drawing boards

October 27, 2023October 26, 2023Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago we held another Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl, this time at the UC Davis Quad, and we had a good bunch sketching with us. I drew the boards, I always seem to draw those at this time of year. I never get ‘board’ of them , hur hur. I see this one is for ‘Cherry Pie Comedy Improv’. I went to a Comedy Improv night once years ago, I asked them whether ‘Improv’ was short for ‘Improve Your Joke Writing’. I didn’t really, I made that up. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to an Improv Night, I’m sure they are very good, never really appealed. I was brought up on Whose Line Is It Anyway, the original British one, Clive Anderson hosting, Paul Merton, Tony Slattery, Josie Lawrence. Proops. Sessions. I suppose showing up at a sketchcrawl is a bit like doing an Improv, using your honed skills to come up with sketches, though thankfully on a sketchcrawl nobody laughs at it (so very much like an Improv night). “Whose Line and Wash is it Anyway”. I do remember going to party when I was at secondary school organized by someone who really liked Whose Line Is It Anyway (as did I) and we all played games like on the show. I barely remember it at all, come to think of it, that was so long ago. That show was so long ago, I’ve not seen it since about 1992. But back to the sketching.

Here we see some sketchers that I’ve sketched with many times, above are Alison Kent, met on my first sketchcrawl in Davis back in December 2005, along with her husband Allan Hollander (below), I have sketched them both many times. On the right of Alison is Robert Dvorak, well known art instructor who I have also sketched before, and the last time I saw him was when I bumped into him sketching a workshop in Yosemite. Also below behind Allan are a couple of other sketchers, we had a lot of students join us that day, many from the Landscape Architecture and Design programs.

I organized this sketchcrawl before I realized how invested in the Rugby World Cup I was going to become, so for my last sketch, I found a table in the courtyard of the Memorial Union, jumped on the strong wifi connection, and watched part of the first half of Ireland vs New Zealand. I was rooting for Ireland of course, but it didn’t start so well. I cycled home fast for the second half, and it was an exciting finish, the Irish nearly made it, but New Zealand held out for the win. (I think they will win the World Cup this Saturday, against South Africa, who narrowly beat England after coming from behind, I’m still a bit gutted about that) (Look at me, I’m a rugby fan all of a sudden!)

I really enjoyed seeing everyone’s sketches at the end though, it inspired me to do a lot more sketching. We’re still holding the sketchcrawls monthly, though I’m not sure the date of the November one, I think someone else might organize it. I’ll post it here when known. You can check out the Facebook group to see other people’s sketches: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LetsDrawDavis.

Friday 13th October, 17 years later

October 26, 2023October 26, 20231 Comment

I said before that every day is Friday 13th these days, but at least the actual Friday 13th has a Saturday after it, I suppose. Halloween is coming up too; I am less interested every year, unfortunately. Remember that one year I drew loads and loads of Halloween stuff, had a Halloween party and drew the invitations, drew most of the decorations, we made costumes, I’ve not even got a pumpkin this year. Well, a very small one at work, on which I have drawn a cartoon of King Charles III with a pumpkin on his head, ‘God Save The Pumpking’. That sits on my shelf. We had a real Friday 13th a couple of weeks ago, and it was no less of a Friday 13th, so to de-stress a little I of course entered the sketchbook at lunchtime. I remembered back 17 (seventeen!) years, to Friday October 13th 2006 no less, a barely recognizable world away, when I also drew at lunchtime, and I had drawn the side of the Bike Barn, the first time I had ever drawn that building. That sketch is below. I wanted to draw it from the same angle, to see what had changed (obviously my sketching style has changed, though I still can’t draw bikes, that’s the same). Those taller trees are gone, replaced with much smaller trees. People now whizz by on those electric scooter things that so many people have now, silent platforms whizzing up behind you on the bike path. Still I think in 2006 I was definitely expecting actual Hoverboards by 2023 and we don’t have those yet, these are the closest thing. They may as well be Hoverboards. In the sketch above I’m drawing on Stillman and Birn Alpha paper with a Uni-ball Signo UM-151 in black-brown, coloured with watercolour. Below, well that was my first Moleskine sketchbook, and it was the ‘regular’ Moleskine paper not the watercolour stuff I have used since 2007, I didn’t know about that then. It wasn’t in the landscape format I’m so wedded to now, but I had seen so many sketchers online using this Moleskine sketchbook that I thought, right, I’ll try that too. And boy did it not work for me. See people would use it because it was popular, but nobody seemed to actually like it. The paper was too waxy, so most pens just couldn’t write well on it (I discovered several years later that the Uni-Ball Signo UM-151 in black actually works perfectly on it, it’s the only thing I’ve used that I’ve liked), and as for using watercolours, well forget it, you may as well be trying to watercolour paint on a jar of honey. Pencil was fine, but the paper is so smooth that there’s no character. It’s also very yellowy, which has its charms I guess, but that yellowy tinge when you scan it makes you feel a little ill. What pen did I use here? I think this was before I was using the Micron pens, so it was probably a regular old Uni-Ball from Office Max, those were good but nothing like as good as the UM-151 and didn’t perform well on this paper. (I tried my new fountain pen with fantastic document brown ink on this paper recently to see how that would be and that was not a pretty sight). For colours, I used the coloured pencils I would draw with that year. I had this set of watercolour pencils, but I’d already learnt that I wasn’t going to work so well so just used them dry. I liked it, but have never gotten on board with good coloured pencil use, that particular art avenue never opened up for me. Still, I really liked this sketch, and for a piece of observation and development this was an important one for me, maybe my best Davis sketch to date. A good feeling about a sketch can propel you to keep going, and this one definitely did that. You never know where it will all end up, so in the meantime just keep on sketching.

