back again, late summer

Varsity Theater Davis 090325

When I’m so far behind with posting it feels like I’m telling stories about a time I don’t remember any more. End of summer 2025 seems like such a long time ago, the world just keeps getting further into horrible history. Up is down and right is wrong and who knows where it ends. Still, I go into my sketchbook to try to understand if not the universe or the world, then just the place that is right in front of me. I was pretty tired after that long trip, and eager to get back to routine. September is still very hot in Davis, so I sat in the shade on a bench outside the Varsity Theatre and drew that. I hadn’t come back from my big sketching trip with some sort of new insight into sketching, so this is just the usual say-what-you-see, I have to draw something type of of sketch. Work is still quiet in early September, it’s the tail end of Summer, and Davis isn’t that busy again yet. I did see an interesting car on D Street painted in DHL logos, so I started to draw that, but ended up taking a photo and doing the rest later, as the owner came and drove off. It looked like a large toy car. It reminded me of the story told by Eddie Jordan, the late great Eddie Jordan (he died just last year), former Formula 1 team boss, whose team Jordan Grand Prix used to race in a distinctive yellow livery. In 2002 DHL started sponsoring them, and in those days DHL’s colours were white and red, but Jordan raced in yellow, due to a contract with a previous sponsor, and they didn’t want to change their colours. So DHL instead changed their branding colours to match Jordan, and the famed yellow and red DHL branding you see today is apparently a result of that.

DHL car Davis 090325

in between the storms

amtrak sketch feb2019

This is a bit different. I drew this from the window of the Amtrak and didn’t use pen, just paint and a bit of pencil, speeding away from Davis across the delta to Richmond. I haven’t got my scanner so I took a photo, hence the ‘no-scanner’ look to this. We had huge storms in California, really heavy downpours and strong winds, causing flooding in a lot of areas. The lands around the Delta were pretty bepuddled, and the dramatic skies in between the two rounds of the storm were something to paint. It was a stress-reliever to to this, it always is.