Monumental

July 13, 2023July 13, 20233 Comments

I went up The Monument. “The Monument? Which Monument? I hear you ask. Aha, The Monument. That’s all Londoners call it, and it has its own tube station called simply ‘Monument’ so that’s that (it joins up with the station called ‘Bank’ which is named after The Bank of England which we never call “The Bank”). I could write a whole book on tube station names, but it’s probably been done, I would only be using it as an excuse to draw pictures. Anyway, the full name of The Monument is actually The Monument To the Great Fire of London, and yes, it is exactly that. And I went up it, for the first time since I was in my teens. I’ve not had much of a reason to go back up there in all these years, and I do muddle up my old your guide stories about it occasionally (no it is not 365 feet high and no it does not grow a foot in leap years, that is St.Paul’s as everyone knows). It was created by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke as a huge column topped with a shiny golden ball of flames and an observation deck, so people can climb up the narrow spiral stair case (all 311 steps) and look out over the rebuilt city that Wren had created. Well I wanted to go up there and draw. The City keeps on changing, and since the last time I saw that view from that angle was in the early 1990s, it was bound to have changed a bit. The first time I went up I was about 15 or 16, and I remember getting to the top, and finding myself still looking up at buildings, while also being at the top of a very narrow stone column with just some bars stopping me from plummeting. They do say that if The Monument ever fell on its side (presumably at the exactly correct angle) it would hit the spot where the Great Fire began, in Pudding Lane. Since it had never happened, there was no chance of it toppling over, but as I reached the very tight confines of the top, my knees went all “Ossie Ardiles 1981”, and I nearly bottled it. I forced myself to the top platform, and hugged the wall with my back, edging slowly around. There was a German couple up there taking loads of photos oblivious to the height, and I thought, well Pete you better get to work on this sketch. So I whipped out my Fabriano sketchbook and my HB pencil and drew the view as well as I could. The idea was that I’d add in the pen up there, and maybe colour it in later.

Another man joined us on the platform and he like me was just edging around the column slowly in a state of terror. “Me too, mate” I said reassuringly. Despite the very sturdy looking barriers, I was convinced that I would drop my pen, and it would plummet down to the streets below, probably taking out someone’s eye and impaling them in the neck, and I would have to get a different pen. So as far as I got with the penwork was drawing Tower Bridge and a couple of other details. It started getting windy, and hello, that was it for me mate. I said Auf Wiedersehen to my brave German friends still taking photos (actually they had left long before so I was basically saying goodbye in German to a pair of American tourists) and went back down that long spiral staircase, hoping that nobody passed me coming back up.

When I reached the bottom, to my surprise they gave me a certificate that certified that I had climbed all 311 steps of The Monument. That was nice. I then went to buy some new pants. Only joking. It did remind me though of that first time I climbed up here (no certificate in those days, at least not for me) and I said something about Wren being “a nutter” to the attendant, who grumbled a possible agreement, and I had this idea about doing a project where I drew and wrote about all of Wren’s buildings in the city, and it was not until the 2010s that I did something along those lines, when I organized two big Wren-themed sketchcrawls, the first one in 2014 starting at The Monument and ending at St.Paul’s, and the second one in 2016 doing the reverse, culminating in a big group photo outside The Monument after we as a group had drawn every single Wren building in the City, all in one day, an achievement so big I’ve never got around to organizing another London sketchcrawl. Read about that sketchcrawl here. I’m still into Wren though, and I’m glad I went up The Monument. I decided to finish the inking of that drawing over the top of the pencil sketch, using what photos I dared to take as reference, and that’s the complicated panorama sketch at the top of the post. I’m very pleased with that one, click on it for a closer view.

as long as I gaze on, i am in paradise

July 11, 2023July 10, 2023Leave a comment

Before heading over to Mile End, I got out at Embankment station and onto Hungerford Bridge. Sorry, I mean the Golden Jubilee Bridge (Hungerford Bridge is just the rail bridge in the middle now, but I still remember the shaky old walkway on the side from years ago, it’s much nicer now). I wanted to start my day with a little bit of my favourite river, and draw this view towards Waterloo Bridge once again. I had intended to add in the blue and white sky, the brownish tinged Thames, but I got too hot standing on the bridge. I went and sat on a bench on the embankment beneath a tree to add it all in, but by that time the moment had passed, and my perspective changed all the colours, (that can happen with reflective objects like a river), and so I went to Mile End instead. But I’m glad I got this sketch done, as it’s been a while. Below are two other panoramic sketches from a similar location (not exactly precise, but same half of the bridge). The colour one is from 2016, the other is from 2012. Well, you can see the difference in the skyline. Obviosuly the bottom one includes the Shard but I didn’t go that far in the other two, but in the City itself, the buildings are all change. When I left London, it was just Tower 42 (the old Nat West Tower) and the Gherkin (Swiss Re as it was called, but it was always the Erotic Gherkin), just to the right of St. Paul’s. Now those are all but invisible from this view. There will probably be more coming, unless the economic downturn means fewer novelty skyscraping, but next time I draw this in about four or five years, we will see. I’ll need better glasses then, my eyes ain’t getting any younger.

