Downtown Riverside

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

UC AMP 2024

April 18, 2024Leave a comment

I recently attended the UC-AMP conference in Riverside, a meeting for administrative management professionals in the University of California. I had been to the same conference last year in Berkeley, and for my own professional development it was an eye opener, and I came away with lots of new ideas and energy for my day to day job. It was around the same time as the Urban Sketching Symposium in New Zealand which I was missing (because it was in New Zealand), so I was feeling extra itch to sketch everything, but I have that anyway. In the end, I actually won the conference’s picture contest for a drawing I did on the Berkeley campus, so I won free registration for this year’s conference in Riverside. I’d never been to Riverside (my wife was born there, but based on her description it was never high on my must-visit list, which is a very long list), but the conference hotel was the Mission Inn, which I had always wanted to visit, and when I looked at it online it shot right up that list. See my previous post for the sketches. The opening reception for the conference was held in this courtyard and hall next to the big chapel there, a beautiful setting, though because I had not arrived right when it started the food was already gone, so I had some ice cream and a glass of wine. People were mingling about; I am not and never have been an ‘enter the room and start making friends’ type of person, I’m more of an ‘enter the room and start hiding’ person. Our name tags revealed our campuses, and when I heard someone from Davis going up to people from Davis and loudly squealing something like “OMG! DAVIS!” to gather them together I made more of an effort to be a bit more invisible. I didn’t see anybody I knew, though there were faces I think I recognized from last year. I really wanted to sketch the courtyard, it was beautiful, but I knew all I’d manage was a quick sketch, so I did the pencil sketch above in my little Fabriano book. The sun was setting, and my tummy was rumbling so I went and found the restaurant for dinner.

Naturally I could not help but sketch at the conference. Most of the reason is that I like to take notes at these things, since I’m here to learn ideas, but it becomes a fun kind of documentation. I used to fret about these things, because you can’t write everything down (boy do I try sometimes, I’m an avid note taker at meetings, it’s how I remember), and you want to be sure that you catch the important bits that at least illustrate the gist of their talk, but I’m better at listening out for those things now. I was drawing mostly with my Lamy fountain pen with the brown De Atramentis ink.

The talks were pretty good, although I didn’t come away from day one with a great deal of enthusiasm or particularly new ideas, unlike the previous year. It was more generic work conference stuff in many ways, and even the breakout I attended didn’t really get me going. Partly though that was because it was using a TV show that I’ve never seen as reference, Gilligan’s Island, though I understood the gist of what was presented I didn’t necessarily agree with the categorizations. Also, I came away not feeling particularly happy, because after dividing us into groups based on characters from the show, I ended up being in a group based on someone called ‘Ginger’, and the presenter made some comment that there were no redheads in our group, to which I said that I respectfully disagreed. While he acknowledged, oh right, other members of my group, people I did not know, decided to take it upon themselves to say I wasn’t, or that “no, he used to be!” and event “he said he used to be redhead but isn’t now”, which I did not say, but now a loudmouthed person has declared to the group that I had. “What? I didn’t say that.” I said, before another woman in our group said “No you used to be, but the stress of working for the UC changed that”. I mean, how fucking rude? This was in front of people. I was ready to argue, but that wouldn’t have been very administrative management professional of me would it, but I was not happy. My hair, which I keep really short anyway (shaved to #1 on the sides), is much lighter than it used to be even a few years ago, but I’m not all faded yet, and still obviously a redhead, just not the idea that someone else has we should look (which is basically how I looked at 11), but either way, that having been an important aspect of my self for my whole life, especially growing up when it is simply put the main aspect and all anyone ever comments on (and I get the idea that’s definitely more true for growing up in Britain than over here), and it’s not just another hair colour, there’s a very real skin identity in there (cf, my own higher risk of skin cancer). It’s not something I particularly wanted a debate on, but frankly I felt that for a group of people who have been patting themselves on the back during this conference on how great they are with people, it was a bit shitty to then make comments about someone’s hair colour in front of a large excited group. It reminded me of Edgware School, but instead of a gobby rabble making the class laugh at the fact I have ginger hair*, now a more grown-up and professionally dressed group of no less gobby people were doing the same in reverse. (*I actually actively avoided the word ‘ginger’ in my life because it had always been used to insult me, until I found the David Devant song ‘Ginger’ which was all about us and very much on our side). Anyway, after that I wasn’t feeling particularly in a mind to socialize so I ditched the afternoon and evening social activities and went and did some really good drawing instead. I enjoyed the second day’s talks quite a bit though, in fact the first presenter Steve Yu gave a talk about body language and public speaking that I definitely took things away from, plus a few interesting phrases. “How you do anything is how you do everything” was a good one. I don’t know what it was, but I came away from it with a “yes, I can do that” feeling. I went to one other talk about Influencing which was really interesting, by Crystal Petrini, though I ended up just writing down all the points but it did make me think about my own place on our campus and how I navigate the various relationships to try to get things done; not easy, often quite a challenge.

