maybe someday I’ll make you understand

October 6, 20253 Comments

Ok, it is suddenly October, and it’s time to start catching up I suppose! I am still scanning my sketches from summer – I just got to the end of Poznań, moving on to Berlin now – while still also sketching loads since my summer trip. How far behind am I in posting my sketches to the sketchblog? Well I’m coming back to the rest of the sketches from May, there is that. These are from the areas that are not quite downtown. Above, a sketch of a house with a tree in front of it in Old North Davis, on the 600 block, which is described in John Lofland’s book as having “romantic character” (he was quoting an Enterprise article from 1980). It is a lovely tree lined block. I was sketching in old north Davis yesterday actually, another old house from Lofland’s book with a tree in front of it, surprise, and I’m looking forward to all the trees turning to Fall colours now, especially along B Street. This end of May though, with summer just around the corner, full of promise, but also knowing that the annual hot weather is about to start punishing us. A little bit earlier in May I sketched another of those frat houses you get around campus. I have never been inside a frat house, I imagine they are all like 1980s college movies. I don’t know, fraternities and sororities belong to a different world than the one I inhabit, I suppose I like to keep that professional distance, just drawing the buildings and maintaining the mystery. We don’t do that in British universities, the whole frat thing, but even if they did it would again have been outside of my world. Not because I’m a working class lad from Burnt Oak who wouldn’t go for any of that nonsense or because I have a deep distrust for old-boys’ clubs and secret societies and all that silly ‘hazing’ (which by the way I’m glad to hear is well discouraged these days). No it’s because I would not be able to resist ‘mistakenly’ calling them ‘fart’ houses at any opportunity, to the point that no farternity would ever let me be a member if I keep calling them fart houses. Also making funny names out of the fart house names, like ‘Theta Xi’ being the club for cab drivers, or ‘Rho Rho Rho’ being for boat racers, or ‘Fee Phi Fo Fum’ being the club for giants. ‘Eta Pi’ for bakers, ‘Pi Eta’ for renaissance sculptors, etc and so on. I would not take it seriously, and no pun is too low. I am like the Dwarves of Moria when it comes to looking for puns, I will delve so low that I would awaken the Balrog, though I would probably call him a ball rag and tell him he can’t pass (“balrog? more like ‘ball hog’, right? Cos you don’t pass, yeh, you just hog the ball oh never mind, fly you fools”). Twenty years now I’ve been here chuckling at frat houses, but I’m still sketching them.

And finally, a tree in the Arboretum that has fallen over. I don’t know when it fell over but it’s not getting up again any time soon. It will not get rebooted. There is a pun in there somewhere, but you really have to look for it. ‘Boot’. In America they call the ‘boot’ of a car a ‘trunk’, and as you know trees have trunks, so it makes sense if you think about it. Ok fine. I liked the shape it made like the arch of a bridge, it would make a nice arch for people to have wedding photos under if they were so inclined, if they were members of Robin Hood’s Merry Men or something. On the right there you can see the legs of the UC Davis Water Tower, and on the left is a little bit of the EPS Building. I stood across the stream to sketch this, stood in the shade as is what I recommend, and wondered about the state of the world, and the country, while looking at a fallen tree. Anyway.

So I will be getting back to scanning my summer sketches, and wondering if I will ever have time to write all the stories that go with them. I will limit the puns and silly jokes if I can, that should save me some time, and try to actually remember stuff that happened, I did write a diary while I was in Poland which was a helpful way to keep track of the symposium, so it’s not just all in the sketchbook. I only really end up writing it here as a way of remembering stuff anyway. June and July in Davis, August in London, Poland, Berlin and back to London, September in Davis, San Francisco and the big Oasis show in Pasadena, and back to Davis. In the meantime as well as the usual busy start to the academic year I am also teaching (well, leading not really teaching) a first year students’ group getting them out urban sketching this quarter, which so far has been great, today we sketched Eggheads, and next week we will sketch trees on the Quad, just getting them out observing Davis. And then there’s the rebooted Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawls which will start again on Saturday October 18 in Central Park (FB event details here) and I am planning to keep going monthly with hopefully a renewed energy after my summer of sketching. I have done more sketching this year than any other year; even up to mid-August I already overtook my sketching totals from 2024. It’s almost as if urban sketching is a huge distraction from the real world events and a way for me relax in the face of constant stresses. Anyway I will be caught up soon, and then get back to more regular posting. Writing also de-stresses me more than it distresses me, though I usually need some quiet to do it. I’m also running again, and training (off and on) for the 10k in November. Oh bugger, that’s next month.

