Midtown Mooching

February 5, 20252 Comments

We don’t have a Midtown in Davis, so to get my Midtown kicks I had to go to Sacramento, the state’s capital city fifteen miles away. It’s been a couple of years since I sketched around Midtown, but I always enjoy wandering about those streets looking at all the big old houses. It’s not like they have as many shops as they used to; the fantastic University Arts store closed recently, and that was always a big draw for me. The record shop called The Beat closed years ago, though there is a small record shop in Midtown which I did visit. We did come to Midtown before Christmas to have a couple of cocktails at the Jungle Bird, a little tiki bar we like that does a festive ‘Jingle Bird’ theme in December. On this one Saturday though, I was itching to get out of Davis and draw, so found myself in Midtown at the Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park. It’s been years since I went there, although I have never wandered into the actual Sutter’s Fort itself; I thought about it though, and it’s the fort that counts. I repeated that joke to myself several times wondering if it would ever be the right time to say that to anyone, but it never will be. It evolved into a joke that went, “someone gave me a calculator shaped like a castle for my birthday; wasn’t much of a gift but it’s the fort that counts.” I think that sounded alright, but it doesn’t really work out here, where they don’t pronounce ‘fort’ and ‘thought’ as the exact same sound like we do in London. If I said that I’d probably be accused again of ‘British humour’ (sorry, ‘humor’), “I don’t like Briddish humor, it’s all Monty Pythaan.” People have actually said that to me, as if British humour or comedy is a genre. I will confess though we are the best (or worst) at puns and I will go to extreme lengths to get one in. Alas I let the ‘fort’ jokes go, at some point you have to realize they make pretty crap puns anyway. I sketched the scene above while listening to another Terry Pratchett audiobook, Feet of Clay (I have listened to five in the past month, really spending down those Audible credits). The building opposite is the State Indian Museum, and the church tower on the left is a place I have drawn several times (early 2007 was the first!) and always forget the name of. St. Francis of Assisi, that’s the one. It was the first place I drew in Midtown Sacramento and I was well pleased with how it turned out. I was going to colour in all the trees but stopped at the pool, because I liked the way the colour of the water stood out, and so I just added the shades; this is all it needs.

I wandered Midtown looking for big old houses to sketch, these ones were on L Street and I sat on my little stool across and drew. I decided to bring my stool out, I don’t usually take it with me these days, as I prefer to stand and sketch, but I knew I’d want to sit and I’m glad I did. There were a lot of details and the shades and colours were very inviting; I wanted to get a feel for what a sunny early-afternoon in Midtown in January felt like. I used to come to Midtown years ago for the occasional Saturday sketching day, my wife would drop me off (as she did on this day) and I’d get the bus back in the evening, or the train, to Davis. It got me out of the house on a Saturday. The first year here I worked in Saturdays at the Avid Reader, as well as a couple of evenings a week doing their book-keeping, on top of my full-time job. I had nothing else to do, so I worked and got to known the downtown. When I quit the Saturday shifts to get some free time back, I had a bit more time to sketch on the weekends. I didn’t know Midtown at all, but my wife had heard it was interesting and had a good record shop and an art shop, as well as a British themed pub called ‘the Streets of London’ (British isn’t a genre of pub I said), but they served London Pride and had football shirts and scarves up on the wall near the dartboard, so it was close enough. She was studying for a master’s at the time so getting me out gave her some study time, and this was around the time I started sketching way more than ever before, 2006-2007, mostly in WH Smith sketchbooks from the UK then (British isn’t a genre of sketchbook) but I got my first watercolour Moleskine in 2007 and still use them today. An exciting time of discovery in a new place, I guess. Long time ago now but my eyes are still wide open looking for things to draw.

I mooched around a bit more. Do they say ‘mooch’ over here? To mooch means to wander about casually, like we would go for a mooch around the shops. I think when they say it here it means something else (begging?). I like a bit of an old mooch. British vocabulary isn’t a genre. The area of Midtown centred on Capitol Avenue is called the ‘Capitol Mansions’ district and there are some amazing old houses down here, big ones too, on tree-lined streets. This building above is a law firm I think, but I was just impressed by its size as I walked down the street. It doesn’t look that big on my page but it felt grand, and that tree was thick and mighty. The city of trees, Sacramento is sometimes called. River City too, and Sac-o-Tomatoes. Big tomato farming industry in this area, you see the trucks on the freeway filled to the brim with tomatoes. I was starting to get hungry as I sketched now so I ended up adding the colour afterwards on this one.

