across the country, by plane and by train

April 24, 2025Leave a comment

During Spring Break, our family took a trip across the breadth of the country to Washington DC and New York. For a few years now we have been using our Spring Breaks to see more of the USA, alternating between national parks and big cities, and this year we decided to visit ‘Our Nation’s Capital’ (as they call it here) and the ‘Big Apple’ (I don’t know if you’ve heard of that but that’s what they call New York). Of course when we travel I must also sketch, what else am I going to do, watch a movie? I did that too, and read a book (Agatha Christie ‘And Then There Were None’, which I finished on the train to New York). Above, the Southwest flight we took to St. Louis. I’ve not ever been to St. Louis, but we flew right over the big Gateway Arch, which was exciting, and then stopped at the airport to listen to the very different accents while waiting for an overpriced lunch. I can’t pronounce St. Louis, I never know whether to add the ‘s’ sound at the end or not, despite hearing it and being told, when I actually come to say it, my brain forgets and I choose the wrong one. A bit like whenever I need to plug in a USB, *every*single*time* I will plug it in the wrong way round first. This is called the ‘USB Law’, or the ‘St. Louis Principle’. We flew from St. Louis to DC, but I didn’t bother drawing that short flight, and caught up on some Agatha Christie instead.

After a couple of days exploring Washington’s museums and monuments, we caught the Amtrak train from Union Station, finding ourselves cramped into large seats with no legroom, looking out of a small window as the marshy landscape whizzed by. This is an America I have not seen, the East Coast where there are lots of little states and big cities around large estuaries, very far away from our dry sunny California. I love a train, watching the landscape change and wondering what will come next. I finished reading Agatha (the butler did it; only joking) and sketched. We passed through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and then the skyscrapers started to come into view as we approached New York, my favourite city after London.

Well New York was fun, but it was time to fly back to California. Thanks to the magic of airline points wer were able to fly back in business class, which was luxury with those little compartments, massive screens, lie-flat seats (with no cushions) and metal cutlery. I sat in the compartment next to my 17 year old and watched Avengers Infinity War. I was going to watch Conclave but thought I should save that for when the Pope died, which unfortunately he did just a few days ago. A shame, I liked Pope Francis. The flight took us all the way to Phoenix, Arizona, and I was still excited by all of our wanderings about New York City. Lots of sketches to post soon.

And finally the last leg, Phoenix to Sacramento, after a couple of hours in a lounge at PHX. We had the bigger seats for this leg as well, and while I did sketch a bit I relaxed and watched another old film, Withnail and I. I’ve not seen it in years. We made it back to Davis tired and in need of a cup of tea and a long sleep, more adventures around the country. I’ll post all my sketches soon.

Newcastle finally win a trophy

April 15, 2025April 14, 2025Leave a comment

Football news now, and Newcastle United have won a trophy for the first time in my increasingly long lifetime. Yes it is hardly believable but it happened, they beat league-leaders Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final, and beat them well. I had to sketch it. I am not of course a Newcastle fan, having no connection to the Northeast myself, but one of my oldest friends Simon is a long-suffering Newcastle fan, Gateshead born but grew up in north-west London so shares my accent. We just assumed they would never win a trophy, after so many near misses. Look, I’m a Spurs fan and we get stick for the whole trophy thing, but our trophy cabinet is like Real Madrid in comparison. Spurs have won trophies, just not lately. When is the supposed cut off point? Did football start in 2009? We could easily say, Chelsea hah, they don’t win anything, they have no trophies, because I’m just counting from 2022, football started in 2022 after the pandemic, but that would be ridiculous. Football isn’t all about trophies, most teams don’t win them and people still support them. I’ve had a bloody QPR fan jeer at me because Spurs ‘don’t win trophies’ but I bloody well remember beating them in a cup final. So yeah I’m pleased for Newcastle. Of course, I’d have preferred a Newcastle v Spurs final, and for Spurs to win it, but we got twatted by Liverpool in the semi-final. We are having a pretty crap season, down in 15th or maybe it’s lower now, but still in the Europa League (just about) so our Aussie manager Big Ange Instead keeps his job for now. Probably be gone by Easter. The whole trophy thing is a bit laughable. I’d love to win one, but it’s not the be all and end all. West Ham won one recently, good for them, they sacked that manager too and are still crap. We were amazing between about 2015-2020, and that team should have won the league in 2017, but it wasn’t to be, it doesn’t stop that team being the stuff of legends in my mind. That Champions League run, woof. Newcastle in the mid-90s, also the stuff of legends. Not only did they have some of the best kits, but their fantastic manager Kevin Keegan (who I actually met in Charleroi in Belgium when he was England manager) had players playing the most entertaining of football, all passing and crossing and scoring fantastic goals in baggy shirts, your Ferdinand, Ginola, Asprilla, Andy Cole in the early days with the Asics kit, then Shearer later on. No defending whatsoever, except big Charleroi-local Philippe Albert booting balls away, I loved it. (Incidentally Charleroi is another coal town that plays in black and white stripes and wins absolutely nothing). They were everyone’s second team, well except for Sunderland fans. I remember when they played Spurs and our fans were singing “you’re just a small town in Scotland!” and the Geordies replied, “you’re just a small town in Arsenal!” Fair play. So well done Newcastle, you’ve got your trophy, your first domestic one since the 50s. Now we’ve got to get one too.

