Another view of my TV screen from my sofa, drawn on the iPad, because it’s 2020 and there’s a lot of this. Before the election of course. I use Procreate to draw on my iPad, it’s great, although I feel like I have a lot I could learn. I should take an online course or watch videos or something I don’t have a lot of time for. This is a different brush than I usually use though, the Dry Ink brush. I was watching Tottenham play Antwerp, a team that had somehow overtaken my Belgian team Charleroi at the top of the Belgian Pro-League. And we lost, we bloody lost 1-bleedin’0. I wasn’t super happy about that. I’m still not, but ah well, that’s football, we’ve won a few games since. The cat sleeps on the chair, not giving a tommy tit about the football, or the election, or anything until dinner time, or play time.
Tag: drawing
almost nearly there
We’re nearly there, aren’t we! The longest week since that week in March that went on until June. I’ve not watched this much news since, I don’t know, 9/11, the death of Diana, JFK, Battle of Hastings, Vesuvius. IF I EVER go to Allegheny County or Maricopa County I will kiss the ground and hug the trees and sing like meeting an old friend. I actually do none of those things when I meet my actual old friends, that would be weird. But last night when I saw the update from Georgia I immediately had a vision of Lucas Moura celebrating after THAT goal in Amsterdam for Spurs vs Ajax. To be fair though the real heroes are the people on the news channels next to the big screens trying to calculate maths in their head, drawing numbers with digital pens onto red and blue maps of this county or that to tot up what the new score is, trying to beat the clock before the number actually calculates on the screen, like Carol Vorderman on Countdown figuring out the Numbers game when the two contestants have only managed to get two away, getting praise from the news anchors, all the while never letting a single second of broadcast go without a moment of audible speech. It’s like those productions of Shakespeare where they don’t want to cut out any text but want the audience to get at least half an hour in the pub afterwards so go at breakneck speed through the Merry Wives of Windsor… I’ve always said that Shakespeare and Scissors should be friends, and I love overly long and uncomfortable pauses in theatre. Which reminds me of my second favourite joke, A polar bear walks into a bar and says “I’d like a………pint of beer please,” the bartender replies “why the long paws?” There are various versions of that joke, sometimes it’s a grizzly bear, sometimes the pause is between the beer and the packet of crisps, sometimes he doesn’t drink beer at all but prefers lager so not to confuse the words bear and beer, but either way the long pause is funnier when longer. Once I told the joke and I actually went away and came back before finishing it. I actually left the country one time. Sometimes you have to do the right thing to get the joke right. And then if the other person doesn’t get it you have to say it again. My third favourite joke is similar, A polar bear (or a grizzly bear) walks into a bar and orders a beer (or a lager) and another for his lawyer who insists on the barman signing a contract to provide indemnity against any damage caused by the polar bear (or grizzly bear) as a result of drinking said beer (or lager). The bartender says “why the long clause”. Right that one probably isn’t my third favourite joke and I’m remembering it wrong, which is pretty impressive considering I only just thought of it, but after this week of endless election coverage I think all of our brains have melted. But we are nearly there folks, we are nearly there! We are nearly there. Nearly there.
I drew this as the second sketch in my new Moleskine and it’s a lunchtime drawing of a familiar building on 1st street. NOT on “A Street” as I have incorrectly written on the sketch. Fifteen years in Davis, drawing A Street loads of times and 1st Street quite a few times, and I make this rookie error. I’ll need to cross that out and write “1st” next to it. I have drawn this building at least three times before. It has a Dutch Colonial style, I think someone told me in a comment on one of the previous posts years ago, now I tell people like I’m an expert in reading American architectural styles or something. I just like the shapes, and the shadows on the walls.
I just remembered, it’s “why the big paws” not “why the long paws”, that’s why it didn’t seem as funny earlier. Oh well, next time I’ll get it right.
side 1, track 1 of sketchbook 38
I started a new sketchbook. It’s a watercolour Moleskine, and I’ve used quite a few of those in the past, but looking at my list of sketchbooks it is actually the first one in almost five years. Five years? Wow. These were my go-to books, but then I started using more of the Seawhite of Brighton books (pretty cheap, picked up at Cass Arts in London) and the Stillman & Birn Alpha landscape books (really nice, I usually save those for when I’m making big trips to Europe). The watercolor Moley is thicker watercolour paper, less smooth, and slightly smaller, but I think I forgot just how much I love drawing in them. The first one I ever used was back in 2007, and even though I had a couple of other ones before that here in the US that I used a lot, I call this one “Sketchbook #1“. That one in 2007 was the first landscape book and that has generally been my format since, so under my new numbering scheme, the latest one is “Sketchbook #38“, and my fifteenth watercolour Moleskine. I know, it feels like there should be more, but I do draw a lot. The last watercolour Moleskine (the fourteenth) was in fact “Sketchbook #19“. One reason I go through the Seawhites more quickly is that I usually don’t draw on both sides of the paper, as it’s a good bit thinner and I really lay on that paint (it’s not really meant for that), whereas in the Moley I’ll usually draw on both sides, no problem. Except that with the Micron Pigma pens I used to use all the time, the ink would rub off on the other side and make the other picture dirty, so I try to avoid that. I use the brown-black Uni-ball Signo UM-151 now and that does it a little less.
