Let’s Gdańsk

January 31, 20262 Comments

Time, finally, to post my sketches from last summer in Poland. This is what I should have done in September, but I was busy, then I was busy in October, very busy in November, December’s a write-off, and well January is almost finished. See how quickly time flies. While I was in Poland I kept a daily diary, which I have not been doing for years, but I did so because I knew I’d probably post months later and forget all the details. Now I have forgotten where that diary is. I’ll do my best. I have always wanted to go to Gdańsk (which I may or may not write with the little accent above the n), since I knew it was an important port in the Solidarity era of the 80s, and also a really pretty Hanseatic city on the Baltic Sea. I had this idea over twenty years ago that I would like to do a tour of the whole Baltic, starting and finishing in Copenhagen, exploring all the different but connected cities and cultures along its shores, and drawing them too. It’s something I’ll never get around to (and I will probably never get to visit St. Petersburg) but it’s a fun dream project. Gdańsk was one of the big attractions of that project. It seemed like a lot of people didn’t really know about it, though it’s more popular today. When I heard that the Urban Sketching Symposium would be in Poland in 2025 (in Poznań), I knew I had to take the opportunity to attend and finally visit Gdańsk, so I booked a couple of nights at a nice hotel in the city centre and flew over from London. I was definitely not disappointed, and my sketchbook got a lot of exercise. I had been dreaming of drawing the view above, the view from the banks of the Motława river, with the big pirate ship (one of two that give tours) moored on the quai. I woke up early to go and sketch this, taking about two and a half hours to draw it all, though I did bump into a couple of urban sketchers from the US who I’ve known for years (Amber Sausen and Daniel Green) which was really nice. I was surprised not to see more sketchers about, since many of us who were in Poland for the symposium were doing our tours of the country before the big event. There was a big pre-symposium meeting hosted by the local USk group on the weekend before, that I missed. I enjoyed sketching this, a big relaxing panorama, but it was a lot of windows, and a beautiful day. I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere, but my mind does sometimes go to all the places I miss out on seeing because I’m sat there sketching. When I was done, I walked down the river a little bit more to draw one of Gdansk’s most well-known buildings, the tall 15th century crane standing high above the river. It was built in 1444 – it was destroyed in 1945 in the Siege of Gdansk (quite a lot went down in that year) but it was restored in the 50s, and then completely renovated just a few years ago. I stood in the ever-decreasing shade next to the moving footbridge (it swivels in the middle of the river to let the big ship pass by).

I had arrived in Gdansk the evening before, and this was my first time back in Poland since 1998. The country has changed an enormous amount since then, but so have I. Poland is so much more modern than it was in the 1990s, but so am I, with my iPhone and my credit card. I went to an ATM to get some cash out at the airport when I landed, but the options of denominations were confusing; I would have ended up taking out hundreds of dollars without realizing it, but I noticed the exchange rate and decided against. I exchanged some dollars at a bureau de change, so I at least had some cash (I was shortchanged by 20 zloty, though that isn’t much), but everywhere took credit cards even for small purchases so I hardly used any cash while I was in Poland, unlike in Berlin where a lot of places said ‘cash only’. Meanwhile back in 1998 I had all my cash for the trip in a little plastic tube around my neck, I had no phone, a cheap film camera and a small backpack with a few changes of clothes for a five week trip around 12 countries. I travelled light enough in 2025 though, but I had more sketching supplies. I didn’t sketch much in the 90s, but I wrote a lot on that trip. As soon as I left my hotel to walk about in the evening I was in love with the city, and knew I’d enjoy my time in Poland (which I really did). I had expected it to be full of drunken tourists from the north of England (not just the north, other regions’ drunken tourists are available), or huge groups of American college kids but it was full of Polish families, many with young with kids, visiting from other regions of Poland. Poland, by the way, is a really big country, much bigger than you think. I could spend a few weeks exploring it all and see a real diversity of cities and regions. In fact I realized that I actually knew very little about those regions, which was highlighted when I went for lunch that day at a ‘Kashubian’ restuarant near my hotel. I wondered where Kashubia was, I thought it was maybe in the Caucasus or somewhere, until I realized like an ignorant tourist that I was actually in Kashubia, and this was the local food. After a bit of reading I discovered that Gdansk actually is not technically in Kashubia, with that region being just to the west, but it’s still considered Kashubian. For a long time Gdansk was ‘Danzig’, a German-speaking Prussian city, but that’s just one part of this interesting city’s long and complex history.

