back to nob hill

April 18, 2025Leave a comment

I went down to the city for a couple of days, as my friends James and Lauren were visiting from England for their 10th anniversary, and we met up for a fun day and evening to celebrate. They married here back in 2015, which history books will tell us is a different historical period, and I came down from Davis to spend a really fun day with them which included a few drinks with locals at Rogue in Washington Square. Nowadays we have self-driving robo-taxis going around San Francisco, and Rogue is long gone, but we ate at Fog City Diner, went to look at the few remaining sealions and walk around the Musee Mecanique, before visiting the old historic bars of North Beach, ending up with a trip to the Tonga Room, classic SF history. The next day after they went to the airport for the next part of their trip I spent the Saturday sketching around the city, mostly around Nob Hill where we had stayed. I sketched the view above, which I have done a couple of times before (a very long time ago – this one in 2006, and //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js” data-wplink-url-error=”true”>this one in 2011 – I’ve been here a long time now). Cable cars rumbled by, tourists took photos and waited on the corner for their robo-taxis (the Waymos; I took my first Waymo ride the day before and it is very strange sitting next to an empty seat watching a steering wheel turn by itself). It was quite sunny. When I came down the day before the morning started off pouring with rain, but it cleared up by lunchtime, I had good luck with the weather. We had just had a really nice filling breakfast and a walk back up the very steep hill.

When we were up here in Nob Hill for my birthday the month before we had such a great view from our hotel room (see that blog post to have a look, it was incredible) that I didn’t want to go out sketching the area during our rest time, so I caught up on that this time. The scene above is in the square in front of Grace Cathedral. I stood in the shade of a tree to draw this fountain. There are lots of little dogs off leash around here, people come and let them scamper about, meeting other dogs, they have a great time. Mostly small dogs with well-off Nob Hill owners. I took a little while drawing this; it had been a very fun evening before and I was feeling a little hungover, but full of sketching energy. Not as much energy as those little dogs though. I sat on a bench to add the watercolour, so I could put my paint set next to me, and after a while soon found that the dogs and their people were gravitating towards the fountain to chatter and smell each others bums (I’ll not explain who was doing what). Which was fine but the dogs were getting very excitable, and some would come over to me to see what I was doing and see whether my paints were lickable. One larger dog put his snout right into my Winsor and Newtons (that’s the brand of paint I use, not some Cockney euphemism) and I had to be like, whoah there. Its human owner came over and I assume apologized (I was listening to an audiobook at the time) but then decided to shield me from further canine interruption by standing right in front of me, which you do when someone is obviously drawing don’t you. More dogs and owners joined the dog and owner party, running around yapping and sniffing bums (again my memory is fuzzy as to who was doing what), and then put of nowhere an excitable Cavalier King Charles Spaniel jumped onto the bench and landed on my paintbox, knocking over my little jar of water. I had a dog like that growing up, ‘Soppy Dog’ (her real name was Lady) so I have a soft spot for them, and didn’t really make much of a fuss other than a Marge Simpson style “hmmmmm” and frown. The embarrassed dog owner quickly got them away and probably apologized (I was listening to an audiobook), and the crowd of dogs and humans started moving somewhere else. None of this affected my painting of course but I thought, this will be a funny thing to write about when I post this, instead of ‘it was a nice day and my tummy was feeling yesterday’s beers’.

I had the day to myself, it was Saturday and I wasn’t in a hurry, so I found another spot in the shade and drew the panorama above looking up at the Cathedral. I had intended to draw the whole lot in, maybe even do the rest later, but I did get a bit bored so just drew as much as I could and coloured in the bits that stood out the most. I wondered what it would be like to live on Nob Hill – you need to have a dog, apparently – and deal with these hills every day. I like a hill but even I’d feel a bit exhausted at the thought of going up and down them every day, so I probably wouldn’t leave the area much. It’d feel like some village, I don’t think I’d enjoy it. I didn’t go into Grace Cathedral this time (not now you have to pay a lot to enter – sod that, it’s nice but not exactly Westminster Abbey), but remember years ago when I illustrated their Christmas Concert official program, two years in a row? That was fun, I got to go to that concert both times, once with my wife and once with my mum. Well over a decade ago now, time flies.

I walked further down the Hill along Bush Street, and could hear people drinking and partying. Lots of people in green, it was St Patrick’s Day weekend, and there was a parade going on, and not far from here some big street party with live music echoing up the hill. I wasn’t in green (I was in blue, St.Patrick’s actual colour as I boringly point out to uninterested people every year, even though St.Patrick probably didn’t wear navy blue polyester with a big ‘AIA’ and a little cockerel on it). I stood in the shade and drew the Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires, deciding to sketch in pencil to be quick. I’ve meant to draw this church for years. I think there is an Institut Français around here, because this little quarter has a lot of French stuff, I remember my wife telling me about this when we first came over here, she came here while learning French (we met in France, see).

