Muir Woods

October 1, 2024October 1, 20242 Comments

We went to Muir Woods, in Marin County north of San Francisco. I’ve never been there before so it was pretty cool. It’s a National Monument, so our National Parks pass got us in. I love all the Redwoods. (I don’t love John Redwood much, but he’s not a tree, he’s a Tory.) These trees are genuinely enormous. The first time I came to the US we visited Armstrong Redwoods, but haven’t been back since. I’d like to visit the Redwoods National Park, though it is quite far north near the top of California, and I’m not liking the long car rides. Muir Woods was really beautiful, though to get there you have to go up some pretty windy roads with steep drops. It’s part of Mount Tamalpais, and backs onto the Pacific, though we didn’t go down to Muir Beach. We took a long walk along the main groves, without any steep climbs, and while it was pretty busy it was still nice listening to the sounds of nature amid all the green shade. One area, Cathedral Grove, is designated a quiet path, but nobody told the people behind us who were talking very loudly. These trees are big, I wouldn’t get them upset. It all reminded me of the recent Planet of the Apes films, they were all up here weren’t they. I sketched this one big tree that had an opening in it, where people would stop and get their photos taken as if the tree was consuming them. Don’t give the tree any ideas, I say. I was inspired by all these trees though. I’ve spent the rest of September filling most of my sketchbook with drawings of trees, and once you start it is hard to stop. Each tree is different, and old, and very alive. After our walk around the woods, we drove down into Mill Valley for a smoothie, before driving around the Marin Headlands and getting some nice photos of the Golden Gate Bridge.

this side of third

September 26, 20243 Comments

I went downtown on September 11th, the flags were up to commemorate 9/11, it’s a lot of years later now but I still remember that day clearly. I was in London, day off from my full-time summer job of being a tour guide on the open-top buses in London, a couple of weeks before I was set to move to the south of France for a year. The radio when I woke up that morning was all about the economy and how we didn’t know what was going to happen less than a year into the Bush presidency, and well they weren’t wrong, they didn’t know what would happen next. It was some time in the early afternoon I think, I was listening to music in my bedroom and for some reason I decided to turn the radio back on, when I heard they were talking about the news of a plane hitting one of the Twin Towers in New York. I had just dreamed about flying over New York a few days before, having always wanted to go there. Like most people I thought it must be just a strange and terrible accident. I turned on the TV just as the second plane hit, and then knew it was something far worse. Well we all saw the rest, that horrible day etched in memory, at least those of us that were around then. The next week in London was surreal, New York being like a sister city to us, with extra security everywhere, and my bus tours were full of stranded, slightly bewildered Americans unable to fly back home. When I moved over here, 9/11 was still relatively fresh, Bin Laden hadn’t been caught yet, and over the years it’s become one of those events from the past like the Kennedy assassination, or Pearl Harbour, or Chernobyl (which along with the Challenger explosion was the big disaster event of my childhood; I had the newspaper clippings on my wall, next to posters of Michael J. Fox and Glenn Hoddle). It’s a little mind-blowing to me that this was before the memories or even births of many people I meet today, but that’s how the world works isn’t it, a lot of history happened before I was born too. Spurs winning the league for example. Anyway, enough history talk. I was downtown on this 9/11, the flags were up, and I stood on 3rd Street outside the Manna Korean restaurant (I’ve never actually eaten there) next to Zia’s Italian Deli (been in there many times, especially at Christmas for my panettone). This is a typical downtown Davis view, if I am ever to do a book this would probably go in there, this is the Davis you recognize every day.

Third and D

September 23, 20241 Comment

Another one from downtown, early September. The corner of 3rd and D streets. There’s a new Mexican restaurant called Maya’s that opened on the corner, I’ve not eaten there yet but will try it. The downtown post office is just beyond. September is already ploughing towards October. As I write, I am up late on the night before the academic year begins, and Davis will be a lot busier from now on, not a bad thing at all, though I like the quieter summer. I did go to bed early, but I could not fall asleep and was listening to an audiobook (“Good Pop Bad Pop” by Jarvis Cocker; last Monday I went to see Pulp play live in San Francisco, a thirty-year-long dream, and have been reliving all my old Pulp love since. I will write a bit more about that, as well as my thirty-year love of Oasis, now that they too are reuniting, though I won’t be going to see them). I woke up very early this morning to watch the Formula 1, the Singapore Grand Prix, and then I went on a long run of 4.5 miles, my furthest distance yet. I felt exhausted the rest of the day, but that might be the effects of getting both my Covid and Flu shots yesterday, one in each arm. I was pretty tired yesterday evening too; I went to the Pence Gallery for the annual Art Auction (one of my two pieces sold, the drawing of Denmark Street) and but I came home early, too tired to stay out. Today I ended up sleeping most of the day, anything I tried to do, whether it was drawing or writing or organizing my clothes, just knackered me out, so I slept on the couch, only waking up to put on that movie The Dark Knight, which is a good film but really is about half an hour too long. Well I’m up now, with the urge to write, but now I’m at it I can’t quite explore any thoughts. I used to keep a diary and be good about that, and it was a good place to explore ideas, but I haven’t for several years now, probably because I write really small and my eyesight’s getting worse. Anyway, here’s a sketch of 3rd and D. Maybe I should draw this scene in 3D some day.