the two cats

April 13, 2025April 12, 20251 Comment

Sometimes you have to draw the cats. Fortunately they do enough lying around in one place for long stretches of time that it makes it easier. I drew in my little Seawhite book, using pencil and watercolour, a good way to draw a cat or two. The top one is called Whiskers. He is a bit smaller than his brother Sawyer, who is below. Sawyer is cuddlier. Whiskers likes my desk chair and will often try to trick me off of it. He is lying in it in this sketch. Sawyer loves the couch, and also his perch looking out the front window, where he was in the sketch below, though here he was staring intensely towards the back door in case anything interesting might happen there. Overall they are good cats, they fight a little but mostly are partners in cat-crime, and make sure each other’s ears are clean. They sometimes hiss and growl at each other when they see this one particular cat come into our yard. I can’t pretend to understand cat politics. It’s probably like human politics, which I also can’t understand. Two boy cats who get on well enough, maybe have different views on the placement of the kibble bowl but otherwise share well, then another boy cat who acts all sweet on the outside seems to wind them both up until they fight each other, no I can’t see any parallels to human politics at all. Still it’s nice having cats around, they add a few more personalities into the house, and they keep the mice away. I’m just glad cats don’t have mobile phones, they’d spend all days watching videos of cats, and it would have the opposite effect that does on humans. They would have to watch videos of humans doing what humans do, yelling at each other on planes or whatever, to calm themselves down. Cats, what are they like.

pink blossom on seawhite

April 7, 20251 Comment

I started the little Seawhite sketchbook with a drawing of my current paintbox, but I thought I should start using it for some quick urban sketching. I did this quick sketch up on 3rd Street as the pink blossoms were coming out, next to what looked like a still autumnal tree outside Ali Baba. I have not eaten in there for years. Don’t know why, I should try it again some time. I rushed a bit with this sketch as I had to get back to work. I hadn’t yet figured out what I wanted this small sketchbook for, it’s not my main book. I have ended up using it more for quick people sketches on the go, it’s small enough to fit into my pocket and quickly get out to add a fast sketch, as I did on the New York Subway. This was a laboured start but the book has helped loosen me up. In my sketching that is, in everything else I’m still as tense and overwhelmed as we all are right now. I would just like normal news please, that’s all. I’ve done a lot of drawing this year, it may end up being the most sketching-filled year of all time. This is the only one in this book that looks like this, but you gotta start somehow, gotta fill them blank pages and move on.

