christmas under the tree

December 27, 2024Leave a comment

These little fellows are sat at the foot of our little Christmas tree this year, and I just had to draw them. This sketchbook is nearly over (yes, I still have to post my London sketches) but Christmas isn’t. Well, I get the feeling from a lot of Americans that it is, because it’s past December 25th, but that’s only Christmas Day. At Target today while buying discounted wrapping paper for next year I heard someone say to their kid, “no, Christmas is over now”. Today, for me as a Brit anyway, was Boxing Day, laziest day of the year. I keep the decorations up until January 6th, though as far as British tradition held when I was a kid, Christmas lasted for those exact two weeks of TV listings in the Radio Times; once it’s January 2nd, forget it, party’s over folks. But they (and the TV Times, and other papers with good listings, even really awful papers like the Mail would have good TV listings at Christmas time) would always list the days as “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Friday, etc, same with New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. So this day when people ask me what day Christmas Day is on, I say “Christmas Day”, because I figured we just didn’t use the actual name of the weekday for it, because the Radio Times didn’t. Still, I was glad to see Christmas Day fall upon a Wednesday this year, it feels somehow fair. Although on the Saturday before Christmas, I threw my back out and was largely unable to move too much for many days. I was in the kitchen making cranberry sauce, which I had never done before. I had the idea when I was deciding to make a special drink called a ‘White Christmas’, which I’d seen online, basically Prosecco with white cranberry juice (the one I used also had some peach), a sprig of rosemary and some cranberries. I had a lot of cranberries left over so I looked up recipes for cranberry sauce; there are hundreds, all different, some with loads of ingredients like rum and cinnamon sticks, some with hardly any. I chose one with perhaps a bit too much orange in it, and I squeezed the juice out of it myself. Once I’d made it, I put it in the fridge for a couple of days before tasting it, I was a bit afraid. It turned out ok, a bit tart and fruity, so we had some canned cranberry sauce as well, which was much milder. Anyway, after being down on the floor looking for various pots and pans in the cupboards, I somehow pulled my back, and this got worse over the next few days, even affecting my ankle and foot, meaning I spent most of Sunday and Monday lying flat in bed. In fact I drew this sketch when I woke up super early, unable to get back asleep, so I hobbled downstairs and drew these guys. Christmas Eve is traditionally the day for just our family, when we have my beloved Christmas turkey roast dinner. We go over to my wife’s family on Christmas Day itself and eat crab for dinner. At home though I get my parsnips (this year roasted with carrots and they were amazing) and different stuffings (both British Paxo and the American stovetop kind), turkey and crispy roast spuds, and of course I eschew brussels sprouts because I can’t stand them. This year though I made Yorkshire puddings for the first time ever, and they came out great. Achievement finally unlocked, why was I so afraid of messing that up. My wife made the turkey and it was fantastic. Though for all the bits I was cooking, I was bent over in the kitchen in agony and had to keep sitting down every few minutes, barely able to stand, but it all worked out deliciously. I was still pretty stiff on Christmas Day, but as the day wore on the back issue finally wore off, and by Boxing Day I was fine walking about Target. No mate, it’s still Christmas yet, not while there are mince pies left to be eaten, and I still have a lot I brought back from London. I’m in denial that 2025 has to start at all, if I’m honest. As I write it’s 3:30am and I’ve been unable to get back to sleep. Enjoy the festive season while it’s here folks, and to all a good night (or a good morning).