Also, both my pieces in the Pence’s Art Auction sold, both a few weeks before the auction closed, a nice surprise. Hopefully they went to good homes. Ok they are just drawings, not puppies. I went to the event and had a glass of wine and some nibbles, and left to get a milkshake to celebrate, because last week it was exactly 20 years since we moved to California, 20 years since I left London and started a new life out here. Next month it will be 20 years since I moved to Davis. That is a lot of drawing, my old pedigree chum, a lot of fire hydrants, a lot of houses with trees in front of them. And there’s more to come!

a new one just begun

February 18, 2025February 17, 20254 Comments

Every year I dread the birthday week; I don’t technically age any more than I do any other day, but that day does push me ever further into the next category in the local fun runs. I tend to draw a lot in the run up to my birthday, as if to take my mind off it; the run up to my birthday is about 365 days. Ok so now we are in February, and have things got better yet, globally? No they have gotten worse, way worse already than ever worried about, and the rest of this month, let alone the rest of this year, fills me with anxiety. Where do we even start? I marginally ease this despair by drawing the world around me; there are only so many buildings with trees in front of it in Davis, yeah? I sometimes think, with all these drawings recording this city over the course of the past nearly two decades (wow) are they something that will be looked at many years later or are they just things of the moment; I need to put a book together. That would take my mind off things, maybe. I see my work on all these drawings as part of a purpose, the idea that these all might be a book or series of books. Occasionally people do see my work on Instagram or here and are like, wow I used to live there, and it sparks memories, and that’s a great thing. When I see illustrations of London, if it is a place I know and connect with well, I look at it and it takes me to places in my mind. Anyway, above it was a day when I was out sick, felt bloody awful. It had been building since the weekend, felt physically wiped out, and on this day I’d been up all night with a headache. I managed to sleep half the day, had a remote work meeting, and tried to rest for a bit more but I needed some fresh air, so went for a walk, making it all the way down to 5th Street where I stopped and did a drawing. I coloured it in later. People were waiting at the bus stop, so I added those in, “why don’t you draw people in your sketches, don’t you think your drawings would be much better if there were people in it?” they say, forgetting the name of my last book; this will satisfy them for a minute. I have waited at that bus stop before, but not for a long time. The bus that would go along there is the one that took me home to our little apartment in south Davis, the area we lived in when we first moved to this city.

A couple of days before, I was already not feeling that well and ended up going home early. After walking downtown to eat something, I found myself needing a rest at Central Park, so I got my sketchbook out and drew the big frat house on the corner. Drawn this a few times, so I didn’t draw it all, left details out and did not start colouring it in. This is enough, all that’s needed. At least I’m drawing. Often times this might be as far as I can get (due to time) and then I’m like, yep finish this one at home.

The next day, already feeling sick, I had to stay home in the morning because a new bed was being delivered to my house. My body said I needed to rest, but any chance of lying in bed was off the table. I had to take my old bed out (not easy at all, no idea how the guys who brought it in managed to do it) and then bring the new one in and put it together. After I was done, I went to work as there is a lot to do. I stopped off for some lunch on the way in, and then did a quick sketch nearby of The Barn, sketching for about ten minutes half-heartedly, not really having any energy at all. So this is kept like this, I don’t really need another sketch of this building, and this is more an illustration of how I was feeling physically.

