pea green soup

November 7, 2015November 7, 20154 Comments

While walking in the UC Davis Arboretum earlier this week, I was greeted with an unbelievable sight. The entire creek and Lake Spafford was a bright, grassy green. It wasn’t the water itself, rather the green stuff floating on the surface. It wasn’t a sickly green, rather a very healthy looking green. It looked like the fairway of a golf course. So I did a quick sketch, which is below. You can see it in the sketch above as well, though in patches the water is visible and reflected the sky. Those scribbly dark areas are shadows.

Just a little green. Or a lot of green. Anyway, the arboretum is a lovely place right now, with leaves turning autumnal colours and the change in the weather (pushing 90 a week ago, pushing 60/70 now). Ok, so back to the top sketch, this is a scene that I’ve sketched many times over the years. I watched this view change over the course of a few years, once per year, until it settled upon the current look, when I got bored and stopped. You will remember, I have been in Davis ten years now, and it’s not a big place, things will get sketched multiple times. This is King Hall, with Mrak Hall in the background. This used to be a view of Mrak alone. Here are the sketches; I really do feel like a sketch historian now…

2012:

2011:

2010:

2009:

2008:

2007:

Coming next: a new sketch of the Bike Barn, which I have sketched about two million times…

tercero

November 6, 2015Leave a comment

These are the Tercero Residence Halls at UC Davis. They are colourful, and still pretty new. In the background, the other UC Davis water tower (no not that one, the other one). I stood here one lunchtime and sketched in the shade, the weather still being really warm at this late-October time of year (it suddenly turned cooler this week, at last). Now as you know I like to showcase the changes in Davis, and this is no different, so below is a sketch from the spring of 2012 of these halls’ predecessor, already closed and about to be destroyed forever. Today, it is much prettier.

such a fine time, such a happy time

November 4, 20152 Comments

Not been posting as much this past week, but I have been sketching, and I will post a lot more in the coming week. The AYSO soccer season came to an end last weekend, I was coaching a very skilled team of under-8s, and while it was a lot of work, I’m really going to miss it! And so, back to posting my lunchtime sketches. This one is about a week and a half old, sketched downtown on 2nd Street past G, near the station. This little row of yellow buildings is very distinct, and is also the location of one bar/restaurant that I have not sketched inside, Our House. I’ve only been in there once, for a pre-dinner beer on a night out with other couples. I always thought that Our House would be a better located on R Street, somewhere in one of the middle blocks. The red door you can see here is to a piercing and tattoo place called Urban Body. I’ve sketched this row before from a different angle, years ago, and with its unusual angles it’s a but tricky but quite interesting.

turning the wheels

October 27, 2015October 27, 20153 Comments

It was time for another bar sketch. After a Saturday of AYSO soccer, pirates versus knights battles, Disney Infinity super-hero smash-downs and the occasional lightsabre duel, I headed out in the evening to do some drawing, read some comics and have a few beers. I love being a grown-up. Since I have a new book out (available right now!) in which I talk extensively about drawing bars in low light, I felt I should add to the sketchbook a little more, so I popped into the City Hall Tavern, which I last sketched two years ago, to again attempt their bar area with the bicycle wheels on the ceiling. Ice Hockey was on the TV (they just call it ‘Hockey’ here; similarly they say ‘cubes’ instead of ‘ice cubes’, ‘cream’ instead of ‘ice cream’, and ‘stares’ instead of ‘icy stares’ whenever I make this joke). They get so aggressive and fighty in Ice Hockey. For a game in which you are essentially just skating around trying to hit a small disc that won’t stop moving, players seem to get unusually angry, angrier than in most sports. Perhaps it’s because they dress head to toe in armour and carry huge sticks, it brings out the medieval warrior in people. Maybe the sport needs to change its image a little, and rename itself ‘Nice Hockey’. Ok, from now on I am calling it ‘Nice Hockey’ in the hope that it catches on. And those stares I get when I do will be called ‘Nice Stares’. So, back to the sketch. I sat on the opposite side of the bar to when I last sketched this bar, for a slightly different angle. I follow City Hall Tavern on Twitter, and I notice that they are using one of my sketches of their bar as their header image (I think I said ok to that), but they have removed whatever was on the screen and replaced it with an actual shot from a real basketball game. Hmm, no, not really a fan of that. Replace it with a shot of Harry Kane scoring for Tottenham, maybe, or of Jose Mourinho huffing as Chelsea lose again, perhaps. Anyway, I tried a couple of different beers, one was a Gose Wheat beer (tasted like Strongbow), the other was a Sudwerk Aggie Cruiser, which was nice too. Lots of people were coming in drinking cocktails as part of some local bar crawl event that was happening. By the time I was done with my sketch, all the City Hall bar patrons were standing and chatting and dancing, and so I popped down to De Vere’s for a comfy seat and one more wheat beer to read a couple of comics (“the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” if you’re interested, and it’s great) before walking home.