back at the avid reader bookshop

December 23, 2024Leave a comment

Here’s the other sketch I did downtown last week, actually over the course of a couple of days because I was a bit cold (and busy) the first day, so went back and finished it off, adding some paint. It was busy downtown, there were lots of last few-days-before-Christmas shoppers, and groups of teenagers roaming about after the last day of school finished early, all the lads looking similar with that same haircut the teenage boys have now, you’ve seen it, the one with the fluffy looking hair and short sides. It was cold out, I had to go inside a few shops just to warm up, and buy more things. In Newsbeat for example I went in and got another little Jellycat (one of those cute stuffed toys, they import them from Britain), and it was packed, everyone in line was buying a different Jellycat. Good to see though. It’s nice to see downtown busy and healthy, and it’s shops like this we need, not more boba tea cafes or frozen yoghurt shops or chain restaurants, and not that I don’t use them myself, but I don’t want more of them replacing the useful shops. This is the popular Avid Reader bookshop (I have a number of bookshops in my sketchbook now, did some more in London) which is a great place to pick up Christmas gifts, books as well as other things. As I’ve mentioned before this was the very first place I worked in America, back when Alzada ran the bookshop (she sold the store just before Covid, and she died a few years ago), and I always enjoyed my experiences there, working part-time as the book-keeper and staying on even after I got my full-time job at UC Davis, right up to when my son was born. I used to like working in the evenings when there would be book events, I’d be upstairs working on the invoices, I did that same job in London at a bookshop, one that was a little less successful in the end, as it closed less than a couple of years after I moved to California after a few decades in business; it’s been a tough time for bookshops, so it’s great when we have one that is doing alright, and is a real fixture for the local community. I’ve even given a couple of talks here myself about urban sketching (one of them being a book talk for Gabi Campanario’s first book in which I was featured), and I did an ArtAbout exhibit in here as well, a long time ago now. It’s fairly different inside now than when I worked there, a lot more products on sale, but the outside still feels the same with that familiar old sign. So I stood on the street and sketched and thought about books. I really need to write a new one myself, maybe in 2025.

tis the season

December 23, 20243 Comments

Before I post all my London drawings, here are a couple of festive sketches from downtown Davis. There is always a bit of a contest for the best dressed window in the downtown shops and I think the one above, at Bella Luna on F St, might be the best one. It’s not really just a window, it spills out into the street and around the tree outside as well, it’s quite a jolly sight as you approach it. I had to stand just off the sidewalk and in between two cars to sketch it, well the outline anyway, I am not standing in between two cars to sketch for too long. I went back on the sidewalk to keep drawing, and then added the colour later on because it was getting a bit cold, and it was my lunchtime. Anyway, Christmas is nearly here, all the shopping both downtown and online has been done, the mince pies are already being eaten and all the Christmas tv and movies are being watched. Spurs are being very generous with all the goals we are giving away (and scoring too), but I hope Santa can bring us some fit players down the chimney. The weather is gloomy and damp, and that’s totally fine, this time of year. I have made cranberry sauce for the first time in my life and it’s on the fridge, but I’m too scared to actually eat any of it in case it’s really bad, so we have a can of it ready to go. We usually have our roast turkey dinner on Christmas Eve, since my wife’s family usually have crab on Christmas Day. I am even going to try to make Yorkshire Puddings this year, never made them before, let’s see what happens there. And I’ve somehow done my back in, which has been fun today. It’s raining outside, and Christmas episodes of Friends are on TV now. Below, a quick sketch I did of the tree in E Street Plaza, I was going to make it all colourful but you know, it was cold and I decided I couldn’t be bothered to colour it in. Not seen in the foreground were those Hump Bikes, parked with various Uber Eats or whatever delivery drivers milling about waiting for orders so they can zoom off silently on the sidewalk and in the bike lanes. The clock was giving the wrong time, it was late afternoon on Friday, we’d closed up early and I was doing a bit more late shopping before heading home. I’ve drawn the festive tree before in other years, and I don’t know, I don’t enjoy drawing Christmas trees if I’m honest. Love Christmas, hate drawing the trees if I can avoid it. Yet I like drawing trees. Well ok I don’t mind drawing Christmas trees. I guess I’ve drawn a lot of trees this year, and what I enjoy most is usually the trunk. Anyway, back to the mince pies and the bad back…

beer and sketching after a long, long week

December 20, 2024December 19, 2024Leave a comment

After I was done with day two of the conference, finishing at about 8pm and exhausted, I walked downtown to grab some dinner and a couple of beers. Despite being tired I really needed to work out all the energy of that long long week into my sketchbook. I popped into the University of Beer, in a spot in the corner with a view that I have drawn before many years ago (2013), not long after it had opened. See below. I remember that afternoon, a hot day, and I was eager to practice my perspective sketching. Those older guys on the left were talking about Davis in the old days, the old bars that used to be there on G Street. They still had the long section of frost upon which you could put your glass to keep it chilled, but that seems to be gone now. And no more iPads with menus on! That seemed like a futuristic innovation back then but is apparently part of the dustbin of history now. To read the menu these days, you need to point your phone at a QR code, which means I have to read on my phone which is much smaller. So I’m sitting there looking over the rim of my glasses, even though I have varifocals, squinting to try and understand the ridiculous names all these beers have, looking for a nice normal amber ale. Back in the old days they only served beer too, but now they have all sorts of drinks, which is probably better for business to be honest, but the beer list is still long.