Click on any of these sketches for a slightly bigger view, that will save you just moving your face closer to the screen.

monday evening in covent garden

July 7, 2023July 7, 2023Leave a comment

Later that day – sorry, I realize several weeks passed by in between writing the posts for my London sketches from Monday May 15th, but I had another trip back to London in June, which included an eight-day trip to Scotland, and now suddenly we are a week into July and my ears are still ringing from the plane – anyway, later that day, I walked over to Covent Garden to do some more sketching. The previous Saturday night I had spent a very fun evening out around here with my old friends Roshan and Frenchie, which involved many laughs during dinner, ending up at the Nag’s Head pub which features in the background of both of my sketches here. Incidentally this is not the only Nag’s Head pub that I would sketch on that trip in May, but the other one will be posted later. I decided to take up position opposite Covent Garden tube station (one of the beautiful oxblood-tiled Leslie Green tube stations), to draw a two-page panorama, which I like to do. There were a lot of people around, being about 5pm on a Monday. In the place where I sketched there happened to be a group of Hare Krishnas who were out chasing people up and down Long Acre asking “have you thought about meditation?” One of them was very enthusiastic, following people like an eager salesman. Nearby, those pedal-cab things were congregating as they do. People were out shopping, this is one of the best shopping areas of the city. One of my favourite shops, Stanfords (they sell maps and travel books) is very close by. Posters advertised musicals like Frozen and Mrs Doubtfire: the musical. I swear, going by all the posters I saw in London, there is nothing that city will not turn into a musical. I’m waiting for “Urban Sketching: The Musical”. Taxis pulled up, letting people in and out, on their way to see a musical probably. People hurried by me on the pavement to get to wherever they were going. I used to be one of those people; I would pass by this corner on my run (I would literally be running) from the 134 bus stop down to the King’s College campus, when I was doing my Master’s in medieval English almost two decades ago. Now, I just focused on my sketch, on all that perspective. I think I had intended to make this full colour, and I had the time and the daylight, although after a while not so much of the energy, so I left it as is. Getting the sky in was important. It was a really lovely mid-May day, the sort where standing out on a London street is pretty much the right thing to do. I was in no hurry, I did not need to be back anywhere, I had no plans. But I was getting hungry, so I went to a nearby Pho place and had a delicious big bowl of pho. I’m going to put a picture of it here just to make you hungry.

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And then I went to Floral Street, and did one last sketch of the day, a block over from where I did the first. I stood outside the White Lion pub, looking towards the Nag’s Head again (in the top sketch the Nag’s Head is in the far bottom left of the scene). There were many drinkers outside the pubs; again I had intended to colour this in, going as far as adding in some yellow blotches for the flowers, but in the end I didn’t have time and didn’t fancy adding it in at home, as I was a bit tired. I didn’t stop into either pub though; instead I went over to the Lamb and Flag for a quick pint before grabbing some food from Tesco Metro and getting the tube home to bed. A very productive day of London urban sketching.

50p down the market

June 13, 2023June 12, 20232 Comments

Saturday morning, London, I didn’t have any concrete plans for the day but was meeting old friends in the evening. I had the whole day to explore and sketch, but wasn’t completely sure where I’d go yet. I had a list of places I wanted to sketch on this trip, places in London that I had not been to in a very long time. I decided to head for Notting Hill Gate, and walk down to Portobello Road Market. I honestly cannot remember the last time I went there, maybe once when my wife first moved to England 21 years ago? I know I went there with my mate Terry once in about 2001. In the mid-90s I used to come to Notting Hill a lot as I had a friend who lived here, though even then I didn’t really go to the Market very often, usually because it was always so busy, and I didn’t really like crowds. Also I worked on Saturdays, didn’t I, back then? Memory fades. Still it had been a really long time since I was even last in Notting Hill, so it was an interesting experience to be back, and there is lots to sketch. First of all, the Central Line was jam packed, and everyone was getting out at Notting Hill Gate tube. Portobello Market is a really popular tourist destination, and it seemed like most of the voices I heard were Italian or American. After a little wandering about I walked down to the Market, past all the little vintage clothes stores and antique stalls and colourful shopfronts. I ate an early lunch at a place that does eggs called ‘Eggslut’ and paid like thirteen quid for a salmon and egg sandwich. Thirteen quid. Prices in England are through the roof right now. When I was a kid, my friend Terry used to help out his Grandad at Portobello Market on Saturdays, his grandad Charlie Bonello (who was Maltese and a great laugh, he used to tell us silly jokes) had a market stall down here, and there was one phrase he would always say whenever Terry would buy something his grandad thought was overpriced, he’d say “50p down the market!” So that became out catchphrase (one of them) for years since. I thought of him when I was paying thirteen quid for a salmon and egg sandwich, I could hear him telling me “Thirteen quid?! 50p down the market!” Except this was that same market. Times have changed since the late 80s, I guess.