This was another impressive house that is very typical of the type you get in Midtown, and it was colourful too but I did not paint it. In fact with this one I did only draw the outlines while there, and drew the rest in later, as I was pretty hungry. I ended up not really eating much, except for a big slice of cake at the Dessert Diner on J Street. That is a place to visit if you are ever in Midtown, they do delicious cakes.

This is Rocket Records on 24th Street, a nice little record shop I have been to once before. Not as big as The Beat was but they have a lot of good stuff; I picked up a copy of Paul McCartney’s Ram album, which I had never owned before. I was pleased to find it wasn’t in the ‘British Music’ section, which didn’t exist, because British isn’t a genre of music. I am really enjoying my record player, since I got the new one in September, and now visiting record shops is becoming a thing again both for me and my son who is also now getting into vinyl. I had to sketch the store of course. I had also just visited the camera store nearby, Mike’s Camera. I had also got my son a film camera for the birthday; vinyl records, film cameras, we are going proper retro on this timeline. Next thing you know we’ll be voting in people who, ok not going there, my headache this past two weeks is only getting worse. It was getting well into the afternoon now in Midtown, and after a mooch around the record shop I walked down J street, copy of Ram under my arm, and went to rest my legs at the pub formerly called ‘Streets of London’. Now called ‘Streets’, they ditched the British theme years ago, so no more London Pride on tap (they served it too cold anyway), and a huge screen showing a very loud Football game on the TV, well I say a Football game, it was mostly just adverts during the game, very loud. I don’t know about you but I often think, let’s go to the pub and sit listening to very loud adverts for car insurance. Anyway once the legs were rested it was time to walk all the way over to the Amtrak station and go home.

pause at the airport

April 2, 2024Leave a comment

I’ve been travel-busy lately, so let’s start posting some sketches. I was at Sacramento airport, waiting for a delayed Friday early evening flight down to Los Angeles, where I’d be spending the weekend before a work trip to Riverside. As I had a bit of time I sat and had a pint at the airport bar, sketching the view opposite which included a newsstand sponsored by Sactown Magazine (see my previous post about my own appearance in Sactown). At this point the new edition featuring my sketches wasn’t on sale, but it was there on the way back a few days later along with the screen displaying pages. I don’t like airports (have I mentioned? Like a million times), but I don’t mind SMF, I’ve been through here enough times and it’s small, so it feels so familiar. Eventually I was able to board. My plan for Los Angeles was to do the following: (1) visit the Scum and Villainy Cantina in Hollywood, great place; (2) spend all Saturday drawing dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum; and (3) eat breakfast at the Original Pantry. I did all of those things (though the breakfast was more at lunchtime; a well-deserved lie-in!) and there’s sketches aplenty to come. After that, I was going to the UC-AMP Conference in Riverside and staying at the historic Mission Inn Hotel, and there are lots of sketches from there. As it is, cheers from the airport.

look who’s in Sactown

March 19, 20242 Comments

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Here is some exciting news! The current edition of Sactown magazine (March/April 2024) features a whole load of my sketches from Sacramento and Davis, going back from 2007 up to 2023. The feature is called “Where the Sidewalk Starts” and to see it all, grab a copy from your local newsagent (if you live round here). Here’s the Sactown magazine’s website: https://www.sactownmag.com/. (My sketches aren’t on the site).

The funny thing though, as I was coming back from a short trip to Southern California last Tuesday (Los Angeles and Riverside, I’ll post all my drawings once I’ve scanned them, there are a LOT) I was walking through Sacramento airport when I saw a big screen outside a newsagent, featuring pages from Sactown magazine, including many of those with my drawings on! That was a nice surprise. There was everyone, walking past basically a big version of my sketchbook. Anyway, if you should pick up the magazine, it’s a really good read.