I ordered a beer and started drawing fast. I can draw quickly when it all starts coming out. As I drew, they started setting up for their Saturday night karaoke. It was pretty busy, that is a popular night out there I guess. People started singing, I didn’t always recognize the songs. I wasn’t tempted to have a go myself. I don’t mind a karaoke, historically, but I always like a stage. These ones where you are just in the corner by the door at the same level as people walking about would make me feel a bit odd. Not for me guv. Anyway, it was getting a bit loud, and I’d drawn very quickly and drunk my beer very slowly, but I wasn’t ready for the walk home just yet so popped by De Vere’s – sorry, not De Vere’s, it’s Bull’n’Mouth now, De Vere’s is in the past. I don’t go out much any more. They don’t do Smithwicks in there these days, and no Guinness, I think they are moving away from the Irishness of the predecessor pub. I drew a couple of quick sketches over a Bavarian beer, and made the long walk home for a long sleep. November was a long month.

that old autumnal feeling

December 19, 2024December 19, 2024Leave a comment

This will be part one of two posts showing autumn in Davis. It feels like autumn lasts a very short time in Davis, but it’s actually a good little while and unquestionably the most spectacularly colourful time of the year. I am loathe to call it ‘Fall’ as the Americans do because it’s more like an amazing Rise, admittedly before the actual Fall when leaves get blown off the trees in a dramatic way. I love that part too, after the winds and storms come laying the trees bare, it’s like Christmas morning when the floor is covered in wrapping paper. November though was full of colour. Above is on Russell Blvd, as seen from outside the International Center. It got even more colourful than this a week or so later, this is really the start of the deep reds and yellows. That building is the Cal Aggie Christian Association, I’ve drawn that building before, it stands at a good location at the end of California Avenue so I pass by it every day.

This one was drawn downtown on F Street, at the corer of 2nd Street, and those two gossiping trees were starting to cover the ground in bronze-red leaves. The mural is one I’ve never drawn before, it’s a painting of the Columbus Cafe in San Francisco and was made decades ago by a local artist named Terry Buckendorf, it’s one of the oldest pieces of outdoor art in the downtown. You can learn more about it on DavisWiki. Obviously I wasn’t drawing many details (poor eyesight from across the street) but apparently the people in the cafe were well-known locals from back in the day. I wonder if I’ll ever end up in a mural, standing in the background somewhere hunched over my sketchbook. I don’t think I could ever make a mural, making anything that big would scare the life out of me. There are some really nice murals in Davis though, many with a bit of local history thrown in.

This building above is the Physical and Data Sciences Building” (PDSB), which was formerly the “Physical Sciences and Engineering Library” (PSEL), renamed this past year. In fact I was in that renaming conversation, I won’t say what my bright idea was but we have a new name for it now, I’m still getting used to the acronym. It’s nice inside, a big shared spaced for various units involved in data science, AI, quantum math and physics and all sorts of other related things. I will be finally moving some of our people in there soon too. The trees on the left were turning brown, and I drew this at lunchtime outside the recently finished new wing of the Chemistry building. There’s been a lot of construction in this little junction over the past few years but finally it’s all coming together.

I am trying my best not to remember the fifth of November, but look, that’s done now. Here are people lining up at the polling station in the Veterans Memorial Center, which I sketched on the way home. I had a headache, it only got worse. However the one thing I never forget about the fifth of November, that is the day we moved to Davis back in 2005. Nineteen years in this town. I remember it well, moving into our little flat in south Davis on Cowell Boulevard, walking down to Nugget and picking up a beer to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, sleeping on an old uncomfortable futon because we hadn’t bought a bed (or a sofa) yet. Waking up at 1am to the sound of the ground rumbling, our first experience of those mile-long freight trains that pass slowly through Davis in the middle of the night; we were relatively close to the train tracks, and it was a sounds I got used to pretty quickly (I still find it funny that even where I am now in north Davis I still feel the ground shaking slightly in the night when they pass through). We are now in our twentieth year in Davis, which I never saw coming back then. You never know what’s coming. Though on this date, I kind of did know what was coming. Still I drew the scene above with that tree turning deep dark purple, before watching maps turn red. Time to keep on sketching.