Here are my previous City Hall Tavern sketches (inside only; I’ve sketched the outside building since way before it was a bar):

July 2012

October 2013

January 2012

fit for a queen

October 26, 20155 Comments

This used to be the Dairy Queen. Long-term readers (hello by the way!) may remember that I drew this before, back in its DQ glory days. As you can see, it looks a little different now. A couple of years ago, the DQ finally closed its doors and sold its last chicken strip, but rather than lose the building entirely for something new, glassy and nondescript, an architecture firm called Indigo took over the space and did something creative with that very distinctive wavy roof, creating a modern but unintrusive structure. They have described it as a “Bioregional Building”, which sounds like they’re taking a word, remodeling the word, keeping the word’s roof and making a new, modern eco-friendly word (in other words yes, I don’t know what “bioregional” means). Indigo (Hammond and Playle) explain their process for rebuilding the old Dairy Queen into a modern energy-efficient and “climate-adapted”office space on their website. As well as this award-winning structure they have also created an adjoining space which, “clad in corrugated metal alludes to the agricultural vernacular of California’s Central Valley”. It all does look very nice. Not however as strikingly red as its predecessor, but surely a lot healthier. Here are my previous sketches of the Dairy Queen, the first from 2011, the second from 2013. I actually sold both of these drawings, the first was part of my 2011 solo exhibition at the Pence Gallery. I learned that the Dairy Queen in Davis was very popular, despite it never appearing to be that busy. There was something all-American about Dairy Queen (I mean ‘is’, because it still exists elsewhere). When I was asked years ago to sketch something ‘American’ for an old university friend in the UK who had an American husband who missed the USA, I chose to sketch the Dairy Queen. The one in Davis was beloved as a place to take the grandkids for a treat (people who have grandkids have told me), and my wife used to stop off here for an ice-cream on the way to picking up my son from pre-school. Alas, Davis Dairy Queen is no more, but we still have its roof.

I did sketch the reconstruction process of course, back in July last year. I think it all turned out rather well. But I never did try their cake…

sorority seems to be the hardest word

October 25, 20153 Comments

One of many downtown buidlings I’ve always wanted to sketch but given a ‘some other time maybe’ thought to, this sorority house on the corner of C and 2nd in Davis, Alpha Chi Omega (I think it’s a sorority. I always have trouble saying that word, “sorority”, words with too many ‘r’s are never easy. Many Americans have trouble with the word ‘mirror’, pronouncing it more like ‘meer’ as opposed to ‘mirrah’ like we Londoners do). I always thought that Alpha Chi Omega was a Greek equivalent to the A-to-Z maps of London. If you are wondering, I didn’t really, I just made that up and had never actually thought of that before. Anyway, I sketched it one lunchtime in brown-black ink, decided against colouring it in. The weather is nice right now in Davis, a little more autumnal, though still sunny.

constructing the manetti shrem, part four

October 20, 20152 Comments

More from the series on constructing the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis (which was previously abbreviated to just the ‘Shrem’, but is now formally referred to as the ‘Manetti Shrem’). As you may know I’ve been following its progress through lunchtime sketches, and now that the large steel frame of the canopy is going up, it is time to carry on. The museum will not open until next year some time but you can really see it taking shape now. In fact as I sketched the construction site last Friday from the edge of the Mondavi parking structure, One of the large steel girders, with two smaller girders hanging beneath it, was raised into place, as you can see from the sketchbook shot below with the ‘forty-minutes later’ scene behind it. I spoke to one of the construction workers before I began, showed him what I’d done the previous week, and then there he was up on that roof helping to weld that massive structure together. This building is going to be such an important addition to Davis, and particularly as it stands on the Vanderhoef Quad, named for the much beloved and respected former chancellor of the university Larry Vanderhoef, who passed away last week on the day before I made that sketch below. I met him just the once, in my early years at UCD, and shook his hand, a very sincere and likeable man, who had recently brought out a book about his quarter-century in Davis called “Indelibly Davis”. Indelible is right – many of the impressive large projects at UC Davis, such as the Mondavi Center, are part of his impressive legacy. RIP Chancellor Vanderhoef.

Previously on ‘Constructing the Manetti Shrem’:

Part Three… https://petescully.com/2015/08/07/constructing-the-shrem-part-three/

Part Two… https://petescully.com/2015/07/01/constructing-the-shrem-part-two/

Part One… https://petescully.com/2015/02/26/shrem-museum-under-construction/

frat’s entertainment

October 16, 20155 Comments

The last time I sketched this Frat House it was a different Frat that was in there. I’m not a massive fan of the whole Frat thing, but then I’m a pushing-40 British sketcher so I don’t know, I’m not the demographic. This is that time of year though isn’t it, when the Fraternities do all their Frat Boy stuff, and the Sororities do all their Sor Girl stuff (it isn’t actually called that, is it. See? I’m clueless). I’m actually surprised that the helicopter parents of these students haven’t set up special societies of their own, to keep an eye on them, Mat Houses or Pat Houses, as it were. That is a terrible idea of course, which makes it surprising that they don’t exist (and they probably do). You see all the boards over campus each year for ‘Rush’, why they are in such a hurry I don’t know. Young people, eh. Actually I was in a hurry when I sketched this, as the lunchtime ticked away and I needed to go and eat something unhealthy. Anyway, this is at the very start of campus, the intersection of Old Davis Road, 1st Street and A Street.