Which brings us to the next sketch (above) which is the Cafe De La Presse, on the corner of Grant and Bush, a French style cafe I’ve enjoyed for years. When I say enjoyed I mean I have eaten there probably two or three times in the past 20 years, but I don’t live locally so that is quite regular. Last time I had some lovely eggs benedict with smoked salmon, which I also ate that same morning somewhere else (and looking at this makes me think of that taste, big fan of the smoked salmon eggs benedict) (and yes, when I see the word eggs benedict I do think of Dirk Benedict, ‘Face’ from the A-Team who drove the best Corvette). More and more people in bright green with big silly hats, just what St. Patrick would have wanted (actually he did like a big silly hat, he ‘mitre’ worn some himself). I couldn’t draw this all there and then because the day was pressing on (get it), so I did all that brickwork and colouring in later on the train.

Speaking of the train, I did this sketch here on the Amtrak coming down to the city the day before, I guess I should show my work. I have to keep that pen moving.

While this one above was a very quick sketch I made at the Saloon in North Beach on Friday afternoon while watching this band play with my friends James and Lauren, before we went to Specs for some good chat. There’s no more Anchor Steam on tap, more’s the pity, but it’s a great city for a beer and a catch-up.

As I walked back I passed where a lot of the music and partying was happening, a block party just off Grant. It was a paid event behind security so I didn’t go in but I stood by the edge and did some people sketching. I was looking out for interesting football kits, there were some, plus a couple of rugby kits. Back in Irish north west London we used to have some fun St.Patrick’s Day parties as a kid, I grew up on the Irish music back in the 80s and most of what I learned on guitar was from a book of Irish folk songs we picked up in Willesden or Southport or somewhere. If my grown-up self didn’t feel so much of this was a bit cheesy I would probably have really enjoyed getting my Irish shirts on and getting all festive, my Mum would certainly have loved it. So I stood and sketched like a good urban sketcher, or maybe like a plain-clothed officer at a party in 1980s Cricklewood, and laughed that the band went right into ‘Come Out Ye Black And Tans’, which now makes me think of that episode of This Time with Alan Partridge. “Double-O Feckin’ Bollocks!”. I had the old Irish music of my youth in my head now, and felt like getting home and spending the next day singing the Wolfe Tones and Brendan Shine. Time to get back on the Amtrak bus and train to Davis, another good weekend in the city.

Chemistry, finally

April 14, 2025April 12, 2025Leave a comment

Here is my possibly final drawing of the now completed new wing of the Chemistry Building at UC Davis, drawn a month ago, when the bare tree still gave a good view. I’ve been sketching this for a long time now, since before the pandemic started and the old walkway between the two wings was still there and about to be demolished. I’ve been in at least one meeting inside already and it’s a lovely modern space. I like what they have done with the courtyard. I drew this after work when the sun was shining and it wasn’t too cold. In the foreground are those standing stones, a piece of public artwork whose name always eludes me (if only I would just look it up, but that requires effort) (ok fine, it’s Steve Gilman’s ‘Stone Poem’ from 1982, I looked it up; you can read more about the outdoor sculptures around UC Davis in this handy guide by the Manetti Shrem). So this concludes my drawings of this whole construction, on to the next one. I saw a new building with interesting curves being built out on La Rue near the sports grounds, problem is I never want to cycle over there, but it looks like a good piece of construction to observe so maybe I will sketch it.

You can see all the sketches I’ve done of this construction (and others of the Chemistry Building over the years) in my blog posts with the tag: petescully.com/tag/chemistry. Or in this Flickr album, without all the accompanying waffle.

march on campus

April 12, 2025Leave a comment

No, this isn’t a post about a march happening on campus. That’s what you might call a clickbait header, albeit a weak one where you’re not actually trying to bait a click. This is literally a post with some of the sketches I did in March (the month) on campus. Ok it is not all of them, but a few stragglers to fit into one post because I don’t feel like giving them their own posts. Also, it’s not just campus, there’s a sketch or two that are from downtown. So the title is not only clickbait but misleading. I’m getting the hang of this internet lark. Above is Young Hall, or part of it anyway, as seen from the MU across the street. I don’t like drawing bikes, but it’s a necessary exercise on this campus. Above, the Bike Barn and the Silo as seen from the shade of the Chemistry Building. Do i get bored of drawing the same things? Sometimes but mostly I don’t. I draw them from slightly different places, at different times of the year. You could argue I never draw the same thing twice, because either it is slightly different, or I am. Looking back to October 2006 this view was one of the first I ever drew on campus. I hated drawing bikes even then. 2006, what a long time ago now. I moved to America in 2005, twenty years ago; what a long time ago that feels, especially now. Twenty years. A lot has happened in twenty years, but I’m still drawing in sketchbooks.