Ok, that is a lot of words. Sorry, I’ve been listening to the election coverage pretty much 24/7 over the past 48 hours. I know that makes no sense, 24/2 makes more sense, but there are so many words flying around, people on TV really like to talk a lot and leave absolutely no gaps while they go over all sorts of numbers and counties and ohmygodwillthiseverfinish… in a way I’m almost glad it’s taking a long time, it’s a little bit funny, like a really long Stewart Lee joke. You know the ones, you’ve seen them, the Stewart Lee jokes we have these days, they go on for ages and repeat themselves a lot, the Stewart Lee jokes, you’ve seen them, the Stewart Lee jokes. Etc and so on. It still feels like watching Jose’s Tottenham, but at least there the crowd noises are fake. It’s like that one Wimbledon final that one time which never wanted to end, but at least there nobody’s allowed to speak or they get shushed by the umpire. I wish a certain orange rage-tweeting rich prat would shush, no chance of that though, whatever happens. Let’s wrap this post up.
This sketch is of a building downtown on E Street that I have drawn before. This time I stood on the stairwell of a building opposite, socially distanced from any people going up the stairs. It was nice having a slightly elevated view, to see over the vehicles parked on this side of the road. It was a Sunday afternoon, and there were quite a few people out and about downtown.
a long, long tuesday night
Election night 2020, it’s been a long year, it’s been a long night, I think it could be a long week. Been a long few years to be honest. The TV has words spewing out of it, the “Road to 270” is still very tight. It feels like watching a Spurs match where we’re holding on to a narrow lead but we keep giving away free kicks on the edge of the box. What a year this has been, and it ain’t over yet. Here’s another living room sketch, done in the new watercolour Moleskine (“sketchbook #38”). Fingers still crossed, but I’m not the optimist in the room.
any way the wind blows
The last page of this sketchbook, the last of the Seawhite of Brighton books I picked up in London last year, so on to a new book. This one was “Sketchbook 37” under the new numbering system I started last year. I need to actually put the numbers on the spines of the books and put them on a shelf sometime (right now I keep them in a box). This view is at the entrance to the UC Davis campus on 3rd Street, along A Street. The large interestingly shaped building is called the Death Star. Actually it isn’t called that officially but everyone calls it that. It’s the Social Sciences and Humanities Building. Imagine if the Galactic Empire called their Death Star something like that. The ‘Planetary Geological Redistribution Department’. On the right you can see a marquee set up, this is actually an outside classroom, set up to deal with the very few in-person classes during the pandemic. There are a few, but most classes are taught remotely. All of ours are, in our department. It was a windy day, we had some very high and dry winds that week, thankfully no fires were sparked in our area this time. I enjoyed drawing this one, I like how it turned out. I’ve drawn so many scenes in Davis but this is a slightly different angle and I like the noticeboard pillar to the left, those were installed when 3rd Street was completely revamped over the last couple of years. This drawing is another gateway, not just the end of a sketchbook, or the entrance to campus. While drawing this I got the phonecall that our house purchase was finally closed, so I started this drawing as a renter and ended it as a homeowner, which feels like a life milestone for me. I like the neighbourhood I live in up in north Davis, and am glad to stay there (plus I hate moving). So a chapter closes, a new chapter begins, and I’ll keep on drawing the same stuff, watching it slowly evolve as the years pass by. It’s important to remember that, on historic days like today, nothing really stays the same. (Actually some things do stay the same, nice sentiment though). For the record, I hope there is a big change today in the government. I’ve spent too long stressing about this election, but I’m not getting my hopes up. This has been a bloody stressful enough year as it is, time to open a new sketchbook. I’ve drawn this town for fifteen years, and I’ll keep on drawing Davis, and all its small changes.