run run run

September 21, 2024September 21, 2024Leave a comment

I’m running again. Not very fast admittedly, but longer distances than usual. I’m not sure what I’m running from; maybe I’m running towards something. Regularly enough for it to be a habit, not too regularly that I do myself an injury. I did that last year, when I overdid it training through the summer, and caused myself a leg injury not long after the Labor Day run, sidelining me for weeks. Rest days are important, kids. I am still running in my comfy Nike running shoes from a few years ago. They still give me a spring in my step, but maybe it’s time for a refresh. I ran the Labor Day Race 5k a few weeks ago; my participation medal is below. I came tenth in my age/gender category. Three minutes slower than last year, but I have not run as much this year; my last race was the 7k Lucky Run in March, and I’ve not run as much this summer. I’m a lot heavier too, carrying around all those extra thoughts I guess. Still, running is good for the head. I am preparing for my biggest challenge yet, which is the 10k at this November’s Davis Turkey Trot. All my practice runs lately have been longer than before, as I am edging towards that distance, though they are still slower pace. I can’t wait though, and would love to do it sooner, but I don’t want to sign up for a 10k in some other city on roads and paths I’m not as familiar with, the first one should be here. I know someone in England who did ten 10ks in one month earlier this year, for charity, so I’m inspired and hope this one coming up won’t be my last, unless I really hate it. Once I put my mind to something though, I can’t easily be dissuaded, I am well up for it.

I’m not going to run a Marathon, or even Half-Marathon, any time soon. In fact the only reason I would is so that I could say, “I ran a Marathon. I took so long, by the time I reached the finish line it was a Snickers.” (Another long-running gag there)

another look at the hattie weber museum

September 20, 2024September 19, 2024Leave a comment

I could have included this in the last post, but because it happened to fall into September I decided not to. I’ve drawn this before a few times (that could be the name of my book) and it is the Hattie Weber Museum of Davis, a little museum all about Davis that is in the old Library building, Hattie Weber being the first paid librarian in Davis. I feel like I am repeating myself, over and over, drawing the same buildings, writing the same words, being the same predictable person day in and day out. I always have been, I think. I mean, we probably all are, but me more than most. Maybe it’s reassuring, maybe it’s samey. My sketchbooks feel like a Museum of Davis though. Maybe that’s how I should approach the book I inevitably must write (or compile, I mean I don’t know if putting a book of drawings together is really ‘writing’). A book that shows the changes in the past two decades, both in the city itself and in my style, and maybe in me as well. You know, back then I would go to work, draw stuff, eat noodles, watch football, listen to the same three or four bands, write stuff on my blog, whereas now… Ok. I felt a bit ashamed of myself drawing this building yet again, as if I was totally out of all ideas. Let’s look for example at the previous times I have drawn it…

So this one was done in 2016, in early September. That was eight years ago, same time of year, shortly before an Election (one which I very much did not like the outcome of), drawn from a similar (but not exactly the same) angle.

Fast forward to August 2020 (another Election year, one which I liked the outcome of a lot more, but was no less stressful) but look, I am drawing on this side of the street now. Samey, predictable? Not me guv! Of course, summer 2020 was a real moment in time, wasn’t it. I drew this one for the Pence Gallery’s annual Art Auction, I think it sold. It’s probably the best one I did.

This one also sold at the Pence Gallery, back in 2011 when I had that big solo show. That was really fifteen years ago? Time flies. It’s eight years since my retrospective exhibition at the UC Davis Design Museum too. I have done a lot of drawing since then, a massive amount. But, as we’ve determined, it’s all pretty much drawings of the same thing, just later in life.

Whoah, what the flip is this? A completely different angle altogether! It’s like jazz or something. I was in the little rose garden looking north or northish. Look, there are people! I must have been in a good mood that day. It was September again, the weekend before the academic year started, out at the Farmer’s Market in 2022, the heady post-pandemic days. Two years from any Election, a completely stress-free environment, yep.