It was raining a bit, but I had to sketch this fellow yelling outside the MU, preaching some nonsense about machines being sinful or whatever. It reminded me of the being at school. No I didn’t go to one of those schools, but me and my friends formed a band and did a ‘gospel’ version of one of my songs for a laugh, with completely off the cuff gospel style words like we would see people do outside the tube station with their tambourines. I still have the tape somewhere. I thought of my old mate Hooker singing, “Repent your sins he said to me! I did exactly that and now I got a double chin!” I think about that a lot. Fifteen years old, we would sometimes get on the tube with our travelcards and go down London, and encounter all sort of characters about the streets and stations that would make us laugh, and they would inevitably end up in our songs. There was one guy who would stand near Oxford Circus and yell at the top of this voice, “Did man make the Sun? No!!! Did man make make the Elephants? No!!!” over and over, this became a staple catchphrase for us at school. We’d be in the canteen, “Did man the Beans? No!!!” and so on. Life was simple at fifteen, uncomplicated. Funny to think back but within another fifteen years of then I had moved to America and started a new life, and there is longer between me moving here and now than was between me being a cheeky fifteen year old at school and flying across the Atlantic to live in California.

Ok, off campus we go. This is Third Street, downtown. Come on I’ve drawn all these before. I’m not that imaginative. As I say, I’m drawing it at a different time of our lives. This was March 13, 2025. Remember March 13, 2020? I bet you do. And look where we are now. I don’t want to think about where else we might be going, there’s enough sleepless nights. But that was five years ago now. Five years! That’s a long chunk of time. Personally I’m still not over the stupid ‘Imagine’ video with Gal Gadot and friends singing to us all over Zoom. You know what I learned recently that I didn’t know at the time in the pandemic, back in England they were calling it the ‘Panny-D”. When I say ‘they’ I don’t mean ‘everyone in England’ or even ‘most people’ but I heard people referring to it as the “Panny-D” and I became just a little bit less British. I asked my friend James about this, he was visiting California recently with his wife, and he said yes people were saying that, and also using the phrase “Hanny Sanny” to refer to Hand Sanitizer. “Hanny Sanny”. This is on the same level of speech as “Hollybobs”. I left England in 2005, and I swear the longer I’m away the more my own version of English is going to sound like something linguists might discover people speaking on Roanoke Island, some throwback to Elizabethan times. I’ll go home and talk and to them I may as well be saying “Marry, nuncle, prithee ’tis a privy” or whatever gobbledegook. I used to study evolving English, and I take the view of embracing language change, but “Panny-D” and “Hanny-Sanny”? Load of old pony if you ask me.

Finally, this is the Davis Tower, I know it’s not much of a tower but that is what it is called. It’s down by the train station, I assumed it was like an air traffic control tower but for trains, but that is probably just my imagination, which as we have established is not very good these days. It was a Friday morning, pissing down with rain (I have to add ‘with rain’ in case you might think it was pissing down with wee), and I was taking a vacation day to visit my aforementioned friend James and his wife Lauren who were in San Francisco to celebrate their tenth anniversary. They were married there ten years ago that week, I was the only witness, and wow has time flown by. Ten years, blink, that’s happened. This was also the week that saw the tenth anniversary of Terry Pratchett’s death, my beloved Pratchett whose books I devoured as a teenager and twenty-something. I have recently been listening to the new Discworld audiobooks, stories I have not read in decades now, and right now I am re-reading ‘Night Watch’ for the first time in over 20 years, and loving it. I love an audiobook, because I can listen while I am sketching, but when I finally sit and actually read a book I take my time (I’m a notoriously slow reader) (well not ‘notorious’, I’m not like a villain or anything who tortures people by reading stories really slowly) (I just write them out slowly in blog form haha) I can do all the voices in my head, or aloud if I’m on my own, and really dive into the world. Anyway, I stood out of the pouring rain and drew this while waiting for my train, and this was the first page of a new sketchbook. There’s always a first page to a new sketchbook.

the market and all its people

April 10, 20251 Comment

This has been quite the week for the markets. Now I’m not an economist, but in the words of someone I used to work with many years ago, ‘Jesus, Lads’. Speaking of markets, I do like to sketch a market. People amble along slowly, making them easier to draw, sometimes standing about to chat. So on this one Saturday at the Davis Farmers Market I got a lot of quick people sketching done, as you can see below. It’s good to loosen up and draw like that. The world is made up of people, a diverse mix of backgrounds and thoughts and ideas and dreams, but we all need to eat. I sat at a picnic table and drew the scene above of the Farmers Market, the trees of Central Park Davis showing signs of spring while still waning out of winter. These types of scene sometimes overwhelm me but you just keep them simple. Trees on top, triangles next, heads and scribbled bodies, then all the stuff a feet level like those concrete walls, with a few vertical tree trunks dividing it all up. As I sketched, a couple of very young kids came and sat at the table and exclaimed to their mother, “Maman! Il fait de la peinture!” I guessed they were French and said “Salut!” and showed them all my book. Their mother was actually American, and told me they used to live in France, and were going to be moving back over there, to Lyon. I told them to look out for the great puppet theatres there, and also if they want to get into urban sketching, the huge Urban Sketchers France national ‘Rencontre’ will be held in Lyon this June. I won’t be going to it, though I did go to the ones in Strasbourg and in Lille. I’d love to sketch Lyon though. The last time I was there was in 2002 with my wife before she was my wife! Great food there, and of course puppets.