I found a spot next to a big fruit and veg stall, overlooking the crossroads with Colville Terrace and Elgin Crescent, next to this trendy looking tea shop, and stood for a long while drawing the scene as it snaked towards me. There were a lot of people around, so I drew passers-by in that usual way, not really drawing anyone in particular but mixing and matching bits of different people as they went by. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is entirely coincidental, although someone did pass by with that exact mohawk and beard combination, so he had to go in the book (he probably wasn’t wearing a massive white shirt but I was tired and lazy with my observations. First drawing of the day, and I was tired already? Well I’d been out late the night before, but I was standing here for quite a while and my legs were hurting. My legs hurt even looking at this drawing. I didn’t want to sit, you need a better view. I coloured most of it in later (except for a few parts I’d started), but there was a lot of ink drawing to do on site, and that Fabriano watercolour sketchbook really makes your pen work on that paper. I had ‘pre-prepared’ the paper a little bit this time, adding a thin wash of paint over the pages the day before, and that helped the pen move a little bit faster but still not as smooth as in the Moleskine. Still I love to sketch a market, and now I’ve finally sketched Portobello. If you want a print of this, well it will be more than 50p down the market, I need to offset the cost of that sandwich somehow…

At the entrance of Portobello Road itself, where it curves into Pembridge Road, there’s this big yellow pub called the Sun in Splendour. I’ve never been in there actually, and didn’t on this day either, but I wanted to draw this colourful corner so I stood over by the e-bike stand on the other side of the road. The first thing I drew was the pile of orange rubbish bags on the pavement. They were soon taken by the garbage trucks. Why keep those in you ask? Well I have my reasons. Look at all the people making their way to or from Portobello Market, I didn’t colour those in as I went along, and you can see there are four people in red, almost entirely evenly spaced out, which is weird. Anyway one thing I wanted to do was try out my gold gel pen for the pub name. I did this a few times in sketches on this trip, and sometimes it didn’t really stand out as much, but in this case it did. I had to remember not to spell ‘Splendour’ in the American way. It did remind me of the sugar substitute they use in the US.

Around here, I saw a lot of references to the 1999 film Notting Hill, the one with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts which should be considered very cheesy and a bit naff, but in fact I love that film, I’m a fan of lots of the people in it, and sure it’s definitely cheese, but who cares. I remember one night at university when I was doing drama, I wasn’t feeling that well and had worked late on drama projects, I forget exactly what we were working on, but it went on really late and I was pretty exhausted. In those days I had a very long tube journey home back from Mile End to Burnt Oak, and was not massively looking forward to it. Sometimes I would stop halfway and get out at Camden Town, and go and see a film at the Odeon on Parkway before heading back to bed. On this one night I didn’t even get to Camden, I popped into a cinema in Stepney Green (which is probably long gone) and watched Notting Hill, and I have to say it totally cheered me up. Sure that silly Elvis Costello rendition of “She” was crooning all over the place, but the soundtrack was pretty great, and I dunno, it just put me in a good mood, and I was ready and up for things again the next day. Doing a drama degree was pretty exhausting, London was pretty exhausting. In fact I went back to Mile End on this trip, visited my old university, did some sketching; more on that in a later post.

Further up Pembridge Road, the little shops lining the street up towards Notting Hill Gate are colourful and worth sketching. That fish and chip shop across the street was busy, next to a vintage clothes shop. There have always been those little shops around here. I’m not really into old clothes or fashion, with the obvious exception of football shirts, of which I’m a football fashion afficionado. I did notice that many of the people in the street were wearing light puffer jackets, it wasn’t cold but it wasn’t that warm either. I stood against an iron railing and drew them, while people sat on steps next to me eating their lunch and smoking. There seem to be a lot more smokers about, and loads more of those bloody vapers, with their little plastic vapes and huge clouds of sticky sickly vapor. At least with smokers you can see the puff of smoke coming when walking behind them, with vapers it just appears as you’re walking by and fogs up the narrow sidewalk, gross. Definitely worse than it was a few years ago. Anyway I moved down a little bit towards cleaner air and sat on some steps to add some paint. As I did, someone came up and said “this is going to be an odd question but can I film you while you draw? Just for a few seconds.” I was like, sure why not. At least you asked, which is nice, I wouldn’t really have cared. Then about five minutes later, I swear, a girl came up and said, “Do you mind if I ask you something?” I said, to her surprise, “You want to film me sketching?” “Yes!” she said, “Is that ok?” She did have her phone in her hand as if ready to shoot so it was a good guess, but I said “Sure no problem, it’s just funny ‘cos you’re the second person in five minutes to ask me!” I suppose people like to see people sketching the world. I love being a tourist.

