back in the good life garden

May 27, 2024May 26, 2024Leave a comment

Another from campus, I was attempting a panorama of the RMI (Robert Mondavi Institute) for Food and Wine Sciences, from one of the few shady spots in the Good Life Garden (“morning Margo” “hello Jerry”) but I couldn’t be bothered to colour it in. I’ve sketched here before of course, it’s close to my office. I do wonder sometimes, I get in a rut with my sketching. Like, drawing the encampment on the Quad, it was at a bit of a distance but it’s still showing something different, a moment in time worth documenting. Sometimes though I’m just drawing a place because it’s there, and will probably look the same in 10, 20 years. I do remember when it wasn’t there of course, it was built in my work-life-time. I still have a wine glass from the grand opening, as it was around the time of the UC Davis centenary so it had that motif on it. I think that was from then anyway. My former supervisor got herself about four or five of those free glasses, it was a fun little trip. She passed away several years ago, sadly. I learned of former colleague who died a couple of months ago, very sad to hear, he had retired a long time ago. While looking for his former workmates to tell, I learned of another who died last year, who was on the original team of staff I worked with when I joined our department. Made me quite pensive this week, thinking about all those people, all those old times, when I was brand new to this university. Now it’s my job to make people feel at home in our place of work, as it was theirs before me. Life goes on, doesn’t it, and I keep on drawing it.

the downtown aprils

May 11, 2024May 11, 2024Leave a comment

Here are a few downtown sketches from recently, I have more but why drop them all at once, this isn’t Netflix. Still you get four here, so that feels like dropping a mini-series and then dropping part two later. Maybe it’s more like a Disney+ series in that it’s got no real story and goes ultimately nowhere. Or it’s just a few more sketches of this place I’ve been living for the past eighteen and a half years. Right, above, that’s the side of the Natsoulas Gallery, and that big dog made of records and cat made of pottery, I’ve drawn them before. I know I should tell new stories to go along with these sketches, but I’m not going to, I’m just plodding on.

I think I have not drawn this building before, on F Street up by 5th. I mean, I’ve not had much reason to. This time, I quite liked the shadow I guess. There’s an eyebrow shop there, which reminds me of Ebenezer Blackadder’s moustache shop (in our favourite Christmas TV show). I saw an eyebrow shop in Riverside called “Eyebrows-R-Us” which made me look twice. I was going to pop in, hoping someone would ask me if I’m looking for anything particular, and I would say “No, I just came in for a browse,” but that would have been pretty a weak gag. Next door is the place that does these ‘Hump Bikes’, which are shaped a bit liked mopeds, but electric and silent, and apparently totally allowed in the bike lane, where they move much more quickly than regular bikes and appear suddenly beside me. They give me the hump. I drew this on a day when I was really risking things by being outside, because the allergens have been particularly strong lately. Sure enough, I ended up sneezing over and over, as per usual.

Here’s a place I have sketched before, on the corner of B and 3rd. I think it’s Sam’s Falafel Hut now, I remember it used to be Ciocolat. Things move around in Davis. I stood in the shade of the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame to draw this. I’ve never been in there either. I ride a bike around all the time, but I suppose I’ve never been that interested in seeing the Hall of Fame for riding a bike. There was one time during the pandemic that I rode from downtown to home to pick up a key and then down to campus in the fastest time possible, because one of our visiting faculty had locked themself out of their office and needed to start their online class, and I was out for lunch while working from home. It was a legendary ride. Maybe it should go in the Hall of Fame, is that how that works? I don’t know. I watch the Tour de France on TV sometimes, it’s probably more stuff like that. I think the main reason I’ve never gone in is because I don’t really like drawing bikes. I’m a bit rubbish at circles. Don’t start looking at my car wheels now though, thank you.