The scene above is of the building known on campus as the ‘Death Star’. It’s an annoying maze of concrete that is easy to get lost in. This is the entrance of campus, and the Death Star (properly called the Social Sciences and Humanities Building) is home to the Letters and Science Dean’s Office; I drew this as a gift for the outgoing Executive Assistant Dean upon his retirement, to remember the place by. I often have meetings in that building, and I’m ok if they are in the same place, but when they change location I have to give myself an extra ten minutes or so in case I get utterly lost. I have not drawn inside the maze of that building much in the past, but it feels like being in an Escher drawing. Safe to stick outside.

Finally, to end Part One, this bright yellow tree is outside the International Center, in the courtyard next to the space we hired for our annual Peter Hall Statistics Conference. I sketched this as I was looking out of the window from the registration table. I did a lot of sketching those two days, but I’ll post those separately. I can’t say I really understood any of it, but the colours outside were dazzling. Part Two coming soon.

a little more october in davis

December 17, 2024December 17, 20241 Comment

I have a bunch more sketches from around Davis to post, and then I can get to posting some of the sketches from my recent flying visit to London at the end of November/start of December. Christmas is coming, ain’t it guv’nor. Also wait until you see this year’s Advent Calendar. For now, some more Davis trees in front of Davis buildings. If I ever get to publishing this long-awaited book of my Davis sketches, it should be called ‘Trees In Front Of Buildings, by Pete Scully’. “So what do you draw, Mr. Scully?” “Well I draw trees, but preferably in front of buildings.” “Could you draw me a building without a tree in front?” “No I can’t do that I’m afraid, you’ll need to find someone else.” Everyone needs a theme. I still draw Fire Hydrants but I’ve kind of run out of new ones. The tree above, a gnarly one in the Arboretum, is in front of King Hall, the law school, and if you remember back to my old posts from the past twenty years I went through a stage of drawing the development of that building from the other side of the creek. That is actually going back a long time now. This one was drawn a lot closer up and from the shade of the Native American Contemplative Garden, which is an area of the Arboretum dedicated to the Patwin people; learn more about it at arboretum.ucdavis.edu/native-american-contemplative-garden. Just behind it you can see part of the old buckeye tree trunk that was left in place after it started falling apart a few years ago, and you can learn more about that here. I really like the shape this tree makes. They have such personalities, if you want to call it that. You might wonder why the trunk twisted this way and not that, what atmospheric elements led to this shape and not another shape, and is this true for all of us? Why am I like the way I am? Alright Sigmund let’s stop right there, stick to the sketchbook not the chaise longue.

This is another tree in front of another building, though the tree is not very interesting, going straight up until it reaches a point where it goes off into two, a bit like the Northern Line. It’s in front of Boheme, a clothes shop I have drawn before and which looks like it has a newly painted sign, it always looks very colourful on this stretch of 3rd Street. There’s a car in front of this one too. This means it falls under the sub-category of Cars In Front of Trees In Front Of Buildings. Having a little bit of kerb painted red is another one in the Pete Scully Sketch Bingo. Sorry, I think you might spell it ‘curb’ over here. Well I’m not doing that.

Here’s another one, but this time without a car, though there is a red kerb, and a big knobbly tree with a very storylike shape. I have drawn this building a few times over the years, in different iterations as a frat house, but at the time of drawing this it looks like it is in-between fraternities, being empty and for sale and having some work done on it. No beer pong today. I stood beneath some shade across the street to sketch, being drawn in mostly by the big tree shape. As I sketched a bearded man approached me. I didn’t recognize him, it was my next-door neighbour and former assistant soccer coach, on his way to teach on campus. I hadn’t realized how much his beard had grown, so when I said “hello” at first while still in my sketchbook-focus, I honestly didn’t realize who it was for a few seconds. It’s funny how even people and things you are really familiar with, one thing changes or you see them out of context and suddenly you don’t recognize them. There’s something in the mind that plays tricks on us, but again that’s another one for Sigmund. I get it when I walk around London, and see things I knew for years but they are different. I’m different, I’m looking older, my hair is getting lighter, my waist is getting heavier. I’m still sketching.

