“you carry on ’cause it’s all you know”

February 22, 2024February 23, 20242 Comments

Here are a few downtown sketches from last week. Above is Pinkadot, a clothes shop I’ve never been in (not really my style), next door to Baskin Robbins, which I have been in once or twice. I really like their milkshakes. One thing about milkshakes, they do make a stressful day/week/month feel that little bit better. It’s still only February! 2024 already feels like it’s been going on for about six months, and March, one of the busiest months, isn’t even here yet. I am going on a short trip to Los Angeles in March though, which should be nice, I’m going to a conference for work so it’s business and professional development, but as well all know that will also mean a lot of sketching. Hey, do you see that butterfly on the wall next to Pinkadot? That’s you that is. Sorry, old TV catchphrase alert. It did make me think of the song by The Jam, ‘The Butterfly Collector’. I think I’m like a butterfly collector, in my own little dream world, collecting sketches of places. I love that song.

This is Mishka’s Cafe, next to the Varsity. I don’t come here very often (not really a coffee drinker) but I do like their smoothies. Mishka’s is a Davis mainstay, but when I first moved here, the cafe was a block down the street. It was at that cafe that I first joined a ‘sketchcrawl’ back in December 2005, a long long time ago. I drew this when it was threatening to rain. We have had a lot of rain lately, those atmospheric rivers, but we need it. Those drought years were not fun either. This building is located where the old tank house used to be, years ago. I have spent well over a third of my life in Davis, in fact I’ve spent almost two thirds of my adult life in Davis, in fact you could say I’ve spent all of my actual grown-up life in Davis, but even that is up for debate. Time just keeps moving on, and that’s that. “And you started looking much older…” I’ve got that song in my head now. The Jam do fill me with joy, but also sadness, they remind me of my uncle Billy who passed away a few years ago, who used to play me his Jam records in his bedroom when I was a kid. As I write, on this day five years ago I was in England for his wedding, the last time I saw him. I think of him a lot.

And finally, the Varsity Theatre, that classic Davis landmark I have drawn loads of times. I don’t go inside very often, in fact the last film I saw in there was Jojo Rabbit. I don’t draw it from this angle much, it’s dramatic feels slightly overwhelming to me for some reason. Oh, everything feels overwhelming these days, drawing in a sketchbook is much less overwhelming than the rest of the world. I’ve been playing my guitar quite a lot lately, that’s a stress reliever. I keep dreaming about getting another, though I don’t need one. Well there’s one I want, but I quite like just wanting it. I find I have been trying to find the right sounds lately. I’m not a technically good player, I don’t do all the fiddly stuff, I am more about the rhythm and the chord changes. I have not written a ‘song’ in years and years and I don’t really want to start doing so again, but I cannot help myself coming up with little micro-pieces, whatever comes into my head, and quickly recording them on my phone. I will go back in later and listen to them, all about 30 seconds long each, and I always feel surprised at how much I like those little scraps when played together. Some are a bit pants, but they are like little thumbnail sketches of music, only for me, no words but occasionally some random lyrics thrown over to make a melody. Not for anyone’s ears but mine, just how I like it, little butterflies only a few chords long.

