Tag: parade

penny farthings at the picnic day parade

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picnic day parade 2024

Last month was the annual UC Davis Picnic Day, the largest university open house event in America, and a tradition that’s been going on since 1909. It’s also a day that usually fills me with a bit of dread, with so many people coming to campus, I usually try to find a way to get out of town. It can be pretty busy, not to mention all the parties going on. Still it can be fun, and we always like the parade. So this year we went down and found a spot by the Quad to watch the Picnic Day Parade go past. It was a good one this year, and I tried to get a quick sketch of it all, though it’s not easy to draw things marching past. I sketched the crowd and the trees before the parade arrived, and while I’d thought I might sketch the marching band or maybe even the fleet of DeLoreans, it was the Penny Farthings I ended up sketching, the symbol of the city of Davis. After the parade, we walked about a bit, my wife and mother in law got some plants from the Plant Science dept, we all got an expensive round of smoothies, then we decided to ditch campus and walk downtown to the Farmers Market. 

Here’s a lot more information about Picnic Day: https://picnicday.ucdavis.edu/history

the 100th picnic day

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picnic day 2014 smA couple of weeks ago, UC Davis celebrated its 100th annual Picnic Day. One hundred! Click on the images to see larger versions (or you could hold your face close to the screen, though I wouldn’t advise it). Picnic Day is a UC Davis institution, the largest university open house in the country, attracting thousands of visitors to such attractions as the Doxie Derby, Battle fo the Bands, the Chemistry Magic Show, and, er kittens. Yes, we waited for half an hour in line to see kittens, only to find out they were now cats (they were probably kittens when we started queuing). Four cats, just sitting there doing nothing, two of which were asleep. Yet massively popular. My six year old wanted to see nothing else. The first thing we watched however was the Parade, the annual march of bands, bikes, floats, the occasional political candidate, which was as fun as ever. We sat down outside Shields Library to watch it, when I started painting, but broke my water jar (as described in a previous episode). I added the rest of the colours at home.

picnic day 2014 battleofthebands sm

This second spread was sketched at the Battle of the Bands. I went home with my family, already tired after the excitement of the cats, and had a rest before heading back in to see the famous band battle. I’ve only seen it once, briefly, but I don’t really like crowds. I am getting better at sketching in large numbers now though, but nonetheless it was tricky. I stood at the top of the slope leading down to Lake Spafford, on the banks of which were gathered the bands themselves. Now these aren’t your guitar-hero indie-beard bands, oh no these are the colourful marching bands, and boy is this an event. The bands come from universities around California. The idea is that each band takes turns playing a song, and then by the end of the day (or night), the last band standing, the last one that has not exhausted all its known songs, is the winner (and I’m told it’s always the UC Davis Aggies). It is crazy, and chaotic, but it all works, and those musicians really keep it up for hours and hours. On the left there is a dancing tree from Stanford. I finally left during a long bit in the middle where all the bands came together in groups of the same instrument, and placed themselves around the crowd in a kind of promenade-theatre fashion, playing a continuous jam (I left after 45 minutes and it was still going on) in a variety of poses. Definitely a Davis event to be experienced at some point in your life.

And this was all. In nine years this is the most Picnic Day sketching I have ever done.

before the rose parade

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waiting for rose parade

Sketching a parade is not easy. They always tend to move. So I’m not showing you the scribbles I made as the 117th Rose Parade, an annual event in Santa Rosa, California, marched by. We got downtown early, and found a good spot across from the library. My son loves marching bands, I mean really loves them, so this was a bonanza (quite literally; the theme was the Old West, and every band played the Bonanza theme tune at some point). The marching bands are all from local schools, mostly high schools but some young ones as well. My wife’s old schools were represented, though, she lamented, the marching bands just aint what they used to be. We spotted her young cousins marching with their school; we never had anything like this in England! All those uniforms and hats and trumpets and drums; ‘Band’ is a very American thing. I didn’t see many majorettes though, twirling batons. I did see dancing horses though. It was a Mexican troupe, I think, but the horses really did dance, it was amazing. Anyway, here is a sketch I did while we were waiting for the parade to begin. One thing about this parade, local businesses tend to throw candies and lollipops and other such goodies at the spectators. One even threw out packs of corn tortilla, which was nice – I grabbed some of that. Note to self – remember that you don’t actually like corn tortilla all that much, and remember next time that the smell of corn tortilla will stay in your bag for days, including all over your sketchbook. You live and you learn. Anyway it was a fun morning, and after sitting out in the sun, it was time for a nap.