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.

old sac at christmas

December 23, 2023September 26, 2024Leave a comment

Still in Old Sacramento last Saturday, I went and stood by the big Christmas Tree on Front Street, where people were gathering for photos, and there were different singers nearby filling the street with a range of sounds. I’m often reminded that I don’t always appreciate the qualities of street performers, this was one of those moments. It was a busy Saturday in the festive season, there were the classic cars riding around, people handing out flyers, musicians, all sorts of people out and about. Then there’s me, standing there with my sketchbook trying to draw it all, soaking it all in like one of those people that goes out and watches the world go by. I suppose I do. I leaned against a barrel, but my legs were like, mate can we go and sit down now?

So I decided to go and find a pub and sit down with a beer. Then I saw this old cart and decided to stand a bit longer, and draw that. I also popped into a shop full of every possible type of novelty sock known to man. I love a novelty sock, but even I was overwhelmed. There are all types of cheesy shops down here in old Sac, and I’m all for it. These days, just having physical shops of any description with interesting things in them is a bonus. One of the reasons I decided against going to San Francisco is because the Lego store downtown has closed, and I always loved going there. I don’t want to have be driven out to some far-flung mall to visit the Lego store. It was accessible and on the way back to the Amtrak bus, so I’d always go in and look around at all the stuff I didn’t need. Now we just shop online, and I’m a big offender, it’s so easy. That said I always make a point to spend quite a bit of money in the downtown shops in Davis at Christmas time, we still have some lovely little independent shops.

I headed to Fanny Ann’s Saloon. I don’t remember the last time I came in here, maybe a decade ago? I know that I last sketched inside here in December 2009, if you can believe it. It’s got a lot of old stuff to draw, yet I’ve not sketched it since. I sat at the bar and got a beer, and started to add a bit more detail to the cart sketch, before realizing that my inside up-close eyesight is getting worse (I went to the optometrist this week and have ordered some very expensive glasses to help with that). So I thought, let’s just sketch the bar anyway, and see what comes out. I was being picked up my wife to head back to Davis soon so I had a short amount of time to observe a large amount of detail, in quite a busy bar area, and I think I did alright. If I had sat further back and had another hour or so (and a couple more beers) I might have done a more detailed and colourful wider scene. The bar staff were friendly. My legs were happy to be seated for a bit, and sketching with a beer definitely helped me unwind. More than that, I am nearly done with the current sketchbook, which I had been hoping to complete by Christmas. I needed a day out drawing, I got one, and I was able to be home in good time for a curry.

engines of old sacramento

December 23, 2023December 25, 2023Leave a comment

Last Saturday I was feeling bored of Davis, but not motivated enough to go down to San Francisco for a day of sketching. Then I remembered that it might be interesting to go to old Sacramento and look at the trains. I hadn’t been to the Railroad Museum in a long time (not since my son was very young). I took the train there from Davis; I didn’t actually go to the Museum itself, because there were engines enough outside to sketch, and it was a bright sunny December day. Families were gathering in their pyjamas to ride the Polar Express, the annual holiday fun train ride that recreates the film/book. We rode it a couple of times years ago, that feels like a long time ago now. Anyway, I found a bit of shade and decided to draw the big red engine with ‘Santa Fe’ on the front that is parked permanently out in the open, with a big Christmas tree next to it (presumably less permanent). I love this engine. It reminds me of Chuggington, the kids TV show engine. We had this board game when my son was a kid called ‘Chuggington: Ride the Rails’. I coloured it all there. It was a good sketch to start the day, though already my legs were telling me I’d need to sit down occasionally on this sketching day. Still I wanted to draw more trains.

