you know the place where nothing is real

August 4, 2022August 4, 2022Leave a comment

As I play catch-up on my sketch posts, I may as well do one of those where I just post a bunch of the drawings I did on campus in Spring all at once, so here they are. It’s probably a lazy way to do it, but it saves you from reading through all the stories I feel the need to write to go along with them (but you can skip by the stories anyway, I’m not actually very interesting). Above, that’s the Silo, which long term readers will recognize as I have drawn it before, like a million times.

This next one, that was the Tri-Co-Ops, which I have drawn before but not as much as the Silo, so it still feels new. I’ve never drawn it with that spiky arched structure in front of it though. I suppose the structure isn’t actually spiky, it’s the plants behind it that make it look spiky. It’s made of metal and yeah, it looks interesting.

This is the UC Davis Coffee House, or CoHo as it’s more commonly known. This was one of those days where I just needed to sketch something but didn’t know what. I get a lot of those on campus. After all these years I’m often a bit uninspired for new things to draw. Sometimes I draw the same things in different ways, but if it’s something that requires a lot of thought like a ridiculous perspective, often I’m like, I need to eat, there’s not much lunchtime left, don’t want to do something that makes me think too hard. I was listening to a football podcast while drawing this.

Another from April, this is along California Avenue, I cycle along here every day. They were doing some construction work, so I had to draw that because I can’t help myself. It looks different now already. There’s always some construction going on. Be nice if they constructed us a new building, we’re running out of space (us and the rest of this growing campus). I liked the people walking by eyes glued down at phones. The mind needs constant engagement, I get it.

Finally, this is the Water Tower, drawn down by the Earth and Physical Sciences building. I was leading a lunchtime sketchcrawl event for the Sustainability Office (we’ve done that for a few years now, close to Earth Day), and I did have a couple of other quick sketches to go with this but this was the main one. Thanks for joining me on this brief campus outing. More sketches still to come…

love and bridges

August 3, 2022Leave a comment

Another break, I was in Europe again recently, so I have many more sketches to post and stories to tell. But we are about four months behind, so you get those ones first. Here are a couple of bridges over the creek in the UC Davis Arboretum that I drew during the Spring quarter. I like a bridge. The one above is fairly newly renovated, having had a big upgrade in the past few years. The one below is a footbridge only, and people put those little padlocks with hearts and names scratched on onto the railings, which I am not a fan of. There’s that one in Paris isn’t there where so many of those silly padlocks have been attached to the bridge that the bridge starting creaking under the extra weight. “Oh I love you dear, I know, I will leave a stupid little padlock I bought off a guy for twenty quid on this bridge in a place we don’t live so that if we ever come back we can see if it’s still there or if it’s been cut off by council workers due to it being vandalism, just like the thousands of people have done before.” “Oh thank you dear you are so romantic and original.” “Well I try. Do you still have that single rose I bought you for a fiver from some guy bugging us at our restaurant table?” “That must have been someone else.” I put a lot of thought into these imaginary character conversations. In fact last week (late July) I was in Paris and that bridge there doesn’t allow those silly love-locks any more, but that doesn’t mean the stupid love-lock industry is dead, because they put them every bloody where else. Up at Montmartre, it felt like every metal fence was covered in them, you could see the cheap brass glistening in the light, and scrawny men were wandering about with bags of them trying to sell them to people. And they are mostly heart-shaped now as well. Honestly there are so many of them it would become utterly tedious to try and look through them when you return with your partner years later to find it, this unique special thing, yeurch. Anyway don’t do that. Don’t carve your initials onto trees either, nor into rocks, or write hit records for them, or build huge domed palaces for them or travel the universe gathering infinity stones so you can wipe out half of all existence with the snap of a finger for them, or any of that cheesy stuff, just be cool.

Anyway, I better start scanning the new sketches and coming up with more interesting things to say. I’ve done some travelling in the past few months and my legs hurt, but it’s the height of hot summer now and time to start catching up. Stay tuned.