The first sketch I did in the city was of that pirate ship down on the river. Yes, I realize my ignorance of tall-masted boats by calling it a pirate ship, but hey I like pirates, I used to dress up as a pirate and go to the Swashbuckler’s Ball in Portland, and this my friends is a pirate ship. Standing on the quai in quickly fading light I could not get super detailed, but I was very excited to have this be my first sketch in Poland. The first of many, a great many. You can see though that the horrible new watercolour Moleskine paper gives it a rough and bumpy feel, it wasn’t much fun to draw on either, and I’m not using those Moleskines any more (unless I can find some with the older, slightly smoother blend of paper), I’ll stick with the Hahnemühles. On this trip I brought both brands, a landscape Moleskine and a portrait Hahnemuhle (the umlaut was there but it kept rolling off), you can see I used the smoother but still slightly textured Hahnemuhle for the crane sketch. That’s enough paper talk, maybe I will do a post about my materials for this trip another time.

As a pirate, and wearing my Portland Timbers football shirt, I naturally had to take a trip on the pirate ship. There are two of them, and the one I drew the night before was called the ‘Czarna Perła’ which I think means ‘Black Pearl, and if that’s not a pirate ship name then my name is Kapitan Jacek Wróbel. This was my tourist time, I wasn’t going to sketch (except for that very quick one above – I can’t help myself, but look at that bumpy paper, it looks dirty but it’s not). I went from the cool shade to the sunny deck to enjoy the view as we toured up the river towards the historic shipyards. I got a nice big beer, and we were told all the stories about Gdansk’s maritime history, its importance as a Hanseatic League city, its shipbuilding industry, and as the birthplace of the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement led by the magnificently moustached labour leader Lech Wałęsa. I remember hearing about him on the news as a kid in the 80s, and he appeared to be a lion of a man. It was in these shipyards that the old Soviet bloc started to fall, and Gdansk is very proud of their role in history. I didn’t get off the ship at the destination in Westerplatte to explore and sketch the big old shipyard cranes, instead I stayed on the pirate ship to have another beer and listen to the Polish folk singer with his guitar, I sketched him in the small brown sketchbook below. He was really good. There is a little bit of industrial architecture in the background.

Below is a sketch I did on the fairly busy main pedestrian street of Długa, the ‘Long Lane’ I enjoyed all the flags, but I kept this quick and sketchy. It leads up to the ‘Golden Gate’ (Brama Złota), but the tall tower you see in the distance is the, wait let me look this one up, it’s called the ‘Przedbramie ulicy Długiej’. Now one thing I must point out, I am usually pretty good with European languages and do a fairly passable job with pronunciations, but when I see Polish my brain just says ‘leave it Pete, you’ve embarrassed yourself enough!’. I had this Berlitz European Phrase Book when I was a kid and I got my head around Hungarian and Russian, but sheepishly slowed the book when I would read the Polish pages. I love hearing the language, listening to people speak it was beautiful, and I really appreciate its consonant heavy words and those letters with diacritics you don’t see anywhere else (like that l with a line through it that sounds like a ‘w’). If I ever get a chance to take some Polish lessons where I can hear it and say the words out loud, I would like to do it. Reading it though I get a block, because I have to hear it out loud (I have a similar issue with Irish, even though it’s actually a more phonetic written language than English; it’s probably why I can’t read music). So when I see ‘Przedbramie ulicy Długiej’ I know it’s not really that difficult, but my brain says its deep water and you can’t swim well, so can you look up the English name? Well, it looks like it is called the ‘Foregate of Long Lane’ but part of the building is the ‘Katownia’ or, er, ‘Torture Chamber’. Moving swiftly on. The other part of this sketch is just what I could draw while eating my Kashubian lunch, which incidentally was chicken soup with dumplings (they love a dumpling here), followed by potato ‘plince’ with cream cheese and trout. It was delicious. I enjoyed it so much I went back to the hotel and had a two hour nap. I must have needed it!