Seventeen years though. 2006! People talk about that time now in retro terms, which is scary, like we would talk about the 70s back in the 90s. This was the end of that long first summer I had spent in Davis. I spent a lot of time riding around on my bike, in the heat, listening to this one album by Belle and Sebastian that came out that year, I got a new guitar, I started drawing a lot, having started to discover other sketchers online starting to form connections (two years before we coalesced into Urban Sketchers, when we all had our own blogs and created Flickr groups, and before all the Social Media madness overtook everything) (except MySpace, that was still a thing for another year or so). That summer I went back to London for the first time since emigrating, and spent about three weeks there, just seeing friends and family, very relaxed, still young. 2006 as a time period feels so long ago. I don’t know how different Davis feels then from now, compared to how much London has evolved since then, for me obviously I’ve just been here longer, sketching everything. If I moved here now as opposed to then, it would probably not feel so different. The world at large though, that feels very different. In some ways better, in a lot of ways worse. I’m glad I was young when I was. In these days of constant information/misinformation bombardment it can be very stressful. I’ve always had a sketchbook to climb into, that’s still why I use it. I’ve changed – maybe. I’m just older, have a bit more confidence, have many years of work-work and sketchbook-work under my belt. I found a note I’d written from Friday October 27, 2007 (sixteen years ago tomorrow), the other day. It was in the pack pocket of that Moleskine, funnily enough, and I was clearly in a bit of a funk about being able to do anything, something I’m still familiar with. It said this:

“While scratching my unshaven chin and frowning at a pile of papers I came to a sudden conclusion today. I cannot write, only wrong. I make no art, only fart. I can’t compose, only decompose. My guitar is better displayed than played, at least by me. My sketching is sketchy, my drawing barely draws breath, and my painting ain’t. I can’t debate, only outdate; I can’t converse, only confuse; I can’t think, only splash ink. *I might feel different when I shave!”

I mean, all of that is still true, I still feel like that every now and then (and I always feel better when I shave and cut my hair). But it’s still a busy-October way of feeling. Too many Friday the 13ths.