The last thing I drew that day was an old pub I have been in before, the Prince Albert, but not since about 1997 or 1998 I think. It’s changed a lot since then, but it’s still there round the corner from Notting Hill Gate tube station. It’s pretty swanky inside with its fancy food; I popped in to use the toilet after sketching outside for a while, my legs getting very tired by this point, and ended up staying in for a pint and to add some of the colour. That red car outside, it was stopped in traffic for a little bit and I drew it very quickly, probably not very accurately but it seemed appropriate for the area. Yeah I got a pint, it was £7.10, and not that nice (I didn’t even finish it). “£7.10” I said, “50p down the Market”. Turns out £7.10 is a pretty average price for a pint in London these days, it’s gone up a lot since even last year. Everything has, food, transport, energy. It’s a good job the Buck is still strong against the Quid. There was a big screen on in the pub playing one of the play-off games, I think it was one with Notts County playing Chesterfield at Wembley for a chance to return to the Football League (wait, neither Notts County nor Chesterfield were in the Football League? I didn’t realize). I didn’t stay for the whole thing but there was a group of Aussies (in a London pub, you are never very far from a group of Aussies) watching the game and discussing their careers in the music industry, from what I could gather, I wasn’t really listening, could have been Jason Donovan for all I know. It was nice to get off my feet for a bit though. I love wandering and sketching, but you need to stop and rest. After this, I wandered Notting Hill for a bit more, walking down to the Churchill arms on Kensington Church Street, which was a pub I used to really enjoy evenings out in years ago, and is on my bucket list to draw, but I didn’t have time to sketch on this occasion. I took a quick snap (for a from-photo pub-drawing to be done later) and headed to Leicester Square where I’d be meeting up with some very old friends for an evening of dinner and drinks and laughs. It was fun to wander around this old haunt for a bit though.

compassion corner

May 7, 20233 Comments

This past week has been a very difficult time for our community in Davis, and this is a difficult local news event to write about here. This is the ‘Compassion Corner’, where 3rd Street meets C Street, so called because of the Compassion Bench, a colourful ceramic bench built about a decade ago at the place where David Breaux, known locally as the ‘Compassion Guy’, would stand and talk to people about compassion, empathy, understanding. He had this idea, to bring awareness about compassion to people, aksing them to write into his notebook what they felt compassion to be. I passed him many times in the street over the years; I never spoke to him myself. On the lunchtime of Thursday April 27, we all got a notification on our phones about police activity in Central Park, and to avoid the area. That was very unusual. I didn’t discover until later that evening that a man had been murdered, and it was David Breaux, found on a bench in the park. He’d been stabbed; we didn’t know when, or any of the circumstances. He was 50. The community was in shock, David was well loved.

Two days after David’s murder, on Saturday evening, our phones went off again, this time there was a ‘disturbance’ in a different park, Sycamore Park. A 20 year old UC Davis student, Karim Abou Najm, was cycling back from an undergrad awards event when he was attacked with a knife, and died at the scene. Witnesses saw the person who did it escape. The city was in shock, people were anxious about being out at night, though it wasn’t clear the cases were related. Then on Monday night our phones went off again at about 1am, another knife attack, this time a woman at a homeless camp near the train tracks; the victim, a woman named Kimberlee, survived; witnesses saw the suspect escape. The police searched everywhere, the FBI were called in, and the community was in a state of alarm at the thought of a serial killer among us. This was a very real situation, nobody knew what would happen next. In an effort to discourage people from being out after dark, UC Davis announced that classes after 6pm would be held remotely, while shops and restaurants downtown all started closing by 8pm.

I went down to the corner of 3rd and C on Wednesday to look at the tributes laid out for David Breaux at the Compassion Bench. There was a news reporter there with a camera, wanting to talk to people who knew David. I said I didn’t really want to say much, not having known him myself, but I’ll be sketching the tributes. I realized I had actually forgotten my pens, left them in my office; none of us have been really sleeping much this week, and my mind was really not 100%. So I went to the Paint Chip and bought a new pencil and pen (a Micron 05 in sepia, not my usual pen these days but still nothing like drawing with a fresh micron pen). As I sketched, people stopped for a while by the bench, some leaving tributes, others just deep in thought.

Compassion Corner 050323 smR

I was going to draw just the bench itself, but decided to draw the whole scene as a panorama. It was important to show the context, show this place in connection to the city around it, a street I have drawn so many times. The same day I was sketching this, it was announced that a person of interest had been taken into custody by police following a report of an individual matching the witness description, right down to the actual clothes worn, who was hanging around at the site of the second murder, where many tributes had been left. The next day, police announced that an arrest had been made, and that the suspect was a 21 year old male who had been expelled from UC Davis the week before, two days before the horrifying murder of David Breaux. The city and campus breathed a collective sigh of relief, but there remain feelings of sadness, exhaustion, shock. It’s difficult for me to fully understand it all. The Davis Enterprise has been doing some amazing reporting on the case, the journalist Lauren Keene always does a great job at keeping us informed: https://www.davisenterprise.com/news/local/breaking-suspect-21-arrested-in-davis-serial-stabbings/. David Breaux spoke to everyone about compassion, and his message is being more widely heard now, at a testing time.