And finally, end of the week, felt a lot better by then (maybe the new bed is helping with the sleep) and it was Friday afternoon, everything was done so I finished an hour early and walked downtown for a birthday milkshake. The new year diet never happened, but it’s 2025, comfort milkshakes are gonna happen, while milkshakes are still available. Still wasn’t feeling too well, but definitely better, and that milkshake had my name on it. Before heading home I walked over to D Street and liked the way the just-after-5pm light was hitting the Pence Gallery. The days are getting a little longer. Each day feels like a million years. I drew and added only a few colours and the shadows, this is all it needed. Another year over.

first street, ten years later

February 5, 2024February 5, 2024Leave a comment

Last week, we held our monthly ‘Let’s Draw Davis!’ sketchcrawl down at Davis Commons. It was an overcast day, not rainy as it had been, but not sunny. Colours had to be a nit muted, not as bold. We had a good group of sketchers there of all ages, it was nice to see so many people out with their sketchbooks. I decided that I wanted to revisit a scene that I had drawn exactly ten years ago (ten years and a few days, that is), looking across 1st Street towards where the Natsoulas Gallery and the frat houses are. You can click on the image for a closer view. It has changed a fair bit in that decade (haven’t we all). I stood in pretty much the exact same spot as in 2014, though I think I must have been seated back then. The Natsoulaas has seen some big changes – the large cat outside, as well as the big colourful dog (just offscreen here), where before there was a big colourful man figure. The big frat house next door is still there, but is part of the TKE (Tau Kappa Epsilon) fraternity now. The building to the left of the pole (which I have used as the middle of the page both times) is new, and home to the ΘΞ fraternity (Theta Xi, or ‘The Taxi’ as I’d always say). They used to be in the building TKE is in now, plus a couple of other smaller houses next door, which have been knocked down. Well in my 2014 panorama, they were still there, as you can see below. It was much sunnier in January 2014 too. There were more trees then, but that teensy tree just to the left of the street signs is now a lot taller. Anyway, I was just interested in seeing the change after a decade. I was ten years younger, belly a bit thinner, hair a bit redder, eyes a bit younger, plus a whole load of other physical or personality things I’m not going into now. I’m still drawing in my sketchbook, I don’t know if I’ve realistically improved much but I’m still going. Stop worrying, keep on sketching. The sketchbook is a place to record not so much a place, as a point in time.

I also recorded some people too. While eating lunch (a huge chicken sandwich at a newish eating place I had never seen before) I sketch some people with my brown ink fountain pen. Not a sketchcrawl unless there are a few people sketched. I spent most of my sketchcrawl working on the panorama piece. At the end we all got together and did our usual show and tell. Someone asked if we could put all our sketchbooks on the floor, like they do on other sketchcrawls, but I don’t like that, because the best way to see peoples’ work is not standing nearly six foot above it looking down onto a damp sidewalk. (I also don’t like the feeling of comparison when doing that, always makes me feel a bit shy). I know, I’m a bit of an outsider here not going along with the whole “throwdown” thing, it’s become a tradition now, and people like to get that shot to share on Facebook, but we always like to take a group photo at the end where you see the sketcher with their sketchbook. The thing I always loved with the original Worldwide Sketchcrawls, especially the ones in San Francisco when Enrico Casarosa was doing them, was that at the end you would mingle with other sketchers and look through each others books (because more than likely you would have multiple sketches that you had done, not just one particular page) and just chat with everyone. We’ve kind of evolved into a group show and tell almost by accident, but anyone that doesn’t feel comfortable sharing their sketches doesn’t have to. On my very first worldwide sketchcrawl in 2005 (when my fellow Davis sketchers Alison and Allan were there) I was too shy to even go to the final meet-up. Anyway, we will be holding more Davis sketchcrawls in 2024, dates coming soon.