Kaua’i part 3: to Hanalei and back

December 9, 2024December 9, 2024Leave a comment

We enjoyed warm and sunny weather in Kauai for the most part, but on the day we drove up the eastern side of the island (that is, the ‘windward’ side; I always forget which is which, but the ‘leeward’ side is the drier and sunnier bit), we got our fair share of rain and fog. We headed up towards Hanalei, stopping off a couple of times to look at a lush green valley or a mist-shrouded lighthouse. We had seen pictures of Hanalei Bay looking like a made-up postcard under turquoise skies, but there was no chance of that today. It was raining when we reached the small town of Hanalei, and we pottered about the shops and ate at the little food trucks. Chickens were everywhere as always, and some even joined us at our table while we were eating a lunch of chicken, which is only weird if you make it weird. I saw this great little shave ice place (above), though we were too full to eat any, as we had already eaten very fancy donuts from the nearby ‘Holey Grail’ place. I spent a good bit of time in a local ukulele shop called Hanalei Music, talking with the owner whose son was a musician in England. It’s on these trips to Hawaii that I always get that massive love for the ukulele back, it’s just the right place to play it, and I cannot stop. I don’t care that I’m not the most sophisticated player, I can get a decent sound of it for what I need. Anyway, we went out to Hanalei Bay, or what we could see of it anyway, and walked out along the pier close by to where there were people learning how to surf. It was a pretty dramatic sight anyway, and the waves coming in were perfect for beginners. There were a couple of teenagers out on their boards learning how to surf and I noticed a couple of people, their parents, sat on those low chairs on the pier close by yelling out instructions to them. “Get your feet out of the water!” “Stay on the board!” “Mind that shark!” Well not the last one, though there are sharks here. It was exactly like being at a youth soccer game, with the soccer moms and soccer dads yelling from the sidelines on their little beach chairs as though they are experts, “Offsides, ref!” “Kick it out!” “Watch that shark!” (Except for the sharks.) I felt bad for the surfers, but they were all having fun. I don’t know for sure but I think Hanalei is the same place that Puff the Magic Dragon lived by the sea. That’s the legend anyway. My niece likes it when I play that song on the ukulele, so now I can say I’ve been to the actual place, sounds legit.

We left the rainy Hanalei and headed back down the windward side of the island, stopping off at Lydgate Beach. The rain had stopped and it was sunny and cloudy, and there is a nice little man-made cover here so people can swim about without being pounded by back-breaking waves or eaten by sharks. We splashed about for a bit, enjoying the tropical paradise, and then sat for a while under a tree, where I sketched the scene above and strummed on my ukulele. An older man even commended me on my ukulele rhythms, asking how long I’d been playing, and telling me he has quite a big collection of ukuleles now. Yes, I’m hoping to eventually do the same, get different sizes and different woods. I need to learn a few different songs first. The colours of the world in front of me were exactly why we came to Hawaii. The tree we sat beneath is drawn below, another of those monkeypods I think, but very much with its feet in the sand.

And below, a sketch I made of the sunrise at Poipu, by our hotel, on our last morning in Kauai. Quite a nice view, really. Since coming back I’ve watched a lot of videos on YouTube about rip tides, having heard a lot of stories about the dangerous tides you get on the beaches of Kauai. The waves here were really strong. When I look at the ocean now I see “danger danger danger!” but I still love it. I love the sound of it, I love splashing about in it, I love looking at it. Of course I have tsunami nightmares too, but I look at the ocean and see this impossibly powerful entity right before me and just marvel at the sheer terror and beauty of it all.

Ok last couple of Kauai sketches, done at the hotel on our last morning there, some of those nice pink flowers, and a couple of palm tree trunks carved with tiki designs. It was time to go home, but Kauai was a lovely place for an anniversary vacation.