jungerman and bainer

July 6, 2022July 5, 2022Leave a comment

Before we get to the Grand Canyon, a couple more UC Davis sketches to tide us over, sketched just a few yards from each other (albeit facing in a different direction). Above is Jungerman Hall, which houses the Crocker Nuclear Lab. They do lots of stuff with their Cyclotron. I can’t pretend I know what the Cyclotron does but I imagine it’s what the Autobots would have turned into if they had landed on Earth before cars were invented, and they just transformed into bikes. Still, I bet it would be cool to draw, hint hint. Below, the side of Bainer Hall, which is where lots of Engineering types can be found. From above, it kind of looks like a chunky Y-Wing fighter. Not everything is about Star Wars, of course. That strange rocket shaped tower protruding from the roof looks nothing like anything in Star Wars, because as we know vehicles in Star Wars don’t rely on rocket propulsion to leave their respective atmospheres. I’m not an engineer, nor a science fantasy writer, so don’t quote me on that. “Jungerman and Bainer” sounds a bit like it could be the name of a cop show, neurotic perfectionist Jungerman partnering with brash no-nonsense Bainer, the pair not getting along at all when the chief puts them together to investigate some serious crime, having a hunch they’ll make a good team to crack the case, but they end up getting caught by the main villain and tied up, where they form a bond and use engineering know-how mixed with blunt force to escape and – let’s face it the pilot of this show is totally getting cancelled, isn’t it. Still more interesting than Jurassic World Dominion. Maybe the TV execs are cancelling it because there’s not enough dinosaurs. Anyway, enough of that tangent. I’m done scanning all the sketches from my recent European trip, so hopefully those will all be posted here soon, probably over the course of the next few months at my rate.

SHEEP

June 30, 2022June 30, 2022Leave a comment

I may post the next batch of sketches out of order, which is either bang out of order, or just what the doctor ordered, depending on what cliche you prefer. I wanted to post this now because who doesn’t love drawings of sheep? What’s more I am going to attempt to write a post about sheep without making a single ovine-based pun, even in the title. I’m telling you, it’s really difficult for someone like me, who loves a pun no matter how weak, but I’m trying Ringo, I’m trying real hard. (Pulp Fiction references to shepherds are allowed). Anyway back in Spring quarter we had some sheep in the middle of campus, out on a little enclosed piece of greenery outside Bainer, very close to where I work. These are the UC Davis Sheepmowers (see https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/sheep-mowers), and they are invited to a lawn to graze, to “eat weeds and grass, fertilize and control pests as well as or better than using conventional landscaping methods”. Also, I think people just like seeing sheep, it’s good for them. We are an agricultural school – our nickname is the Aggies, which took me a couple of years to figure out, I used to think it was a reference to that Scottish woman who cleans houses on TV, I never watched that show – so farm animals are not uncommon to us, but mostly they are in fields and stables on the outskirts of campus, rather than right in the middle. Always nice to see the sheep.

Anyway as part of the Sheepmowers project, they had this great idea of getting UC Davis people down to draw the sheep, providing art materials and watercolours (and shade, very important), and inviting people to sit around the edge and draw the sheep. Well I couldn’t pass that opportunity up, so I enthusiastically drew the little sheep fellows, daydreaming about that episode of Father Ted with the sheep, the one with the ‘Beast of Craggy Island’, and other sheep based TV shows like Larry the Lamb, Shawn the Sheep, er, Roger Ramjet? There are probably more famous TV sheep I’m not thinking of, and I’m still trying so, so hard not to do a sheep-based pun. This is an act of sheer wool-power (aaargh!!!!!!!!! one slipped out. Two technically).

Right, definitely no more sheep puns. Hey do you remember counting sheep when you were a kid, to go to sleep? No, that never worked for me either. I always thought that was really weird, like how is that a thing, counting sheep? So basically you imagine the sheep, and then count them? How many do you imagine? If you imagined them you wouldn’t need to count them. “I imagine 500 sheep”. So you start counting them but your brain says, look you know there are 500, you don’t need to check. I always had a hard time going to sleep when I was a kid, for one thing I kept imagining my room being full of sheep. These days I tend to listen to a history podcast, preferably someone with a boring voice, to get me to sleep. “Hello, and welcome to the history of sheep.” Anyway, I really enjoyed coming down and drawing the sheep. Below you can see the scene in full, with many others drawing and painting all the little sheep.

To find out where the Sheepmowers will be this Fall check out https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/sheep-mowers.

TLC, all finished

May 9, 2022May 9, 2022Leave a comment

Sure I’m a couple of months behind, but it’s good to get sketch-blog active again. The sketch-blog is a nice place after all, unlike the popular social media spaces that have dominated our lives and re-shaped global politics since the days when just a bit of regular blogging was the thing. It feels like a little allotment escape, a place to come away from the busy shouty high street tumble-dryer of Twitter, the shopping mall of Instagram, the awkward friends-of-family wedding of Facebook, although I do miss the music-store-noticeboard of MySpace. I prefer it in here, just me and my sketchbook, and some rambly stuff that doesn’t make a lot of sense but isn’t setting out to enrage and inflame. Now this drawing is a couple of month’s old already but it is the Teaching and Learning Complex at UC Davis, which I have been drawing as it has been built, and is now complete, save for some work on the top floor. It’s lovely inside and outside, some nice spaces for student learning. The construction people who built it actually gifted me a very nice surprise upon completion of the project, a nice sweater with their logo and one of my construction drawings stitched into the arm! It looks great. The sweater is quality (Patagonia) but quite warm, so I’ll probably need to wait until after the Davis summer to wear it (or just bring it with me to the London for the British summer). A pretty cool honor though. I’ve enjoyed drawing this building over the past couple of years, and here are some of the other sketches, from various angles and times of day…

