goodbye, tree

September 18, 2023September 17, 2023Leave a comment

Sad tree update. We thought after all those big storms at the start of this year that we had seen the last big tree loss in Davis for a while, but this one is particularly sad. In the UC Davis Arboretum by Lake Spafford, very close to Mrak Hall, stands a tree called a Japanese Zelkova, out on its own and in a perfect spot to provide loads of shade not only to students and picknickers, but also to the many ducks and geese that call this part of the campus their home. This tree was planted back in the 60s and was so well loved. So when they discovered a serious crack in the trunk last month, likely caused by the weight of the many branches (which have always been meticulously managed), which was not possible to fix, the tree was deemed too dangerous to leave and so scheduled for removal. Here’s some information about the tree: ucdavis.edu/news/damaged-lake-spafford-tree-slated-removal . The UCD Arboretum IG account also posted the news, with a photo of how Lake Spafford looked back when the trees were first planted in the sixties: www.instagram.com/p/CxGiZm_husi/?img_index=4.

I went down there last Wednesday, the day before it was going to be taken away, and sketched it one last time. What a beautiful tree it was. There were already a couple of workmen there with a machine taking away the bench. The poor tree probably knew something was up. Trees aren’t just furniture, they are actual living things, but it was going to die. I mean, yes they often become furniture afterwards, but I’m trying to be sensitive here, I love trees. I said goodbye to the tree (in my head, not out loud, obviously), and went back to work.

I came back next morning, to see if the deed had been done. The main trunk remained, but completely removed of all branches. It reminded me of Aslan, shaved and murdered on the Stone Table, but I heard no crack of Deep Magic to bring it back to life while my back was turned. I sketched it (see below), and went off to a meeting about temporary visas elsewhere on campus.

By Friday, it was completely gone, just a stump and a sign commemorating the tree left. I did not feel like sketching it. This area has a lot less shade now, and shade is good for keeping the ground cool during those long Davis summers. Goodbye, lovely old tree.

summer running

August 30, 2023August 30, 2023Leave a comment

Summer is already drawing to a close on the UC Davis campus. Oh sure, we have several weeks yet until Fall classes begin, but I’m ramping up my anxiety levels before the quiet times of summer end, trying to get those summer projects out of the way before the busy work begins. This panorama sketch was drawn a month ago in July; in a month’s time this same scene will be fill of people and bikes. That’s not to say summer is completely empty, we do have a lot of summer sessions classes on campus, so there is activity. Many staff are working remotely, though I am in every day except for the occasional day. This summer I have been working on my fitness, and have been up running in the mornings on most days. In fact August I have run a total of 56 miles already, preparing for the 5k Labor Day Run next Monday, I’m feeling well up for it now. And then I woke up early this morning to see that the AQI was up in the 150-180 Unhealthy level, due to red flag weather and smoke being blown in from fires way to the north. It’s really the first bad smoky sky of the summer for us, it’s that time of year again, and I’m really hoping it does not last. I’m really looking forward to this race, but I also don’t want to derail my running progress. Three years ago when we had that terrible smoke that lasted weeks, months, I had been up to then on my best ever running streak, even though all races were cancelled due to the Pandemic, the global situation made me focus on getting out and running harder than ever, and I was clocking in excellent times I can barely believe now – and then the sky filled with smoke and the air quality monitors said it was far too unhealthy to run, or do soccer practice (I was coaching at the time), so that stopped and I never quite got back to that level (though in late 2021 I did clock my best 5k time in the Davis Turkey Trot). This past month I’ve felt myself building back towards it well, and I’m hoping that by November’s Turkey Trot I can have a go at beating that 2021 score, or even the mythical pace of 2020. I do love running, and was really looking forward to getting out there today, but my lungs man, they’re quite important.

This view here is of the Silo, seen from outside Haring Hall, stood in the shade of a tree. The TLC is back there too, lovely building that is. A few red buses at the Silo terminus. Only a couple of people, very small but they are in there (for all you “but why don’t you draw people?” folks). I’ve not done quite as much outdoor sketching this summer in Davis, it’s been hot, and I’ve not been feeling up to it as much, but I’ve done a bit which I still need to scan.

do something pretty while you can

July 24, 2023July 22, 2023Leave a comment

To finish off the batch of sketching that I did in Davis between my UK visits, here are a bunch of lunchtime drawings from UC Davis of places that all kind of look the same. Some of them are the same place, just different sides of the building. The one above is the Bike Barn; the one below is the other side of it. I’ve drawn all these before, nothing to add really.