Here are all the people sketches I did on that morning/early afternoon, using a brown Pitt brush pen and watercolours. People passing by, people stopping to chat with each other, some mixes and matches (this person’s head, the next person’s body), even a dog and some musicians. You know what is coming up, Picnic Day. It’s this weekend. Perfect opportunity to get out and people sketch. Then I remember I don’t really like Picnic Day much, it’s too busy and overwhelming; I might stay away this year. I went last year, it was hot and there was a lot of slow walking about. I don’t mind the market though. I’m trying to think, what other markets have I sketched, other than the Davis Farmers Market? I sketched Portobello Market last year and the year before. I’ve sketched Borough Market, of course. I’ve sketched the San Francisco Ferry Building Market a few times. I sketched the Market at Place Richelme in Aix last summer, on a rainy morning. I sketched the big covered market La Boqueria in Barcelona. And yes, I’ve even sketched Wall Street. I prefer a proper street market. I have a wish-list of other markets I’d like to sketch. Places where people gather.

the last day of the long February

April 7, 2025April 7, 2025Leave a comment

Been a little while since I posted, nearly a month in fact, but in my defense I’ve not felt like it. No that’s not really true, I always feel like sharing my drawings and random thoughts, and in this ever-changing world in which we live in, that’s more and more and more important. As much as we are allowed to share our random thoughts. In my defense, I have been very busy, not just in general life and the labours of the world, but also in my sketchbookery. In fact this March was probably my most sketch-tastic March in a while, since maybe the last one. I did draw quite a lot last March now I think about it, when I went to LA and Riverside, and then later to Zion and Bryce Canyon, with some Vegas thrown in. This time I went to San Francisco, Washington DC and New York City, which was not bad. I did a lot of sketching in the last two places, I’ll tell you that. New York is a great city, I have to stop leaving it so long between visits (nine years since the last trip). But before all of that, more of Davis, the usual places, the same old streets. My task is to draw the whole town over and over, and that I will keep doing. Above is another panorama for my Davis-in-landscape-format book that I have been publishing in my head for well over a decade now. If I ever publish it outside of my head, well you should take a look at it, it’s brilliant. Until then, it doesn’t exist, except on these digital pages. I think in this non-existent book the best bit is that I don’t really write much, I just let the drawings do all the talking, to give myself the air of an ‘artist of mystery’. “I bet he is really deep, this artist,” they will say, inaccurately, “or maybe he is really boring and has nothing to say,” their friends who also read the book will say, half accurately. I keep thinking about one review on Amazon (a 1 star review, I’ll have you know) to my last book which came out nine years ago now, which said: “The writing is so long-winded that by the time he gets to the point I have forgotten what he was talking about.” Or words to that effect. In that book I actually edited my writing down really well, it’s not my blog, but my first reaction was “they must know me in real life!” I stopped looking at Amazon user reviews after that. I do like to tell a story though. I decided when I was a kid that I never wanted to be rich, I just wanted to have a lot of stories to tell. Which doesn’t help when someone wants to borrow a tenner. Most stories are boring anyway, so I draw. I think if I just have a book full of pictures it may be missing the personality behind them, but it also may give others the chance to look at them and pretend that the pictures are illustrations of their own life, or could be, and they put their own stories on top of them, stories that have a lot more meaning to them. I always think back to the two books I have by Karen Neale, “London in Landscape” (vols I and II), as inspiration behind the idea of a book just of my two-page spreads, with no stories attached (although she does write some stuff around the edges, it doesn’t get in the way of or alter the story of her very detailed and lively on-location sketches) but there is a glossary at the back with her notes and stories related to each of the sketches. I look at those books quite a bit for inspiration, and to remind me of London at the time I left it behind, the mid-2000s, but I really love the little bits of writing that are in there too. I’ll get around to my currently non-existent Davis book some day. Some day.

Oh by the way, the drawing above is Davis Community Church, as seen from the edge of Central Park on 4th block of C Street. It’s a couple of blocks up from the panorama in the previous post on C Street. There were not a lot of people around. A car did park there for a while, and a man even walked over and said something to me cheerfully, but then it moved before I even noticed it had gone. Another car was parked to my left, a woman sat in there on the phone for a very long time. Someone else came and sat on the bench for a while, pushing a shopping trolley full of bags and clothes, and the local ice-cream van also pulled up for a bit, playing its horror-movie music. The ice-cream van that you see prowling around these parts is not the colourful big-windowed Mr.Whippy type van that we used to chase down the street back when I was a kid. This one is more the type of vehicle that would show up in those kids public information films that your loud-meowing cat would warn you not to go near. It gives me the creeps. Anyway I kept an eye on it in case it tried to lure me away and show me some puppies, and carried on with this unreasonably detailed drawing. After spending so long drawing branches and windows I coloured in some of the trees but then did the rest of the painting at home. I was listening to more Terry Pratchett audiobook. Now it is April and the sneezing has begun, and I am still nowhere near finished with scanning all the sketches from my trip. I’ll add in posts here and there, maybe even with more interesting writing, or not.