trees before the super bowl

February 21, 2024February 20, 20242 Comments

I really like drawing two-page panoramas, as you have probably realized, but the format of my blog is not super conducive to looking at them. It shrinks them to around 600 pixels across, making it a bit too small. You can click on the image of course and see it in full widescreen glory on my Flickr page, and without all the fairly tedious accompanying text. I feel the need to write a few things down here, very self-indulgently and only occasionally caring about ending sentences, but over there I’m like Silent Bob. I could change the format of my blog, but I really like this format, it works for me when I’m reading through it. I’ve looked at other layouts, but they’re all a bit bloated, not for me guv. For me it’s still 2007 in terms of blog formats. That time went by fast. I wish my eyes still looked like they did in 2007. I’m glad Spurs don’t play like they did in 2007. Anyway, back to the drawing. This is in old North Davis, corner of 7th and B, on a bright Sunday after my birthday (whatever that is) I got out on the bike for a bit and sat at a table outside a school and draw the scene above. It was the trees that drew me in, especially the two on each side, which were textured on these dark orange-brown leaves wrapped around their trunks. I was fascinated by those textures, and I loved the shapes of the bare trees behind. It’s what I appreciate about this time of year, right before the blossom and the buds. I sat there quite a while, until it was time to head home and watch some of the Super Bowl. It was already halfway done by the time I got home, but I didn’t really watch it, until late in the game, and that’s only because it was the San Francisco 49ers and they are my wife’s family’s team. We watched it with the Spongebob commentary and graphics, because it was a bit more fun. It was annoying how often they cut to Taylor Swift, who is the most famous singer in the history of the world at the moment (I have as yet been unable to convince my family that she is a descendant of Jonathan Swift, and was named after former England manager Graham Taylor, which is why she has songs called “Do I Not Like That” and “Can We Not Knock It”). We had listened to a whole one of her albums in the car ride back from Truckee, and I swiftly fell asleep. I’ve got nothing against Swift though, she is alright, seems like a good person. I just didn’t want the team her current boyfriend (I think he’s called Chelsea or Millwall or something) plays for to win though, because we were cheering for the 49ers. Actually I didn’t really mind. People watch the Super Bowl for the adverts anyway, that’s what they say. Tottenham have as good a chance of winning the Super Bowl as the Premier League. More maybe, since they play NFL games at our amazing stadium in N17 (which I learned is the most northerly stadium ever to host an NFL game). I was disappointed at the end though, even though it was one of the most exciting and thrilling ends to a game in history, when the Subaru advert just pipped the Geico commercial at the last minute to take the W, as they say here. Sports are funny, you win Bowls, Cups, even Wooden Spoons, you could end up with a whole kitchen set. Chance would be a fine thing, following Tottenham.

a day up in the snow

February 20, 2024Leave a comment

A couple of weekends ago we went up to Truckee, in the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains a couple of hours’ drive from Davis. We don’t get snow down here in the valley, but with all the weather at this time of year there was a good dumping up the in the Sierras, and we wanted a change of scenery. It’s colder, but it’s beautiful up there. We headed to the Jax by the Tracks Diner, which I drew when we were last up here at the end of 2020, when you couldn’t go inside because we were still in that Covid era. We went inside this time for lunch, and had delicious milkshakes. My ‘sexy chicken sandwich’ was nice, but I wish I’d got something else. I didn’t sketch inside, but we had a nice view from our table through a window of the lovely old building across the street, the River Street Inn, so I started a sketch of that. I knew I wouldn’t finish it, what with trying to get through my ‘sexy chicken sandwich’ (honestly I kept hearing Ruud Gullit’s voice in my head talking about the ‘sexy football’ his Newcastle team would play, only for it to be not very good and he dropped Alan Shearer) (I think it could have done with a bit more sauce, the fried chicken was a bit dry) (in the sandwich, not the Newcastle team) (but that too). My wife and sun’s lunches were delicious though, and I couldn’t get enough of that milkshake, that was worth the trip. I drew as much of the building as I could, but decided not to finish off once we got outside, so I did the rest from the photo I took from our table. I liked how tall the hydrant was, I think the snow can get suddenly really deep up there. The very first time I ever went there, back in the start of 2006, I was gobsmacked at the depth of the snow. I took a picture of a snowdrift outside a house, and it was only when I saw a long thin aerial poking out that I realised there was a car buried underneath. I was told it’s the snowiest part of the contiguous United States, just a couple of hours up the road from our snowless town.

We went and explored the main street of Truckee, all the little shops, trying not to slip up on any bits of ice, and I drew a slightly shorter fire hydrant with the snow around it. Afterwards we drove over to the Donner State Park, to walk around in the snow for a bit, and along the lake. the snow was quite deep up there, and we had our snow boots, but it wasn’t too cold. We weren’t up there too long, I did no snow-sketching, and it was a long drive back downhill to Davis, but at least we saw some Sierra snow in 2024.

