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.

do the maths

September 19, 20155 Comments

This is my – oh hang on, wait a minute. Today is “International Talk Like A Pirate Day”. Right, I’ll start again.

Yarr, this be the ol’ Mathematical Sciences Buildin’, yaaarrr, this be where I be workin’ each day. Click on the ol’ picture to see it bigger, yarr, or be usin’ a telescope, me old shipmate. So aye, yarr, ye lily-livered-landlubbers, I be drawin’ this oh I can’t keep this up. Talking like a pirate is not easy you know. When I went to the Swashbuckler’s Ball a couple of yarrs ago (did you see what I did there? Did you see that?) someone said I did a really good pirate voice, but I wasn’t doing one, I be just talkin’ normally. Anyway, if for some reason you were unable to translate my piratespeak (and if you weren’t, shame on you. Like the old saying goes, “fail to translate my piratespeak once, shame on me. Fail to translate my piratespeak twice, er, er, I won’t get fooled again.”) Ok, where was I? Ok, so, this is the building where I work. It’s called the Mathematical Sciences Building, or “Math” Sciences Building, as some people call it. Or “Maths Sciences Building” as I sometimes call it. Ok so for those who don’t know, in America they say “Math” but in Britain we say “Maths”. We also say “Mathematics”, and so do Americans, and let me tell you they don’t like it when pretend to assume they say “Mathematic”. They definitely don’t say “Mathematic”. “Mathsematic” is right out, don’t ever say that. Anyway…this is where I work, it was built almost ten years ago and I’ve worked there for most of that time. It’s a nice building, though the elevators are very slow. I drew this to use for work (I like to have a few sketches of the building to use for various things) and I will do a colour version to, but I wanted to highlight our brand new sign which was installed a month or so ago. On either side is a different symbol, one for Mathematics and one for Statistics. It’s been years in the making so it’s very exciting. Many UC Davis buildings have been getting modern new signs, as part of the campus branding process, which has been (for me) very exciting to watch develop over the past decade. So anyway, I haven’t drawn the MSB (that’s what I really call it) for a few years so here we are.

building the pitzer, part three

August 16, 2015Leave a comment

Continuing my series of sketches showing the Ann E Pitzer Center going up on the site of the old Boiler Building. Two different angles a week apart, you can see that the front frames have gone up now, rising like a musical crescendo (is that the word? I don’t do musical terms). Exciting work this summer…

the egg of good luck

August 13, 20157 Comments

Another Egghead, this one is called “Bookhead”, by Robert Arneson (1991). It is located outside the Shields Library at UC Davis. There is a legend that students touch it for good luck. Really. I think that is one of those things that people just say, and then people do because people just say, “it’s a tradition”. It’s one of those things that people say because there are no other interesting stories to tell about it. Yes, I know this old trope, I used to be a tour guide too. “Legend has it the lions in Trafalgar Square will get up and dance if Big Ben strikes thirteen,” that sort of thing. Nonsense with no evidence at all. Or “Charles Dickens used to drink here, even the plaque outside says so,” when he may have popped in for a pint on his way to his next bar; he drank in pretty much every pub in London, it’s amazing he wrote any books at all. Ok, so here’s what I would like someone at UC Davis to do. Have someone stand next to this Egghead and every time someone touches it for luck, have them give their name, and then have them come back with their mid-term results or final term grades, perhaps include their grades prior to touching the Egghead for a comparison, and then do some sort of statistical analysis to see whether touching the Egghead gave them any particular advantage over those who did not, or if it signaled a shift in their general academic progress, and maybe have them indicate if they had won any competitions or survived an accident, or if they had bad luck, like, well the opposite of those things. Then perhaps we will know the truth. In the meantime I am willing to hazard a guess that it does not give any magical gift of luck, and I might even have a sign posted next to it warning people that touching it will not give any guarantee of an upturn in your fortunes, and that UC Davis is not held responsible should your luck be not quite as good as you expected. In fact, just move the whole thing completely, put it somewhere else, on the roof maybe , somewhere nobody will be able to touch it. Then there could be a story behind it, “too many students were using ‘Luck’ to affect their grades that the UC Regents voted to have it moved to ensure academic integrity”.

Or perhaps tour guides could just not mention this obviously misleading legend at all, let it die a death, and perhaps use this opportunity to tell perhaps the most appropriate joke there is to tell when faced with a big egg in a book. What did the chicken say in the library? “Book-book-book-book…”

No? Alright, keep telling the silly ‘good luck’ story. Doesn’t make it true.

constructing the shrem, part three

August 7, 2015August 7, 20153 Comments

The Shrem Museum of Art (under construction) now has some walls, covering the skeletal framework that has been going up these past few months. This building is bigger than the Pitzer Center (the new Music Recital Hall whose construction I am also sketching, see previous posts) but it also had a head start – but the race is on! Which will be finished first? It’s exciting. It’s exciting because it means more ART and MUSIC. More Sciences are great, UC Davis is cutting edge in so many fields but we are also great at art. I’m not talking about me and my little drawings of things, but the bigger art world of Davis and UC Davis, which is substantial and world-renowned, encompassing not only fine art and music but also the dramatic arts. I sketched the scene above on an overcast day earlier this week, meaning I didn’t have to find some shade and could sketch the front without getting too hot in the sun. The lamp-post in the foreground carries the image of Maria Manetti Shrem and Jan Shrem, the donors for whom this museum is named. Wait hang on, an OVERCAST DAY IN DAVIS IN AUGUST? I never thought it would happen again (and unlike last week, it was overcast with clouds and not smoke from all the wildfires, though that was probably mixed in). Yes, actual clouds. For those of you who live in Davis and aren’t sure what clouds are, them being so rare here, they are made up of moisture and float in the sky. Moisture, for those of us in Davis who aren’t sure what that is, it’s made of water. Again, for those not sure what water is, it’s what happens when – look I can’t keep this up. It’s a long-winded way of saying this unending drought we are having in California seems to have no end in sight, so to see actual clouds is encouraging. Last night it even rained a few heavy glops, though it all seemed to evaporate upon impact. We’ll take what we can get in this state.