Phew! I drew a lot. I should draw the interior some time. Now on to the next project…

on the wall at walker hall

May 2, 2022May 2, 20224 Comments

After several years of redevelopment, the new Graduate Center at Walker Hall had its formal grand opening a few weeks ago. Part of the grand opening included a special exhibition of several of my in-progress sketches, which I’ve shared here over the past few years, of the construction and redevelopment period. They blew them up into large colorful prints and have them displayed right now in the lobby area of the building, along with a touch screen where you can flick through all those sketches, along with a variety of historical photos from the past century. What an honour! I’m gobsmacked at what a nice display it was, and I got a lot of very nice comments from the people touring the building on that day. One of my personal favourites was of the building pre-reconstruction, the big panorama I did in 2014 when it was still in its old Walker Hall form, and that was nice to see big on the wall. There was another one – the ‘sneezy one’ – a sketch I started but abandoned after 10 minutes due to a massive attack of the April sneezing. I wrote “Atchoo!” all over the page and left it. Well they even made a print of that one! And that one is the one people mentioned to me the most. I think we all have those allergy experiences in Davis in the spring… There were several from that time when I was able to go inside and sketch the mid-construction shell, drawing bits of the interior in a hard hat just before dark, but most of the sketches were done peering over the fence or standing on a bench next to the bins. I’m pleased to have documented this project like this.

I did draw some of the ceremony outside that was given by the Chancellor Gary May, Vice Chancellor for Finance Kelly Ratliff (not in the sketch, I arrived during her speech), Graduate Dean JP Delplanque, and several others also not sketched here. I used to be a graduate coordinator for years on campus and always liked working with the Grad Studies team, so I am really pleased to see them get this amazing new space. Especially for the graduate students on campus, as this is the first dedicated Graduate Center of its kind in the UC system, which is great.

B14EC64A-E354-4E27-82AF-760C69DE3AA9

You can see all of my Walker Hall sketches in this album on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/petescully/albums/72157678149480548

Now on to the next campus drawing project! It’s a while now since I drew the Manetti Shrem going up, the old Boiler Building going down and replaced with the Pitzer Center; more recently I drew the Teaching and Learning Complex, which just opened recently. I like to draw things as they are being built because they are moments in time that are not repeated, they will never look like that again, and spaces have meaning to people. Drawing them is a way of connecting with them myself and sharing a personal perspective.

*********************

Yep, it’s been over a month since I posted; my home computer has been down, I don’t like typing on the iPad, and I’ve been sitting on a pile of scanning. I need a new computer but have been lagging behind a bit there. I’ve done a bit of drawing, a lot of sneezing, a lot of soccer coaching, and I got a new guitar which has been taking up some of my spare time. Still hopefully I can start posting my sketches and stories more regularly again soon. Summer planning is afoot and there will finally be some travelling across the Atlantic. Check back soon!

towering over our heads

March 10, 2022March 10, 20221 Comment

Here’s another sketch of the UC Davis Water Tower (one of them anyway) in the Arboretum, this time with a very spring-like feel with the redbuds glowing. The first day of March 2022, which means we are nearly two years on from that day in March 2020 when we all stopped, and then carried on in a different way.

a complex world

March 10, 2022March 10, 20221 Comment

The world is a mess, but we keep on keeping on. This is the new Teaching Learning Complex, a building that has been under construction this past couple of years and is now open (I went and walked around inside last week, it’s nice) but there’s still work going on at the exterior and I think the upper floors are nearly ready as well. I drew at lunchtime, but added in details on a different lunchtime, and then decided not to colour it, but then decided to put colour on it, and splashed on a bit of paint so that it dripped down. It’s nice to have this new building around, I can even see it from my office. But, as I am sure will be said many times over the years by clever people giving talks here, “teaching and learning doesn’t need to be complex.” I don’t know where you go next from that phrase but it sounds like the sort of thing that you might say when speaking to a group of, I don’t know, undergrads learning to be teachers maybe. I might use it some day myself. In fact I just did, just then. Oh, the world is a mess. I wish the war would stop in Ukraine and Russia would leave them alone, that isn’t going to happen, what an awful situation. I’ve not felt this much dread at a world event since, I don’t know, the cold war? Or maybe since Covid started. I wish Covid would go away, though on that front campus is relaxing things soon, and masks will no longer be required after March 18, though I’ll still wear mine because I like to feel like a ninja. At least I have plans ahead, I finally booked a flight to London this summer, the first time back in two and a half years, and I’ll believe it when I see it. We just keep on keeping on.