big red mini

February 19, 2024February 17, 2024Leave a comment

I learned something very interesting recently, apparently Albert Einstein’s name wasn’t actually Einstein, that was just a nickname people gave him because he was really clever. He’d be going all, “I’ve got this theory about relativity” and his mates would be like, “alright leave it out Einstein”. I was thinking about that when we were watching that film Good Will Hunting the other night, which is a really good film that features a genius. It doesn’t feature Einstein, unlike the movie Oppenheimer, which is perhaps the most boring and overrated film of all time, or at least of last year. Oscar season is upon is isn’t it, and it will win a whole load more awards. Maybe it’s not meant for me. I’m never much of a fan of Oscar winners. We did watch ‘Shakespeare In Love’ last night though, funnily enough, that won the Oscar back in like 99 or something. It’s a fun film, but a lot more smoochy-smoochy-and-boobies than I remember, but I was a drama student at the time so it probably seemed tame. Funny thing though, and it’s not mentioned in the film, but William Shakespeare’s real name wasn’t actually Shakespeare. No apparently that was just a nickname people gave him because he wrote plays. He’d be like, “I just wrote this play about this Danish fella who can’t make his mind up,” and his mates would be all “yeah alright Shakespeare, give it a rest.” His other nickname that didn’t stick was actually “Quill.I.Am.” Anyway I was probably thinking about these things when I drew this sketch downtown, on the day before my birthday, a red Mini parked outside the Dresbach-Hunt-Boyer House. Now I know you are thinking, that’s a big Mini, and yes it is, everything is bigger in America, even the Minis. In New York the cars are as big as bars, so I heard. I was just happy to draw a car that didn’t look exactly like every single other car parked on the street. The sky was partly blue and grey, the leaves really blossoming now, it was very spring-like, by which I mean I was feeling pretty wound-up, mostly about having a birthday that I didn’t really want. I wish I could have a birthday at the time of my choice, maybe when I’m in England and can get my old friends out to celebrate like in the old days, not midweek in February when I’m knee-deep in work. It’s just a number changing from one to another, it happens every day anyway, if you count the days. Still the numbers keep piling on. Eighteen and a half years I’ve been in Davis. I remember there used to be this massive tree right here, way taller than any of the other trees on this block, and it was cut down a long time ago because it would definitely have fallen over sooner or later. I remember on the other side of this building there was the old Tank House, before they built Mishka’s (which moved form a block down 2nd Street) in about 2011 or whenever it was. They put the Tank House on this side temporarily (I sketched it, if you zoom back far enough), and now it’s out at Impossible Acres farm on the edge of Davis. I sketched it out there as well. I’ve drawn so many things in Davis multiple times. I wonder who will look at these all in decades to come, long after all the birthdays have stopped (this got dark suddenly), at the record of all the buildings and trees that used to be there or at least look differently. Maybe nobody. I just like to draw a lot, I’m not exactly Picasso. By the way did you know that Picasso’s name wasn’t really Picasso, etc.

the cats

February 18, 2024February 17, 20242 Comments

If I’m at home, there’s always a cat to draw. I don’t always want to draw a cat, but sometimes they just sit there, and you can’t help it. We have two cats, Whiskers is the smaller, Sawyer the bigger, but they are litter-twins. Well technically they were triplets, but the other kittie lives somewhere else. Anyway above was the last day of January, very rainy, the first of three days when I was home sick. That’s ‘at home sick’, as in I had a really nasty cold, but I’m always a bit ‘homesick’ as well, for London, that’s normal, it’s been a little harder than usual being away from my London family lately. Still we plod on. I was working from home while sick for part of that day and Whiskers was helping, but I had to sketch him looking out at the window. I made him a little bed on the desk from my scarves. There’s another cat that looks like them both who often comes into our back yard and winds our cats up, usually resulting in our two cats turning on each other and spending the next hour or so hissing and clawing at each other. Cats and their politics. That cat is like Fox News, and within seconds of appearing he is dividing our two usually friendly cats up with his nonsense about pretend culture wars or something. I usually have to go out and shoo him away. I haven’t seen him in a while though, since he was nearly attacked by an owl. We get these huge owls around here, and they can pick a cat up so you have to be careful, well our neighbour said they saw one swoop down and scare that other cat away. It must be the same owl that lives in the big tree near our house, I hear it hooting at night. We get a lot of owls around here. There was a superb owl last week on TV.