on the corner, a break in the rain

January 31, 2024January 31, 2024Leave a comment

A rainy day, the showers stopped for a bit so I took a late lunch and drew the corner of A and 1st. I’ve drawn this corner a few times, they’ve painted this building a few times too. It’s some frat house, Zeta Psi. It’s a whole culture of American university life that we didn’t really have in British universities, not to this extent anyway. I suppose it’s important for stuff, parties on picnic day and beer pong and definitely no hazing. I’ve never been inside a frat house but I imagine it’s either like some gathering of the offspring of wealthy elites with secret codes and fridges of champagne and butlers, or it’s like the house in the Young Ones with bits of old mouldy fruit that talk to socks and Neil the Hippy burning his lentils while Rik the Peoples Poet plans the next protest against fascist pigs. The imagination is probably much better than the reality. You usually see all the new frat and sorority people out and about in large groups in Fall during their ‘Rush’, all dressed up in shiny clothes. As I sketched, the occasional jogger ran by, taking advantage of the break in the rain. I have not yet re-started my own running, I’ve been a little bit lazy on that front. I have the Davis Stampede coming up too, and need to prepare for it more. I had a lot on my mind this day, I often do, the world weighing down, hard to understand. One of the reasons I draw I think is to gain a tiny bit of control over the world around me, as if I can hold it in my hand, but maybe I’m over analyzing it, maybe I just like to draw because I really like drawing. This day was my son’s 16th birthday which was a scary thought too, and my own birthday is coming up soon which always makes me fill with a little dread. Every birthday I’ve had in my 30s and 40s has been spent over here, I’ve not had a birthday in England since my 20s, and those 20s seem like a very distant memory now. Ah well, we move along with time, it’s just not always that fun.

big red letters and a really big cat

September 27, 2023September 26, 2023Leave a comment

I did that thing where I used some masking tape to make a perfectly lined rectangle, so that I could draw and paint over the edge, and then peel it off satisfyingly for a lovely straight line, like all the proper artists do on Instagram. I went downtown and drew the brand new TKE frat house, which replaced the older looking frat house that was there for years, that I definitely sketched a few times over the years. It’s next to the Natsoulas Gallery which has that massive cat outside, part of which you can see here. It was a pretty hot day when I was sketching this. And then I pulled the tape off, and yes I got that dead straight line, but it was less dramatic than I’d liked, and I remembered that actually I like non-straight lines don’t I. Also I am not as smooth as those Instagram artists, and managed to pull up half the page with me when pulling up that tape. I mean that’s fine, it has a bit more texture now. I found myself wondering what TKE stands for. ‘Total Kinetic Energy’. ‘The King’s Elephant’. No, I got nothing. It looks a bit like the word ‘TAKE’ without the A, so I suppose you might look and say ‘Take Cat’ and then start singing Take That songs, but that’s a stretch. It’s a bit hard to ignore those big red letters though.

not all those who wander are lost (except me)