You can learn more about David Breaux’s compassion initiative here: https://charterforcompassion.org/11eleven-project/david-h-breaux-compassion-initiative. Last Sunday a large group gathered to pay tribute in a vigil

For Karim Abou Najm, hundreds attended a service for him at UC Davis last Friday afternoon. I know faculty who knew him, and he had a bright future, taken from him. However he was a great inspiration as well. A special fund has been set up by UC Davis in his name to raise funds for Undergraduate Student Research Awards. You can learn more and donate to those here: https://give.ucdavis.edu/VCSA/125342 .

another view of the MSB

April 24, 2023Leave a comment

This is the Mathematical Sciences Building (MSB) at UC Davis, the building that has been my work home since I joined the campus along time ago. I wanted to draw a new view of it, this time slightly set back from the street (California Avenue; it was called Crocker Way when I first started), stood outside the entrance to the Earth and Physical Sciences Building (unseen to my left), which was not even there when I first started. Also missing are some trees, the largest and most recent to leave this earthy realm fell in the massive new years eve storms, along with hundreds of others trees. It’s left quite a gap, it provided some good shade in the summer for those sitting outside, although we still have the big wide spread tree you can see there that will keep us cool. I have drawn the building in panorama a few times over the years, we use those on our mugs and stickers and Stats department website, though each new drawing there is another tree missing. Be nice if this building were just a little bit bigger though, so we could have more office space. The perennial problem. The winter storms and rain look like they are finally over now, here in late April, and suddenly BAM it’s summer. It will be 90 degrees most days this week. The allergies have kicked into full gear, as always happens when the heat cranks up, but with everything being watered so much this year there has been a lot more growth, so the pollen is through the roof, as it were. I had to stay home today, the allergies were so bad that I didn’t actually sleep at all last night. At 5am or so I messaged work to say I wouldn’t be in and then worked from my bed until I eventually fell asleep around 7am, though not for long. Stupid allergies. I also saw that Spurs sacked their interim manager today, Stellini, the Tottenham merry-go-round continues, not so merry after losing 6-1 to Newcastle. But back to the MSB.

Below is another panorama sketch I did last month, inside the MSB Colloquium Room, at a mini-conference we held in honour of our emeriti faculty. It was really great having our eminent retired professors back, I’d not seen some of them since before the pandemic, and we had several presentations by our younger faculty, such as this one by Asst Prof. Mina Karzand. I’ve been with the Stats department a long time myself now so I gave a little speech as well with my memories and moments with each of them, and thanking them for establishing a welcoming culture in our department that we’ve tried to maintain. It was a nice event, and so I had to sketch it.

the mustard seed and the cloud forest

April 17, 2023April 15, 2023Leave a comment

This is D Street, Davis. There is a big gap of nothing to the left where I couldn’t quite be bothered to draw the car that was there. It moved and became a different car, and well, I just didn’t want to include it. I drew it over a couple of visits, fully intending to draw it in full colour because the colours were quite nice, but ended up only keeping the red because that’s what stood out most. Your mind will fill the rest in. If that sounds like a Jedi mind-trick, it is. The British phone box outside the Mustard Seed (a fancy and not cheap restaurant which I last went to with my wife for our anniversary in September, and was pleasantly surprised to find they had one of my drawings of that very phone box on the wall) was also one of the first things I drew in Davis, if I remember rightly. That summer of 2006 when I started really filling my sketchbooks, I painted it, no ink drawing, and it made me happy. A little piece of home, like the big red buses, here in my new home. When my son was very little we would come by here and pretend that the phone box was a rocket ship taking us to the moons of Saturn. Then it got chained up so people couldn’t use for interplanetary space travel any more. This being a panorama you will need to click on the link (takes you to my Flickr site) to see it in more detail. That’s the Cloud Forest Cafe on the left, another popular place that I’ve drawn before. I like the little narrow alleyway directly in the center, there are some cute little places in there, and then it leads you through a (slightly smelly) back alley which leads through to E Street, or if you turn right you get to the rear of the Pence Gallery. This is a nice spot in Davis, it’s no surprise that when important visitors or prospective faculty come to campus they are often taken here.