In fact, I just realized I already posted this sketch, as the secondary drawing in the previous post. But I have taken the brave decision to keep this one up, because I added to the story of it, and it was a good sketch so I am just giving it some more airtime. Like when you release a single off of an album that has already sold well, except not really anything like that. Hey, it’s a confusing time. Stay tuned for a lot more sketches.

across the C street

March 10, 2025March 10, 2025Leave a comment

Two more from February, both panoramas (that is, two-page spreads in my watercolour Moleskine), both from C street in downtown Davis, albeit a few blocks apart. Above, the symmetrical apartments called ‘McNeil Manor’, near 1st Street, which I have wanted to draw for ages. It was a bright late afternoon and I wanted to draw it from the very middle so I could show the mirror image reverse identical twin look of the two main buildings, with the shadows of the trees breaking up the uniformity. I was happy with how this turned out. I was listening to another Terry Pratchett audiobook, both while drawing onsite (where i did the outlines, many of the details and about a quarter of the colouring) and back at home, where I filled in the rest; now when I see this I can hear Jon Culshaw’s fantastic character voices in my head. I think it was the last one in the City Watch series, Snuff, which one of the only few Discworld books left that I have not read. This week marks ten years since Sir Terry Pratchett died, far too young, and so he is on my mind a lot. I started reading him while I was at school; I have been saving reading those last few, plus some of his non-Discworld books (I heard ‘Nation’ is very good), because while they are still unread it’s like he is still alive. I have been devouring the newer audiobooks lately, all of the City Watch ones first (except ‘Night Watch’, which wasn’t available; I have bought the paperback to read myself, though I read it when it first came out and loved it, almost all of my Pratchett books were left in England when we moved, and are now lost). I don’t know why, but these buildings remind of some flats in Mill Hill, London; they don’t actually look like them, but they remind me of them. The ones where my cousin lived when I was a kid maybe, or other ones that I sometimes pass by on the 221 bus, but these would not look out of place there.

Above, a building I have drawn a lot of times, the Davis Community Church. Sorry it looks so small on thei blog. If you click on it, and the one above, it will take you to my Flickr page where you can see it bigger. I like the view from the side. This was a Friday, end of a long and frankly stressful week, a headache inside a tumble dryer, and scenes like this bring some serenity. I drew much as I could there and then, and coloured in the foreground trees to get them looking the way my eyes see them, but finished the rest at home. February was ending that day, and I was glad of it, though March has not proven to be any improvement. The news of the world continues gloomily onwards. The clock went forward a couple of nights ago, nobody told me, though I wish they could have gone a few years further forward. I don’t wish that, of course, don’t wish your life away. There weren’t many people passing by, the occasional one, maybe a car that would park in front and then leave a little while later.

the long bad February

March 8, 2025March 8, 20252 Comments

What a world. Things seem to be rapidly going from bad to what-the-hell-is-happening with overwhelming speed. I go into my sketchbook to not be so overwhelmed, but it’s not making much difference to my stress levels. Keep on keeping on, and look for the good things. I’ve slowed down on my manic sketching a little in March, probably due to work being busy so I’m not sketching at lunch so much, and I’m hitting that wall again of “I’ve drawn all of Davis do I really need to draw more of it?” I need a sketching trip away again, a change of scenery. I’m hoping I can make it to the Urban Sketching Symposium in Poznan, Poland this summer, August is a long way away. I did still draw a lot of Davis during February, probably the longest February ever for news and worries, and so I have a few more downtown Davis sketches to post here. I’ve not been taking the time to sit down and write either, my head feels too exhausted, but I like the quiet, still early mornings. Above is Woodstocks Pizza on G Street, not the same place as when I drew it years ago, but further up the road where KetMoRee used to be. You can see some of the colourful blocks outside that are part of the new G Street redevelopment that I mentioned a few posts ago, it’s not very inspiring to be honest, and I wouldn’t say those blocks are that great for sitting on in any useful way. There are a few tables and chairs spaced out along the sidewalk, and I sat at one to draw this scene on a very cold afternoon. I’ve not been into the new Woodstocks location yet. We sometimes get their pizza for work events, it’s pretty good.