The last one is from D Street or somewhere. I think they do hair or nails or moustaches or something here. I just like the shape of the triangular roof. I have drawn a lot of D Street lately. I draw a lot in general. I was going to do a sketchcrawl last week, another Let’s Draw Davis, on May the 4th. I made it Star Wars themed. It absolutely bucketed down that day. Normally I wouldn’t mind sketching int he rain, and I could go inside and sketch anyway, but it was one of those days, I wasn’t feeling that great, so I stayed in and stayed comfortable. That evening though we did go downtown to the Varsity Theatre to watch the rereleased showing of The Phantom Menace. Great stuff! More Davis sketches to come.

24 hours in Vegas

May 8, 2024May 9, 2024Leave a comment

At the end of the Utah trip, we spent the night in Las Vegas. We stayed at the Venetian – well, the Palazzo, the equally fancy and lavish massive hotel next door that’s an extension of the Venetian. It was very very nice. Our room was on the 45th floor, the hotels in Vegas can be pretty enormous. Our window overlooked one of Vegas’s newest curios, The Sphere, an absolutely massive ball covered in a wraparound LED screen, displaying all sorts of animations and advertisements. There’s a big concert venue inside, I know U2 were playing there last year. I had to draw it. There was a giant animated emoji that would come up, that was easier to sketch than the goldfish bowl. Sometimes it would turn into a big basketball. Honestly, it’s really made to be turned into a Death Star isn’t it. There’s a lot of Vegas behind it, with an airplane landing way below us. Strange being so high up. It’s been a little while since I was last in Vegas, actually I think it was the layover I had in 2019, when I stayed at the seriously aging Luxor. It’s twenty years this year since my wife and I got married in Las Vegas! Before our wedding we stayed at the Luxor, and for the wedding itself we were at the Rio. For our honeymoon, we went to the Venetian, which was our favourite of the big themed resorts. It’s brilliant. That shop Michael Jackson used to buy his tacky junk in is still there. Back then in 2004 we had a nice dinner at a restaurant called the Canaletto, on the indoor St Marks Square; we went back all these years later for a lovely meal. This time was our son’s first trip to Vegas, and we were going to see the Beatles ‘Love’ show by Cirque du Soleil at the Mirage. My wife and I last saw that show in 2011! It’s a brilliant performance, and my son loved it. And a few weeks later, we learned after 16 years the show is closing. What a shame! I’m glad I got to see it (twice). Anyway, before the show we walked down the Strip a bit, and it was pretty packed, bit too busy for me. After our Utah trip and the long journey across the desert, and dinner and shops and the show, we slept well that night. Of course, I was a little nervous about scorpions; I’d heard that a man last year had been stung on his (ahems) in his bed at the Venetian by a scorpion in his sheets. I triple-checked the sheets that night!

When I got up I went out sketching on the Strip, which was a little less busy than the night before, but not without the lads carrying around those long plastic margarita containers and those ladies dressed as showgirls getting people to take photos with them for tips. I stood in the shade underneath the bridge next to the traffic and sketched the Strip, until I got a bit bored of standing there, and left it at that. We didn’t do too much more in Vegas, except we drove down the Strip towards the older downtown, looking for the place we got married, Cupid’s Wedding Chapel. It’s a little rougher down there, and one block just off the Strip was cordoned off by the cops. We looked for the chapel, with its distinctive red heart-shaped sign, but unfortunately, it’s gone. That was a shame! Nothing sits still for too long in Vegas…