take a seat on G Street

February 13, 2023February 21, 2023Leave a comment

The catch-up on my 2022 sketches goes into October; this panorama of G Street was drawn on a Saturday afternoon in mid-October on a hot Fall day, sat on the kerb (that’s ‘curb’ to Americans) until my body hurt. I used to be ok sitting on the kerb, but these days I’m so used to standing while sketching that I don’t like sitting right on the street as much, so I ‘curb’ that activity. I don’t even bring along the little fold-up stool like I used to, though I still have one that’s nice and light to carry. I have this idea, not so much in Davis but in other places (London for example) where you might get hassled by a busy-body who thinks you shouldn’t be there on the street near their place, their office or their shop, and try to move you along. It’s rarely happened, though I’ve heard of it and it did happen once in London to my friends who were sketching in the city of London with me on a Sunday, they sat down to draw a church, and a security guy inside the office building next to us came right out and tried to move them along for, I’m not sure what, blocking the view from the window? It was as far as they were concerned their sidewalk (not actually true, they were on the public right of way), and it didn’t matter that they were obviously just drawing the church, this guy wanted them to move. I was standing; he didn’t talk to me. I have heard of other sketchers and artists being moved about by busybody street security guards who like to overreach, even when standing. So maybe that’s one reason I don’t like to sit when sketching? Not really; I usually know my rights. The main reason is I get a better view when standing, and usually if I sit, the worst thing that will happen is a car will park in the way and block my view. Well on this occasion, I did feel like sitting down on the kerb. This section of G Street has been informally pedestrianized since the pandemic, when the restaurants along here were forced to take their businesses out onto the streets – go to the kerbs, or curb your business, I guess. It’s pretty much stayed that way, so on these balmy summery afternoons (in October) it’s usually full of people, drinking outside the University of Beer or eating outside Woodstocks. On this day it was not super busy, but still pretty vibrant. I sat on the kerb (with some subconscious trepidation, obviously) and drew the view of the Kathmandu Kitchen, the G Street Wunderbar, and the sushi place in between whose name I forget. I went to that sushi place once, back in (wow) 2006, when my friend Terry visited (he likes Japanese food; he lives in Yokohama now). My only memories are that you had to go into the G Street Pub (as it was called then) to use the toilet, and also Terry asking if I’d heard of ‘Teriyaki’ before and me pretending I hadn’t so he could explain it. I think I’ve only been to Kathmandu Kitchen once too, maybe in 2006 or 2007? I remember we weren’t that impressed, comparing with the similar foods we would get back home in London, and so we never ate there again, though I keep thinking we’ll try it again some time. Finally, the G Street Wunderbar. I’ve not been there in years; I always associate it more with live music, or loud music, and young people, or loud people, just a different vibe from the regular pub feel of De Vere’s (may gawd rest its soul). I’ve sketched it a few times, first when it was the old G Street Pub, and one time about ten years ago, during a particularly busy Spring Break week, when I really needed to draw a complicated curvilinear panorama, I came here and sat in the middle of the bar and drew all those bottles, while the bar light around me changed colours and people filed in taking shots of whatever and talking. That sketch is below. I really loved a bit of curvilinear then; I need to do more of those, I enjoyed looking at rooms in that style. That’s why I’d sit in the middle of the bar, to get as central a view as I could. You have to be a little bold to do that, when your instinct is to hide away and be unnoticed. Perhaps I could have approached the sketch above in this way; if I had, I might have to have sat right in the middle of the road, to get a more close-up view, and let my vision of the buildings curve naturally. Which is a thing I can do, since G Street is closed up. Actually I always let things curve, even if only slightly, although in the above panorama my awkward seating contributed to the curviness having a little bit of wonkiness (more ‘curbilinear’ than ‘curvilinear’) (or ‘kerbilinear’). Right, new new year’s resolution (my birthday was last week so it’s a new year for me anyway), draw more curvilinear interiors and exteriors again, like I used to a decade ago.

summertime in davis, 2022

February 1, 2023February 2, 2023Leave a comment

Still playing catch-up from last summer, here are the rest of the sketches from downtown Davis in summer 2022, including September, which very much is still summer when it’s a hundred million degrees outside. The panorama above though is from the end of August, and is one of our favourite Davis shops, The Paint Chip. They have art supplies and do framing, and when I was doing the sketchcrawls (it has been a while…) they would always put up the flyer in their window. The people outside are actually a painted mural on the side of the building; except for the redhead in front of the window, she was real. The dog behind was not real, that is a painting. Next door, Tibet Nepal, not in the location that I drew it last, it moved from the corner of G Street when they redeveloped that whole quarter. I stood outside the Old City Hall building (now empty) in the shade to draw this.

Speaking of chips, odd incident yesterday evening in Habit Burger in Folsom. It wasn’t busy, but there were four staff members behind the counter, one guy was talking very loudly about British food, not exactly sure why. He kept saying how someone called fries ‘chips’ and he was ‘offended’ at that, and then started going on about fish and chips and other foods, and the other staff were joining in going on about bangers and mash and shepherds pie and spotted dick (basically the Jeopardy category, “What Americans Think We All Eat”), and then – criminally – stating loudly “and they eat beans with tomato sauce, that’s gross!” Knowing how important Baked Beans are to me culturally, my wife raised her eyebrow to me as if to say, “them’s fighting words!”. I said it sounds like he has a fry on his shoulder. The staff were talking a bit unnecessarily loudly about all this stuff and then it became clear they were actually having a go at a previous customer, who had said ‘chips’ (this guy would not let it go) and then when they overheard them making disparaging remarks about it, had told them to ‘shut up’ before leaving. They were saying all sorts of stuff about this customer too, like “she’s probably having a bad day because her husband’s cheating on her!” and “she’s just angry because we say fries”, like pretty immature comments. One of them was making these impressions by saying “shut up!”, and because it was in the direction of the customer seating, my wife actually thought they were saying it to us, so she said, “Excuse me? I haven’t said anything to you.” The eldest of them (manager maybe? Hard to tell) just said oh no, we were talking about someone who said that to us. I mean, it’s a bit rude to be talking so loudly about another customer like that in front of your customers, but mocking British stuff? So we probably won’t be eating at Habit Burger in Folsom again (we go to the one in Woodland anyway). Though if we do got back to Folsom, I will be asking for CHIPS, chips on toast, bangers and chips, spotted chips, chips in the hole, chips tikka masala, baked beans on chips (actually that’s delicious), diet chips with no ice, chips sandwich on a chip bun, etc and so on.