And then, back to the earliest one, May 2011, an innocent time when I was still putting little borders around my sketches, and drawing with a black Micron pen. there was an old school-bell outside the building in those days, whenever I would come downtown with my at-the-time-very-little son on the bus on a Saturday morning (the ‘real bus’, he used to call it) he would occasionally ring this bell. Anyway this is the Hattie Weber Museum over the years, but it doesn’t tell its most interesting bit of history, way before my time, when it was actually the original Davis Library, and was located in an entirely different place, at 117 F Street. They moved it here at the start of the 90s, and the museum opened in 1992. And I’m sure I’ll keep drawing it as long as I’m in Davis. I’ve just realized, I have never actually sketched inside…

a few more from August

September 19, 2024Leave a comment

When I draw I always add it to the chart I make to track all my sketches for the year, and looking at this summer it feels like I’ve drawn a lot less than usual, but it’s not really the case. The format is a bit different because of the sketchbook I am using, with the portrait pages rather than the long landscape pages, so in the way I arrange it, it looks like less. I should have done it differently, but never mind. I still have a bunch of drawings from this summer wandering about Davis over long lunchtimes on slow days, and rather than post them all individually I’ll bunch them up like I usually do with my summer sketches at this time of year. What story is there to tell other than it was summer in Davis, it was hot, I was a bit bored. So like they do in montage sequences of films, here are a few more from downtown that I drew in August. At the top, well it’s on A Street which is where downtown meets the university, and I’ve drawn this building a few times before, Guilbert House.

This one is on 3rd Street, and drawn a little differently. I have drawn this house in the background of a sketch before I think, they often have fun stuff dotted around it, I think it’s one of those student houses. Anyway I was drawn to the pedal machine thing they have on the driveway, I must have seen this at Picnic Day or around town, it says “Vibey” on it so that must be its name. I decided to do the background with only paint and no lines, for some reason, but I don’t really like that much.

This one isn’t downtown at all but very much in the heart of campus, Haring Hall, as drawn from the Silo. The ghostly phantom walking past there is to remind us that I do draw people as long as they look like the people in the road-signs at crossings. I’ve only been inside Haring Hall a few times, and that was only to visit a now-retired professor who I knew and would have to get an occasional signature from, and I always liked his office full of books and things, as a proper professor’s office should feel like. I still occasionally see him at arts events and new building openings on campus, but I do think of his old office when I look at Haring. Anyway I drew Haring in the middle of August, before you know it it’s the middle of September.

And finally, late August. I actually didn’t do much sketching in August this year, as it turns out. I’m making up for it in September by drawing loads of trees, more on that later. I have also done lots of shoe drawings (they are long and take up more space in the chart). The drawing above is of an optometrist, “Eye Sea” (eye don’t get it), I have drawn this building before but not so big. It’s an interesting shape. It’s not my optometrist, this one, I go around the corner but I did come here once many years ago, it was a different optometrist back then, because I wanted some different frames and they had a good selection. I remember I picked up a pair of ridiculously small glasses, comically small lenses. They had no rim on the bottom half, and a very thin rim on the top; I would call them my ‘Half-Svens’, because former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson used to wear little rimless glasses, and he was pretty cool. Poor Sven; he died just two days before I drew this sketch. I must have thought about that subconsciously when I chose to draw it. I liked Sven a lot, ever since first seeing him on the pages of World Soccer in about 1991 when he was Benfica manager, I think. He didn’t look like football managers looked, certainly not English ones, and nothing like the old grizzled ones you’d see coaching the big clubs of Italy or Spain. He got around a bit, did Sven, and was much loved, the football world lost a real individual when he died. He left the world a farewell message before the cancer took him: “Never give up. Do not give up, is my message for life. And please don’t forget this: life is always, always to be celebrated.” Thank you Sven, rest in peace.