Kaua’i part 2 – Poipu, Kōloa, Chickens and a Comet

November 15, 2024Leave a comment

Not a bad view. This was what we saw from our hotel room on Kauai, where we stayed near Poipu Beach. I had these new Arteza paints which were a selection of ocean blues and so this gave me a chance to play with them a bit. The pool below was nice, the ocean just a few steps away was not bad too, though it was definitely a bit wild. I like hanging out in the ocean, but it was like Man vs Wave out there, and quite a physical struggle. I was on guard for rip currents too. And sharks, let’s face it, watching a bunch of shark attack documentaries on the plane ride over was a good way to get paranoid. They are hilariously made though. “Could this rash of shark attacks have been caused by the radars from a nearby military base? The evidence seems conclusive. Or is it?” Nobody ever asks the sharks. They’d probably be like, “Humans taste good, Surfboards taste good!”. Still I was taking no chances, and didn’t swim very far. There were a lot of really good surfers out there, on some pretty powerful waves. I could watch the ocean for hours, and especially from a view like this. I brought my ukulele, and strummed away, it always sounds better with the waves.

Not far from Poipu is the little town of Kōloa. We went there for dinner one evening at the Kauai Island Brewing Company, which is apparently the westernmost brewery in the world. The beer was pretty good. We came back on another day to have lunch at one of the little food trucks dotted around town, and while my wife looked around the shops I sketched the big monkeypod tree at the junction. I’ve been so obsessed with tree drawings lately, I had to get at least one of these amazing trees into my sketchbook. I couldn’t really do it justice, but hopefully you get the sense of how tropical and overgrown Kauai feels compared to the more developed islands to the east. Right next to it was this fire hydrant as well, and so of course that had to go in. Then we went for a delicious all-natural shave ice.

Right, so anyone that’s been to Kauai will know what I mean when I say there are chickens EVERYWHERE. You might see some running about on the other islands and it’s like, oh isn’t that cute, wild chickens. On Kauai however they are literally all over the place, everywhere you go, chickens, roosters, baby chicks, all minding their own business. You get used to them really quickly. I sketched a few. While eating lunch in Kōloa a bunch of them were running around the picnic tables; in Hanapepe they were even getting up on the tables and sitting next to me, even while I was eating chicken. This is their world. The rooster is all the fridge magnets and stickers; by the way, Kauai, not every shop has to have its own sticker. Even liquor stores have their own sticker. I spent a lot on stickers at the Talk Story Bookstore, I tend to go overboard. So I got a few souvenirs with Kauai Chickens on them too. In fact there was a little shop in Kōloa called Kauai Chickens which was more of a fashion brand. We spent a few, er, bucks in there.

It was our anniversary trip (one month after our actual anniversary) so we had a lovely dinner at a restaurant called The Beach House, which was you can imagine was right on the beach, dining at sunset, amazing food and those delicious ‘Monkeypod Mai Tais’ that we love. We got to have photos on the little lawn overlooking the ocean, and then after the sun went down, and just before dessert, we got the best surprise – we saw the Comet. You know the one, the comet that was over the earth last month, “Tsuchinshan–ATLAS”, which apparently comes around only once every 80,000 years. A bit like Spurs winning a trophy. Historically comets are portents of some global doom, but thankfully nothing has happened since then that might indicate some sort of impending age of catastrophe. Still, looking over the ocean, we got an incredible view of it, which my wife with her slightly-newer-than-min phone was able to capture really well. What an amazing view. We went out the next evening by our hotel with a couple of cocktails to look at it again, and it was funny looking at everyone else’s photos of it online, especially those in Davis where it was definitely at more of an angle, while here much further south it was almost pointing straight down.