January 22, 2022January 22, 2022Leave a comment

A big building across the street with a tree in the foreground? Oh go on then. C Street to be precise, right by 4th St, across from the park – I’ve drawn this spot before. I’ve said that before too, “I’ve drawn this spot before”, many times. I drew this on January 6th, on the one year anniversary of January 6th. The day the decorations come down. This is a frat house, Phi Delta Theta. A big old fancy house that isn’t that old; there was a similar looking building here before, but it was knocked down several years ago and then they built this one. I remember that I hadn’t sketched the previous one (surprisingly) and regretted it – people would tell me stories about their student days going to parties in the old one. Well, not many stories. I remember my own student party days. Well, I say ‘remember’, I mean I know they happened. They were a long time ago. Some fun times, going all over London because someone at uni was having a party, there were plenty of long journeys home on the night bus. Well, I lived in north west London out at the end of the Northern Line, but I went to university in east London, and people tended to spread out further eastwards from there. I vaguely remember one party at someone’s house in the Docklands, and afterwards getting totally lost on the Isle of Dogs trying to find my way back to the Mile End Road. No smart phones or Ubers back then, I just used the massive skyscraper of Canary Wharf as my compass – if I was moving away from it, it was probably the right direction. I just followed my nose. I obviously made it home ok. Another random party I remember, I was invited by a good friend to come to a house party in Leytonstone or somewhere, bloody miles away. I had been at my mate’s birthday in Burnt Oak (at his nan’s house) all evening, but I’d said I’d go to this party so it was pretty late by the time I got there, after an hour on the rube and a long walk through streets I did not know at all, not at night anyway (though I remember passing the cemetery where my Scully grandparents are buried; they died before I was born) – I was a bit nervous I might get put in the cemetery myself, some of the lads hanging around. I eventually made it to the party (how on earth did I find the place? Oh right I looked at the address on a map and just remembered the way, 90s style), and my friends there were all massively drunk already, it was definitely a party that was winding down. I think I stayed for about half an hour and had one drink before it was time to go, the long trek back across London. Another time, I went to a new years eve party in Gants Hill, which is like out in Scandinavia or somewhere, it’s that far away, and I didn’t even know the guy who invited me all that well, we’d just met in the student union a few times, as you do in the first year at college. I do remember that one of his friends gave me a lift down to the tube station at least, which was nice, because I’d definitely have gotten lost out there. I spent a lot of time travelling across the city at night in those days, usually on the way to or from somewhere. Formative years. Some things I don’t miss about being younger and being in the big city, but then again, I think I do miss it, sitting on a bus at night with the headphones on, not exactly sure what part of London I’m in. I don’t miss the wandering about at night being lost much, but I always find my way home in the end.

knowing just where you are blowing

January 6, 2022January 6, 2022Leave a comment

Well it is 2022 now, I suppose. The number at the end of the year changed a bit. Due to general busyness (and a few technical issues putting me off of scanning my sketchbook) I’ve not posted in a while so will make up for that now. I have also not drawn that much lately, December was a big slowdown in terms of my sketching output. Ah well. So it’s time to just catch up by posting these sketches from late Fall, when bright orange leaves were still on the trees and in the streets (long since blown away). Above is Rice Lane, which joins up B and A Streets near campus. I did this over a couple of days, so some of the leaves may have moved about a bit overnight, who knows. I was listening to a Terry Pratchett audiobook while drawing. I remember that because that’s what comes to mind when I look at my sketches, the sounds in my ears. Those are the things you don’t see. You’ll never look at a sketch I did of, say, Community Church and think, this puts me in mind of the Great Vowel Shift, but I would because I was probably listening to a podcast about that when I drew it. Associated sounds are personal. It’s good when visiting new places to keep the earphones out and listen to the city itself, the crunching leaves, the traffic, the language of the passers by, the sizzle of a hot dog, whatever. If I’m just here in Davis where I always am I want to listen to stories through my headphones, I already know what Davis sounds like.

Above is somewhere on D Street. I have long said we should rename the lettered streets to something more memorable, maybe something to do with university subjects, like Anthropology Street, Biostatistics Street, Chemistry Street, and I guess D would be Design Street? Drama? Then I thought in the spirit of fraternity / sorority we should rename them with Greek letters, so Alpha, Beta, C would have to be Gamma confusingly, but D would automatically be Delta. You don’t want to be Delta. Well now it’s Omicron that’s everywhere. This pandemic, it’s never going to end. I’ve been a bit depressed about it all lately (me and you and everyone else) and now the new year is here it’s like, oh, 2022, it’s going to keep going isn’t it. On and on and on. We will run out of Greek letters for variants, we will need to start using the NATO phonetic alphabet, you know, Foxtrot, Charlie, Bravo, those ones. Except Delta would still be Delta, and who would want to say they caught the ‘Mike’ variant? It gets a bit problematic that alphabet. Or maybe Father Jack naming scale? The ‘Drink!’ variant, followed by the ‘Feck!’ ‘Arse! and ‘Girls!’ variants. No, that might be problematic too. That would be an ecumenical matter. You can’t use the Care Bears scale (“Tenderheart”, “Love-A-Lot”, “Grumpy”) though I’d like to see that scale used more for weather (“Hurricane Funshine”), but I could see the Transformers scale working (the “Megatron Variant” sounds terrifying) though maybe not the He-Man scale (really, the “Fisto Variant”?) I’ll leave naming conventions to the experts.