Sawyer spends a lot of time sleeping on the couch. In fact I think the couch itself gets up and moves about more than he does. I was trying out those Graphitint paints mentioned in the previous post and thought I’d use them to sketch Sawyer. I knew he wasn’t going anywhere for the next six hours, so I had plenty of time to work on it (it took me about 15 minutes top). On weekends I also spend a fair bit of time on the couch, so I can’t talk. I’m not exactly talking Royle Family levels, but those mornings when I get up super early to watch Spurs at 7am, and then suddenly its midday, well what are couches for. I got up this morning to watch Spurs actually, and we lost (I’m still in a bad mood about that), but I did go for a three mile run afterwards, before settling back to the couch to practice guitar, build some Lego and watch a Spider-Man movie. It’s been a busy and occasionally quite stressful week, it’s good to relax.

And here is Whiskers again, sitting looking out the window while seated on my big heavy copy of The Riverside Chaucer. I was at home that day working remotely (had several Zoom meetings and a deadline to meet so was glad not to have the interruptions). That copy of The Riverside Chaucer is always by my desk. If I were a smarter person I would say that use it for inspiration, hoping the Canterbury Tales might unlock the conundrum of campus office space, or that Troilus and Criseyde might help me figure out the teaching budget, but I don’t really read it much at all any more. It still has a lot of little post-it note fragments poking out of the top. I had to study it during my MA in English at King’s College London, and felt it important enough in my life to bring it with me when we emigrated in 2005, this massive heavy book of text I would probably never study again, not that I knew that. However it has been useful, immensely so, in a way you might be surprised at. I keep it on my scanner, because when I want to scan my sketches, this big heavy book can lie on top of the sketchbook and keep it much flatter than just my hands. It’s perfect for that, and even better with a cat sat on top. I drew this with the brown fountain pen, very quickly while Whiskers posed. It was quite a sunny day, and that spot by the scanner gets a good bit of sunshine in the morning.

trees and fever

February 17, 2024February 16, 2024Leave a comment

On the last day of January I got sick, and stayed home, getting progressively worse. By the first day of February I was laid out in bed with a fever and in no mood for anything. I slept all day long, onyl getting up shortly before two to grab something to eat and catch the news – I saw that Lewis Hamilton had signed for Ferrari? How long was I asleep? That was exciting news, though it wouldn’t happen for another year, so I went back to bed. I did get up shortly before it got dark out, and went for a quick walk on the Greenbelt to get some fresh air. I sketched a tree with the sunset behind it while sat on a bench, drawing in that Nero pencil that I got from one of the symposiums (wait, the last symposium I attended was in 2019?). I like that pencil though, with its thick black texture. The sunset was lovely. I was not feeling lovely, so went home and slipped back into bed.

These trees were an experiment using these Derwent ‘Graphitint’ watercolours that I bought recently, I was really interested in seeing what they could do. I think I like them? I mean I suppose, well no, I don;t like them that much, really. They don’t act like normal watercolours for sure, they do have an interesting texture and yes, feel like they are full of graphite pencil which I suppose they are. This is the view of the back of Covell Commons as seen from the Greenbelt in north Davis. That green rise, that’s beside where me and my son would play with the football when he was much smaller, before he was on soccer teams, we’d go out for a kickaround there setting up a couple of goals, and I’d usually lose. Seems like a long time ago now, but I always think of that patch as our little patch. This isn’t the most accurate sketch, though the day was gloomy with rain coming in and out, so atmospherically it’s accurate enough. I probably won’t be using the Graphitint paints while out urban sketching much but they are interesting enough. I was feeling much better by that Sunday, to the point where my energy was rushing back in, so much so that I could not sleep at night at all, leaving me exhausted the next day.