Why do I sketch? I ask myself this all the time. Well not all the time, but every now and then. And I might have a different answer each time if anyone asks. The answer itself may evolve over the years, but the actual reason never does. Do I question myself, question my need to sketch all the time? Yep, absolutely. It’s why I like urban sketching symposia and sketchcrawls and those things, because it’s helpful to meet other people who sketch, learn why they do it, not feel so bad for needing to sketch all the time myself. Sketching does relax me, helps me stop and focus. It can frustrate me too, when I hit those walls of “all my sketches look the same” or “why can’t I make it feel a bit more effortless?” but sometimes when it hits exactly what you want it to and doesn’t take very long, I feel amazing afterwards and feel like I can accomplish anything. I do love drawing; I sometimes feel like I am too obsessed with it, when I get irritable because I’ve not been able to sketch, or if I have three pages left in my sketchbook but really want to fill them with something interesting, and not just of the same buildings near work or stuff around my house, or the living room. One of the reasons I draw is to capture a moment in time. “To remember, in case someday I forget” is how I have put it in the past. So with this in mind, all of these drawings from campus maybe reflect a bit of that. The ones above, look they look like several other sketches I have done of those buildings before. But what if next year they put new signs up, or replace all those flowers with bike racks? This sort of thing’s happened, and my old sketches show the area how it used to look. The one below has part of the under-construction new wing of the Chemistry building in it, already looking slightly different to how I drew it in the sketch in the previous post. It will look different again in six months. The are to the left looked different just a couple of years ago. This was also sketched on the first day of Commencement, the graduation ceremony days, and walking by in the left is a professor in their black professorial robes, you can tell what time of year it is because of that.

I do question myself though, what if I just stopped and told myself I didn’t need to sketch any more? Or not sketch as much, just sketch occasionally and not worry about filling up all these books? Spend more time thinking about other things. I do use the time during sketching to think though. I also listen to podcasts, audiobooks, music. When sketching the building below – K. Esau Science Hall, which I don’t think I’d sketched before – I was listening to the audiobook of Lockwood and Co (just finished that series, it was very good), and I finished this whole sketch in my lunchtime, and that felt pretty good. Besides, I sketch in my spare time so that I can keep my skills up, so whenever I do a drawing for money those skills just roll right back out. My style looks like me, I always try to make improvements or rather move towards how I want the drawings to look, while balancing the fact that this is how my eyes see, my hands draw, and often a drawing is reflection of how I physically and mentally am at any given moment. If I’m uncomfortable when I draw, it comes out. This world is a crazy and overwhelming place, so many issues and terrifying things vying for my attention, politically things seems to be dragging towards horrible again (or the horrible lot would have us believe), and I know there is good in the world, it’s just that I need to go into my sketchbook sometimes to focus my mind on what’s right in front of me.

I dunno. There may come a time when my hands go, or my eyesight packs in (on our way there, lads!), or the supreme court makes it illegal to draw pictures of fire hydrants, or whatever. I have not been active in the social media sketching groups, the Facebook groups and what not, though I post on the Instagram and still occasionally on that Twitter (and I still post all my stuff on Flickr like it’s 2007), I’m not all in with the groups any more. I just write and focus here mostly, like when I started, before Urban Sketchers. I’m less visible these days I guess, and I’m ok with that, I’m just getting on with the act of being a mostly-daily but always obsessed urban sketcher, telling my little stories, written to myself.

Next up, sketches and stories from the June trip back to England, as well as eight days in Scotland. I have more stories to tell. Then there’s a load of drawings from my day out in San Francisco last weekend, avoiding the heat, searching for the last few pints of Anchor Steam in the world. I’ll probably need a rest after wall this, but as it stands I’m still a couple of pages from finishing Sketchbook #47, and I like to finish a sketchbook in good time, so I can’t rest until it’s done. I need to catch up with the scanning though…

Chemistry Building latest news

July 23, 2023July 21, 2023Leave a comment

I have this compulsion to draw the construction projects on campus – it gives me something sort-of new to draw, and I can pretend I have some sort of special purpose or something, like I’m some sort of official documenter of change on this campus, when really I’m just obsessed with filling my sketchbook and find drawing relaxing. When I get a good lunchtime sketch done I feel satisfied and it propels me to be productive for the rest of the day. That’s what I tell myself anyway, but I remember noticing that in times when I was super busy at work, I also got more sketching done in my spare time than at other times of the year. Like in some Januarys, always one of the busiest times of the year, I would be drawing these big panoramas almost daily. Anyway, this is yet another update of the Chemistry Building’s new wing. As I write, the whole thing is now covered in orange. They covered it in green, then in orange, and the end result will be white, so the Irish flag is fully involved in this one. Incidentally, when I was in Scotland I witnessed some of the Orange marches for the first time ever, both in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, that was interesting (but nothing to do with the Chemistry building). I’m not sure when this building’s construction will be fully done, but rest assured there will be a sketch of it posted on this site, because I can’t help myself can I.