There were other talks I didn’t have time to attend, and the big group parts where they presented during lunch about the conference organizing committee and other stuff, plus a huge presentation on Oracle which I only caught the last fifteen minutes of, but by this point I was done and had to fly back home. They told me the 2025 one will be at the Hyatt Embarcadero in San Francisco, a place I’ve stayed at a few times, so I might go to that one. I have some more Riverside sketches to show you in the next post.

at the Mission Inn Riverside

April 16, 20242 Comments

A month ago I was in Riverside, southern California, for a conference for work. The conference itself was at the nearby conference center, but the official hotel for it was the historic Mission Inn, which I had heard of many times, but wow, what an amazing place. I knew I’d want to sketch the whole thing, but I was a little blown away by it. It might be the most interesting hotel I’ve ever stayed in architecturally (even the one I stayed at in Amsterdam, and the Coronado in San Diego). It’s a historic landmark, the largest building in the Mission Revival style, and one of the official Historic Hotels of America. It was a popular hotel with presidents (especially Republican ones), and Richard Nixon was actually married his wife here, the Reagans honeymooned here, and JFK even stayed here (so it’s not just Republicans). Bette Davis married there too, in 1945. There is a Presidential Bar area, with portraits of past presidents associated with the Inn, and loads of old photographs on the wall.

My room was nice, with beautiful historic details, overlooking the main entrance. I got up early on my first morning and went out as soon as there was light to get some doughnuts, and then sketched the entrance before the conference began, the sketch at the top if this post. In my free time away from the conference, I wandered the hotel’s corridors and passageways, it’s like a maze with all sorts of unusual places to discover. The sketch above was high up on one of the highest levels (though not the highest), with a clocktower and flowers everywhere, overlooking the beautiful courtyard. I enjoyed sketching this, though the sun was going down and I had to colour most of it in while sat at the hotel bar (listening to all the people striking up conversations with each other). This place is an illustrator’s dream.

I did spend some time in the courtyard, when I ate a delicious dinner (Cioppino, I can’t resist it) in their restaurant under a beautiful setting. I did have to try to sketch, but there was no way I could draw the whole setting, with the fountain and the flowers. The food was great, and I had tiramisu for dessert, before going to explore the hotel a bit more. I had skipped the afternoon activities of the conference – going to look around UC Riverside – to sketch more interesting buildings near the Mission Inn, and I’d also missed the evening activity – one group went to the Cheech museum, another went on a pub crawl – so I wasn’t feeling very sociable, and I got to exploring the hotel a bit more with my sketchbook. It’s not every day I get to come somewhere like this.

The sketch above was of a little courtyard in front of the large chapel, where we had the conference’s opening reception the evening before. The sun was already set, though this was the first day of Daylight Savings in the US, but the courtyard was pretty well lit. Still, I was starting to get detailed out by this point so kept it simple enough. There are a few other urban sketchers I know who I’d love to see draw this. As I got back to my hotel room, I sat down at the little desk and looked up, and there was a painting of that exact scene made from the same spot, which made me smile.