a peak under the hood

February 16, 2025Leave a comment

I thought it was time I should show my current palette. I have a new smaller sketchbook (a Seawhite of Brighton A6 size that I got in London) for when I need just a pocket-sized sketchbook with me, so I opened it by drawing what paints I am currently using. I don’t use the Seawhites as much any more because (a) they aren’t really as good for watercolours as the watercolour Moleskines I use, and (b) I have to get them when I’m in London, but they are really good for penwork (less so fountain pen, I find, better withe the uni-ball signo pens I prefer). Anyway. You can see from the image above that there are faint lines across it, courtesy of my Epson scanner which has been doing this lately. Not the screen, not the software, just the scanner after many, many scans I guess. Shame as it is fast and quiet, although I’ve never been happy with the quality compared to my old HP. Both were all-in-one printer/scanners. So this week I decided to buy a new flatbed scanner, to deal with this issue. It’s a bit more mobile and light, and has to be connected with a cable and not over wifi, because I decided not to get a more expensive one in case it turned out to be not really better at all. I also stuck with Epson because I am used to the software, even though it’s not really perfect. I should rescan this, along with other recent sketches where I notice it, but that’s time-consuming; I hate scanning. I did scan the guide (below) with the new scanner, worth pointing out that this was added to the inner cover and that paper never takes watercolour all that well in the Seawhites, so the odd texture is what it looks like, annoyingly. Paper makes a big, big difference. Doesn’t matter, this isn’t my usual paper and it’s just a rough guide for myself to remember what I’m using. I do forget the names of paints a lot. I am not, alas, one of those urban sketchers that enthuses regularly about their paints, I wish I were sometimes but I just make do. I have some nice colours though, and I am so pleased I finally got that Buff Titanium colour by Daniel Smith that I’ve seen in many other urban sketchers’ palettes over the years, it’s well nice for those slightly off-white houses and objects, it’s like a missing link in my paintset. Those QOR ones I have in there, actually those are just small blobs from the tubes, they can be pretty powerful paints and I like to use those as just a palette of three by themselves, that’s fun. The box itself is a Winsor and Newton ‘Complete Pocket Set’ size box which I find to be perfect; those come with about 16 half pans but there’s room for a lot more and I cram them in. I like the small size and the little fold out plastic thing on the bottom to hook under my thumb. This is my third one of these since 2007, and I just got this one in November because I broke the little thumb-handle on my other one, and then while trying to balance it I dropped it onto the pavement and broke the lid, which was a pain (I was carrying it round with elastic bands holding it together). This size has worked best for me over the years though, especially in a tight space like a bar or standing on a narrow sidewalk. Anyway. The list of all the paints is below, and I’m not explaining how I use them, because I just hit and hope most of the time. Still it’s always fun to take a look inside a paintbox…

Most of these are Winsor and Newton, mostly in the ‘Cotman’ range but a few in the ‘Artist’ range, mostly half-pan but a few tube. The rest are Daniel Smith (indiciated as ‘DS’) mostly from a tube, one or two might be half-pan, and there’s those three QOR ones too. Also, the ‘bronze’ is a metallic Winsor and Newton watercolour, it’s much shinier in real life than on the screen.

Top row: Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Turquoise, Cerulean Blue, Hookers Green Light, Viridian, Sap Green, Phthalo Yellow Green (DS)

Second Row: Purple Lake, Permanent Rose, Quinacridone Rose (DS), Winsor Red, Orange, Cadmium Yellow Hue, Lemon Yellow

Bottom Left Corner (clockwise): Lamp Black, Buff Titanium, Chinese White, Payne’s Grey Middle Bottom: Bronze (Metallic W+N), Ultramarine (QOR), Quinacridone Magenta (QOR), Nickel Azo Yellow (QOR)

Bottom Right (Clockwise): Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Umber, Transparent Red Oxide (DS)

late July, downtown Davis

August 27, 2024Leave a comment

The Seawhite accordion sketchbook that I filled in the second half of July was very much a double A-side. The campus side, well that was We Can Work It Out, and the downtown side is Day Tripper. Or the other way round. The campus side is Strawberry Fields Forever, the downtown side is Penny Lane. Or maybe the downtown side is the B-side, the I Am The Walrus to the campus Hello Goodbye. No, it’s a double A-side, and this is side B of the double A-side. It starts off on 1st street with that big white Dutch gabled building I have drawn before. I realize now, this ain’t a double A-side, it’s an album, and clearly a greatest hits filled with old favourites (but surprisingly not the Bike Barn or the Silo). This is like the Red and Blue Albums condensed, all the greatest bits but for some reason no sign of I Saw Her Standing There.

Now I drew this out of order, not starting at the left and going right, but starting in the middle. In fact apart from that first one (which I drew last) I drew this all over the course of one weekend while my wife and son were out of town visiting family. The weather was suddenly a bit cooler after a really awful heatwave, so I took advantage. I went downtown on the Saturday afternoon and drew the Amtrak station below. I’ve never enjoyed drawing the train station, because those curves and arches always seem to get the better of me, but I had some shade and a big electrical box to lean on. You can see some haze in the sky, that was smoke from the Park Fire that was burning further up north. It didn’t end up drifting down this way thankfully, but it was a terrible fire. I drew this, and then went for dinner at Froggie’s.

You can’t have a series of downtown sketches without the Varsity Theatre slap bang in the middle of them. I spent the whole of the Sunday out there drawing, finishing off at home with the colour and hatching, and was quite tired by the end of it. You can see the poster for Deadpool and Wolverine in this picture in a couple of places, I had been to see that on the Saturday; fun, very silly, very violent. As you can see I’m using street signs and trees as dividers between the pictures. That’s something I did in the original 2010 accordion book. I think I’ve drawn the Varsity about 21 times now. I need to do an itemized list of which places in Davis I have drawn the most, and keep it like a league table.