a beer at the shoppe

April 27, 2024April 26, 2024Leave a comment

After that last sketchcrawl, it was raining on and off a lot. My legs were in need of more rest after that 7k run, so I popped into the Davis Beer Shoppe for a nice beer and a sketch, while outside the day flitted between heavy rain and spots of sunshine. We were off to Utah next morning, I was already packed so not really in a hurry. The Beer Shoppe was fairly busy, and on the TV screen they were watching the end of Life of Brian, a film I know word for word pretty much. I found myself mouthing along to it all, “…Swedish separate from Welsh…” “…I’m Brian and so’s my wife…” “…you silly sods…”, it’s been a while since I last saw it but I did watch that film a lot when I was a teenager, that and Holy Grail. I settled into a beer and just started sketching the scene, because I can’t stop drawing for a minute can I. I last sketched inside this bar about ten years ago, a similar view, some of the details on the wall have changed but otherwise it’s not really different. After the film was over some people started playing video games on the big screen, Mario Kart 8 I believe, looked like a fun way to spend the afternoon. The couple nearby me were playing chess. Got me thinking, chess, Mario Kart, Life of Brian, beers… sounds like a typical night with my older brother. If there was a game of pool and a Spurs game on, that would be it.

Here’s that one from before, it was actually August 2013, a long old time ago now. I remember coming in here once and saw that they had it as the screensaver on their computer screen, which was funny. I don’t come in here very often to actually sit and have a beer, I usually only come in to buy from the shop, they have a really good selection of beers. I’ve become a bit unconvinced about beers lately, so many of them just taste very samey, or are getting too silly and gimmicky chasing the craft beer craze with new names and labels every season, it is a bit like the football shirt fashion trends in a way (though I still keep buying those football shirts). I am still sad that Anchor Steam is gone. Still it is nice to come to a local bar that has a good atmosphere and have a two or three pints while it’s raining outside. Shame they didn’t have any of the Holy Grail Ale, that’s a Python-themed beer I used to really like.

the scum and villainy cantina

April 3, 2024Leave a comment

I arrived in downtown Los Angeles after dark, checked into my very nice hotel and nearly decided not to head out to Hollywood because it was already past dinnertime. But how often am I down this way? Not very often. So I jumped on the Metro, which didn’t take that long. The LA Metro on a Friday evening is a fun place full of all sorts of characters, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a hive of scum and villainy but it was interesting. It didn’t take long to get to Hollywood. I really like the aesthetic design of the station at Hollywood and Vine with its palm trees and movie cameras. The Oscars were happening that weekend, and further up the street they were preparing the Red Carpet. I eventually found the Scum and Villainy Cantina, one of my favourite places. I first came here in 2017, when it was just a pop-up place not expected to be permanent, and had a great evening with my friend from London (it was his birthday) and my brother-in-law. I came back a year later with my wife and son (who was then 10) for early drinks on the way back to our hotel in Burbank. So I was really pleased to see that these years later it was still going strong. It feels like the Mos Eisley Cantina, but has expanded its theme from simply Star Wars into a more general level of popular geekdom, with staff costumed in various guises such as the one guy dressed as Super Mario. I was particularly excited to see the one bartender dressed as Hunter from the Bad Batch, one of my favourite current cartoons. Some of the beertaps were lightsabres, and there was a comics-accurate Magneto helmet behind the bar. I ordered a deliciously messy “Charizard Chicken Sandwich” (I recognized Charizard from son’s Pokémon days) and a Blue Milk, of course. It was busy but not overly crowded, and I found a seat at a table with a good view of the bar, because of course I was going to sketch it. This is a very welcoming place that prides itself on being “Your Friendly Neighborhood Geek Bar”. The light was interesting; I was still getting used to my new progressive-lensed glasses so this was a test, but when it came to actually using my paints it was a bit of shot in the dark, as the blacklight changed most of my watercolours into something else, green being impossible to see. I know my palette pretty well though so I did my best, and when I looked at the sketch in proper light I was pleased with the accuracy of my colouring in. There was a lot of pink light though. I had another cocktail called Twin Sunrise, which I sketched below. I had a good evening, and the bar staff were pleased with my sketch, and the cantina reposted it on Instagram; someone commented that it looked like Snape and Voldemort were having a drink in front of me! It was just a couple on a date; I draw people pretty generically when I sketch bars (hiding features where I can – people isn’t my strong point!) (yes, despite the fact that I wrote a book about drawing people), but now I’m wishing that I had actually drawn people as sci-fi and fantasy characters, added in a Wookiee and a Gelfling or two. Maybe you can imagine the hairy figure on the left is Hagrid, crouched over. My eyesight was struggling as it was!