tree by Turner Wright

October 24, 2023October 24, 2023Leave a comment

Another lunchtime, another part of campus, this was outside the Art Building, by the Turner Wright Hall, next to those Arneson Eggheads that look like they are in a one-way argument; a spot I have sketched before, not that that’s ever stopped me. I liked the colours. I’m drawing a lot at the moment, because (I think) it’s something I know how to do, and in moments when you feel like you can’t really do very much at all, that means a lot. Even if sometimes it feels like a waste of time/energy that could be spent better, it actually isn’t, and in the long term, well I have this huge body of art work to look back on, and people seem to like it. It’s never enough though is it. There always has to be another drawing. Like, do more, do better, try out another idea, another pen, another type of line. There’s no ‘finishing line’ though, not even the end of a sketchbook, because I tend to race towards the end of that sketchbook (I have about a third left in my current one) just so I can start a new one, that magnificent feeling of Page One. I’m drawing in these books, creating them and controlling the narrative, but I think I’m also reading them. Some sketchbooks, they are like novels you just can’t put down, you’ve drawn on one page and you can’t wait to see what happens next. The plot point might be “the Silo” or “the Arboretum” but it might somehow be the best sketch of the book, one of those ones that inspires you to draw a load of other sketches in a similar way – or not, maybe it will be a sketch that convinces me to give up on a certain palette or pen. All the sketchbooks just show the story of my life, the mundane, the world I’m in. I’m not that interesting, Davis might not be that interesting, but there it is, here I am, I’ll keep on drawing it (“everything is interesting if you take an interest in it” a younger man once said, hoping that would be his catchphrase, and it’s still true). This sketch shows I’m really into the trees on campus still, worried about them all after so many fell since last year. I decided not to colour in the trunk but let it stand out against the background colours. On to the next page.

more F street

October 22, 2023Leave a comment

I went down to F Street, near the Paint Chip, drew the view across the street, crunchy leaves already falling. Another view of Davis, that’s what you’ll see here. Really wouldn’t mind travelling somewhere actually and drawing some other streets. Gotta keep drawing. I keep thinking about that old old idea of publishing a book of Davis drawings, and why I’ve not gotten on that yet. I think that would be quite nice.

the joggers on the corner

October 21, 2023October 20, 2023Leave a comment

Another one from 10/10, this one was drawn after work, because I just needed to sketch some more while there was still daylight. I went downtown and decided to draw with the black fountain pen again, this time on the corner of 3rd and F, where those two statues of people running in opposite directions are, near the old City Hall (now an Italian restaurant and deli called ‘Mammas’). I stood and sketched furiously, and I enjoyed what I drew, it’s a colourful scene. It might even be my favourite sketch in this sketchbook. You know sometimes when you’ve not yet grown into a sketchbook yet, then one drawing feels like it kicks off a bit of confidence, this might be that one. That said, I’ve been a bit irritated with my sketching lately as well, but I get like that from time to time. There were a lot of people about, after a long day I wasn’t in much of a mood to enjoy the early evening atmosphere, and just cycled home when I was done. It’s a nice little corner this though, with that bench underneath the big old tree. I’ve lived here quite a long time now, and when I pass this way what I think of, bizarrely, is the day Michael Jackson died. We had come downtown that evening (probably off to Chipotle for dinner) and there were a bunch of people gathered here mourning Jacko, with some folk with their guitars singing some of his songs acoustically, I distinctly remember them singing ‘Man in the Mirror’. That was in 2009, that long ago? Of course when I first heard that Jacko had died I did admittedly assume they were talking about Jacko from the hit TV show Brush Strokes, and planned my own vigil where I played that song “Because of you, these things I do…” over and over with a cheeky chirpy Cockney smile. But it wasn’t that Jacko, Karl Howman remains alive and well (I presume). The restaurant behind that is now Mamma’s, that used to be Bistro 33, a nice restaurant that we went to a few times for work lunches years ago, I really liked their Creme Brulee. So the statues, they are called ‘The Joggers’ and were created in 1986 by Tony Natsoulas, a local artist who grew up in Davis (I think he works out of Sacramento), I like them. That reminds me, the Turkey Trot is coming up in a month. I have been doing some running, but not like before, my right leg is still aching a bit and I’ve been trying to not to do too much on it. I’ve given up the plan of beating my Labor Day run pace, now I just want to get through the 5k race in decent shape and make our usual trip to Black Bear afterwards.

RMI

October 17, 2023October 17, 2023Leave a comment

This is the Robert Mondavi Institute (RMI) of Food and Wine Sciences at UC Davis, very close to where I work. I’ve drawn it a couple of other times, and am surprised I don’t draw it more because it is an interesting building. I stood in the middle, in the Good Life Garden surrounded by all sorts of flowers and foods, and drew the view looking east. The sky was dramatic that day; I couldn’t stand in any shade, so when the sun came out I would hide under my hat with my collars up, like a spy. Those limes in the foreground looked nice. This October is getting me down man, getting me stressed. Needed to stand in a big garden for a bit. I actually went to a meeting in that building over the summer. When I say it was in that building, it was actually mostly over Zoom, I was one of three people there in person (including the host) while everyone else were little faces on this big screen. I was taking notes, but being in person I couldn’t do that thing where you’re looking at the screen nodding as if you’re paying attention, but actually getting some other stuff done. It was pretty awkward being one of the only people actually there. That was summer though, now most of our meetings are in person again, and it’s less awkward when you’re in a room full of people. I have been the only one on Zoom though, in a meeting last year when I was in London, and if you’re the only one, generally you are a big head on the big screen instead of a small head among many others. I probably looked like Holly from Red Dwarf.

