beer and wine, i’ll be fine

May 14, 2010May 14, 20102 Comments

UC Davis does wine, I mean really does it. No, they’re not all winos, there aren’t lots of expensive fancy fashionable Napa style wineries around here, but this is the place where those vintners come to learn what the hell is going on with those grapes. The viticulturalists and enologists here are the top of the game, and they know their stuff. So now they have a shiny new complex and vinyard on campus to work with, the Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science. I sat out there yesterday lunchtime and sketched inside the courtyard’s Good Life Garden. More new additions are being, er, added to this complex, including facilities for the study not just of winemaking but beer-brewing too (I’m sure a few frat houses have their own micro-brew facilities already set up).

“Beer and Wine, I’ll be fine“, that phrase comes from a friend of mine who vehemently claimed it to be true, and then after downing a bottle of red plonk and a few pints of amber nectar, spent the rest of the night disproving his theory in the toilets of the Dublin Castle in Camden Town. Don’t mix grape and grain. I wonder if any of the high-tech labs are working on similar experiments. No need, mate – just go down Camden, innit.

droit au but

March 30, 2010March 30, 20102 Comments

Target, in Davis. A controversial place in this town. It has only been open for about six months, but a few years ago it required a very narrow win in a city-wide vote for building to be approved. Target played hard-sell, appealing to the underwear buying public, college students and suburban moms alike, as well as sugaring the pill for Davis’s famed environmentalists by building the greenest Target building ever built (or something), but they faced some fierce opposition – Davis, with it’s anti-big-box tendencies, is not a town to mess about with. Downtown independent businesses banded together and fought the proposal, fearing (justifiably, given the story in so many other American towns) that the arrival of large big-box stores on the edge of town would destroy this small city’s downtown, and with it, its character. There were arguments, oh boy there were arguments, bitter bloody spit-in-the-street-and-call-you-elitists arguments. The underwear argument for one. The fact that there was already a new Target opening up the road in Woodland so another one was unnecessary. The whole creating new jobs thing (with the counter-argument that if it forced other stores out of business it would take away jobs too, and then the town is dependent on its big box store for employment, and if said store goes the way of Woolworths…) And then it was back to the underwear argument again (just where can you buy socks in Davis?).

But in the end, Target prevailed; with their national wealth behind them they had been able to spend sixteen times what the downtown stores had been able to muster up. And so here in 2010, here it is, green Target. And despite my love of and support for independent stores, I do go there when I have to, because it’s there. But personally, I don’t buy socks. I wait for Christmas.

the sky’s the limit

March 23, 2010March 22, 20103 Comments

This is Maurice J. Gallagher Hall, one of the newest shiniest new shiny buildings at UC Davis. It’s home to the Graduate School of Management.

I don’t often draw such modernity. I was interested in giving it a go, a study in perspective, and decided that I’d leave the big blue sky blank. The sky is literally the limit. I’m not into management speak. I never give people a heads up, aka an FYI, vis a vis the big picture all on the same page. Sometimes I sketch small pictures on the same page though.

brick top

March 10, 2010March 11, 20104 Comments

Do you remember Bill the Brickie? UK people of a certain age might. No, he’s not like Joe the Plumber (whose name wasn’t even Joe), or Mott the Hoople (who wasn’t even a real Hoople). He was a cartoon segment on a TV show we had to watch at school that would teach us about building ‘-ing’ words (which conveniently enough were bricks). It was however the song that would accompany the cartoon that got stuck in my head, and the heads of countless other British kids, an annoyingly catchy ditty that won’t ever go away, ever. It was brilliant, we loved it. And it worked too; I totally know how to build ‘-ing’ words. Cheers Bill. I was thinking about that today. It has nothing to do with this drawing of course. Any attempt to link the two is futile; not even Bill the Brickie, with his little trowel, could do the job. This is Turner Wright Hall, one of the more colourful of the UC Davis buildings. Not a single brick on view. I could have waited until I drew a nice big brick building, but I couldn’t wait to remind the world of the morpheme-friendly bricklayer.

with never a whisper in the sea

February 27, 20108 Comments

I got up early on Sunday morning, to see what San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf looks like without all the slow-walking touristy people milling about. It looked better. I thought of how much more I like it, being near the sea. But it was very foggy, and then it started raining. It was ‘mizzly’. I went back to the hotel for a bit, and drew the view from the window, looking out towards Coit Tower (below). I went back out, when the sourdough-bread-and-sealion-photographing masses had emerged, and I drew a boat (above), while tucked away under some shelter. I like drawing boats these days; if it hadn’t been so rainy, and if I’d had more time, I’d have drawn boats all day long.