Chemistry latest – pretty much finished

September 16, 2024Leave a comment

The new quarter is upon us, it starts in a week. The quieter days of summer are over, and the busy busy is back. I’m usually well up for it, but I’ve enjoyed the slightly less stressful couple of months; the last year was a lot of work, a lot of headaches. Still, I’ll feel different when the game starts, I always do, and every year I get energized by the start of Fall quarter on campus. Here is another campus sketch from August, the latest in the new sing of the Chemistry Building, whose development and construction I have followed for about five years now. You can see all those posts by following the ‘Chemistry‘ tag. When a building gets to that end stage, it does become a lot less interesting to draw as it stops being an active moment in time and becomes its long-term self, interesting in the fact that people will come in and out a lot but there won’t be many outwardly different changes. I’ve drawn the Manetti Shrem a lot less since it was finished in 2016, and I’ve not drawn the Pitzer at all since then. Walker Hall I’ve still drawn a few times, but that building is starting to look different already as the freshly planted trees on the Hutchison side are starting to grow and break up the long expanse of architecture. I have probably got one more Chemistry sketch left in this series, the final-final-final one, but the one above is pretty much the end result already, the fences are down and the landscaping more or less done. The windows are all installed, and I think all that needs adding are the people. I wish we had a new building sometimes; ours is relatively new, having opened just a couple of months before I joined UC Davis, but growth happens. I have had a small part in drawing some maps for new rooms in existing buildings, but imagine being part of designing a completely new building, that must be exciting especially when it all opens. The Teaching Learning Complex for example, that was so fun to watch all that come together. This one has been too, and as I pass this way every day it has been easier to follow. I’m looking forward to taking a look around inside once it the new academic year starts.

the green and red, eighteen years later

September 13, 2024Leave a comment

It was August the 20th, the traditional height of summer. The Premier League season had begun days before; Spurs played Leicester the very day before this, and after dominating the game we ended up drawing, of course. And so the next day, I too ended up drawing. Ooh, that was a weak link. Why does August 20th stand out to me though, it has no significance in my life does it? No major birthdays, celebrations, anniversaries. Anyway, I chose this date to come down to D Street, to that little alleyway with the cute little shops that leads through to E Street and to the rear of the Pence. I like the red parts against the green, the brickwork in the chimney of the (very expensive) Mustard Seed restaurant, the lights hanging across on garlands. The woman who walked past did actually have a red bag too so I had to quickly draw her in as she passed to get the unifying look. I had to add a lot of the paint after I got back home, because of time/my legs. I thought back, it was on this date back in the summer of 2006 that I cycled down to D Street and did a sketch of the red phone box outside the Mustard Seed, a little piece of home. This has always felt like a significant point in my Davis existence. It was that first summer here, hotter than I could possibly have imagined; would we have moved to the Bay Area instead of Davis if we’d really known how hot it would be? I doubt it, I’ve always appreciated the air-conditioning, and Davis has been a great place to live and work all these years. That summer I was working at the Avid Reader bookstore on weekends and a couple of evenings per week, while also working full-time at the UC Davis Statistics Department, having been assigned there as a temp before they decided to take me on full-time as the graduate coordinator (I’m still there all these years later, but now the manager). There were a lot of incidents of the air-conditioning going down amid power outages across town, I remember one night a lot of people crowding into the Avid Reader just to stay cool until our closing time of 10pm. On this one day, it was a Sunday and my wife was away in Hawaii with her Mom and nephew, I couldn’t go because of work; the bookstore, but also I had no more vacation days at the university, having spent my small accrual on a solo trip to London earlier that summer, a trip I still look back on with great fondness). So I was all by myself on this Sunday, and I had recently bought a small watercolor set. I had with me a WH Smith spiral bound sketchbook that I had bought and started drawing in during that trip to London. It was not long since I started to look at other people’s blogs online, people who sketched daily, as I had been trying to do for a while, and it inspired me to really get a move on with that and do a lot more of it, especially around Davis, to really start looking at my new town. I didn’t know how I was going to sketch yet. I drew with pen a lot before moving out here. I bought sets of pencils, and they seemed to smudge a lot. I still have a bunch of watercolour pencils I bought to start adding colour. But I was really interested in the whole watercolour thing. It was a cheap set of pan paints that I bought from the university bookshop that got me started. At this point I did not use pen and watercolour together, I had not found a pen that didn’t run by this point (when I did, it was the Pigma Micron, because that’s what some other sketchers online used and so I copied that, a few months later). That green bike in the foreground, I rode that everywhere. My wife got it for me the first Christmas we lived here, it did me well, until eventually it gave up and the wheels just stopped turning. I rode that thing everywhere. That summer I think about riding across Davis with the sound of Belle and Sebastian’s new album The Life Pursuit in my head, wondering how many summers we would have here until we moved on elsewhere. So far it’s nineteen. That’s a lot of hot summers.