Next up: Black Bear Diner on B St in Davis (and much better customer service). Actually I remember one server we used to talk to there, she always seemed very all-American to me, turns out she was British but had moved over here as a young kid, never became a citizen (neither have I, yet). Black Bear Diner is a fun rustic-style diner place we first discovered in Medford Oregon years ago. We love going there for pancakes. Well, I don’t eat the pancakes, my son does, I usually get the cinnamon roll French toast (or even the bear claw French toast, when they have it). I love their country potatoes and egg scrambles and chicken sausages too. Black Bear is a chain all along the Western US now, but it’s good grub and the sort of thing I’d really crave going to if we ever lived in England again, this is what I’d miss. Even though these days we go like maybe twice a year. It’s always the place I like to go to refill after running the Turkey Trot 5k. This year however I could only manage the 2 mile (foot injury plus increasing lack of fitness and non-existent gym attendance), but I still deserved the cinnamon roll French toast.

This sketch is from 3rd Street, on the way towards campus, Tim’s Hawaiian BBQ. Or “Tim’s Hawaiian” I think it’s just called. Or are they saying Tim’s Hawaiian, that is, Tim is from Hawaii? I don’t know, but I’ve never actually eaten here. I don’t know why I never think of it, because I really like Hawaiian food now. There is this Hawaiian food truck that comes on campus called Jojo’s that I love, although their portions are so massive I often skip dinner if I’ve had that for lunch. In fact I feel so full afterwards that ‘skipping dinner’ is literally the only exercise I can do for at least 24 hours. I should try out Tim’s though, I pass it on my bike enough but always forget about it at lunchtime. You’ll notice I mis-spelled my own name on this as well. That’s because I either cannot type, or because the laptop I was using to edit the scan of this drawing is a little slow on the uptake whenever I have to type words with double letters. To mis-spell my own name though; then again Shakespeare apparently spelled his name sixteen different ways (he was probably trying to rhyme it with something). One funny thing about this sketch, on the right-hand side it feels like it slants off to the right. I feel like I’m standing with my head cocked. Maybe it’s the way it’s scanned, but I don’t think so; the sketch below does it too. I think it’s a consequence of how I hold my sketchbook, and when I get the right side I don’t necessarily draw as straight as on the left. I don’t know; either way, I quite like it. It’s one of those things that makes it more real, less mechanical and more human. You need to put yourself in these sketches, even in subconscious ways.

Next up, what’s this one, oh right this is that house on D Street I have drawn quite a few times, the one in between the Pence Gallery and the Mustard Seed restaurant. In fact I once exhibited some artwork and sketchbooks in there at an event called ‘Scene in Davis’ with some other local artists, back when this was an artist’s center and studio. Before that it was an antiques shop. Then later it became, I can’t remember, a realtors I think. I’ve exhibited in the Pence Gallery too, on several occasions, most recently in the 2022 Art Auction (I sold the drawing of that London pub, the Lamb and Flag). What I didn’t know though is that one of my drawings is on the wall of the Mustard Seed restaurant too. It’s a pretty fancy restaurant, so my wife and I went there for our 18th wedding anniversary, we hadn’t been there in, well it must be about a decade? It’s a nice treat. When we walked in though we had a pleasant surprise, my drawing of the Mustard Seed from 2011 was there on the wall. It was just a print they had bought (I presume; the original is slightly smaller and sold in my solo exhibition at the Pence in 2011) (which by the way, ELEVEN YEARS AGO now, doesn’t seem that long!). Still it was exciting to see it in this fancy place. I remembered too that when it was exhibited back in 2011 I was at the gallery talking to a local woman who had lived in Davis for many years, and she said back in the 60s she used to go to the house which is now the Mustard Seed, her friends lived there and they would stay up late playing cards. The hidden stories in all these places. I have a few of my own now.

A hot mid-September day, after a short period of not-sketching-enough and being-tired-all-the-time, I just had to get out and draw something. I cycled over to the Candy House (that place that sells the delicious little chocolate pyramids/cones I can’t resist), and bought myself a box of those little choccies, because they are the best and I was hungry. I stood outside and drew the second-hand store across the street. Well, as best as I could manage. I was feeling tired. I only got so far. I needed to go home.