stop dreaming of the quiet life
This is A Street, which is a street in between the university and the downtown. I needed to draw a panorama, so I drew this over the course of two days. Things are starting to feel autumnal. This should be an interesting week. Interesting as in “may you live in interesting times” interesting. I can’t even think about it. So drawing is the release. They take time, but I really like a two-page panorama. I want to publish a whole book just of Davis panoramas, I think that would be a good read. I mean, you wouldn’t be reading the pictures, just looking at them. By the way, you should be able to see this one in more details by either (a) clicking on it, or (b) moving closer to the screen. If I were to publish a book just of Davis panoramas – and when I say panoramas I just mean two-page landscapes, not the long panoramic sketches – there would be no text to accompany the drawing, which would be a good thing. It wouldn’t be like this blog where the text is there but completely optional and not very enlightening. In fact in my last published book, in which I was extra concise (and took out most of the jokes about fire hydrants), one hard-to-please one-star reviewer on Amazon said that my explanations are “so long-winded that by the time he has finished explaining it, you’ve forgotten what he was talking about.” To which I would reply, (a) so you’ve met me then, and (b) if you think that’s bad you should read my blog posts, but also (c) what was your long-winded review about again, I’ve forgotten. They also said I should have talked about ‘gesture’ when talking about drawing people, to which I would reply I know lots of gestures actually and I’m making them at the screen right now while reading this review. So a book of drawings with no explanation might be right up their alley. Or it might be right in their dustbin, I don’t know. But as you can see, in this socially distant age there are no people in my drawings these days.
If you do want to see more of my panoramas, without accompanying text, there’s a whole album of them on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/petescully/albums/72157647926718773. Or wait for the book, but it’s probably going to be a long wait.
The Flying Carousel of the Delta Breeze
At the end of the last sketchcrawl we met up at the Carousel in the middle of Central Park, Davis, to look at each others’ sketchbooks. Some people drew the carousel, but I revealed that I had chickened out, because it’s pretty complicated. Of course whenever I say that it’s a sure-fire sign that I will be back to try and draw it as soon as I can, so I cycled down to Central Park the next day and stood there drawing as much as I could. The carousel is called “The Flying Carousel of the Delta Breeze”, which is a bit of a mouthful, and I’ve never heard anyone actually call it that. Honestly I thought that was an album by a psychedelic late-sixties California hippy band that still play local events across the region at farmer’s markets and brewfests (I am making that up but it might be true, sounds like it would be true). It’s not in use at the moment clearly, because of COVID-19, but when it was it was a fun thing for the local little kids to ride on, and helps fund the Davis Schools Foundation. It is human-powered, that is, there’ll be a high-school kid who sits and cycles to make it go. Kids can ride on the hand-carved animals such as the Frederick frog, Seymour the seal, Pickles the pig, and Terri the Tomato. I know a tomato isn’t an animal, and don’t get started on the fruit/vegetable debate. The tomato fruit/vegetable debate is so contentious now that they have to mute the microphones when the other is speaking, and the vegetable side just refuses to take part and goes off and has a big rally with lots of other vegetables so they can chant about locking up the apples. Anyway back to the carousel. It was opened in 1995. That was the same year I went strawberry picking in Denmark; strawberries are definitely a fruit, but I don’t eat them any more after that summer (yet I still love strawberry flavour things, like milkshakes). I’ve never been on it (it’s not really meant for me) but I think my son rode it when he was very small. It’s a nice thing to have in the middle of Davis.
A Decade of Let’s Draw Davis!
In October 2010 I organized the first in a monthly series of sketchcrawls called “Let’s Draw Davis!”. We met in Central Park in the morning, drew all day, had lunch together, and met up again in the mid afternoon to look at each others’ sketchbooks. I had been on sketchcrawls in Davis before, advertised on the workdwide sketchcrawl forum, but after going to the Urban Sketching Symposium in Portland in the summer of 2010 (up to which point I had really not been getting ‘out there’ as an artist, except for being one of the original urban sketchers when that website launched) I scribbled thoughts and ideas into a notebook on the plane, one of which was that I needed to connect more with the local art community, meet other artists, encourage people to get out sketching, like Art Brut telling everyone to form a band. I wrote the words “Let’s Draw Davis” into my notebook and was struck with all sorts of ideas, the main one being that we needed a monthly gathering for people who wanted to draw, that would be free and organized with a start and end point, that would not be a ‘club’ or ‘group’ you had to join but an event anyone could feel part of, regardless of ability or experience. I had been on too many sketchcrawls where if you arrived late you wouldn’t know where the final meeting would be, or if you missed the middle point and they changed the final meeting you would be standing around wondering where everyone was (I’m looking at you, sketchcrawls in Berkeley years ago). It needed to be accessible, somewhere you could cycle to if need be, and IN DAVIS – this isn’t “Let’s Draw Davis And Sometimes Woodland Or Vacaville”, though they can definitely be things that should happen. I would put up posters in shop windows, make a website, put fliers in the local galleries, add things to social medias. I did all of that. I still make the posters, but someone else handles the Facebook group, and I’m not printing posters and putting them in Newsbeat like I used to. I am still making stickers, and recently I even tried to make badges. On that very first sketchcrawl I even made a few mini-sketchbooks, and brought extra pencils, so that if people asked what we were doing I could give them a book and a pencil and say, why not give it a go? I know of at least one person that actually worked for, and they went off and started drawing. The sketchcrawls haven’t always been monthly – been a few hiatus periods, such as this year with the pandemic, and also other years when I kinda stopped wanting to draw in groups (we all get like that; even now on sketchcrawls I still prefer wandering off on my own), but I have met so many great people, great artists, prolific sketchers that it’s been so totally worth it. It even kicked off a series of sketchcrawls when I organized a big sketchcrawl down the Fleet Street area in 2012 called “Let’s Draw London”, to celebrate the start of the new London Urban Sketchers chapter. They are still holding them monthly like clockwork there, big events with crowds of artists in all sorts of locations, called “Let’s Draw Trafalgar Square” or similar. I’ve had several other sketchcrawl ideas in California that haven’t been able to happen, such as my Sacramento Sketch Saturdays plan, or my big San Francisco Sketching and History Tour. But we still keep finding things to draw in Davis, even if it’s the same stuff in a different year.