Speaking of Greek letters, I drew this Alpha Chi Omega house on C Street (we are back to regular alphabet for street names then), in mid-November. They are a pretty old women’s fraternity, dating back to 1885 in Indiana, that’s a long time. I have drawn this building before, because I date back to Davis in 2005 and that’s a long time for a sketcher. I remember when I first came to Davis, I was a little bit fascinated by all the fraternity and sorority houses, with those big greek letters outside, because this whole ‘panhellenic’ society thing you get at universities here is pretty alien to me, we don’t have those at British universities, at least not to the scale they have here. They would have their big Rush periods with their big dress up events, and their hazing (though I think there’s much less of that nowadays), but I was already well beyond student age when I came here and I just kept getting older, so anything the youthful did looked a bit alien to me. So I just occasionally draw the big old buildings with the big mystic-looking letter combinations on the wall. Sometimes there will be lads playing beer pong outside. I daresay these buildings hold a lot of memories for people.

And this last one, another from November, a little bit more autumn colour but not much, standing outside Walker Hall and looking towards Shields Library. I used to spend a lot of time in Shields when I first came to Davis, because my default mode was sitting in big quiet libraries looking at books (usually about language). I’d finished my Masters not long before flying out here (I had handed in my MA dissertation – about the relationship between the English and French languages within England in the late Middle Ages – a week before emigrating; my wife had originally set the leaving date for the day after I handed it in, but I’m really glad I had a week of non-library time before flying off, time to say all my bye-byes and party a little. I’ve lived in America ever since.) This library was the only place I could access the internet at first, so I would send my long emails home from here, update my old blog, and start looking for jobs. I was still a bit shell-shocked after moving countries so coming to the big Shields library felt like finding a little bit of familiar me-space, and even after I started working on campus I would come here at lunchtimes and try to translate some old Anglo-Saxon texts, most of which I’ve forgotten all about now. It’s 2022 now, I suppose…