I nearly came back again the next evening, a fun place to hang out this was, but I was pretty tired after drawing dinosaurs all day (which was my Saturday plan) so I didn’t come back up to Hollywood, especially on the night before the Oscars when I’m sure the LA Metro would have been full of celebrities and stars. I can’t wait for my next visit back though, to try more things. I bought a pin; I wanted a t-shirt but I’ll get one of those online. If you want to see their website (check out their drinks menu!), it’s at: https://scumandvillainycantina.com/. If you’re in LA, check them out!

armadillo music

March 4, 2024Leave a comment

Another two-page spread, though I didn’t reach the edge of the right-hand page. I went downtown right after work that day and the light was so nice that I decided to do a sketch, and decided to draw Armadillo Music. You can’t really see the golden pre-sunset light because I didn’t colour in the sky or the trees or any of the shading but I did colour in the record store, and the reflection of old city hall in the window opposite. That said, I wasn’t that happy with how the coloured-in record store turned out, and my initial idea to just colour in a few elements would have been the better choice in this case, but you live and learn. I got a cold drink from Newsbeat and stood drawing as much as I could, but stopped short of drawing more parked cars, I’m so sick of drawing those, they all look exactly the same anyway. The record store by the way is Armadillo Music, one of those proper part-of-the-cultural-fabric spots in Davis. I don’t buy records any more, or even CDs, but the existence of good record shops is vastly more important culturally to any society than yet another chain coffee shop. I don’t go out as much these days, but I really should go down there on evenings when they have live music or other events, they serve beer and get good numbers in. The band of one of my work colleagues has played there a couple of times, but I always seem to be busy. It’s on my wish-list to go and sketch an event there though.

Armadillo’s old location was a couple of doors down F Street, and that’s where I first discovered it (back when I was still buying music), and in fact it’s where my first ever art show in Davis was held back in early 2011 (during the monthly ArtAbout), before even my solo show at the Pence. They were super nice in there, and really supportive of local artists and I’ll always appreciate the boost that show gave to my confidence. It was an exhibit of prints of my drawings, with the real sketchbooks displayed on the night, and there was also a live show by local musician Rita Hosking, who had just been touring in Britain and other places, she was pretty well-known, so there was a good crowd in the small store that evening. I had quite a few come to see me though, as well as a bunch of students from our grad program coming out to show their support. Here is a picture from that night:

Here’s the sketch I did of Rita Hosking and her band (it was January 2011 not 2010, I am useless with getting the year right when it’s January):

And here is a sketch I did of Armadillo back in 2013, the old location (opening a new sketchbook, so I decided to to put the big “DAVIS, CA” lettering there for some reason):

And finally, another one in 2017 of the current location, the only time I’ve drawn it:

positively tired on fourth street

March 3, 20242 Comments

More sketching downtown on the last weekend in February. This was done on 4th Street, and I guess I’ve drawn this panorama before several years ago, just from a little bit further down. This was done a few hours after I had run the Davis Stampede 5k, my third time doing that, so my legs felt a little bit cream-crackered after standing for a while with my sketchbook. I’m still well interested in all these winter trees, the shapes and the textures. My run went pretty well, considering I haven’t really had enough time to train since the food-and-drink-tastic Christmas break, with work being so busy and things just being a bit stressful, but I did alright and really enjoyed the run, though it was a few minutes slower than my last 5k. In fact since last weekend I’ve done another three 5k runs, and while I’ve still not cut out the junk food yet, I’m feeling like I can keep going to try and do the (gulp) 7k Lucky Run later this month. I’ve never run that distance before so I’m building myself up to it, and then I will work on getting to the 10k distance. Easy does it, I’m not going for marathons, but I am enjoying it while I can do it. Anyway, after getting as far as I could with this, most of the penwork except all those scribbles for the background trees and some of the colouring, I headed off to a local brewpub to rest those legs with a beer (the beer wasn’t very good though). I have quite a few panoramas in this sketchbook already, though I’m hoping to finish it this month and finally start landscape sketchbook #50.