There are a lot of ‘things’ to sketch all over the hotel too, if you like drawing objects. I just wanted to draw the old bell, because everywhere you go in Riverside you see the symbol of this mission bell everywhere. It’s really old, of Spanish origin, with the year ‘1247’ inscribed on it, and is considered ‘the oldest bell in Christendom’ (you don’t hear that phrase much these days), and was bought in London by the hotel’s founder, Frank Miller. There is a statue of Frank Miller, holding a parrot (sorry, it’s a macaw) near the entrance, and I had to sketch that. There was a detail of two macaws on the lobby floor also (I didn’t stand there to draw that, I took a picture and drew it in my sketchbook, but was a bit half-hearted with it).

On my last day, I did a bit more sketching before I had to go to the airport, what I really wanted to do was go up to the top floor and draw the highest tower. There is so much there, and a lot of staff busying about keeping the place beautiful. I drew the sketch below, with the hills in the background, intending to colour it in but by that point I was done, and had to fly back home. I do have a lot of other Riverside sketches to show you, as well as my conference sketching, stay tuned. Also coming up, lots more Davis sketching, lots of Utah sketching, I have been busy this year so far. I draw a lot. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to visit this place (and it was a work trip too, professional development). One thing I will say though, it seemed like it was impossible to just get a bottle of Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke like anywhere. You can buy a soda at the bar, sure, but there weren’t any vending machines like in many other hotels, and even around the hotel I couldn’t find any convenience store with bottles of Diet Pepsi (I really needed one while I was out sketching) anywhere, it was really strange. That’s my small complaint. Otherwise, yep, nice place.

UC-AMP 2023 (“not the urban sketching symposium”)

May 28, 2023Leave a comment

The 2023 Urban Sketching Symposium took place in mid-April in Auckland, New Zealand. I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand; when I was a kid I bought a little pocket Berlitz guidebook for New Zealand, I used to read about Milford Sound and learned a couple of Maori words (admittedly it was just ‘Kia Ora’ which was easy to remember because of those juice adverts, “It’s too orangey for crows, it’s just for me and my dog” “I’ll be your dog! Woof woof woof woof…” You remember the one). So when the first international USk Symposium after the pandemic was announced, I was excited to go. Except, it was in April, and in New Zealand, and that was a tricky time with work, so I decided, ok, I won’t go. I’ll get to Auckland another time, I guess. So I got to watch all my other fellow sketchers’ posts from down in Auckland, but I didn’t have time to be jealous because instead, I went to a different conference. This was for work was the UC-AMP conference at UC Berkeley. Despite not being at the USk Symposium, I still acted as if I was, and kept my sketchbook out at all times. I drew pretty much all of the speakers whose talks I attended, as I usually do as I am taking notes at the same time. I was very impressed with all the talks, this being my first UC-AMP I was not sure what to really expect, but I’ve not been as engaged at a work conference as with this one, and I learned a lot that I will bring back to my own job. The networking was good too, and I met some interesting people and got some different perspectives. See, even though I’m not urban sketching, I’m still obsessed with perspective.

Many of the talks focused on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in a pretty broad number of ways. The keynote speaker was Dania Matos, Vice-Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at UC Berkeley, and I really enjoyed her talk. “Data drives decisions, but story telling drives commitment.” I liked that phrase. As I say, I drew most of the other speakers too, though I’ll not go into all their talsk or names here, but here are the sketches I did.

I mostly drew in the small Stillman & Birn Alpha pocket sketchbook I use for people sketches (and occasional travel sketches), and mostly used that purple Pigma Brush pen that I like for these quick people sketches (though I did use the black Zebra pen for one of Eugene Whitlock, above).

I will say though, the guy above, David Alcocer, gave a really excellent and engaging presentation on the UC Budget. I thought, as did others, that this would be the one very dry talk, but it was the opposite, and I felt like I knew a lot more about the bigger picture, plus he was just a great presenter too.