I went over to the front of the train that hosts the Polar Express. I know there’s an old steam train that runs through here, or at least used to, but it looks like they use this Western Pacific engine to pull the Polar Express carriages now. I could see they were getting ready to board everyone, so I drew as quickly as I could, but it pulled away before I could draw many details, only outlines, so this was a finish off later job. It’s another ‘Chuggington’ style engine, but with more of a Chelsea 1995 away kit paint job. Nearby there was a voice on a loudspeaker announcing fish and chip orders that were ready. That sounded good; I had that for lunch. I only ate half of it though, it was a little bit gross, and was making me feel a bit Tom and Dick. I threw it in the bin and went to sketch the big old steam engine that was now parked up on the rails. I liked the little spots of colour provided by the trees. I drew the whole outline and a bunch of the shapes and details with a mix of pen and pencil before the sun was getting in my eyes a bit, and my legs were asking for a break, so I said ‘I’ve done enough’ and went somewhere else, finishing off the remaining details later. I do love a steam engine, and a nice bit of machinery.

Here are a couple of quick sketches from the train going into Sacramento from Davis, in my little Fabriano sketchbook.

back in the sac

April 19, 2023April 19, 2023Leave a comment

It’s been a little while since I sketched Midtown Sacramento. My son’s soccer team (the one I used to coach but stepped down from last year because I was knackered) had a tournament in Natomas (I think it was Natomas, the places all blend together some days) but we only stayed for the first game, so afterwards I was dropped off in midtown Sac so I could go to the art store and draw some of the old buildings around there. I started off by drawing this big old Victorian on the corner of I and 27th, a fantastic well-kept old house. There are plenty of old interesting old buildings in that neighbourhood. I went to the university art store, and walked down to Dessert Diner for a delicious hot chocolate and cake (I’ve not been there in years, it’s fantastic). I also found a little record shop that I’ve not been to before, Rocket Records, that I was going to sketch but maybe another time. Last time I sketched a midtown record shop (The Beat), it closed down. I then had lunch at one restaurant/bar by the train tracks which served barbecue food; I won’t say what the place was called, but the food was utterly gross and made me feel sick. I got barbecued chicken with mac and cheese, and it was so bad, for one thing I’m not sure the chicken was cooked too well but it was so drenched in a smoky, woody stench that it made me gag. The mac and cheese may as well have been a rain mac, it had no flavour. So I quit that place and left, the taste being in my mouth for hours afterwards. I did one more sketch though, of the St.Francis of Assisi church which is over near Fort Sutter.

Interestingly enough, the first time I drew this building was sixteen years ago to the day from when I drew it on February 25th. I remember that day. My wife had told me about a record shop – the aforementioned ‘The Beat’, now long gone – so I went and spent a lot of time there, and wandered midtown with my beloved WH Smith sketchbook looking for places to draw. This was one of my favourite of my early California sketches, back at the start of all this.

sacramento station

January 27, 2023January 26, 2023Leave a comment

In August I took the morning off work and went to Sacramento for a small medical thing, my wife drove me there. It took a little longer than expected so I had to get the train back to Davis, but there was quite a long wait for the train (so I ended up taking most of the afternoon off too), so I sat outside the station in the shade of a big tree and tried to draw the old Sacramento Valley Station, which I’d never drawn before. It’s a grand old structure dating from 1926, and is the end of the line for the Capitol Corridor route which goes down to the Bay Area. I had quite a long wait (there were two hours between the train that I had missed and the next one) although it’s a bit of a schlepp to the platform, takes a decent ten minutes to walk. Ok maybe a couple of minutes less but you have to hurry. I did add the paint and some of the window shading later though. I like to draw train station exteriors, I’m building up a collection of those as well now. One thing I love to do is travel by rail. I often dream of taking one of those really long train trips across the country, the ones that take several days, but who has the time for that now. The closest I did was the long train ride down from Davis to Santa Barbara, which was on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train, the epic journey from Seattle to Los Angeles. That was a fun experience, though I wasn’t an overnighter unlike many others. You can see the post from that trip here: https://petescully.com/2016/05/19/rails-whales-and-tales/. There are many train journeys in Europe I still want to take as well, like that steam train in Scotland through the Highlands, and I’d really love to take that bullet train across Japan. I just like trains.

