Tag: davis

the e street strummer

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12-string guitarist, E st

He stands outside Chipotle and Peet’s Coffee n E Street, busking on his twelve-string at lunchtimes when I am there, sounding like Dylan, Nelson, Haggard; his music is very nice. He has one of those harmonicas you can play while guitaring; no cymbals at the knees though. Very distinctive with his long white hair, moustache, sunglasses; he has a long feather in his hat. One of the characters of Davis.  He was singing a song about watercoloured wine while I was drawing this, munching on my burrito. It was cold outside; November is really kicking in. The Fall Colours have just exploded all around us, the trees have suddenly turned the colour of flames, and there’s no way I’ll keep up with them.

stop, look, listen

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Think of a big STOP sign, and you will stop thinking about what you were thinking; if you need to, that is. Well I was listening to The Jam and sitting outisde Uncle Vito’s Pizza (not very good pizza, btw) in downtown Davis on a sunny Sunday afternoon in downtown Davis, at the corner of 2nd and E streets.

stop sign on 2nd & E

I was thinking about perspective. Incidentally this is just the other end of the block from this one I did about a month ago.

every leaf speaks bliss to me

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a house and tree on 4th and D

November in Davis means warm and cool sunny afternoons, with turning leaves and long, lazy shadows. Alright, what I’m saying is we have nicer weather than back home in London, where it rains and is cold. But now the clocks have gone back, it also gets dark earlier, so less time for sketching. I don’t really have the time anyway, so here is another one scrambled in during lunchtime yesterday. A building (I think it’s owned by Allstate) on the corner of 4th and D, with a tree outside it.

Oh, was it Guy Fawkes Night back in England? I had forgotten to remember.

nailing it down

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nails by tam, 3rd street

This place, ‘Nails by Tam’, is found on 3rd street in Davis, way down near L street (aka Linguistics Street, as per my street re-naming rules). This is the first drawing from Watercolour Moleskine #5. Actually that’s not true; this is the second, but I haven’t finished the first one yet, on page 1 (it’s of shoes, if you’re interested). But this is the first posted. I drew this yesterday on a quick cycle downtown. I had to draw some urban on Urban Sketcher’s first birthday. It was fairly warm and I had to chase the moving shade of a telegraph pole in order not to get sunburnt (haha, it’s November, folks back in England).

I have drawn this place before; it’s very sketchable.  The last time was back in 2006, when I coloured it in watercolour pencil (see below). I think it’s nice to see how my style has evolved and improved over the past three years. But I do like the effect in the old one.nails by tam

to market, to market

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farmers market, davis

The last page of Moleskine #4. I might draw something in the back cover though. This is the Davis Farmers Market in Central Park (not that one), a popular market, to which I rarely go. However we as a family decided to head down there yesterday, to sample fruit, eat chocolate croissant, and (in the case of my son) run about in the crunchy brown leaves. It was a lot of fun. I stuck around after my son went home for his nap, and drew the market itself.

I have the next watercolour Moley waiting patiently in the wings. Click on the pictures below to see all of the drawings from each of the four watercolour Moleys from the past two and a half years.

sketchcrawl 23 pages 1 and 2 Moleskine 4 (Feb 2009 – Oct 2009)
seeing triple Moleskine 3 (July 08 – Feb 09)
in the sunshine Moleskine 2 (Nov 2007 – July 2008)
pete's sketching kit Moleskine 1 (June 2007 – Oct 2007)

froggie’s

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froggies

Froggies, on 2nd and G in Davis. Hadn’t been here in quite some time, so came here on Thursday night for a quick beer and a long sketch. Actually I took my time drinking the beer and drew faster instead. Froggies is alright; the serving staff are friendly, and the beer is good and not expensive. They do really nice food too. But I’m generally not a regular; the acoustics are bad in here, it’s a little too sports-bar in it’s character, I don’t know; can’t quite explain it. It gets a bit packed with young students on the nights when there are DJs, and can be a bit uncomfortable. I like it a lot more than the Grad (Davis’s big sports bar), though, and even the G Street Pub (which is certainly more pub-like, but appears to have been modelled directly on the worst possible late-80s Camden Town dive, particularly in the toilets). Froggies is better than those places. I prefer Little Prague though. Ah, the bars of Davis. So anyway, I fancied popping in here to do a slightly less brown pub drawing. And look, I even drew some people. 

My oldest friend Tel, who now lives in Korea, loves this place. He last came here in 2006.

agony and eggstasy

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yin and yang

Another of Robert Arneson’s Eggheads series; it’s outside Turner Wright Hall, and is called ‘Yin and Yang’. God knows which is meant to be which though.  I’ve drawn it before in fact, a couple of years ago, from a different angle:

eggsecution 

Also posted at Urban Sketchers. By the way, that super-blog extraordinaire is nearly a year old…

keeping an eye on things

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'eye on mrak' egghead

“Eye on Mrak“, one the Egghead sculptures made by the late Robert Arneson, former UC Davis art professor. This one is outside Mrak Hall, and has a large eye that looks up at proceedings within (perhaps it has eggs-ray vision, I don’t know). Oh come on, this is petescully.com, you must have known a silly egg-based pun would come along at some point. Anyway I sketched this dude at lunchtime today.

To learn more about the UC Davis Eggheads (if you absolutely have to), please see: eggheads.ucdavis.edu.

silent is the house

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davis cemetery

I cycled around Davis today. It was cool outside, the autumn is upon us and I lost myself in streets and cycle paths I had never been to. I ended up at Davis Cemetery; I have never looked around it before. It isn’t very big. This surprised me, but then I suppose Davis isn’t as old as Highgate, where I used to live. It was peaceful, sad and peaceful. Maybe I’ll draw Highgate Cemetery when I’m back in London again next month. 
Completely coincidentally: I just looked on Twitter and saw an update from Davis Forever about Art in the Cemetery, an exhibition of art in Davis Cemetery that I guess was going on in that very building as I was drawing it, and I knew nothing about it. I do recall thinking that people didn’t look all that funereal coming out of there.

assumed by arts unknown

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back to the pens

I’ve been having a little sketching break – I don’t know if I meant to or not, but my mind has been under important things – but managed to draw on tuesday lunchtime. It’s not a good drawing, and is just of the Silo once again, but even during these periods it is important to at least exercise the fingers (in fact I brought two end-of-life micron 01s to a shuddering end with this particular sketch). I feel as though this drawing is like a few words spoken in the middle of the night, before going back to sleep. I’ll be back drawing again, I know it.

I like October, the month of changes. I don’t know if I like this October in particular much, but at least the air is cooler, crisp and inviting.