bull’n’mouth

October 16, 2023October 16, 2023Leave a comment

I went downtown on Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago; I had a big drawing to do on short notice, and had to scout out a few locations to preliminary sketch for it. Of course this was the day we finally decided to have some rain, after another seemingly endless hot spell, finally some cooling down. So while it was raining, I decided to pop into the Bull & Mouth, the pub which is formerly the location of De Vere’s Irish pub on E street. I had not been into Bull & Mouth (it might be ‘Bull’n’Mouth’, I’m not sure) since it’s opening; De Vere’s originally closed at the start of the pandemic, as so many places did, before a fresh paint job outside in the summer of 2021 followed by a slow reopening later that year; I went back in once then for dinner with my wife, and that turned out to be the last time because it closed down again shortly thereafter, this time for good. The spot has been closed ever since, until this summer when the new Bull & Mouth took over the space. I had not been in yet, so I took this opportunity to finally check it out. I was pleased to see that it still looked a lot like De Vere’s, but with a few added TV screens (thankfully not overbearing), a lot of different wall decorations, long displays of beer cans above our heads, and the wording on the long black strip above the bar now referencing something about bulls rather than what it said before. The fantastic old wooden bar was brought over from Ireland when De Vere’s first opened in 2011, I remember going in there that first week and drawing a panorama while in the middle of the busy place. On this rainy Saturday afternoon, it was not too busy but there were a few people at the bar and I took a seat and ordered a beer. The guy behind the bar recognized me, “it’s been a while!”, it certainly had, about four years since I’d been in there for a beer and a sketch (dinner with my wife in 2021 not included). It didn’t feel that different from De Vere’s. I don’t know what it’s like in the evenings (I don’t go out much in the evenings any more). I had to do a sketch of course; first I worked on my prep sketches a little for the other big drawing, I was still working out the composition of that one as it was of three Davis locations all in one (I’ll post that soon), and then decided to play with the Lamy Safari fountain pen, I had not used it for a bar interior like this. It worked well, moving quickly across the page, and I added a bit of a wash too, though it took the ink a little longer to dry I think in the slightly damper air of that rainy day. I had a couple of very nice beers, and then once the rain had stopped I went across the street for a milkshake (diet be damned) and walked home (there’s my exercise). The last day of September.

green and brown food truck at the silo

October 16, 2023October 16, 2023Leave a comment

There are more food trucks at the Silo these days now that the quarter is in full swing. I ate lunch, and stood in the shade to draw this one, which I think sold coffee and ice cream or something, I didn’t inspect it too closely despite drawing it for half an hour. I couldn’t really read what it said. Not very investigative of me I suppose, I was in a hurry, I had other things on my mind. I just liked the colours of it. I just wanted to do a quick sketch with that fountain pen, that was fun.