Next up, the old City Hall, we’ve heard this song a few times too. It’s part of the restaurant / deli Mamma’s now, which I’ve still not been to.

And below, the old house on D Street in between the Pence and the Mustard seed, which I have drawn many times. It looks like it is called Mabel’s Market now, and I’ve not been in there yet. Ten years ago when it was an art studio and gallery space called Art-Is-Davis I took part in a small joint exhibition in there called Scene In Davis. That was a fun evening. I think the first time I sketched this place (in that 2010 accordion book) it was an Antiques shop.

And that’s your lot, I hope you liked this little tour through downtown. I did buy a second one of these sketchbooks which I will fill, not sure when.

late July, UC Davis

August 19, 20242 Comments

Here’s what I did in the second half of July. Or rather, half of what I did. When I was in London I bought a Seawhite of Brighton accordion sketchbook, one that is just under 7″ tall (that’s 17cm, I did buy it in England), and each page is about 3.5″ wide (about 9cm that is), and there were about 16 of those pages/folds, and well, you do the math. I mean, the maths. I have got one of these particular accordion books by Seawhite before, about 12 or 13 years ago, but it was bigger, and I never got past the first drawing. This time I was determined, a series of drawings of UC Davis, with another series of drawings of downtown Davis on the other side. To be honest it wasn’t hugely ambitious, it’s all stuff I have drawn a million times before, right, and the individual drawings aren’t exactly long panoramas themselves (unlike the four very long ones drawn on Hutchison in the 2016 panorama Moleskine). It does look pretty good all stretched out though, it does get a ‘wow’, but the idea was to show the two sides of the Davis we know, or I know. For the UC Davis side, we have six locations all drawn in ink and watercolour: Hart Hall, Shields Library, Heitman (formerly the Hog Barn), Mrak Hall, the Memorial Union, and Turner Wright Hall.

No stories with these, just the images as they are, UC Davis in the middle of summer. It’s quiet. In a month’s time all the people will start coming back and the quiet days will turn back into busy days, and before you know it the rest of 2024 will whizz past and we’ll all be six months older. I’ve enjoyed the quiet of summer, if not the heat (it’s relatively cooler now though, which is nice), and my daily sketching has slowed a bit since I did this book, and I have not been to many places, nor have I organized any sketchcrawls, that can wait. I drew some London pictures to go on the wall, and also to go into the Pence’s annual art auction. I have (as of last week) started getting into lino block printing, which I’ve not done since some time in the late 80s at school, and it’s fun so far. The biggest creative project I’ve done this summer (even bigger than this accordion book) is the faculty family tree I finally created for our department at UC Davis, which you can read about and look at in this article here. That was a project many years in the conception but which I finally decided to create when the idea hit me on the London Underground. And finally, I’m running again, albeit slowly and more heavily than before, aiming for the 5k on Labor Day and then (gulp) train up for a 10k by November…

Check back for part 2, a whole spread of downtown Davis.

Walker Hall, ten years later

January 25, 2024January 25, 2024Leave a comment

I have been getting the ‘on this day ten years ago I drew this’ bug, because it’s a decade since my worryingly over-productive January 2024 set of drawings around Davis (I mean, January was always my busiest month at work, yet I had the energy to produce a lot of two-page drawings that month). It’s always a good moment to reflect on the changes. This week my then-six-year-old son became a sixteen-year-old son, which scares me to think how fast that’s happened. I’m working in the same department, just in a very different job, but I’m still plugging away with drawing campus on my lunchtimes. I’ve published two books since then, had a successful retrospective sketchbook show, been interviewed by the chancellor of the university, done a lot of travelling, and there’s been a pandemic in the middle. The world has been an ‘Interesting Times’ sort of place in the past decade, give me the decade before that any day. But looking at just one spot and tracking the changes, this view of Walker Hall above, the new modern Graduate Center in the historic refurbished building, is a good example. Regular followers will have seen my sketches of this building as it was slowly turned into the center that we see today, and many of my in-progress sketches are still on display in the lobby there, which is a massive honour (as a former grad coordinator I always maintained good relations with Grad Studies, and it was the previous Dean Jeff Gibeling who gave me the idea to draw the progress of the construction when it was first announced a decade or so ago in a meeting). I think I may have already known the future plans when I drew the panorama below, or maybe that was a little afterwards, but this view was always one I wanted to draw like this, and of all the panoramas I drew in January 2014 this one was my favourite. Now it has captures a moment in time that has passed. I liked the big diagonal shadow against the windows, and trying to convey the large E-shaped building using curvilinear perspective. It was drawn in the old Seawhite of Brighton book I was using then, while the newer one above was drawn in the watercolour Moleskine (side note, in recently comparing older scans to newer ones, I’ve decided I don’t like my current Epson scanner at all, I cannot seem to capture the right amount of clarity no matter how much I mess with the settings, unlike with my older (now long-departed) HP scanner. I’ve rescanned some older drawings recently and they don’t even compare with the older scans, regardless of 300dpi or 72 dpi. It’s subtle when they are small but I really notice it now. Time for a new scanner.) Anyway, this one above might put a final bookend to my Walker Hall series of sketches. It’s been a fun journey, but the building’s finished now and it should look like this for its foreseeable future. You can see them all in this Flickr folder.