among jets and giants

July 26, 2021Leave a comment

Last week we went to the Aerospace Museum of California in Sacramento, which I’d wanted to visit for ages but as always, never get around to it. I grew up near the RAF Museum in Hendon, living about a mile or so away, yet it wasn’t until 2019 on a brief visit back to London (there was an Urban Sketchers London sketchcrawl there) that I finally visited. The California Aerospace Museum has a pretty amazing collection of planes and helicopters, and to quote the Bard, I love all that shit. When I was a kid I was obsessed with war planes, fighter jets, army helicopters. I loved the Spitfire of course, who didn’t, but was a big fan of the Tornado, and of the classic F16. In my primary school, probably because of our proximity to the historic RAF Hendon Aerodrome (now the site of the RAF Museum, and Grahame Park Estate) divided the kids into four houses, common in British schools (magical or otherwise; round our way your wand would be broken and your broomstick half-inched), and those four houses were named after great fighter planes: Phantoms (blue), Harriers (red), Jaguars (green) and Tornadoes (yellow). I think they were the colours anyway. Come to think of it maybe Jaguars were blue. Were Phantoms black? They might have been green. I don’t care. I was in Tornadoes, we were yellow. We got house points for good deeds, doing well at stuff (most of my house points were for drawing) (I might have lost some for drawing on the table though), and sports day. I did have pictures of planes on my bedroom wall; my big sister went out with a guy called Neil for a while and he worked at British Aerospace, so he brought me some brilliant prints of fighter jets. I used to draw my own ones, overloaded with all kinds of missile and machine gun, helicopters too. One of my favourite shows was Airwolf. Anyway the nine-year-old me was in heaven seeing all these old American fighter planes. It’s mostly open air, all the planes and choppers are displayed around the outside of the main hangar building, which mostly holds exhibits and engines and things about space, as well as an enormous aircraft called ‘Makani’, a many-propellored ‘energy kite’. Even thought it was morning it was very hot and hard to spend too much time outside. I particularly liked seeing the banana shaped helicopter and the Sikorsky ‘Jolly Green Giant’, and was enthralled with the fighter jets (no F16s, sadly). I got to draw a couple of them – the F86 Sabre (above), which had the logo ‘CALIF-ANG’ on the side (I made my wife take a photo with it, since she goes by Ang (short for Angela) and is from Calif (short for California). I love the US Air Force logo, that big star, it’s so classic. I also drew the McDonnell-Douglas F-4C “Phantom II”. I had to draw a Phantom, in honour of that old school house (my friend Wayne was in Phantoms). I always thought they were a British plane but of course that fighter originated in the US, and was exported to the RAF. This one flew extensively in Vietnam and is supersonic. We were able to go inside some of the larger planes, and in one huge Korea and Vietnam era plane there was a man who had participated in combat missions in Vietnam in that very plane, not as the pilot but as one of the crew on the plan, and who had parachuted from it many times. His stories were fascinating, and when asked if he enjoyed his time serving in the Air Force he said yeah, because he was up in the sky – it was much less fun for those on the ground. I’d like to go back and draw more some time, spend a few more hours there, but maybe at a cooler, less oppressively sunny time of year.

band of coyotes at shine

March 30, 2020March 30, 2020Leave a comment

And now a look back at the distant past when we could go to things like parties and gigs. Not that I ever go to any such things anyway so it’s not something I’m really missing. However I wanted to show you this sketch I did back in September when I was in Sacramento with my wife, at her father’s party in midtown, the one he holds each year to celebrate when he moved to the area. (He is generally a bit more social than me!). It was held at a cafe bar called Shine, and he had a couple of bands come to play at the party, one of which was called Band of Coyotes, and those are the ones I sketched. They were very good. I really enjoyed drawing this though and it was probably my favourite drawing in that particular sketchbook, because I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but I just drew anyway, starting in the middle and working my way outwards. I added paint in a very let’s-see-what-happens fashion too, not having great light to really see the colour, and I loved the multicoloured outcome, going from warm in the middle and cooling off outwards. I put on a lot of washes, so many that it actually went through the thin Seawhite of Brighton page, I didn’t mind. It’s always more pleasant to draw when you have good music to draw to, no doubt. A lot of the time I wouldn’t want to draw musicians, they might turn out to be pretty bad, or maybe they themselves are kinda nobs, and you don’t want to draw those, but this band were very good, and I think that comes across in my enjoyment of sketching. Oh man, I want the world to go back to normal, and I can go and draw everything again.