green is the colour

October 15, 20152 Comments

Did you see it? Did you see Ireland beating Germany? I missed it! But it did happen. I’m talking about the football now. I’ve been proudly parading my various Ireland shirts from the past twenty-one years, but it’s not just the Republic. Northern Ireland may not have beaten the world champions, but they did win their group and will be going to Euro 2016 in France! I’ve not seen them play in a tournament since Mexico 86, the first World Cup that really did mean the world to me (not for Northern Ireland, but for Panini stickers, Gary Lineker and Diego Maradona. I can still hum the “Aztec Gold” TV theme tune used by ITV, at least I think it was ITV). I was ten. I don’t have a Northern Ireland shirt, despite my family connections (my grandad was from Belfast, my other grandparents all came from the Republic) but I might get one now. Wales also made it to the Euros, and I’m super happy about that, though I’ve never been to Wales and have no Welsh family, I do like Gareth Bale, and their manager. England made it too by winning all their games, whatever. But the Republic of Ireland, despite beating Germany and going a point behind them in the qualifying table, were not quite there yet. They had to go to Poland, and either win or get (specifically) a 2-2 draw. Not easy against Poland and their striker Lewandowski, who has scored about four hundred goals in the past couple of weeks alone. (American readers: I am joking, it was more like two hundred). It was on TV. It was Sunday. I wasn’t going anywhere. While my son played on the floor, I watched the game and sketched, naturally in green. Remember, we needed a 2-2 draw. Unfortunately, Ireland lost 2-1. So near, and yet so far. And so Ireland go into the play-offs to see who will get the final few spots at Euro 2016. There is still hope yet! However, poor old Scotland didn’t make it this time, so the almost-there prospect of a tournament with England, both Irelands, Wales and Scotland all in it was just a distant dream (what, there already is one? Oh right, in Rugby…)

sketching sofia and hennessy

October 13, 2015Leave a comment

Last week I was invited to attend an undergraduate Design class at UC Davis, DES001, by Professor James Housefield. I was there to sketch the special presentation by two guest speakers, Sofia Lacin and Hennessy Christophel, who form a design team called LC Studio Tutto. It was in a large lecture hall (Kleiber; I’ve sketched the outside before), quite a lot of people in there. I sat on the side at the front, it was a struggle to get a good view of the speakers so I moved on to the floor! They were very interesting, and talked about their local projects, including “Same Sun”, the colourful one on the massive water-tank that you may have seen as you enter Davis westbound from Sacramento. This one. Pretty cool! Very interesting to hear about their design process. Of course I had to sketch quickly and try to add a few nuggets of what they said. A lot of it resonated with me, from what I learned and experienced back in the days of Interactive Theatre at uni. Here’s a tip when doing this sort of sketch, it is always important when doing that to get the relevant information, if you write down the wrong things it can affect the context and undermine what public speakers really said. That said, the line that stood out most for me was “Whenever possible, make a cake of your artwork”. Now, this was accompanied by a very beautiful picture of a cake of their artwork, but, well, I couldn’t agree more. All I could think of afterwards was fire-hydrant cakes. It made me very hungry!

I kept thinking about cake as I sketched the students listening to the talk. Many of them asked questions, and it was very engaging. I sketched these people in my newer pink pen, which made me think of frosting, which made me think of cake. I was thinking of Battenberg, that’s a nice cake.

Sometimes when you are going to sketch people, it’s fun to pre-prepare a block of colour so that you can draw over it. I’ve done it before, it is fun. Unfortunately this time I chose red, and although one of the speakers Sofia was wearing red, the overall effect didn’t really work quite as well as I’d hoped, and the likenesses weren’t all that close. That’s ok. Perhaps I needed more words all around the figures like I did when pirate-sketching that one time. I didn’t have much time on me though, because it was wrapping up, and was my turn to speak. I got a few minutes to say some things about sketching in general, and show my sketchbook to the audience projected onto a big screen.

One interesting thing in this class, Prof. Housefield has his students all stand and sketch for five minutes at the start of class, while music plays over the PA. They all sketched an image of Magritte’s pipe, but I sketched them. Just five minutes though! Overall it was a lot of fun, and I had some very nice conversations afterwards. I didn’t mention, but a couple of weekends ago my sketches were featured on the UC Davis Instagram account all weekend as an “artist’s takeover”. Which meant that I myself had to start an Instagram account. I’m @pwscully, if you are interested. (@petescully, which is my Twitter and everything else handle, was already taken, so I went with my “novelist name” – thanks, kid Pete of the 80s – and now in 2015 of course I don’t use for the book I have actually authored). I haven’t got the hang of the old Instagram yet either, and approach it grumpily as another thing which doesn’t quite make sense. But I’m veering off topic.

So many thanks to James Housefield (I’ve sketched him too) for inviting me and many thanks to Sofia and Hennessy for their inspiring talk. I hope you can check out their work.