And here then are the last few of my sketches from Riverside, southern California. I did consider joining the trip to visit the UC Riverside campus, so that I could add another UC campus to my sketchbook list, but then I thought, nah sod it. I’m sure it’s lovely, with its big concrete block clocktower from a 1960s British town hall in the East Midlands somewhere. I however was surrounded by lots of actually beautiful sketchable buildings surrounding the Mission Inn, even though it was in an apparent Diet-Pepsi desert. The sketch above though was of the dome at the rear end of the Mission Inn, from a relatively quiet street called Main Street, drawn on my lunchtime on day two of the conference. The previously blue sky had become a little cloudier. I was not that interested in my conference lunch, it was a little bit bland and tasted of nothing. Downstairs there was another conference going on for employees of a local fast food chain called ‘Farmer Boys’ (when I saw the sign I at first thought it said ‘Former Boys’) and their food sounded really good (something a lot of us say when we haven’t actually seen a menu, judging it by its logo alone, which is totally fair enough) (example, ‘Happy Eater’, a former roadside restaurant in the UK whose logo was a boy putting his finger down his throat, and the French chain ‘Flunch’, which sounds like the sound you make when throwing up your main course), but I didn’t think I could get away with sneaking in there to try it out. I wasn’t up for any bland conversation that tasted of nothing (“what campus are you from, oh right, Santa Barbara, what campus are you from, oh right, Berkeley” etc; let’s face it, I’m not much of a conversationalist) so I excused myself and made it look like I had to rush to a meeting, which I did, a meeting with my sketchbook. 

It was the second time I’d drawn that dome, as I had also skipped out the day before toward the end of lunch to draw a quick one on the corner of Main and whatever street, 6th I think. The sun was shining bright and I drew from what little shade I could fund but I didn’t have much, so I drew fast and ran back to my next workshop. My lunch hadn’t been very interesting, and conversation a little awkward, and there was only so much of that iced water with a little bit of lemon in it that I could drink. The dome reminded me of Balboa Park in San Diego, where I’d sketched back in, I don’t even remember, 2009? I hope I’m better at drawing domes now. These Mission-style buildings and their ornate details can be a little hard. Actually the Mission Inn is a blend of many different architectural styles, and had a number of architects.

This building was a little bit easier and had a couple of small domes. I was not sure what the building was, and then a random man passing by asked me, “hey what’s that church?” and I said, “I was hoping you’d tell me”, but I wasn’t hoping that. It was after I started sketching this that I decided a visit to UC Riverside was not going to make my life complete. The sun was hitting it in a way to give it a golden feel, and when I’ve got light like that, I ain’t going anywhere. You can see the lamp-post thing in the shape of that really old bell from the Mission Inn, you see that all over the area. This building is actually Riverside Municipal Auditorium (not everything’s a church you know), and I was told by a person we will meet in the next paragraph that it was built as a memorial to local soldiers who were killed in World War One.

The building above was just across the street and most definitely a church. The amazing bell tower really stands out in the neighbourhood, although it sits among many interesting looking buildings and churches. It’s the ‘First Congregational Church Riverside’ and is pretty historic, according to the fellow that spoke to me outside it. He saw me taking a photo of the tower and told me that it was the oldest, er, oh man I forgot. You see this is why I have to write everything down, because I will forget otherwise. Ok, I think he said, this was the oldest Spanish-colonial-revival church in California and was built in 1913, though the church dates from 1872. “Ah, so not very old then,” I said. I think he understood that I was from Britain, so that made sense without having to explain, and it turned out that he had been to Britain many times. Anyway he told me some more of the history, which I have unfortunately forgotten, so you’ll just have to look it up online. The tower is ‘churrigueresque’, which means ultra-baroque and is obviously a word I found on Wikipedia. My wife told me that she thinks her grandma used to go to that church; my wife was born in Riverside but left as a baby. I definitely wanted to draw this, but had to get the right angle (and right amount of shade). It was warm, and I was thirsty, and water just wasn’t going to cut it, I wanted a nice cold Diet Pepsi, but as we have established I appeared to be in a Diet Pepsi desert with no convenience stores and honestly after quite a lot of looking it was feeling a bit strange. Then I remembered – there was a Farmer Boys restaurant a couple of blocks away, that I’d walked past when I arrived into town. I was hungry (having had a bland taste of nothing for lunch) and still pissed off from the “he used to be a redhead but isn’t now” comments made by total strangers pretending to be administrative management professionals, so that sounded perfect. So I got there and ordered what sounded like a really tasty fried chicken burger and a big Diet Pepsi, and they said well you can have the Diet Pepsi, but unfortunately because our machine isn’t working you can’t have any chicken. Sorry, your ‘machine isn’t working’? Is it a machine that makes chicken? Right well, that has put me off food for a while, Farmer Boys. So I just got an unnecessarily massive soda and went out to sketch the building above, stood next to a bus stop where a random local man was harassing or just talking to another random man; moments earlier the same random man had said something to me from behind which I hadn’t heard, and then followed it up with a louder “hey! I was saying hello to you!” in one of those aggressive ways random people like to talk to you. So I said, “Hello!” brightly, and I think he realized I was not very good at conversation and moved on to randomly talk to someone else.

And of course we cannot leave a new place without sketching its fire hydrants. These two were within a short walking distance from the Mission Inn (that is, a short walking distance for me, but a very difficult walking distance for the fire hydrants). Fairly typical specimens for Southern California. And that was it, those are all my Riverside sketches, not bad for a brief couple of days. There were other places I wish I had sketched – the Fox Theater looked interesting, but what I didn’t know was that was the first place in the world that showed the movie ‘Gone With the Wind’, which I’ve never actually watched much of; Tico’s Tacos, an amazing taqueria with all sorts of weird and wonderful sculptures and artworks all over the place, a literal urban sketchers dream yet I didn’t go there; and the UC Path Center which is in a boring concrete building in an industrial estate, but since UC Path (a new payroll system) has given us so much grief since our campus adopted it I think it only fair I go and sketch the place, or not. I don’t know I’ll ever be back so I think I made the most of my trip to Riverside, and then I flew back home from Ontario airport (which is confusingly not in Canada). I was now into my 50th landscape sketchbook, that is my 25th landscape watercolor Moleskine.