So after a year of pandemic and shelter-in-place and wildfires and election stress, I was determined to celebrate ten years of Let’s Draw Davis with a sketchcrawl in the same place, a decade and a day later.
This was the poster, incorporating many of the posters I have designed (thrown together) over the years. Many fun ones; my favourite sketchcrawl might have been the 2017 City of Davis Centenary one, with the map of all the places that were there in 1917 and earlier (now go and draw them). So on this Saturday, we met at Central Park after most of the Farmers Market was packing up to go, and drew around the surprisingly busy park. It was a nice group of sketchers from around the region, a few new faces and several familiar friends. I drew the panorama at the top of this post. It was a hot day, with temperatures hitting 90 yet again, but pleasant. I stuck to the shade. I drew the compost heap area in the Central Park Gardens, an interesting little spot.
I was going to draw the Carousel, but it looked a bit too complicated, so I chickened out and drew the statue of Gandhi instead. then we all met up and shared our sketching stories. Being a special sketchcrawl I had some prizes at the end, for the ‘sketch of the day’ (William Lum got this), for the ‘most sketches’ (Misuk Goltz won this), and a long-time sketcher award for Marlene Lee who’s been coming on these since Jan 2011 and has come to almost every one since. (I did have a couple of long-time-sketcher prizes for a couple of others but they had left early, so next time!) 
And that was that! The next Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl will be a scavenger hunt on Saturday November 14, I’ll update the Facebook page soon. In the meantime, here’s to more drawing Davis!
Oh, and Happy Halloween!
but i know that i will be back, right back here with you
Another downtown lunchtime sketch, or late lunch, I don’t remember now. Lunchtime is just an arbitrary time slot in the day a lot of the time nowadays. This is a bright yellow building, but I don’t really like drawing yellow buildings much, so you just get the monochrome version, except for the sign. Drawn with the Uniball Signo UM-151 brown-black pen. Making the most of drawing outside. Before we’re all locked down again. I hear back in Britain that is where it’s headed. Here in California, we aren’t ‘locked down’ (in fact we never called it that, it’s always been ‘shelter-in-place’) but hardly anyone’s on campus. Lots of places are still open downtown though, restaurants (for take-out or eating outside on the new patios, where parking spots used to be), shops, but not movie theaters, not bars, not the places where in the past I would have gone on a Friday evening after a busy week, to watch one of the movies I like, with a Snickers ice cream bar, and then go to De Vere’s for a few pints and to draw an intense panorama of the bar and all the people. De Vere’s Irish Pub is closed now. In hibernation, rather. The Sacramento pub is still open, but Davis is shuttered for now. I miss it there, a friendly place you’d bump into locals. Some other bars are open, University of Beer has an expanded patio, and I think Sophia’s does too, though we just order a bi-weekly curry from there, the best. Ah, I miss the pubs, I miss sitting at the bar and drawing in my sketchbook over a pint. But at least I’m out sketching now, not just drawing my living room over and over. Sometimes when you feel like you’re just falling off the planet, getting a sketchbook out and committing to a drawing with a lot of penwork and shapes and observation can really help bring you back.
outside the bubble
I’ve been drawing outside a lot lately. Trying to make up for lost time, taking advantage of cooler weather and safer air, getting it in before it gets rainy (haha, ok), and despite the fact there’s very little left in Davis I feel I absolutely need to go and draw (boy am I missing travel) it’s nice to be out and sketching. In these trying times, these stressful times, these unprecedented – you get the idea – it’s a good stress reliever. This is another one with the fountain pen and black ink, which lets me have a bit more value to the dark shades. It’s that funny looking building on G St, currently home to Bubble Belly, which I think sells baby clothes. Actually the weather was still warm – in fact up to last week we were still having 90 degree plus temperatures. What an October.
petescully 