This next one is a lunchtime sketch on 1st street, I wanted to draw the very bobbly bark of the olive trees, but I drew the one next to the crosswalk so I could put the face-height STOP sign in it (it’s that height for cyclists coming off the bike path). We are the cycling capital of the US, so we have a lot of cyclists and were the first city in the country to have a bike lane (though bike lanes are probably considered ‘woke’ by the numpties running the country now) and we even have the US Bicycling Hall of Fame here , a couple of blocks up B Street there. I’ve never been inside, I am not that interested in bikes, despite being a bike rider myself, and I do watch the Tour de France, but mostly for the maps. Someone had written ‘genocide’ on the STOP sign, hard to disagree there. On the other side of the street, the Aggie Inn. I love cycling in Davis, it’s great. Although sometimes my commute down Oak Street alongside the High School can be a little hairy in the mornings. Cars will zoom past a bit too quickly, and because traffic backs up you’ll always get the cars that think they can just slip quickly into the wide bike lane to overtake, right as I am approaching (this happened a couple of days ago). The crossroads at Oak & 14th with four STOP signs is a nightmare too, as cars who have stopped before I have will often decide to wait and let me go as a cyclist, while I am stopped waiting for them (who were there first), causing general confusion; I cannot see inside the car to see if they are waving me on, and nor can other drivers, so if I say ok then I will go first, it’s usually at the same moment another driver has decided to do the same. All the while, other cyclists (often kids headed to the schools) will just breeze through the STOP sign anyway, and so many cars expect all cyclists will do this and act over cautiously, understandably. If I wave the car through and they go, invariably what happens is the car behind them will go as well, at the same time I do. I just avoid that crossroad in the morning if I can. Then there are all the cars parked alongside the High School stadium in the evening, you have to be extra careful that they don’t open their door without checking, I have been close-called on that a few times. Other cyclists though too can make this route feel hairy, one guy this week ran through not only the STOP sign (while a car was about to pass across it) but also ran the red light, and then crossed over the street to cycle on the wrong side causing bikes in the opposite direction to have to move over into traffic. And then there are the so-called e-bikes that are really just silent motorcycles that are in the bike lane, that seem to appear out of nowhere and cut you up on the inside. And then there is the lack of street lighting on Oak, when it is dark it’s impossible to see. I have two lights on my bike just for better visibility along Oak, but I’ve nearly gone into the piles of leaves and branches that people helpfully place into the bike lane to make it more interesting, not to mention other cyclists who don’t have lights. But I love cycling in Davis it’s great.

The sketch above is the corner of 2nd and G, that is ‘Pachamama’ which I think sells coffee, a drink I don’t drink, but years ago it used to be Subway, a sandwich I don’t eat any more. I did then, but mostly because they were the only place in town I could find the pineapple Fanta. I loved that sugary nonsense of a drink. It’s not Lilt but it was good on a hot day, and we get a few of them here. I drew this in the early evening, one of those Saturdays I just needed to get out of the house but didn’t really have anywhere interesting to go. Story of my life, I was like that as a teenager as well. It’s a good view to draw. Not the sort of one that would end up in a book or a poster but I’m happy enough with the sketch.

And finally the Scout Hut on 1st Street, the old log cabin building that’s about a hundred years old or something, I’ve never been inside (that I can remember; wasn’t there a gallery in there when I first came to Davis?) but I’ve sketched it before. It’s all on its own, barriered by traffic and trainlines, easy to miss. I was in the scouts when I was younger. First in the Cub Scouts, which was one of the best experiences of my life, and also gave me my first leadership experience when I became a ‘Sixer’ (leading my own six, or was it pack, I can’t remember as I was like 10 or 11), before graduating into the Scouts. I remember that event, you wear a green jumper in the Cubs, embroidering the badges onto the arm when you pass them – my best areas were with art and camping and reading – but you wear a green shirt for Scouts, and on the day you go from being a Cub to a Scout you have to ritually take the jumper off for the last time revealing the new shirt underneath. I liked being in the Scouts, and still did a lot of events and camping with them, but as we became early teens a lot of kids fell away and I stopped going regularly, and then in the end not at all, so I never went up to Venture Scouts where you get a khaki-coloured shirt. The old 8th Edgware, blue scarves, little plastic toggles keeping them in place, that drafty old hut in Burnt Oak behind the shops on the Watling, with the goat tied up outside. Those were the days. I don’t know what the Scouts are like over here, what I do know is that the Girl Scouts here (we have ‘Girl Guides’ in the UK) sell excellent cookies at this time of year, my wife always buys several boxes. The old scout hut isn’t used by the Scouts any more.

This one is on 5th Street, I was cycling home that same day and liked the look, another little house with a tree outside, have to draw that. Picket fence, always annoying to draw but this is what we move to America for isn’t it, picket fences. There were picket lines on campus recently due to a strike by some unions. I was going to sketch them in support but (ironically) had to get back to work. They were banging drums and it was all very positive. We do get strikes over here, but I remember my year in France, there were so many. My favourite was the 59 minute bus strike, they wanted to be able to get the buses out on the hour but strike in between, and I was on one bus which just stopped at 1:01 or whatever it was and said to everyone they could get off, or wait on the bus for 59 minutes if they liked. No complaints, everyone shrugged (the famous Gallic shrug) and just walked, it was fine. I was working at the university in Aix at the time. One of my duties was to work in the library for part of the day, and one afternoon I came in for my shift to discover that I too was on strike that day, but didn’t know it, so I walked downtown and got a poulet frites instead. The first song I ever wrote was about a strike. I was at school, music class, our teacher asked us to write a protest song about something that was in the newspapers at the time. I saw that there were travel strikes that day and wrote about them, performing it with my mate Kevin. Rudimentary at best (“down to the station I usually hike, today I have to take my bike, because there’s a strike”). I didn’t even ride a bike at the time, London was rubbish for that, not like Davis which is great. So I was already totally making things up in songs and stories, all for a cheap rhyme. I’ve not changed much.