a little little chef

October 15, 2023Leave a comment

This little chef is found by a path on the North Davis Greenbelt, next to a very well-kept garden with lots of interesting features (that I am always a bit too nervous to sketch; it is a bit ‘as seen on TV’ and I am scared of the person who creates it coming out and chasing me away) but I could not help to sketch this little chef. He is very little, and maybe a bit more plump than I have drawn him (which I did with the Lamy Safari fountain pen with carbon platinum ink). I never knew any chefs that look like this, though I did know a fairly rotund cook once (I think called Ron? It was a long time ago when I was a very young waiter), lovely chap. I was a waiter when I was a teenager, going on many catering jobs with my mum in places all over north and west London, usually synagogues, often people’s houses, the odd conference centre, one time I even did a catering job at the Houses of Parliament, serving tea and sandwiches to some people at a Jewish Single’s party hosted by an MP. One time I even served tea and wine at the Israeli Embassy. Wow, this was a long time ago, the mid-90s. The little chef does remind me of the 90s though, specifically the ‘Little Chef’, the restaurant chain much loved by motorists around the country. I maybe ate in one once? We didn’t stop in them very often, the occasional service station on the way up north maybe, but I do remember going to the ‘Happy Eater’ when I was a kid, and throwing up violently right after eating some of their alleged food. If you are from Britain and remember the Happy Eater, it was another restaurant you’d find off the motorway but its logo was of someone putting their fingers down their throat, I kid you not. The clue was there all along. It reminds me of a similar chain restaurant in France, ‘Flunch’, named for the sound you make when vomiting into a bucket. However the Little Chef was a notch above these places, from what I understand. Actually everything I know about the Little Chef comes pretty much exclusively from my correspondence with a friend of mine (Jacki) who worked at one in the mid-90s somewhere in the Cambridge area, we would write to each other a lot back then, proper letters on paper like in the old days (before emailing, decades before social media), and she would tell me all about everyone who worked there, the people that would come in, everything. Except about the food, come to think of it, I presumed it was good because she wouldn’t tell me about anyone being violently sick, as I had been in the Happy Eater that time. I think it was a good place to work. I enjoyed reading all those letters, and would write back with my own stories about working in the Asda Coffee Shop, or serving triangle sandwiches to Ronnie Corbett at a gallery (which I did once, and he was utterly fantastic). So when I see this little chef as I’m on my walks or runs on the Greenbelt, I do think of those tales about the Little Chef back then.

when the world is shite

October 13, 2023October 13, 20231 Comment

It’s Friday the 13th today. I mean, it feels like it’s Friday the 13th every day, except Fridays are usually good. Look, the world is feeling pretty shite right now isn’t it, it’s hard to deal with the news everywhere, it’s hard enough to deal with daily life going back and forth. I’m not even glued to the news, and try to limit social media for the weight it places on you mentally, but the world keeps happening. I try to deal with it by putting a pen on a piece of paper and looking at something while moving the pen around and making a pattern that looks like the thing I’m looking at, and I find that relaxing, and sometimes when it turns out well I feel like I’ve achieved something positive. A small achievement every day can make a difference, even if it’s a small difference. I wasn’t in a great mood last Saturday for whatever reason, and though I did get out for a first decent run in a while (my leg’s been hurting, limiting my running) I pretty much stayed inside, watched the football (Spurs won again and hey, we are top of the league! That’s definitely not shite), watched the Rugby World Cup (I’ve been getting really into that) and then decided that I really needed to get out for a bit in the late afternoon to do a sketch and pick up some Octoberfest beer. It was still really hot, mid-90s, and not massively comfortable sketching weather. I got a cold drink at Newsbeat and went down to 2nd Street, stood outside El Patio Mexican restaurant, and drew the Hunt Boyer Dresbach Mansion on the corner of 2nd and E, one of the really old historic buildings of Davis. Or Davisville, as the town – not yet a city – was known then. Actually it’s the Dresbach Hunt Boyer Mansion. In my sketchbook I’ve written Hunt Dresbach Boyer which is totally wrong, but I’m getting forgetful. I wasn’t having a great week. The Dresbach was William Dresbach, the first postmaster for Davis, and it was apparently he who shortened the name from Davisville to Davis, probably envelopes were really small then. I’ve always found it a bit hard to draw, partly because that tree is always in the way. I didn’t go over and look at the City’s official seal which is right outside, and was recently raised above the ground, I should sketch it some time. When I say seal, it’s a huge round bronze plaque, not an aquatic mammal, or a singer from the early 90s. There were a lot of people around, it was late afternoon/early evening on a Saturday, and a couple of different people did say “Come on you Spurs!” and “Nice shirt! Tatten-ham!” to me as they passed, I was in my navy shirt from 17-18. Well we are top of the league now (don’t know if I mentioned that). That violinist who annoyed me that time was over the crossroads, but there was also a pianist playing in the little plaza by the mansion making some nicer music to fill the air. Still I mostly listened to podcasts about history, football, the Beatles, I don’t remember which now. I ended up feeling a bit too hot and sticky, and not really in the mood to soak up the downtown atmosphere, so I ended up stopping after all the penwork was done. I got a couple of Lego minifigures from the Avid Reader, some Hofbrauhaus beer from the Davis Beer Shoppe, and cycled home to finish the painting. At least I did a nice drawing. When the world is a big horrible ball of rubbishness, look for the good bits, and focus on them. Not everything’s shite.