making all his nowhere plans

February 16, 2024Leave a comment

The start to 2024 has been long and stressful, and full of tiredness and wishing to be far away somewhere with a sketchbook and my headphones on, nowhere that I have to be. But you need the busy times to keep you busy, I could just do with a lot fewer headaches from the rest of the world. My way of handling it is and has always been to go into my sketchbook and draw things, I’ve said before I think it is a way of getting a little control of a small bit of the world by putting it onto some paper. Anyway on this one weekend day of rest, not a lot going on, I went downtown, had a milkshake, and chose a stretch of street I don’t think I’d drawn before, along D Street. It was sunny, and I’m drawn to those big leafless trees at this time of year, with the lovely bark textures. I listen to podcasts when sketching, probably something about the Beatles. I noticed a police car going up and down the street a few times, I don’t think he was looking at me sketching but you always get a bit paranoid. It was a nice day, a lot of people about downtown, pretty much as every other day. All these days blend into one don’t they. Another two-page panorama sketch, another for the book of landscape Davis sketches that I want to make some day. If I ever get there. I remember at a talk I gave years ago a lot of people saying they’d like to see a book just of my Davis sketches, but I still haven’t done it. I just never have the time to figure it out. So I keep drawing instead, and working. I spend a lot of energy trying to solve problems, come up with plans and schemes, try to unlock solutions, but I can never really figure out my own ones. So I keep drawing.

playing with pure pink

February 6, 2024Leave a comment

After the downtown sketchcrawl, I wandered about the shops, and then popped into the Bull’n’Mouth (formerly De Vere’s) for a beer before heading home. I’d really wanted to get another sketch in, and I haven’t really used that ‘pure pink’ pen that much, so I sat by the beer taps and drew those in dark brown, using the pink for the background. It’s one of my uni-ball signo um-151 pens, I have loads of different colours, most of which I only use for the occasional few lines of another sketch. I really liked how the pink and dark brown worked together for the depth. This is always a good sketching subject, the shapes and different areas of light and shade. It didn’t take too long, and I cycled home before it was dark. I had done that big detailed panorama on 1str Street, and this, and a few people sketches, so that was a good day of drawing.

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.

winter shadows on the old bank of yolo

February 4, 2024Leave a comment

This is one from 3rd St, downtown. I stood across the street, there were some workmen around blocking off part of the street to do some work. I have drawn this building before, it’s some Thai restaurant I think (I’ve never been inside) but historically it was the Bank of Yolo building, at 301 G Street. It’s from 1910, so would have been included in the centenary sketchcrawl I did a few years ago (sketching buildings from 1917 or earlier). I just like the shadows against the walls that those leafless trees cast in January. Right now, it’s February, and a big storm, an atmospheric river maybe, has been rolling through Davis since last night. Well, it started earlier this week, but today is the biggest stormiest part, and there will be a lot more wind tonight. I’ve been indoors most of the time since about Wednesday anyway, give or take a quick excursion out for fresh air, because I’ve been sick with a horrible cold. I’m feeling a lot better now, but I was in bed for a few days there. January seemed to last forever this year, and February is proving to be busy too, and I’ve not even had a chance to start it yet. My sketching productivity is up this year so far though, been filling up those sketchbook pages like its all gonna dry up. I always worry that it might, or that I might hit a wall and just not be motivated to sketch for a while. I’ve had those moments, but I can never really stop drawing. I’m definitely not taking on any commissions or side projects right now, I’m too busy with normal work. I’m organizing sketchcrawls; we had a good one at the end of January and I’m working in dates for the next couple at least. Still, I increasingly find myself going back into a shell in the urban sketching world, I don’t really interact globally as much as I used to. I don’t post to any online groups any more, just my own space. It’s such a big urban sketching world now, there are so many people, groups, communities, I tend to just gravitate to the sketchers I have known for years. I don’t teach workshops or classes, or even take part in big meetups any more, and I find myself getting very shy. My last USk symposium was Amsterdam 2019, that was fun (despite the heat), but it’s been a while. I missed out on Auckland 2023 (being in April), and I will miss out on Buenos Aires 2024 too (it’s in October, I can’t be away then). I should go to another sketching event, maybe. I will. I always get a lot out of them, usually meet and sketch with people that end up inspiring me massively. I don’t know, instead of worrying about being part of the urban sketching world any more I usually just go into my own sketchbook and sketch, and that’s what I tell everyone isn’t it? Forget worrying, just draw? Ignore the noise, just keep on sketching.