I have meant to re-draw this house for a while, I don’t know what occupies the space now but for a long time this was the Davis Psychic, and the building was quite colourfully painted. I drew it a couple of times before. This time I sketched it after work as the late sunlight was making shadows creep slowly up the walls. I am not into the whole psychic thing, but people enjoy it, fair play to them; I wonder if they saw February 2025 coming. The mind is a strange thing. We all have one, in some form or other, but can’t all understand them. I suppose psychologists give it a good go. I’ve been thinking about the mind during all of this, because a mind is a fragile thing, manipulable, sometimes delicate and sometimes unbreakable, but it can only bear so much weight and people know this. So I go back into my sketchbook. I decided a little while ago that all this sketching was my way of controlling a little piece of the world in my own way, looking at it and making sense of it, trying not to be too affected by it, while at the same time feeling like I know it a bit more. ‘Conversations with the City’ was the tagline for my sketchbook exhibit in 2016 (centuries ago now, that feels) and it still rings true, though I am getting very shy and not interacting with people as much these days. If they are missing from my sketches it is because they just weren’t passing by at the time, but subconsciously I’m probably enjoying the space without all the people and their little worlds. Sometimes I like to be around lots of people, and other times, well I like the quiet.

Finally, a quick sketch on 2nd Street, near G, again as the late afternoon turned to early evening. Friday evening, another busy week with stresses and unknowns, so I rode downtown after work was done and just drew something, anything. This is Aggie’s Barber Shop, who must close after 5 because it was already dark when I got down there. I listened to my audiobook, still going through all the Terry Pratchett series on the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and relaxed a little, though not enough. I listened to some podcasts as well, stopping and starting, bit of football, bit of history, and some of my favourite one on the History of the English Language. This month was overwhelming for sure. One of the executive orders I heard about though was they were going to make English the ‘official language’ of the United States. This topic has been a big deal for ages, and many of us have long felt it important that the country had no official language, since it was not needed, and could potentially marginalize further the minority languages of the country. I don’t just mean like Spanish (not just a language of immigrants, it did exist here before the US was a thing) or the ‘smaller’ immigrant languages but the many many native languages that are too often overlooked and historically repressed. (I used to read a lot about this when I first came over here, when I’d devour books on language at the library because I wasn’t sketching as much then). Britain similarly does not have an ‘official’ language, in both countries English is only the de facto official, not officially official. Until now, because that guy has decreed it so, English is the official language. Wait a second; English. English. Not ‘American English’…just ‘English’. Right then! Well in that case, you’d all better start learning to bloody spell! English yeah, from England? Ok then. Stop all this ‘aluminum’ bollocks, it’s ‘maths’, put those ‘u’s back where they belong and put the ‘y’ back in ‘tyre’, and yes it’s fine to spell it ‘ise’ instead of ‘ize’, you get to choose. And we aren’t stopping there. Pints should be 20 ounces not 16. Learn to queue properly too. Move July the 4th to the 7th of April where it belongs. If you insist on keeping the Imperial system you have to use ‘stone’ as well, I don’t care if it’s confusing. And it’s ‘BERNard’ not ‘BerNARD’. Sorry, that’s the law now, you bought it, gotta keep it.

I do have a couple more February drawings from downtown Davis to post but I’ll stop here, the sun is up now and the cats are demanding food with menaces. It’s Saturday now, there’s housework to do, and let’s face it, more drawing. February was too long, but March is marching on.

the view from the fairmont

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025Leave a comment

For my birthday this year we went away to San Francisco for the weekend, the weather was sunny and super clear (if a bit cold), and we spent the day at the SFMOMA (Museum of Modern Art), which I have not visited for many years and is a great day looking at art (it’s huge). I miss going to huge museums, it is one of the things about London that I loved most. Well, the gift shops anyway. The shop at the SFMOMA is probably the best museum gift shop in the world. After we’d been in the gift shop for a while we drove up to the hotel, which is easily our favourite in the city, the Fairmont on Nob Hill. We’ve only stayed there once before, for our anniversary seven or eight years ago, so it’s a real special treat. The Fairmont is historic and very grand, in a classic sort of way rather than a Vegas sort of way. Presidents have stayed there (remember them?), and famously it is where Tony Bennett first sang about leaving his heart in San Francisco, presumably they didn’t have a lost-and-found back in those days. These days if he sang that, he’d have hundreds of comments online from Fox News viewers making up stories about people stealing your body parts here. Nob Hill is very steep, and it’s a big climb to get up here even in the car. We got to our room, thinking we’d drop our things off and go back out to wander about outside, but immediately we saw the view from the window and it was like BAM we ain’t leaving the room before dinner! See above and below. The view looked across a wide view from Russian Hill on the left to Telegraph Hill on the right, with Alcatraz right in front of us. Squeezing down each end of the window we could make out the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid, but I couldn’t squeeze those into my sketches. We relaxed in the room admiring the view and I sketched, as did my son (who’d forgotten his sketchbook but used my iPad). We were up on the twelfth floor, but being on Nob Hill our elevation was really high anyway. There was so much detail. I have dreamed of drawing this view, but there was so much detail there was no way I could do what I did with that sketch from the Hilton I did in 2021, which was a bit lower down (though included the building I was drawing from here). I did my best to keep up with the changing afternoon-evening light, and drew a few smaller sketches as well to show what the light was like. Here is Alcatraz. It always reminds me of the third X-Men movie.