sorority now

April 14, 2021Leave a comment

A late afternoon/early evening “need to get out of the house” sketch, sat at the desk in the kitchen all day I escaped on the bike despite the threat of sneezes, and cycled toward the UC Davis campus where we’re currently working away from. I stopped at Russell, and drew one of the many fraternity/sorority houses that line that long avenue. Sorry, boulevard. Street, boulevard, avenue, road, I don’t mean to be rue’d. Sorry I’m juts avenue on. Right, now the obligatory weak puns are out of the way, this is Delta Gamma. It’s a sorority and as I have mentioned before, the whole fraternity/sorority thing is highly alien to me, for two reasons: one, I’m from Britain and we don’t have those there at our universities like they do in the US (not to say that certain old universities don’t have their posh-person clubs, but that’s also very alien to the likes of me), and two, well I have never been one of those “member of a social club” types. Some people just are, some people just aren’t. So I’ve always found the whole thing fascinating, but not so fascinating that I want to know anything about them. I work for the university, but I have never interacted with them, and I’ve mostly worked with international graduate students who are probably as nonplussed about these organizations as I am. The Greek lettering they use for the names means you can come up with funny pretend ones; Terry Pratchett once joked about the rowing club “Rho Rho Rho”. I always liked Theta Xi, where future cab drivers go to learn The Knowledge. (For non-Americans, The Knowledge is something that London black-taxi drivers have to learn in order to be eligible to drive one of the famous black cabs. It’s not something you learn overnight or by taking an online course. You learn The Knowledge over the course of a couple of years or more, by studying the A-to-Z every day. My brother did it, but gave up. My former brother-in-law did it too, but also gave up. He had a huge map of London on his wall while trying to learn it. They both drive all over the country for a living and could tell you the quickest route from Penzance to Penrith, but the Knowledge requires you to learn every single street in London and the shortest route between them. I know quite a few black cab drivers back home who’ve driven for years. You would see trainee cabbies riding around London on their mopeds, easy to spot because there would be a huge map board on their handlebars. There was a little test book you had to study. I never wanted to be a cab driver myself, but I was fascinated by The Knowledge and loved the idea of being able to store all of that information in your bonce. This is why cabbies have such great general knowledge, they are used to soaking all that in. Now as I write all of this, I’m writing from memories about this stuff when my brother was doing it, so it might be completely different now. Even since I have moved to the US, the world has changed. With smart phones and more accurate GPS, with all these Uber and Lyft apps, black cabs and their Knowledge might seem a bit old fashioned but I still admire them. Not that I’d hail black cabs very often, a bit expensive. I like to walk about central London. How did I end up talking about London taxis? I should draw one sometime. In the meantime, here’s another fraternity/sorority house. To get into one of these, you don’t need to do The Knowledge, you just need to do whatever they do in their ‘Rush’ periods, I don’t know, wear a different dress every day is one I was told about, or hazing, which I think involves beer. I remember the first time I ever met “Frat Boys” at an American party in Provence, and my American friend explaining to me “these lads are typical Frat Boys” and the idea of them stuck. Very drunk, huge muscular frames, nasal voice, glazed expression. Long time since I was a student, and this would have all been alien to me. Except the beer, of course. (And the glazed expression, and the nasal voice; it was the muscular frame my skinny-boned stick figure body didn’t have). Many British universities are actually built around the campus pub. I suppose the closest thing I can think of to these institutions in British universities are the rugby teams. I remember at Queen Mary, being in the pub at the same time as the university rugby team was not fun. I remember one rowdy night when the rugby team were all partying around one table and one shirtless bloke was stood on a chair drinking massive amounts of cheep beer (the student union pubs always had the cheapest beer, like a quid-twenty a pint), vomiting into a bucket, then drinking more beer all while stood up, with his fellow rugbyers singing something one of their public school rugby field songs (by the way, a “public school” in England is a private school, not a public school, which is a state or comprehensive school, and both rugby and cricket are very popular at those) (the one I worked at for a while had strong rugby and cricket teams, but didn’t even have a football team, that’s more a sport for the oiks, like at my school). Anyway I seem to recall he was then encouraged to drink the vomit from the bucket as well, which he gladly did, to much public schoolboy merriment. The antics of the British public boarding schools and university rugby teams are more worlds of mystery to me. But I studied drama, and I’m sure they thought we were all bonkers as well, and they were probably right. I took part in a multilingual performance show once where I had to play a drunken old man doing a solo piece on stage drinking a bottle of wine and ranting about, I have no idea what, it was by Raymond Queneau. Anyway I was given a bottle of real wine and I got through about three quarters of it during this one very silly speech, which only wet on for less than ten minutes. Needless to say there was plenty of ad-libbing by the end of it. the vice-chancellor of the university was in the audience and he actually came up to me and said how much he enjoyed the show, but because I had so much wine in me by this point I immediately asked if there could be more funding for the university theatre company, as if I had any idea about that at all, I’d just heard they were well short of dough These days I am part of university bureaucracy so I navigate such things differently, but when I was a kid I thought “the multilingual absurd performance piece is the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the vice-chancellor!”. Ah, student life was fun.