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.

christmas time at the farmers market

December 21, 2023December 20, 2023Leave a comment

A couple of weekends ago we held our latest Let’s Draw Davis meet of 2024, a small group in Central Park sketching at the Farmer’s Market. It had been a cold week and I was expecting a chilly morning, but the sun was out and the autumn colours were massive, and it was a really nice morning to be out with a sketchbook. I decided I’d sketch with my brown-ink fountain pen, it really creates a nice tone with the fall colours. There were a lot of people and stalls to draw; the flat earth people weren’t out this time, having probably fallen off the edge of the world. There was a banjo player making some nice tunes. As I sketched a young couple came up and tried to give me a flyer to some party with their church; no thank you, I said, but they were really insistent. I tried to politely make it clear I’m a little busy. They complemented my drawing but said “God gave you that gift”. I’m like, mate no, thousands and thousands of hours of practice gave me this gift, anyway see ya later, have a Merry Christmas. Still they held out the flyer, and then asked “Have you ever heard of Jesus?” I couldn’t help myself and said “No, never heard of him, who’s that?” As they started to actually tell me, and question me on how I celebrate Christmas, I had to say look mate you might try someone else, I’m not interested and obviously busy, and they finally left me to my sketch. Really not got a lot of time for religious converters, and don’t really have to explain why. One of the other sketchers later said they’d also been approached by the same insistent group, and instead had a long philosophical debate with them, and they eventually left him alone. At least it wasn’t the flat earth lot.

I drew more people about the market, I was going to colour them in but ended up leaving them as is, I like that brown ink. I wrote the colours next to them too, people were really out in lots of colourful clothing on this colourful Fall morning. Christmas is just around the corner. While I’ve no interest going to anyone’s Jesus party, I do absolutely love the Christmas carols at this time of year. One of my favourite festive moments since coming over here was attending the annual Christmas Concert at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which I did on a couple of occasions about a decade ago, having illustrated the program and poster for the event. There is nothing like a cathedral for the incredible acoustics of a Christmas concert. (Also, did you know that ‘Away in a Manger’ has a different tune in America than it does in Britain? We learned that song every year in junior school for our nativity play, so it is strange hearing it with a different tune, a bit like hearing Yellow Submarine with the tune of a David Bowie song) (which I have done at karaoke by the way, replacing the lyrics of Modern Love with those of Yellow Submarine, which really worked; I remember as I was going up a woman said to me “I really love this song!” and I said, “Yeah, you’re gonna hate this version”, but actually it really worked. I had this theory years ago that you could shoehorn the words of Yellow Submarine into any song. You can even do it with ‘Away in a Manger’ – try it! Fun Christmas party game). Anyway I love a Christmas Carol. You don’t get carollers coming round to your door any more, at least we never have here. I used to do it as a kid, me and a few other kids on our street would go round knocking on the doors in the Orange Hill area of Burnt Oak singing basically two songs, “Jingle Bells” and “We WISH you a Merry Christmas”. And occasionally Away In A Manger if they wanted an encore. We would get some money each, 10p, 20p, 50p if you were lucky, but woe betide those who gave away a full quid because word would get around and every carol-singing kid from Deansbrook to Stag Lane would descend upon your doorstep singing the exact same rushed verse of “We WISSHHH you a Merry Christmas” and hold out their hands. Ah fun times.

Well there was a group of singers in the park this day giving a performance of festive songs (though it was much more the church hymns than your Jingle Bells), but they were really good and I enjoyed listening to the singing as I sketched, with the fall colours behind. Nobody tried to give me a flyer either. Still I was up against the clock as the sketchcrawl was ending soon and we always meet to look at each others’ sketchbooks and share sketching tips. That Lamy Safari fountain pen with the brown ink is good for the quick sketchy movements of drawing people. These singers mostly wore black or dark clothes so it really stood out against the autumnal trees. Catching this season while I can.