yer blues

February 21, 2009February 21, 20093 Comments

Looking down at the interior of the Silo (the place where I most often eat and sketch at lunchtimes) yesterday, with a micron 05 blue/black pen. It’s the other side of a drawing I did well over a year ago from the same spot, also in blue, but that time was cobalt copic 0.1; see it on the right there. That was back in Moleskine #1! Wow. I’m on #4 now.

I gotta say, you overhear some boring conversations at lunchtime. Not that I listen, but sometimes you can’t miss them. So-and-so did this, so-and-so did that, blah blah blah. Must remember my bigger headphones.

frat luck

February 19, 20092 Comments

A frat house downtown. I’ve mentioned before about the frat houses in Davis, all running along the edge of campus. They are so sketchable, yet I rarely get around to drawing them.

Did I mention the Amgen Tour of California, kind of like the Tour de France of California (like, dur), started here in Davis (amid a massive rainstorm) on Sunday? Well I missed it, sadly (hey, I stayed warm and dry, don’t feel too bad). Huge event. Lance Armstrong. Serious stuff. Davis is the bike capital of America and didn’t want anything to go wrong, this is a showcase. Now Davis did do really well, however… Lance Armstrong’s bike got nicked. No, not in Davis, and not while he was riding in the race; it was his one-of-a-kind time trial bike which he’d used the day before in Sacramento. Someone actually half-inched it. The most famous cyclist in the world.

I hope he didn’t chain it to a bollard, like David Cameron.

clock wise

February 18, 2009Leave a comment

The grandfather clock at the Avid Reader in Davis. You may recall I used to work there a while back, at a little desk under the stairs at the back there behind the language books. I drew that desk once.

ain’t no sunshine

February 13, 2009February 13, 2009Leave a comment

Hey, it can’t be sunny all the time in Davis.

Storms have been rolling in, and I’ve watched them roll away again. More storms to come. While the rain stopped I was outside during lunch today capturing part of the Silo complex, but then drips and drops started falling from the sky. I ducked beneath a shelter to finish the pen and write some notes on the colours (‘cos you know, not like I’ve sketched here before or anything), and did the wash at home. This is page 1 of moleskine 4, it’s so nice starting a new book.

picture book

February 5, 20099 Comments

The late January sunshine has been replaced by early February rain (much needed, considering California is running out of water as well as money), but here are a couple of photos of my sketchbook in the weekend’s sunshine. I’ve nearly finished this one; a new one is on the way…

who needs remote control

February 1, 20093 Comments

Perhaps… we spend too much time looking at the shadows, and not at the trees.

Or vice-versa, take your pick.

This is the old city hall in Davis (now part of a restaurant), sketched on Saturday afternoon on the last of january; see how warm and sunny looking it is. I hear you are having huge snowstorms in Britain. Sorry about that. I recall the arctic blast of 2003, that night I never got home to crouch end (but instead walked through the icy storm several miles to burnt oak). And then the second one a year later, when finchley central station closed because nobody had thought to grit the platform (but i made it home thanks to my boss giving me a lift, and managing not to get frozen in a slippery traffic jam on highgate hill, for which i’m very grateful). I love snow, it makes the world look so peaceful, except when it is causing utter flipping chaos.

daylight falls upon the path

January 30, 2009May 27, 2010Leave a comment

lunchtime sketch by the hog barn It feels like ages since I did drawings of Davis, I have been drawing so many other places lately. More than a month in fact. So I thought I’d make up for it. It was very sunny this week. Well, during the daytime obviously, I mean at night it was dark. It was pretty cold too but is getting progressively warmer; these Californian Januarys, eh! So I got out each lunchtime and sketched.

On Wednesday I sketched near the Silo, by the newly renovated Hog Barn (or Pig House, or whatever it is called; presumably it was renovated after the big bad wolf blew it down or something). No hogs here now though. There are cows not far from here though. Davis is well known for its cows. Scientists do experiments on them. Some of them have windows in their stomachs (please, no jokes about beef curtains, this is a family site).

I had a hole in my shoe once. I used to tell people it was a window to my sole.

On Thursday I went downtown, and drew a house I’ve drawn before, I believe it is some sort of dentist’s surgery on E Street. I drew it in sepia about a year and a half ago. Theres’ that tree look, in the foreground as usual, and it managed to keep itself within the frame this time.

Here’s the older version. I don’t mind drawing things I’ve drawn before. In a city this small it’s bound to happen.

And on Friday, to complete the triptych, I drew a frat house on First Street. Ths is right on the edge of campus. Most of the fraternity and sorority houses are.

Before I moved to an American college town I had no idea what frats were. All those greek letters, old boy’s clubs I guessed. Some frats are aparently older than the US itself. I met some American frat boys when I lived in France, I’d heard of their legendary alcoholic exploits (ah, no more than a typical night in any binge-drinking high-street town in England). They all start recruiting in the fall, having their ‘rush’ events and their ‘hazing’, and how the sororities have all these functions every night for a month whereby the wannabe entrants have to wear a different outfit each night or they are like so-out-omigod-who-does-she-think-she-is.

Yeah I’m glad we never had those sorts of things when I was at university. We had the student union bar, and some nights, oh dear, it was not pretty.

Roll on the weekend.

and the dead tree gives no shelter

December 11, 2008December 11, 20083 Comments

We’ve been here before, once or twice. The Silo, UC Davis. A cold December day, in fact turned too hot by the bright winter sunshine, my shade being muscled out until my ears were hot and red. The sunlight was too warm. It was uncomfortable. I even knocked my water pot into my paint set; I didn’t like that much. I thought of all the urban sketchers out there freezing their fingertips off in colder and wetter climes, and there’s me complaining about the heat. Hey, I’m British, that is what we do.

I posted this on Urban Sketchers, so I did. Incidentally this is post number 150 since I started this blog in April. that’s 750 since April 05, including my old blog. I’m still managing an average of 50 posts every three months. Statto.

away from the numbers

December 11, 2008December 11, 2008Leave a comment

Did some christmas shopping on monday night, out in the cold; thankfully there’s that nice warm Czech pub near the bus-stop, so I stopped off in there while waiting and did a quick dark drawing over a quick dark beer.

it’s chriiiiiiiiistmas…

December 6, 2008December 7, 20082 Comments

Christmas has come to Davis. The christmas tree was lit on Thursday amid a crowd of about sixty million kids (there or thereabouts) with all sorts of festivities going on, santa, carol singers, candles, etc. My ten-month old loved it, particularly the person dressed as a dinosaur. I came back next day to draw it; I’m not one for big crowds (me being from, you know, London), so you’ll just have to imagine what it was like. But here is the tree, on the E street plaza, as seen from the window of Chipotle across the road.