First and A

April 5, 2019April 5, 2019Leave a comment

This is the corner of 1st and A. If Davis were a chessboard, this might be where you find the Rook. Davis would work well as a game of chess. In fact this might well be the middle of the board, because a game of Davis chess might be between the City of Davis and UC Davis, the natural delineation. Or it might be between the students, who spend just a few short but massively formative years here, and the residents, living here much longer-term and bringing up families. Or the chess game is the cyclists and the motorists (nah, in Davis the cyclists win that one). Perhaps it could be a chess game between the small businesses downtown and the big box companies just outside? Yeah, that’s been a game for quite a while now. Maybe the chess game is between the Davis Moms At The Park and Everyone Else. Or the chess game is between the Youth Soccer Teams trying to find a spot to practice at the park and the Youth Baseball teams trying to find a spot to practice at the park. Could be that the chess game is a downtown match between the Thai Restaurants and the Frozen Yogurt shops? Again, this could be happening. Or maybe the most thrilling chess game would be between the turkeys of Davis and the humans of Davis? Downtown Town would have been the king. I told you about Downtown Tom a long time ago, but come to think of it I never showed you the drawing I did for the Pence Gallery, I’ll have to dig that out. Downtown Tom, what a legendary beast, he was the Kasparov of Davis.

This is the corner of 1st and A. I have drawn this corner before, a few times, already. This building, a frat house (how could you tell?), was painted white before but is now custard yellow. I like the warning sign on the barrier, warning that it might drop on your head. It reminded me of the fate of Cyrano de Bergerac. “Mais on ne se bat pas dans l’espoir du succès, non, c’est plus beau lorsque c’est inutile!”

the last few sketches of the year

December 31, 20189 Comments

It’s New Year’s Eve! Look to the future now, it’s only just begun. I wish it could be New Year’s Eve every day. I don’t really do much for New Year’s Eve, but I do make a point to get out and sketch somewhere, no matter how cold it is. Here are today’s ones. Most sketching I’ve done in a month! My thumb was hurting, so I had to go light on the sketching. Still hurts but wanted to feel productive. I have been trying to teach myself to do digital illustration, the very basics, which has meant a fair bit of tracing as well. Feels very ground-level though so it was nice to get back to sketching, something I feel a bit better at. Bloody windy out today though. It’s 2018 being blown away. I’m not looking forward to 2019 (specifically March, when Britain leaves the EU with no apparent deal in sight), but it’s just numbers on a calendar. I think that it’s just the last year of an unknowable decade. We don’t really have an agreed name for this decade. The last one is sometimes called the ‘noughties’ which is a bit of a rubbish name, and I’ve heard this one called the ‘twenty-tens’ but that just isn’t anything. When we finally hit 2020, and the Twenties, we can get back on track. I’m still not used to being in the ‘twenty-first century’. It’s all just numbers on a calendar. The sketch above, drawn in the wind, C Street Davis. I drew this same building on New Year’s Eve four or five years ago, from a different angle.

This is my back yard. Apart from the above, I’ve not left the house much this week. I did this before going out to sketch, as if to warm up, and listened to a podcast of Edgar Wright speaking to Adam Buxton, which was really interesting. I really liked that long triangular shadow sneaking across the back fence. New Year’s Eve, I don’t party on New Year’s Eve any more. When I was a kid my family always had a party, or if not us then someone else in our street. When I was in my 20s, I’d sometimes go out on New Year’s Eve, but I also remember the ones in my late teens when I’d just stay in watching Jools Holland and Rab C Nesbitt on my little TV in my bedroom, while drawing football kits. I ain’t changed much!

I did one last sketch, a quick one paint-first while the daylight drew to a close, and my son took part in a smaller soccer practice session at Playfields in Davis. It was cold, windy, brisk, but the boys were just happy to get kicking balls about. As I’m not coaching now, I was happy to just watch and sketch, though I did get cold.

I do have some more 2018 sketches to scan, maybe I’ll do those later tonight (party on!!), but I need to finish assembling the 2018 sketches grid. I do it every year. You may remember from last year (you probably won’t, that’s fine) that I have been doing more and more sketches each year. Here’s the post. Well, I can confirm that this year the sketch-rate went down again, and I could not catch up with 2017, not by a long way. Ah well. Happy New Year 2019!