I have quite a lot more Gdańsk sketches to share before we get to the Poznań stories, but first I have to show the in-flight sketch from Stansted to Gdańsk, reading Agatha Christie on Ryanair like a boss. I watched Poland unfold below me and wanted to visit each village, though I knew I’d never be able to pronounce their names. Check back for part two.

Burnt Oak Broadway, corner of Stag Lane

January 10, 2026January 9, 2026Leave a comment

Here are a couple of drawings from Burnt Oak that I did last summer. Specifically, Burnt Oak Broadway. I mentioned in a previous post that Edgware High Street was part of Edgware Road which is part of Watling Street which was an ancient Roman Road running from Dover to Wroxeter, passing through London and running in a north-westerly straight line, give or take. The A5, in modern parlance. It was probably a route before the Romans came as well, used by the ancient Britons, and we don’t really know what it was called before the Saxons migrated here from mainland Europe and called it Watling Street, or Wæcelinga Stræt, after a tribe that lived around what we call St. Alban’s now, the people of Waecla, or Waeclingas. Watling Street also marked the border between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms under Alfred and the Viking-ruled territory of the Danelaw. Our side of the street, in Burnt Oak, that would have been in the Danelaw, which explains a few things about us (what’s the Old Norse for “yeah what you looking at, come on then”), with our longships and our Odins, while those posh Saxons lived over there in Harrow with their burnt cakes and their Wodens. Burnt Oak is where I was born and grew up, and supposedly has its origins in Roman times (what’s the Latin for “yeah what you looking at, come on then”) and refers to the old practice of burning an oak tree to mark boundaries (a simple sign would have probably been easier). When we say we are going ‘Up the Watling’ we are not referring to Watling Street, but to Watling Avenue which turns downhill from here. This part of Watling Street, Edgware Road, the A5 whatever, is called Burnt Oak Broadway. Hey this is Britain, we can have as many names for things as we bloody well like. One summer morning I got up and walked up to the top of the Watling, and stood on Burnt Oak Broadway looking over at the junction with Stag Lane. This junction is ancient, and you could grow ancient waiting for the bloody lights to change, and is probably named after the Bald Faced Stag pub which would have been to my left on the Broadway before it was closed about a decade or so ago. All the old pubs are closing, there will be none left soon. There are none left around here. That’s a different story. The large building on the left with the clock on top has stood there for many years, and reminds me so much of being a kid. It was a department store for a long time, but it reminds me of my Nan, because I would see it when going to her flat, which was just across the street further down the Broadway, or in the Stag, where she would spend most days. Across the junction on Stag Lane, that building painted an ugly blue is now an amusement arcade and casino called Silvertime, well I say amusement, who really knows. It’s in the former location of Nat West Bank, and this was my branch when I opened my first account as a kid, do you remember those porcelain NatWest piggy banks? My mum or dad still have them somewhere I think. Sad to see the bank closed. There used to be two NatWests in Burnt Oak, both closed now. There is another blue Silvertime across the street, also located in a closed down bank, where the old Midland Bank (later HSBC) used to be. Funny how these casinos open in old banks. I really don’t know why they have to paint these old buildings bright blue though. Next door is a Romanian food market, and a restaurant next to that. There’s a sizeable Romanian community in Burnt Oak now, that was not there when I left. My mum did have a friend from Romania when I was a kid, she used to work with him and we would often meet with his family. He had escaped Ceaucescu’s brutal regime in the 70s or 80s (hiding in a box, apparently), and was able to bring his family over after that. I still remember when the communist regimes fell, and he was finally able to go and visit his homeland. Last time I saw him he had opened a bakery on Burnt Oak Broadway, about seventeen years ago just down from here, and he gave me a massive plate of pastries, but that’s gone now. Everything changes, you can’t stop it, but we’ve all got our stories in these places.