a familiar sight, slightly different height

February 29, 2024February 29, 2024Leave a comment

Today is a Leap Day, isn’t it. It’s always exciting to have an extra day in February, but this February has felt longer than most other months so that extra day feels like a day too far. It’s a long winter quarter. I’m looking forward to my upcoming trip to L.A. to draw dinosaurs and not think about this campus for a couple of days. Leap Days are funny though. We all know someone who has a birthday on a Leap Day, there was a girl in my class as a kid who had that birthday every four years, to much amusement. I always thought it would be funny if instead of putting the extra day in February, it could be moved around a bit, so next Leap Year we would have a March 32nd, for example, or maybe for once we could start the New Year on the 0th of January. Imagine having that as your birthday. I always wondered too, what do dogs do? One of our years is supposedly worth seven dog’s years, so when do they calculate their birthdays, and do they get annoyed when people forget? Maybe that’s why they are always chasing postmen, they are looking for birthday cards. Such lofty thoughts go through our heads when looking out above the campus from the top of the stairwell at the Mathematical Sciences Building, my place of work since this very week in 2006. That was not a Leap Year, though the previous year was a personal Leap Year for me, when I made the Leap across the Atlantic and moved to America. I’ve been away from London a long time now. Anyway, as I finished work one day last week I saw that the sky was looking pretty dramatic, and the light was getting golden as the sun set, so I went up the stairwell a bit and painted the sky and the famous water tower, before drawing all the bits underneath. There’s the Earth and Physical Sciences Building on the right, and the rear of King Hall dead ahead just beyond the low Facilities Building. It’s a nice view, looking east.

my train of thought

February 24, 2024Leave a comment

Last weekend I took an afternoon at the California State Railroad Museum. There was a big rainstorm coming in and I thought that’s a good place to spend a rainy day. It ended up not raining until the evening, but I still got to draw a lot of trains so that was nice. I also got the day before some new glasses, these ‘progressive’ lenses, that are better for up-close at the bottom (ie, when looking down at my sketchbook) and better for distance up to, however they are also blurry looking down at the floor or in my peripheral vision. It takes getting used to and it’s making me a bit dizzy. Anyway I wanted to try out drawing in a lower light environment like this. It was frustrating at first, and I tried to switch back to my other glasses, but my up-close was not as good in low light. anyway I soldiered on, I had engines to draw. The one above I drew in the brown fountain pen ink, it’s one of the first big locomotive engines you see in the museum. Seeing these remind me of the plastic train set toys I had as a kid, that looked nothing like any train I’d seen in England, but I imagined them barreling across the vast American West. They can be a bit complicated to draw, stretching the observation skills a bit, but my strain was really in the new glasses as much as anything. (Also I’ve never liked drawing wheels).

I walked about looking at it all, the history of the West before me. I’m really into trains and always dream of making a long train journey, like the California Zephyr (which stops in Davis as well as Sacramento) heading out towards Chicago. I read Murder on the Orient Express recently and became obsessed with those really high-end trains as well, looking at videos online of the super expensive train routes to exotic places. Silly. I do love a train journey though. We used to come to this museum quite a lot when my son was very young, a toddler, and look around before making a beeline for the section with all the toy trains, that was the best bit. We got rid of his old wooden train tracks and trains and bridges a long time ago, I used to love setting those up myself. Those were fun moments. He was really into Thomas the Tank Engine, as were most kids weren’t they (and it used to bug me when people over here would say “Thomas Train” like seriously, do you even watch it?). Ringo didn’t do the voices over here, and the Fat Controller was called “Sir Topham Hat” in America, which is probably a bit nicer. For the panorama sketch above, I sat on a bench in the main atrium and drew the scene as best I could, I was already getting quite tired. There were families with their young kids excited about the big engines, and on their way to play with all the toy trains, that was us a long time ago.