The phone box is still there; I don’t think it ever had a phone in it. Years ago when my son was very small we would get the bus downtown, and come down to this phone box and pretend it was a space ship that would take us to the moons of Saturn. I think it’s locked now, presumably to stop people going in and exploring other planets. I’ve drawn it a few times over the years, and when I went back on August 20th, eighteen years after I drew this, I thought about drawing again from the same spot, but since my bike has a flat tyre that I am too stubborn/lazy/unskilled to fix (see previous post) I wouldn’t have got the same view. I would not have wanted a comparison anyway, this old sketch is its own thing and a particular step in the story. So I turned and drew the other direction. There’s a lot of green and splashes of red, so it’s on theme.

the cyclery on the corner

September 12, 2024September 12, 2024Leave a comment

Another downtown sketch of another downtown corner. Mid-August, the quieter days before the students all come back. I sketched on the corner of 3rd and F, looking at the bike shop called the ‘Davis Cyclery’. That reminds me, I need to get my bike tyre fixed. I have left it for ages now. I need to just bring it to a shop, or to the Bike Barn, but I put it off because it costs so much now, and I always feel (at least with the Bike Barn, less so with the shops downtown) that they always go on about other things I need to do with my bike, when it’s like all I want is the not have a flat tyre, thanks, everything else works fine. I want to be able to fix it myself, is the thing. So I gave it a go, I flipped my bike over and tried to remove the back wheel, and failed miserably. I watched YouTube videos, all different types of bikes, they just seem to pop it off like it was a piece of Lego, yet when I try it I could not get the thing off. It clearly does come off, but I have not figured out how. I feel like it’s the sort of thing I should know how to do. Maybe I could just go and ask someone to show me how to do it, but I’m not going to do that am I. (I hear Marcellus Wallace in my head, “That’s pride, f***in’ wit’ ya. F*** pride! Pride only hurts. It never helps.”) No, I’ll get it done at some point. In the meantime I have been walking a lot more, which is good for me anyway. I stood on the corner of the street near a fire hydrant I thought I had sketched before (it was actually a very similar one on 3rd and G, case of mistaken identity) outside the University of Beer, which now has pandemic-era patios out in the street. I needed to add people in, so I drew a couple of people as they crossed the street. Now when I draw people I keep it very generic and mix and match elements of whoever is passing by, so you get an idea of the type of people who are around rather than the actual people; I’m pretty sure the guy crossing the street wasn’t wearing a green shirt and was probably a lot taller, but definitely had that a beard and sunglasses, while the woman with black hair ended up with someone else’s red t-shirt and, well, someone else’s boyfriend too, because I wasn’t quick enough to draw whoever beard-guy was with, and I wasn’t quick enough to draw whoever black-haired-girl was with with, so they have ended up together, like a romantic comedy set in a sketchbook. Hopefully their respective partners don’t see this, recognize them and get the wrong end of the stick. “Honey those aren’t even my legs, I have tattoos!” “Who gave you that t-shirt, you weren’t wearing that when we had lunch!” While contemplating these fictional domestic dramas, I popped into the bar afterwards to rest my own legs and have a pint, though it has been a while since I used to go in there and sketch, and then I walked home.

the former Uncle Vito’s

September 11, 2024Leave a comment

Mid-August, E Street, Davis California. This was Uncle Vito’s Slice of N.Y., a pizzeria and bar that I used to come to occasionally (if you call about once a year or so ‘occasionally’) for a beer, but since the pandemic they have closed down and the spot stands empty. It’s always sad to see spaces sit empty (or stand empty, whatever the correct verb is, maybe it’s lie empty) but at least the amazing 1930s New York style mural along the E Street wall is still there in what I like to call colourful black and white. Some day another business will finally move in, a boba tea shop or a frozen yogurt shop and they will paint over this with some ugly pastel, and it will be a loss for Davis. Anyway, I needed to sketch one day, and I stood looking down E Street along the big mural down towards the contrasting colourful trees and panelling outside the Hotdogger. That violinist I don’t like much wasn’t there on the corner that day, but someone did start playing some music on the piano across the street. I listened to my football podcast, as the Premier League season was just starting later that week, though I was already bored of it even before a ball had been kicked. It’s already the international break now, England have a new interim manager, and as for Spurs already we have won, drawn and lost, not in that order, so our season will be another Spursy season. I would like to go to New York again. The last time I was there was for my 40th birthday, an increasingly long time ago now already. I want to go everywhere, but I always want to visit New York. Go back to Pete’s Tavern, I liked that place. As an urban sketcher, it’s one of the cities you can never be bored of sketching. I presume, anyway. If I lived there I’d probably be longing to go and sketch somewhere else, that is usually how it works with me. Right now, my travel itch is getting to me as I keep looking at Instagram and seeing people sketching places far away and wishing I could just get on a series of trains and explore with the sketchbook. I’d probably get tired, and need a rest. After a while sketching this, I had to go back to the office, and my legs were feeling stiff anyway, so I decided to finish it off later at home.