ickle bit of pink

March 9, 2022Leave a comment

The Redbuds are out. This is in the Arboretum at UC Davis, the section closest to where I work is the Warren G. Roberts Redbud Collection, which blasts into life at this time of year. Here’s a little bit of info about it: https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/warren-g-roberts-redbud-collection. The Redbud is a native Californian plant, which grows in the foothills. I sketched quickly. A lot of people in the Arboretum that day, seemed to see many people I know, or who knew me without me knowing (or recognizing) them. I do sometimes get a “hello!” from people who I’ve obviously met before but don’t recognize (either due to the masks, my legendarily bad eyesight, or just that I never recognize anyone), so I always just say “y’alright, how ya doin’?” back, and let my slow mind catch up with who it might have been afterwards. This happened just last night on the way out to the soccer practice field, I got a “hey Pete, been a while!” from someone but for the life of me I don’t know who it was, I just waved a “yeah man, good to see you!” although I couldn’t actually see them. My phenomenal lack of being able to recognize people goes back a long way. Back in the 90s, I was up in Yorkshire visiting a friend who happened to work in a nightclub, so after arriving on the late bus from London I went by there to wait for them to finish and I spotted one of their friends, who I had met the previous time I’d been up there, Bertie I think he was called, drinking with a couple of other lads. So I went up and started chatting, “how’s it going, good to see you, yeah I had a long journey up here, six and a half hours on the bus, not very comfy, bit cream-crackered now,” the music was loud so it wasn’t easy to hear each other, I anyway after about ten minutes he says to me, “who are you though? I don’t actually know you.” Because it wasn’t Bertie, he had no idea who Bertie was, or who I was, or why I was talking to him about the state of the seats on the National Express. I just went, “oh, you’re not Bertie, sorry!” and went off to hide forever. I might have done that thing where I take off my glasses and rubbed my eyes like in a cartoon. To be honest I probably wouldn’t have known Bertie if he’d jumped out of a big cake. I don’t even remember if he was really called Bertie, he was probably called Bobby or Barry. Anyway, I’m not great at recognizing faces, so if you do see me and I look a bit nonplussed and give the random “hey, how’s it goin” response, that’s just my terrible eyesight and memory, nothing to worry about. I’m too busy focusing on the pink trees anyway.

you see UCUC, you see

March 2, 20221 Comment

Every two weeks I get my Covid test at the ARC, on the UC Davis campus, which all employees have to do. It’s a bit of a long walk back to the office on those days when I don’t bring my bike (my back wheel is acting a bit odd these days and I need to fix it, I just haven’t gotten around to it). On this day I took the long walk past the old ARC Pavilion on LaRue, now the University Credit Union Center (UCUC, which sounds like someone emphatically making a point) (maybe it should be called the UCUCUCD). I was listening to an audiobook about the Beatles (“Tune In” by Mark Lewisohn, chapter one of a planned three part epic called “All These Years”, detailing their entire childhood and early adulthood right up to their last Hamburg trip at the end of 1962 – it was a 45 hour audiobook, which seemed like a lot for an audiobook until I remembered I’ve probably listened to over 100 hours of Beatles podcasts in the past couple of months since the Get Back inspired return to Fab Four obsessiveness. Honestly I’m like Murray the K. Anyway, I was listening to stories of young Ritchie Starkey playing Butlins with Rory Storm, I realized I’d never drawn this building before. It makes interesting shapes when the sun casts its shadows. It put me in mind of the Southbank Center and Royal Festival Hall (where Macca gave a talk about his book The Lyrics not too long ago), and that made me miss London, which is my default setting these days, missing London and obsessing about the Beatles. I used to like going down to the South Bank when I was in my teens, when I was doing A-Levels I would go to art exhibits there on the weekends, back before the South Bank was as busy as it is now, before the London Eye, before the Tate Modern, before the nicely paved walkways down to City Hall which also wasn’t there; I’d say ‘before the South Bank was cool’ but in the early 90s the South Bank was as cool as it was ever going to be, though I do love all the new things. I also had this thought, UCD standing for “UC in the sky with Davis” which I think would be a good name for a book, or maybe just a zine. Or maybe just a blog post, and not even this one, save it for a better one.