With these last two, I did write a lot more o what they were saying down, as it was worth noting. The colours by the way are just my usual watercolour, with a waterbrush pen.I’m very much looking forward to the 2024 UC-AMP conference, whcih will be in Riverside, and hopefully won’t clash with the Urban Sketching Symposium. Although actually it probably will, because once again the next one will be in the souther hemisphere, in April, in Buenos Aires, in Argentina. Another place I’d love to go, another place I probably won’t make it to. We shall see. I do miss seeing all of my global urban sketching community, but it was nice to be part of another community for a few days, and come away just as full of ideas.

Berkeley time

May 26, 2023Leave a comment

In mid-April, I went to a conference in Berkeley, the UC-AMP conference (standing for University of California Administrative Managerial Professionals, me being a manager type these days). It was actually one of the better conferences I’d ever been to and I sketched a lot; I’ll stick the conference sketches in the next post. I did take the chance to sketch a bit more of Berkeley though, a palce I’ve drawn a lot over the years, but don’t go to as often these days. I was also starting a new sketchbook, one I’d never actually used before, a Fabriano watercolour book. Same general size and format as my other sketchbooks (that roughly 5.5×8″ size in landscape, slightly bigger than my watercolor Moleskines, smaller than the Stillman & Birn Alpha, but about the size of the Seawhite of Brighton books I used to use). The paper was a bit coarser, a bit thicker, and this would be an experiment. Basically, I was having a bit of trouble getting hold of the usual watercolour Moley, noweher seemed to have it in stock, and so on a whim I tried this. It was ok, I didn’t really love it, the pen had to work a little harder, but the paints too did not always act in the same way as in the Moley, in a way I can’t really describe but never mattered when using similar Fabriano watercolour paper at home, but out on the streets seemed to be a bit different. Paper matters, and I’m fussy. (I’ve actually finished the sketchbook now; while still not my favourite, I got used to it and got around it by washing the pages with a light sheen of watercolour paint ahead of time, making it much easier to work on, a preparation I never had to do on the nice Moleskine pages). So, I stood outside the Berkeley Games shop on Durant, just off Telegraph, and drew the colourful scene ahead of me. That games shop is massive. I have a friend in London who has in recent years become a massive serious board games fan, and would love this place. The weather was warm, cooler than Davis of course, with a lot of characters about the streets. I’m less into Berkeley than I used to be, as a place, largely because of some of the people that roam about making you feel uncomfortable. Shortly after leaving the BART station I was yelled at by a random wild-eyed guy who started following me, asking if I work for the university, and telling me in a shower of expletives that they have been following him and monitoring him and what he would do to those people and their families and their children, which wasn’t very nice in the middle of the day. Another guy sat on Shattuck started yelling at me recently when I was with my family because I was wearing an Adidas hat and he didn’t like Adidas, and that because I wore Adidas I was a Nazi, and then kept yelling “That guy’s a Nazi!” at me as I tried to cross the road, doing my best to ignore the weirdo. Try that in Burnt Oak, mate. People out there getting aggressive and bizarre, you have to ignore, but it doesn’t make it feel like a nice place to go. Still, Berkeley is Berkeley. I finished up and went back to the hotel where the conference was taking place, to attend the reception.

