), including a recent one of the Art Center. I was talking about how I’d never drawn the building before, because it wasn’t an easy one to draw – trees in the way, lots of angles, it had always seemed very difficult. And then almost as soon as I had said it, I said to myself, difficult, huh? Really? So I determined to give it another go. I liked my first version – it says ‘Davis Art Center’ on it – but really wanted the panoramic version in my Moleskine sketchbook. I stood in the sunshine for just over two hours (my wife even came by and brought me a sandwich!) and sketched away. I started in the middle and worked my way outwards.
I didn’t end up doing any more sketches on the sketchcrawl (I popped back home to call my Mum in England and have a cup of tea), but met with the group at the library afterwards, where we all showed off our sketches. In the end I think about eight people came, which was pretty good for a cold day (though it wasn’t cold, really California, really..). Next one will be in mid-December, when it might really be cold…let’s keep drawing Davis!
Finally, here is the drawing of Davis Art Center I started on location before I went to Portland (and finished when I got back), showing the main entrance and part of a sculpture in the foreground. I love this place, they do a lot of good for our artistic community in Davis, and long may they do so.
all around the world i’ve been looking for you
A small break from the Portland sketches (many more to come!), to bring you something I sketched on Saturday afternoon. This is International House, aka I-House, one of Davis’s great institutions (for foreigners such as me). I have been meaning to come by and sketch for a very long time, and finally on Saturday I did, and a nice building to sketch it was too. I haven’t personally been to many events here in the past but I really should. A few years ago when my son was a baby we came to a potluck party here for internationals, which was nice. I brought trifle (that didn’t sit there for very long! My trifle is lovely, I’m not kidding) and we chatted with a friendly German couple, but that was it really, I was shy and didn’t speak much. Still, I like being an international. It’s nice and you get to travel.
As I sketched this I listened to the latest History of English podcast, which was about the Greek word horde that has filtered its way down to English, and I was especially pleased because there was a mention of Wulfila (or Wulfilas; it means Little Wolf), the fourth century Gothic bishop whose translation of the Bible from Greek to old Gothic provides us with our earliest example of a Germanic language, and an East Germanic one at that – I loved studying that. Wulfila’s my hero – though his choice of Gothic vocabulary may have been heavily influenced by the Greek rather than what was in general use among the Goths, his work is a massive resource to Germanic philologists. It has been a few years since I read about it all though.
In other news…well done Barack Obama!!!! Re-elected President tonight! Knew you could do it!
whole in the market
When failing book behemoth Borders closed last year, there was a large empty space in downtown Davis where something should really go. Now finally something is in there: Whole Foods Market, a chain of grocers that specializes in fresh organic food. The grand opening and bread-baking ceremony was today, but on Sunday they held a ‘Harvest Hullabaloo’ over at Davis Commons, with stalls and tents offering free samples of their organic foods and drinks. I tried some very nice chocolate, followed by some air-cooled roast chicken, which I must say was quite lovely. There were other stalls with other predictably ‘Davis’ oriented stuff (such as ‘decorate your vegan bike with corn-fed soy glow-sticks’ or something) but I didn’t really pay much attention to it. It was the end of our monthly sketchcrawl, so I preferred to sit down and draw. Interestingly enough the first time I ever sketched in Davis I drew this view, back when it was Borders.
I’m sure Whole Foods will be a hit, at first, though I know it can be quite expensive. It will be competing with our much beloved Davis Co-Op (to which Davisites are very loyal) and the very popular local chain Nugget (my personal local favourite, though Nugget too can be not so cheap). Another issue is that it’s not an obvious location for a grocery store – finding a spot in the small parking lot at the back is already a challenge, though of course you don’t always need a car to shop (hello, public transport / baskets on your bike / spare the air, like?). (in fact they are offering free 24-hour bike trailer rentals… really trying hard to get the Davis vote!) Still, I hope it doesn’t hurt the Co-Op. I always worry about national chains moving into towns and driving custom away from locally owned business (eg, a branch of national sandwich/bread chain Panera just opened right opposite local independent deli Zia’s), and then after closing the small local store the chain potentially decides further down the road to close thus leaving a gap… but I don’t know if I should be too worried for Davis. Borders came and went and the local bookstore Avid Reader lived through it, same as record store Armadillo Music outlived Tower Records right across the street. Whole Foods will probably be a success, and appears to be interested in the community, and I don’t think Davis is going to lose sleep about having yet another place to buy fresh healthy organic food. I’m looking forward to checking it out.