Telegraph Hill reminds me of a Provençal hill town, such as Gordes or Lourmarin, in this drawing.

Incidentally, the Pier 39 sealions appear to have gone. I’d heard that they had moved on from their home, which they have occupied since the 1989 earthquake. A few remain, honking for the cameras, but the rest have swum away.

Here’s the Moleskine spread, after drawing at Fisherman’s Wharf. I’m quite pleased with how these pages look.

white house experience

February 16, 2010February 17, 20105 Comments

Pancake Day was a success. In otherwords, I had pancakes, proper pancake-day pancakes with lemon and sugar (and one with nutella). My two-year-old excitedly shouted ‘pancake day! pancake day!’ and giggled as I flipped the pancakes up in the air from the pan, but he wouldn’t even eat a nibble. Ah well. I often say that Davis, my current home city, is flat as a pancake, and it is. But it has some nice old houses, like this one on 1st Stret – I have wanted to draw it for ages, and so today at lunchtime (70 degrees warm folks, not bad for winter) I got out and sketched it. I just love that big roof, it’s so ‘America’, it’s so ‘Not Burnt Oak’. I don’t know if it’s a frat house. There are so many on this row I wouldn’t be surprised. Either that or it’s from a horror movie.

does that star-spangled banner yet wave

February 15, 2010February 15, 2010Leave a comment

First Valentine’s Day, then President’s Day; what next, Pancake Day? (Oh yeah, it is, tomorrow… I promise, this is not a food blog, I won’t post photos of my lovely scrummy proper pancake-day pancakes, they’ll be eaten too quickly)

So anyway, Pres’s Day, I got out into this gorgeous Californian February weather (69 degrees and sunny; how’s that snow, everywhere else?) and cycled about a bit, slowly and aimlessly, before settling on the corner of C and 5th to sketch Newman Chapel (I have drawn it before, a few years ago). there was a flag, as there were on many of the streets, so I added it to the frame. It’s funny, I’m not into the whole flag-waving business, flag-fuelled patriotism, in whichever land, and yet I have always been obsessively interested in flags of all countries. Vexillology is one of my favourite subjects, I can’t get enough of it. That, and football shirts, so I’m already gearing up for the World Cup. Anyway, there I am below, giving the post-sketch analysis with Moley #5. David Devant was on my headphones, though I’d spent most of the sketch listening to Joni Mitchell, and I think it shows.

window olympics

February 12, 2010Leave a comment

The Vancouver Winter Olympics opening ceremony is opening ceremoniously as I type. Well, actually it was three hours ago; even though we are in the same time zone here on the West Coast, we have to watch it at the TV hour that the East Coast dictates (they get to see it live, while we have to avoid twitter feeds). I’d like to go to Vancouver, I hear it is very nice there. In fact every commercial break is another advert for British Columbia to convince me. I’ve always wanted to go to Canada; I lived briefly with a couple of Canadians while in France (one of whom was very good at magic tricks). Well, the place isn’t going anywhere, so for now I’m in California.

None of this has anything to do with the sketch, which I did today at lunchtime, at the Silo. Sometimes, when it’s Friday and you haven’t sketched all week, you just look out of the window and draw.

dome alone

February 9, 2010February 9, 20102 Comments

I’ve been meaning to draw this building for a while, the Islamic Center of Davis; an unusual structure in this town, as it is painted in a very bright sky blue, and it features a striking dome above the entrance (but not actually part of the main building). It was built in 2006. Taking advantage of a sunny Friday lunchtime I cycled up Russell and sketched it. You can see the possibly storm-driven clouds passing in the background. We’ve had some winter weather lately.

from here to fraternity

February 4, 2010February 6, 20102 Comments

One of the many fraternity houses that line Russell Blvd, on the edge of the UC Davis campus. This was drawn over a couple of lunchtimes; I had to cycle back up today to finish off the drawing and add the colour. It was however grey today, so I kept in the fluffy clouds and blue skies from yesterday. And wow, that was some gnarled up tree! This is the Chi Phi frat house. Chi Phi is an old national frat, founded in 1824, but the UC Davis chapter’s been here since 1969. Ok, enough facts. If you’re interested in how it looked after the first lunchtime, the work in progress is on the right there.