Th train engine I drew was this one, the Virginia and Truckee No. 18 “The Dayton”. I am not much of a trainspotter and cannot remember all the models and information. It’s an impressive engine this though. When I was a kid there was this trope that kids wanted to be a train driver (by the 1980s I think that was the sort of thing your grandparents would say), but I always wanted to be a train passenger, it’s a more reachable ambition. There was also (and still is maybe) the image of the trainspotter in their anorak, people still use the word ‘anorak’ to describe anyone sufficiently geeky to be uncool, with their thermos and their thick glasses. I mean, I’ve always been in the anorak camp myself, I wander about with a sketchbook drawing whatever, and I love to draw things like trains because they represent the human spirit of discovery and ingenuity, curiosity and story. Imagine if we had gone straight from the world of wagons to freeways and not had that great idea of train travel in between? The world is better for the train.

trees before the super bowl

February 21, 2024February 20, 20242 Comments

I really like drawing two-page panoramas, as you have probably realized, but the format of my blog is not super conducive to looking at them. It shrinks them to around 600 pixels across, making it a bit too small. You can click on the image of course and see it in full widescreen glory on my Flickr page, and without all the fairly tedious accompanying text. I feel the need to write a few things down here, very self-indulgently and only occasionally caring about ending sentences, but over there I’m like Silent Bob. I could change the format of my blog, but I really like this format, it works for me when I’m reading through it. I’ve looked at other layouts, but they’re all a bit bloated, not for me guv. For me it’s still 2007 in terms of blog formats. That time went by fast. I wish my eyes still looked like they did in 2007. I’m glad Spurs don’t play like they did in 2007. Anyway, back to the drawing. This is in old North Davis, corner of 7th and B, on a bright Sunday after my birthday (whatever that is) I got out on the bike for a bit and sat at a table outside a school and draw the scene above. It was the trees that drew me in, especially the two on each side, which were textured on these dark orange-brown leaves wrapped around their trunks. I was fascinated by those textures, and I loved the shapes of the bare trees behind. It’s what I appreciate about this time of year, right before the blossom and the buds. I sat there quite a while, until it was time to head home and watch some of the Super Bowl. It was already halfway done by the time I got home, but I didn’t really watch it, until late in the game, and that’s only because it was the San Francisco 49ers and they are my wife’s family’s team. We watched it with the Spongebob commentary and graphics, because it was a bit more fun. It was annoying how often they cut to Taylor Swift, who is the most famous singer in the history of the world at the moment (I have as yet been unable to convince my family that she is a descendant of Jonathan Swift, and was named after former England manager Graham Taylor, which is why she has songs called “Do I Not Like That” and “Can We Not Knock It”). We had listened to a whole one of her albums in the car ride back from Truckee, and I swiftly fell asleep. I’ve got nothing against Swift though, she is alright, seems like a good person. I just didn’t want the team her current boyfriend (I think he’s called Chelsea or Millwall or something) plays for to win though, because we were cheering for the 49ers. Actually I didn’t really mind. People watch the Super Bowl for the adverts anyway, that’s what they say. Tottenham have as good a chance of winning the Super Bowl as the Premier League. More maybe, since they play NFL games at our amazing stadium in N17 (which I learned is the most northerly stadium ever to host an NFL game). I was disappointed at the end though, even though it was one of the most exciting and thrilling ends to a game in history, when the Subaru advert just pipped the Geico commercial at the last minute to take the W, as they say here. Sports are funny, you win Bowls, Cups, even Wooden Spoons, you could end up with a whole kitchen set. Chance would be a fine thing, following Tottenham.