I did sketch the side of the Shrem museum last week on a far hotter and sunnier day. I found the shade of a tree and listened to the X-Men podcast “Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men”. I have mentioned it before. It’s a really great podcast going through the history of the X-line of Marvel Comics, the “ins, outs and retcons of your favourite superhero soap opera.” Since I started listening to the show certain phrases they like to use have become stuck in my head, such as “Angry Claremontian Narrator” (the voice used by Chris Claremont when narrating comic panels, often berating the characters), “Ah’m Nigh Invulnerable When Blastin'”, a phrase uttered by Cannonball (Sam Guthrie), “The Eternal Moppets of the Marvel Universe”, a reference to two mutants who never seem to age beyond childhood, and “Charles Xavier is a Dick”. If you’re not listening to it, even if you are not an X-Men fan, even if you don’t listen to podcasts or human voices or read anything, I still highly recommend it. Here’s their website. Anyway back to the sketch: so yeah, the Shrem Museum of Art, under construction still.

Previously on ‘Constructing the Shrem’:

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/

To be continued!

building the pitzer, part two

August 5, 2015August 4, 2015Leave a comment

The Pitzer Center, which is the new Music Recital Hall, still under construction on the UC Davis campus. I wanted to sketch from this angle, on the corner of Hutchison and Cushing; you may remember that I recently sketched the initial stages of construction. To be continued…

fast food lunch

August 3, 2015Leave a comment

France was fun, but you have to come home. I do actually have a few more sketches from London but they were kind of shoehorned in to the end of the trip, I’ll post those soon. So aftre all those lovely picturesque canals and timber-framed buildings, you get the interior of the UC Davis Silo, where I often eat lunch. this was sketched while waiting for (and subsequently eating) my Carl’s Jr. It was typically tasty, but incredibly greasy. Outside the mercury was rising fast to those unbearable Davis Summer levels. Welcome back to America! When’s my next trip to France?

barn on the thirteenth of july

July 17, 20152 Comments

And now for a short break from France sketches to see a sketch from July 13th, which of course is the day before the French national holiday, Bastille Day. This is the UC Davis Bike Barn, yes, even looking like this. Regular tuners-in will remember I have drawn several times since taking up Davis sketching, but now it appears to be undergoing some reconstruction. It looks sad with the windows boarded up, but signposts indicate the Bike Barn is still operating during the building work. So much building work on campus right now…

Below are most of the sketches I have done of the Bike Barn over the past nine years, not including the ones of the other side of the building (which looks very similar). I wouldn’t mind, but I hate drawing bikes.

Above: September 2006, October 2006, January 2007.

Above: August 2007, January 2008, March 2009, April 2010

Above: January 2011, February 2011, August 2011, October 2013

Above: October 2013, March 2014 (x2)

building the pitzer, part one

July 7, 20155 Comments

More construction on the UC Davis campus, while I slowly scan (and finish in some cases) my French sketches. Long-memoried observers of my UC Davis sketch adventures (really, that sentence) will recall that I spent a lot of time a couple of years ago or so sketching the demise of the old Boiler Building. You can see those posts at petescully.com/tag/boiler-building. The space was assigned as the location of the brand new Music Recital Hall, which (thanks to a generous donation by the late alumna Ann Pitzer) will officially be called the Ann E. Pitzer Center. When complete, it will be a 399 seat concert venue (why 399? Definitely no room for 400? Bet there’s a bureaucracy reason, oh I love the bureaucracy. No, I actually do). It will also be a classroom space, which will have course schedulers gleefully rubbing their hands with their 400-capacity classes (ah, I see why it’s 399 seats now…). Anyway, I got back from Europe and saw that construction had finally begun, with the first concrete panels going up (top sketch). A week later (yesterday) the large concrete box was already sealed. I don’ know what the vertical lines around the edges signify, but they add a touch of interest into what currently looks like some sort of military installation. It won’t always look like that. Once the shiny glass and steel are added this will be one of the most attractive buildings on campus, and one of the first you see when you enter on Shields Avenue, in what will be known as the campus ‘Arts District’.

On the right, you can see how this spot used to look, in 2011. I miss the old Boiler Building, with its rusty pipes and sun-burnt tiles. You can find out more about the Pitzer Center here at arts.ucdavis.edu/pitzercenter. Here is how it will eventually look (pictures from the Davis Enterprise). I’ll be sketching its progress, so watch this space…

constructing the shrem, part two

July 1, 2015July 7, 20152 Comments

We interrupt the London sketches (actually I am off to France in the next batch) to bring you an update on the construction of the new Shrem Art Museum at UC Davis. But first, the weather. It is bloody hot. A hundred and six they say today, but it’ll be more, knowing Davis. July in the Central Valley. The Shrem Art Museum has been under construction for a few months now and I first did a sketch of its progress back in February. I did a couple more sketches in April from the side, and this week did an updated sketch while standing in the shade of the Mondavi Center on a hundred degree day. In short, it is coming along nicely. It reminded me that I need to get over to the former location of the Boiler Building, where at last construction has begun on the new Music Recital Hall. If this heat calms down a bit I might get over there next week. The sketches below were done in the Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook #2, while the one above was done in the Stillman and Birn Alpha landscape book #2.