I drew a couple of quick ones of Coit Tower as well, as the late afternoon turned into sunset, to show the magnificent colours as the light changed. It was last year I think (was it the year before?) that I went up to the top and did that long drawing. I’ve drawn a lot of this city now. I’m not done yet, but the plan was that we’d spend the night in the city, and then next day after my family drove back to Davis I’d go out and do a lot of drawing by myself and get the train home.

Dinner was at the famous Tonga Room, downstairs at the Fairmont, and that was great fun. I love that place. The cocktails ain’t cheap, nor is the food, but they were strong and the food was super filling, I could barely eat half of mine before I was full. No dessert for me. The band floating on the pool played great music, and every half hour the showers came on imitating a thunderstorm. I love the Tonga Room, though I wish the bathroom was not such a walk. The next morning we got room service breakfast, and sat looking out of the window until it was time to leave. Well I sketched of course. The light was very different again in the morning, the shadows creeping in a different direction, getting shorter rather than longer, and it was another clear day. Imagine if it had been foggy. So I drew the view below, mostly of the tall towers of Russian Hill. I’m very lucky to be able to come to this city and to a hotel like this with a view like that and draw it. Ever since I was a kid I loved to look out of a window and draw. I like being down there on the streets among it all, but it’s always special to look at it all from above.

I never spent the day out drawing. I was already sketched out, and feeling pretty tired. It was cold out, and the thought of getting the train back to Davis later on a Sunday evening with work the next day, well I didn’t fancy it, so I rode back in the car. As we waited I popped across the street and did a quick outline of the hotel, drawing it in later with the statue of Tony Bennett singing about leaving internal organs in San Francisco. I started idly wondering why it was called Nob Hill, but it was time to go home. A nice weekend in the city, and a big thanks to my lovely wife for arranging it.

BTW, I realize from looking at the blog post that the small size of the panoramic drawings do absolutely no justice to them whatsoever, but if you click on them it takes you to my Flickr page where you can see them a little bigger.

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.

opening reception of ‘Visual Journals 2010-2024’

February 15, 20253 Comments

Recently I was invited to the opening reception of an interesting exhibition called ‘Visual Journals: 2010-2024’, curated by Prof. Tim McNeil of the UC Davis Design Department. The exhibition is at the UC Davis Design Museum, but the reception was in the lobby of the International Center, where some of the work is also displayed. It shows many of the visual journals created by students who went on Study Abroad trips to Europe, a course called ‘Design In Europe’, visiting historic cities and interesting museums, sketching and writing and collecting ideas. Even as I write it, I wish I was doing that myself. The books are displayed in cases so can’t be flicked through, but there were photos of many of the students holding their work and what I could see was already an inspiration (and I get inspired by wondering what is on all of the pages I cannot see, knowing they are filled with experiences and ideas). Tim McNeil (sketched above) spoke about putting the project together, and there were students and alumni and organizers who had been with them all on these trips over the years. There was nice food and I spoke to a few familiar faces I’d not seen in a while.

Here’s an article about the exhibit in the L&S magazine: lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu/arts-humanities/new-exhibition-visual-journals-puts-design-thinking-display-10-years-students

Above, a sketch of some books in the cabinet, and below, some people sketching. I had not done much people sketching in 2025 by this point so it was fun to loosen up. It was at the end of my work day so nice to relax a little. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I would like to just right now get up and take a sketchbook trip across Europe, connect with my old continent again, now that this one is starting to feel so uncomfortable (though this lot in charge are doing their best to make everywhere feel horrible). Sometimes it’s good to get out there and look for the good things. One of the reasons I advocate so much for Study Abroad is because this is how so many young people are able to connect with different ways of thinking and seeing the world, that this here isn’t all it really is. I was so pleased to get to travel when I was young, and independently of my family too, it opened up my brain a little bit more even when I wouldn’t realize it, even when my little brain would rebel and be insular, it still took it all in and had its effect and we all need a bit of that. Going with a sketchbook helps you sit (or stand) and really look at it all, and then when you get back, you see everything else that little bit differently.

I haven’t had time yet to go to the main exhibition itself, but will do so soon; it’s open at the UC Davis Design Museum in Cruess Hall between Jan 21-April 25, 12pm-4pm. See arts.ucdavis.edu/seasonal-event/visual-journals-2010-2024 for details. And get out sketching yourselves!