Comet Kauai

Kaua’i part 1 – Kalalau Valley, Hanapepe

November 6, 2024November 6, 2024Leave a comment

Last month my wife and I took a long-awaited trip to the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i to celebrate our 20th anniversary. We had meant to go in September but ended up moving it to mid-October, which worked out nicely, as it wasn’t too crowded and the weather was great. Kaua’i is called the garden island, and you can see why. It’s a lot more lush and not as over-developed as some of the other islands, and geologically older. I counted that this is our sixth visit to Hawaii since 2017, and our fourth different island, after Oahu, Maui and the Big Island, all of them quite different. We landed in the evening, driving through the tree tunnel towards our hotel near Poipu Beach, and went straight out for a nice dinner at Keoki’s Paradise, having our favourite, Hula Pie. I got some Hula Pie stickers for my new sketchbook which I was starting on this trip, returning to the classic landscape format Moleskine (but this time with a white cover). On our first day we drove up to what’s called the ‘Grand Canyon of the Pacific’, the Waimea Canyon. For such a small island there is a large amount of natural diversity and geology. We stopped at the Waimea Canyon Lookout and took photos, but there was no way I was going to be able to sketch it, it was enough just to look at it and try to take it all in. We have been to some amazing canyons in recent years and this was up there with them. We drove up further, through twisting tropical roads, towards the Kokee State Park. We knew that we would not get to view the famous and dramatic Napali Coast in the way that a lot of people see it – by boat (too long a trip), or by helicopter (no way man), or by small plan (aint gettin me in no plane sucker!) – and a lot of the hiking trails were closed due to them being a bit unsafe. However, the views of part of the Napali Coast from the elevated Kalalau Lookout were some of the most unbelievable that I have ever seen. We got out of the car, and it just didn’t look real. We stood there a while just looking at it. Or rather I started sketching it, which is the sketch at the top of this post (click on it for a closer view). The turquoise blue of the pacific, the hints of golden sand and red dirt, the verdant volcanic rocks, the jungle of plants and trees, and that one big cloud that was just sitting there all by itself right over the cliff on the left, like an airship waiting to depart. It was the furthest I’d ever been from Burnt Oak, geographically and in every other way too. We took a hike up a jungle road about a mile to another lookout which was supposed to have even more amazing views. When we got there, it had fogged up, the clouds coming off the sea and into the valley blocking out all visibility. The magic view was gone, utterly. So we decided to wait, and see if it would burn off. A few other visitors waited patiently, some giving up, but I was optimistic. This was opti-mist. And slowly we could see some shapes, and even a hole or two of blue, and bit by bit the world opened up again, a little bit like in that show Catchphrase when you see a small part but have to guess at the whole picture. In the end, it looked like this, see below. I wasn’t Not a bad looking place!

IMG_0044(1) - Lowres

We drove back down the long road out of the Canyon, and went to the town of Hanapēpē. It’s a small place with an old Hawaii feel, and I think it’s the inspiration for Lilo and Stitch, though I’ll admit I’ve not seen that film. There are a couple of painted murals of them. They call this the Art Capital of Kaua’i, perhaps for all the little gallery stores. We grabbed a simple but tasty lunch at a friendly place which served from a table in a doorway and sat outside, feeling tired already from our hike and drive. We walked over to a very cool little bookstore called Talk Story Bookstore, which is apparently the westernmost bookshop in the U.S.! They have a cat that rules the shop, and lots of stickers of the boss-cat called ‘Mochi-Celeste’ (based on the previous boss-cat). I spent a small fortune on stickers of all kinds. They sold records too, and comics. It was pretty busy, so I stepped out to sketch the place from across the street.

I walked a bit further down while my wife went into other shops, and I drew a quick one of the little church with the picket fence. I started getting a bit hot so I outlined and drew the rest later. We walked over to the Swinging Bridge, dating back from Hanapēpē’s days as a military town. It was a very warm day, and humid, and we drove back to the hotel to hang out in the pool before dinner in Kōloa (at the ‘westernmost brewery in the world’, Kauai Island Brewing). We were pretty far west, furthest west I have ever been. From here there is only the small island of Ni’ihau, but that is off limits to visitors. After that, you move into tomorrow. Far from home.

voting at the VMC

November 6, 2024Leave a comment

In a word, ‘bugger’. I have more words, but that will do for now. Remember remember the Fifth of bleedin’ November, indeed. I went to bed early last night rather than watch all the news coming in, as the constant noise about this county or that county was doing my head in, and I was getting a massive headache. I could see what was coming. I did fall asleep, for a bit, but woke up several times and in the end could not stay asleep, so here I am. Here we are. Anyway, I got off the bus yesterday to walk past the polling station at the Veterans Memorial Center in Davis, to have a look at democracy in action. This does hearten me, and the line was long. Sometimes you win, other times you lose. This time though, well, ‘bugger’. More words are available, but I’m not adding to the noise. I don’t think I’ve drawn this building before, the VMC, yet its near my house. Evening was already creeping in so I didn’t draw this all there, just a quick outline. I already did a sketch the same day, at lunchtime, and I have a whole load of sketches to post still, from our recent trip to Kaua’i, and all the ones in Davis since then, but I just wanted to post this one now. Bugger.

In other news (other news!) yesterday was also 19 years to the day since we moved to Davis. I have been a Davisite for 19 years. I need to think of a way to commemorate 20 years, next year. Another exhibition? A book? Right now, I just need some sleep.