A week later, the 24th of September, with the new academic year in swing, I must have had a bit more energy, judging by the colourful picture above. Saturday morning, I cycled down to the Davis Farmer’s Market (voted the Best Farmer’s Market in America) (“by the people of Davis” as I used to add in my Virtual Tour of Davis) to sketch something, walk about, not be inside. I settled on the side of the Hattie Weber Museum of Davis. This building has a history too – it was the first Davis library (it still says ‘Library’ above the door) and was actually in a different place entirely. Ok, not ‘entirely’, it wasn’t on the Wirral or Mount Everest or somewhere, it was still in Davis, but three streets away on F Street. (I had to count in my head there, C, E, D, F; oh actually that’s four streets away) (actually at 117 F Street so probably a few more, if you count going down blocks) (look it was somewhere else and it moved, ok, don’t worry about it). It was named for the first librarian of Davis, Hattie Weber. “Known as Miss Hattie by young and old alike,” the HWMD website says. I love that place too. And yep, they too have some of my drawings on the wall, including another from that 2011 exhibit (a printed copy, the original was sold) of the Museum itself. I remember going in here many years ago with my son when he was about four or five, to do the Easter Egg hunt, and was surprised when he suddenly said “daddy this is what you drawed!” pointing out my sketch of Old City Hall. I was amazed he remembered, I think he was about one when I drew it. I drew this one however while sat in the little Hattie Weber Rose Garden, looking north. The Farmers Market raged behind me. This end of the Market is where you get the people who get to set up their stalls and I don’t know, say any old bollocks. The Flat Earth lot, basically. They seem to be there a lot, with their “Nasa’s lying to you man!” signs and literature about how, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, how apparently the Earth is flat and not a globe, despite the fact it is demonstrably a globe, because “it’s a conspiracy man!”. Whatever mate, not a rabbit hole I want to go down. There were a lot of people standing around them though (probably new students trying to find out what they are on and where to get it); right next to them were the local Republicans, and nobody was talking to them. So the Flat Earth lot were back there, maybe I’ll sketch them some day, or probably not. It did remind me of when I was at school though, and my friend Terry got in trouble for submitting a one-line history homework, responding to some reference in the homework about the explorers sailing to all four corners of the globe, and he just wrote “globes don’t have corners”. Needless to say, the teacher was not impressed, and I think gave him an F for that. Didn’t matter, we both thought it was funny, and I suppose that’s what is important. Humour makes the world go round.

Still more 2022 sketch catch-up posts to come… Better start catching up with 2023 sketching too.

some time at UC Davis (summer 2022)

January 29, 2023January 29, 2023Leave a comment

As we catch up from last summer, here are some of the things I drew on campus. There was a lot of work done on the roundabout junction between the Silo, Chemistry and Bainer, so I stood behind the wire and drew the construction machines and the workers putting the street together. The standing stones in the foreground on the right have been there for ages, I’ve drawn them before, I’ve drawn everywhere before. It’s interesting to draw the in-between moments of these places, as they go from looking one way to another.

The next view is very close by, from a different angle, where there’s no work going on, and it hasn’t changed in years. I drew this one pretty fast; it was the difference in the high-summer greens that made me want to put it to paper.

Another one drawn on a super hot day while stood in the shade, this is an old campus building called TB-9, which sounds like the name of a protocol droid in the Star Wars universe, but TB stands for ‘temporary building’. I mean, astronomically or geologically it is temporary, as are well all and all our thoughts and fears and politics, but in this case, the building was born in 1958 and is now on the actual National Register of Historic Places, no less. So it’s probably not going anywhere, but it might tempt fate to call it ‘Permanent Building 9’. If you want to know more about this building, check out this article: https://www.ucdavis.edu/curiosity/news/historical-highlights-uc-davis-department-art-and-tb-9-1958-1976

This next one is primarily about the cacti in front of the Student Community Center, looking out at the Silo area. Another hot day, they all blend into one now. What even happened last August? It feels so long ago already.

A week or so later, while it was a sizzling 102 degrees outside (in the weeks that would follow, 102 would feel like a bit of an ice age), I sat inside the Student Community Center and ate lunch, and drew the lobby area. Among other things this building is home to the UC Davis Cross Cultural Center, and there are colourful murals inside. We hold our annual department holiday party here too.

And finally, the end of September, summer was over and the new Fall quarter had begun. So everyone was back, and we all got busy again, and the Silo area had new blue and yellow sun-shades over the tables. The academic year started. I still have a bunch more sketches from summer to post, from Davis and a few other places, and some from Fall too, but this was the summer on campus. Most of the staff in our department worked remotely except for one day a week, so I was there by myself for a lot of the time, but it’s nice when there are more people about again giving the campus its life, with all the students rushing about and bikes everywhere.