After reception food and chat, and a little wine, I was a bit full to eat dinner but still decided to head out to find a historic bar called Tupper and Reed. The evening activities for the conference the next day would be either (a) attend a baseball game, which I did, or (b) go on a bar crawl of Berkeley, that classic Monday evening activity. One of the places they would go though was Tupper and Reed, an old wooden bar on Shattuck that’s about a century old. Described in the conference materials as being like something out of Harry Potter, all brick and wood and presumably wizards and dark magic, “and they even have a beautiful retro record player sitting at the far end of the bar!” (just like Harry Potter, eh). It was built in 1925 and is quite nice, has a lovely old fireplace, though I have to be honest, it felt a little clean. Nice enough. People seemed cool, it wasn’t too crowded and the staff and patrons were friendly. There were some people playing pool, and the music was right up my cup of tea, 90s and 80s stuff that would probably have been on my Walkman back then. This is though primarily a cocktail bar, and so they had some very fancy cocktails. I decided to try one called a ‘Flying V’, because of the guitar themed name, and I think it was nice, but I could not drink very much of it. I mostly drank the bottle of tap water I got to go with it, bit too strong for my liking. Still I got a decent sketch out of the evening, and went off to bed. My hotel was very close by, and I was up on the 16th floor.

And what a view that was! You could see the Golden Gate Bridge from my bed. I woke up early before the conference, and did a drawing of the view. I went back to add a bit more at various points but I had to get this view down. I love a high-up view. Remember that one I did in San Francisco a couple of years ago, from the Hilton Financial District? In enjoyed that. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, putting these scenes together. I decided against putting all the windows in that building opposite, just a suggestion, you can imagine the rest. I did have a conference to get to though, which thankfully was only thirteen floors below in a fast elevator. It was so nice having everything take place in the same hotel. The previous UC Berkeley hosted conference I went to, in 2017, was a bit more spread out about the campus, which was a bit more tiring. I also did not stay overnight, but took the early train down and back again in the evenings, so it was pretty tiring. This was better.

That said, after the workshops and talks were all done, I did go out and explore campus a bit more, because there is always something to sketch. There was a walking tour of campus for many of the participants, but I decided not to do that, and stood outside the magnificent Wellman Hall with my awkward sketchbook. At one point the tour group passed me by. It was a little breezy, and the pages kept flipping up because I only had one elastic band with me to hold them down. The shade of the tree I was under also kept moving, deliberately I assume, in an effort to annoy me. Plus this paper just wasn’t quite right, was it. I hope nobody on the tour heard me swearing at the universe. In the end i took a photo of my sketch and posted it on my Instagram, and remembered to include the conference hashtag because they’d said to do so. Well I’m glad I did; this unexpectedly won the conference’s picture competition!! They announced that on the last day, to my surprise. Apparently I win free registration to next year’s conference, in Riverside, and I was already looking forward to going to that so that was a nice prize. But yes, I did kind of fight with myself to draw this one, and I was pleased to go and sit down for a bit in the shade afterwards.

On the last day, after the last speeches and talks, I took a last stroll up Telegraph, firstly to find that place that does the Belgian waffles my son really likes (I had to send him a picture of one and of course eat one myself), and do another sketch, this time of Amoeba Music on Telegraph. I remember the first time I went to Amoeba, it was the one on Haight, back in 2002. I first came to this one in 2005, right after we moved to the US, when we were checking out Berkeley as a potential place to live. My wife was interviewing at UC Berkeley (if memory serves she got the job, but had in the meantime accepted a position in Davis, and so that’s where our lives ended up, the rest is sketchbook history). I loved a record store, and if I recall correctly I bought a Paul Weller CD here. I chatted with a nice guy for a bit while I sketched who works for the Telegraph business association (we talked a lot about Lego), and it reminded me that this is a thriving little community here, that people are rightly proud of. I’m glad to see Amoeba still doing well too, though I didn’t have time to go in and look around this time.

I did pop into a little art shop that I had been into before though. And what did I get in there? A new watercolour Moleskine sketchbook. Having been a bit back ordered online, and not in any of my local shops, they had one here, and for a good price too (ten bucks cheaper than listed on the Moleskine site). But of course because I have a policy of not starting a new ‘primary’ sketchbook until I have finished the current one, I did not abandon the Fabriano one, and used it all the way through my recent London trip (the sketches of which I’ll probably post in about 2028, I did so many), and just started the new book last week, at the Victoria and Albert Museum of all places. So it all worked out.

petescully

postcards of the hanging

Tag: UC-AMP