Further down the Broadway, opposite the flats where my Nan used to lived (when she wasn’t in the Stag), I stood under a tree and drew this on the morning before heading off on my trip to Poland. This building is in a sorry state, disused, boarded up. When I was younger it was a Mecca bingo hall, but closed more than ten years ago. We love leaving this big old buildings empty and derelict. Years ago it used to be a cinema, when my Mum was a girl, the Savoy, she remembers seeing Calamity Jane there as a kid. Someone contacted me to let me know that there are proposals to convert this space and the spaces next to it into new flats, with concerns about some more local history being lost to the march of redevelopment. Luxury flats are probably better than bright blue ‘adult gaming centres’, but London is at the mercy of big corporate property developers these days. Communities would be nice, and they still exist, if you want it. Pubs would be nice, and newsagents, and a post office, and banks with humans, and a cafe where you can get a nice cup of tea. It’s funny, I like drawing these big old buildings whose presence echoes so much through not only my own history but that of my family and local friends, yet I think I only ever stepped foot in here once in my life, when it was a bingo hall when I was a kid, and I am probably misremembering that for somewhere else. Memory and Nostalgia are funny things. I was considering writing a book called “I Remember When Things Used To Be A Little Bit Different From How They Are Now” but things keep changing and changing again. So I will just keep on drawing what I see, until it does. These were the only sketches I did in Burnt Oak in this trip but I did more around London, stay tuned for those, they won’t all come with maudlin’ nostalgic stories, but most will.

San Francisco panorama from Nob Hill

September 9, 2025September 9, 20252 Comments

Hello everyone, I am very behind in posting because I was in Europe for a whole month (London, Poland and Berlin) and have an extremely massive amount of sketches to post, and I am still nowhere near caught up with posting the pre-vacation sketches – I have enough to last me forever, if you can keep up with them all. I draw a lot, that is for sure. It’ll never say on my gravestone “Here lies Pete, who didn’t draw enough”. Yet I always feel I need to draw more. Even since I got back little more than a week ago, I have been busy, running a 5k race (beating my time from last year) and then taking a weekend trip to San Francisco to watch Supergrass and then fly to Los Angeles to watch Oasis! I have hundreds of sketches to scan. In the meantime however I should finally post again here on my old-school sketchblog, and to get going again, here is a big drawing I did this summer (based on sketches I made back in February while looking out of the window of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco’s Nob Hill). It’s big, it’s detailed, it’s of a great city view, and I loved this one. I worked on it while my family were away in Disneyland and I was home alone for the weekend. Telegraph Hill there on the right, Russian Hill there on the left, Alcatraz (long may it remain a tourist attraction and National Historic Landmark), and Powell Street sweeping down to the bay. I liked the buildings on the left in the foreground going uphill like books lined up on the stairs.

Anyway I’m showing this one now because as of this week it is on display and for sale at the Pence Gallery’s annual Art Auction! I have two pieces in there this year, the San Francisco panorama and a drawing of the Primrose Hill Bookshop that I made last year (I did visit that bookshop again on my recent trip, bought a nice book by David Gentleman there, signed copy). You can find out about the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction on their website, pencegallery.org/events/art-auction.

You can also see the listings themselves at the Auction Catalog. My listings (and you can bid on them if you like!) are available to see here.

Anyway, I’d better start scanning the mountain of summer sketches, because Fall is about to begin…

some trees on campus in april

June 22, 2025June 22, 20252 Comments

April was a long time ago now but I’m still posting old sketches. I am forever behind but it’s good to see how the world used to look in the before-times. It’s midsummer already (astronomically, though not seasonally, summer has just begun). Here are a few from a couple of months ago which are very tree-focused, two trees from campus below plus a panorama of the UC Davis Quad showing a lot of trees all at once, like some kind of tree party. The annual Picnic Day is around this time of year but I avoided that kind of thing this year, wasn’t up for the crowds and walking around feeling hot and bored. No sketching Picnic Day 2025. This drawing was done after work one day when the novelty of extended periods of sunlight in late afternoon had not yet worn off, and it wasn’t too hot yet. I like this one a lot though, I might use it in future things at work if I want a regular campus panorama scene. Here are a couple more trees.