widescreen e-street
On Sunday, about seventeen sketchers of Davis (and surrounding areas) got together again for another urban sketch crawl, this time downtown at the E St Plaza. I must admit I didn’t do quite so much ‘crawling’ this time, and spent most of the day in the same spot, sketching people in the morning (see below) and spending over a couple of hours in the afternoon stood up drawing the above panorama, a two-page spread in my Moleskine. You can see a larger version on my Flickr site, and below is a detail. This was drawn in uni-ball signo um-151 pen.
I wanted to sketch the sketchers, needing to practise some people drawing. Amazingly I was able to get a quick sketch of my four-year-old son, when he stood still for a few minutes to draw a rocketship (mostly it was all about the sprinting about). On the right is Syd, another of the sketchers.
And here are two more sketchers, Emily and Scott.
Next Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl will be in November, date to be announced soon…
studio lines
I am honoured to be in another group show at the Pence Gallery in Davis (212 D St; website), called “In Their Studio”. This show features the works of many local artists, along with a picture showing them at work in their studio. Well as you know, my studio is out in the street with my sketchbook! The two works I submitted are “A Londoner in Davis” (the double-decker bus drawing, which was recently featured on the cover of the Davis Enterprise), and “Old City Hall“, which I sketched on a very sunny, very windy day in January.
Can you guess where I am in that photo?
The show runs upstairs at the Pence until October 28th. If you are in Davis, pop by and check it out!
your cover’s blown
I didn’t post the rest of the Davis Enterprise’s “Welcome to Davis” editions from a couple of weeks back, so here they are. These are big!! Broadsheets, really. Plus they make good curtains as you can see. I’m pretty chuffed to have had this honour, and hope that the people of Davis enjoyed them. Now the Toad Hollow sketch from the ‘Only in Davis’ edition, as I mentioned previously, is pretty small – a few inches up and across. I though you might be interested to see the other originals set against the papers themselves.
For the ‘On the Go’ edition my drawing of one of the Unitrans London double-deckers was used, so here’s a size comparison – the original was about 7″x5″ or so, and in fact if you’re in Davis and want to see it (or buy it) it’s at the Pence Gallery on D Street right now.
For the ‘Our Community’ edition my recent drawing of the Farmer’s Market was used. Incidentally, the sign in the middle has only some of the writing on it because they started packing up when I got to drawing that bit and I missed the rest. I did think ahead though and took a photo beforehand, very smart, but there was a lot of glare so I never could read it all. Doesn’t matter. The fellow standing next to it, he has a passing resemblance to me, because the passer-by that I actually drew was actually wearing a Tottenham t-shirt and stopped to talk for a moment when I said ‘Come on you Spurs!’ So in honour, I actually made this person look like me, though he really didn’t. Most moving people in these in-public-place drawings look generic anyway, as it’s always hard to really capture someone while they’re walking past, though otherwise all of the people that ended up in this one were actually the people stood there. Anyway, I loved how this turned out in the paper, and if that’s you in the drawing, hello there.
And finally, the really small one, which actually translated pretty well large, I thought. I sketched that one lunchtime at the Memorial Union back in 2009, and it took up a third of a page of my Moleskine. So anyway there you are. Many thanks to Tanya Perez at the Davis Enterprise, who does a great job in the Welcome editions, and it was great to be a part if them this time.
petescully 