Way Up Above New York City

June 2, 2025June 2, 20254 Comments

My dream as a sketcher is always to go high above a city and sketch everything below – not too high above, I still want to see things. (Click on the sketches and you will see it all in bigger detail). New York City is easily the most exciting place for this. Our hotel was located on 6th and 28th in Chelsea, in sight of the One World Trade Center, the Chrysler, and the Empire State Building which loomed outside our bedroom window. It was too big to include in the view above but would be just to the left of that view. The above panorama was drawn while sitting on my bed. The light and colour of this view changed enormously throughout the day, and I did this in a couple of sittings, about a couple of hours total at most, but I drew much of it in the late afternoon/early evening while the sky was all purples, pinks and blues. Below, cars moving slowly in lines, the famous yellow cabs weaving in and out, and people the size of ants, all looking for the jam. What excited me most is not all the windows or the depth or the movement, or the feeling that I am in the Spider-Man video game, but the water-towers.

The distinctive New York water-towers really are everywhere you look., especially in the view above which was drawn from the roof of our hotel, just a few floors above our room, about 30 stories or more above the street. I was looking south towards the One World Trade Center on the left, and across Chelsea on the right. I was a little overwhelmed by how many water-towers there were, and on another day I might look at the pictures I took and draw a big detailed one, all coloured in. On this day I stood up on the roof of the hotel, which was open to the elements with just an elbow-high glass fence keeping me safe. It was thankfully not too windy. It was late afternoon/early evening, the sky was an interesting collage of shades, and the tall towers in the distance were just blue-grey silhouettes. I drew fast (this took less than an hour and a half) but could not quite finish it, and left a gap which I never had time to fill, and felt that my mind’s eye would fill in the gaps. My eyesight is not that great anyway, and while I sketched one of my lenses actually fell out of my glasses, thankfully falling on my side of the barrier and not hundreds of feet to the sidewalk of 28th Street. I popped it back in. There were taller buildings to my right, and my eyesight was not so bad that I could miss the sight that greeted me there, a man at the window completely, well, ‘stark bollock naked’ as we say and possibly oblivious to the fact anyone could see him at all. I tried not to stare, and thankfully he was not very long. By the window I mean. I think I understand that song about being ‘caught between the moon and New York City’ differently now. I kept drawing (not that obviously) until I could draw no more, and we went for dinner. I was so glad to have the opportunity though to draw New York from above, which is always a dream, and to stay in a hotel where I have the time to actually do it and not feel rushed to leave, even though I still drew faster than usual. New York, all those movies, all those photos, all those paintings and songs and stories, all that culture that has played with our imagination, all right there below me. I want to draw more of it!

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.

pink blossom on seawhite

April 7, 20251 Comment

I started the little Seawhite sketchbook with a drawing of my current paintbox, but I thought I should start using it for some quick urban sketching. I did this quick sketch up on 3rd Street as the pink blossoms were coming out, next to what looked like a still autumnal tree outside Ali Baba. I have not eaten in there for years. Don’t know why, I should try it again some time. I rushed a bit with this sketch as I had to get back to work. I hadn’t yet figured out what I wanted this small sketchbook for, it’s not my main book. I have ended up using it more for quick people sketches on the go, it’s small enough to fit into my pocket and quickly get out to add a fast sketch, as I did on the New York Subway. This was a laboured start but the book has helped loosen me up. In my sketching that is, in everything else I’m still as tense and overwhelmed as we all are right now. I would just like normal news please, that’s all. I’ve done a lot of drawing this year, it may end up being the most sketching-filled year of all time. This is the only one in this book that looks like this, but you gotta start somehow, gotta fill them blank pages and move on.

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.

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.