You can see the rest of the in-construction sketches of the Chemistry building, and all previous ones pre-reonovation, at: https://petescully.com/tag/chemistry/.

chemistry latest

June 4, 20231 Comment

Here’s my latest sketch of the Chemistry Building’s redevelopment, with this bright green covering going over that newly built wing, ahead of the final cladding going on top. In fact the whole thing is covered in green now, I should do an update. The green on my page is unusually bright. I used that very strong Daniel Smith Phthalo Yellow Green paint, which glows like something out of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Well it is the Chemistry building. I showed this to someone and they were shocked, thinking that this would somehow be the final colour of the building. I mean, I wish more fairly conservatively designed buildings had an out of place massive neon green wing attached to them, but it’s pretty unlikely we’d do that. It is Chemisty though so it would get a, haha, reaction, geddit. I can’t wait to see the end product though, I expect it will fit seamlessly with the rest of the building.

stats and sprinkles

June 3, 2023June 4, 2023Leave a comment

At the end of April our department held its annual conference, this year titled “Advances in Statistical Data Science”. Our conferences are named in honour of Peter Hall, our former distinguished professor who very sadly passed away in 2016, at a time when he was one of the top statisticians in the world, especially in terms of number of and quality of publications. More than that, Peter was a lovely guy, I always enjoyed our chats. This conference went well (I must interject to say that while I’ve been working with statisticians for my whole career in the US, I know next to nothing about statistics and it all goes over my head), and one of my favourite parts of the weekend was when several of our alumni, who I’d not seen in a few years, came back to give talks. It was great to see them again, each of them being people I had brought into the department as new PhD students and who are now out there in the world making a difference. This was a talk given by Xiongtao Dai, and while I didn’t really understand it, I enjoyed the analogy of the sprinkle-covered donut, so I drew that. I don’t understand statistics, but I do understand donuts. (Not that I could make one; I leave that to the expert donut makers). In fact looking closely, I obviously don’t understand donuts either, because this was clearly a chocolate ball, and I even wrote that part down. This is why I wouldn’t make a good statistician, I can’t distinguish donuts from chocolate balls. This was the only sketch I did at the conference, as I was back and forth a bit to the office, or helping out there or walking the participants over to lunch, but I really enjoyed seeing everyone.

i feel as though, you ought to know

April 26, 20234 Comments

And a few more from the UC Davis campus. It will be nice when I get back to the sketch-scan-post all in the same day (or at least same couple of days) routine like I used to have years ago, but I always let the scanning build up, especially when I have had some trips. We were in Chicago during Spring Break, and then I was in Berkeley for a conference, but I finally got around to scanning and editing all of my recent sketches this past weekend, no mean feat. Yet I’ve not been sketching every day, perhaps because I didn’t want the to-be-scanned pile to get bigger. Also, not been too inspired by Davis, although I still find things to draw on campus during those lunchtimes. Above, the final page of Sketchbook #45, a place I have drawn many times but it never gets old, Hart Hall. Hart Hall never seems to change. This was about when the allergies were starting to kick up again, as the blooms starting blooming-well blooming.

This was a windy lunchtime in February. What do draw? Well I stood outside the Teaching Learning Complex (which you’ll remember I drew a lot as it was being built) and drew the view towards the Silo area, I like all the triangles of that building. I like this sort of view, I can do different shapes, values and textures, though I always have to make sure I have enough elastic bands to keep my pages down when it’s windy.

Finally, another building I have drawn a lot is Walker Hall, which I sketched throughout its whole reconstruction into the Graduate Center. So many times over the past several years did I stand on this spot looking across toward Shields Library in the background, and this would be a building site, I would be poking my head over a fence with some bins in the foreground and some trucks scattered around. Not any more! Except on this day, as I sketched a Facilities truck came along and decided to park right in front of me, blocking the specific view I was drawing. I couldn’t really see over it, so I just though ah well, and came back the next day to draw the rest. This is a really great part of campus now. I think on our graduate open house it poured down with rain making a tour very difficult, if not impossible, but if I were touring graduate students now I would make sure they came to this place, to see this amazing new facility we have for them. And then there is the great Shields Library, which was the first place I spent much time on this campus, before I was working here (my wife was already an employee) I would come here to read books on medieval language, spend time in the computer lab writing and updating my blog (before it was a sketchblog, when it was just a here-I-am-living-in-America-now blog, the old 20Six one before I switched to this WordPress one). I don’t suppose I thought much in those days that I would still be here now, and sketching these same places, watching them and recording them as they changed. It’s not my actual job, but I feel like it kind of is my job. One day, these places will look different again. Though maybe not Hart Hall, that never seems to change.

another view of the MSB

April 24, 2023Leave a comment

This is the Mathematical Sciences Building (MSB) at UC Davis, the building that has been my work home since I joined the campus along time ago. I wanted to draw a new view of it, this time slightly set back from the street (California Avenue; it was called Crocker Way when I first started), stood outside the entrance to the Earth and Physical Sciences Building (unseen to my left), which was not even there when I first started. Also missing are some trees, the largest and most recent to leave this earthy realm fell in the massive new years eve storms, along with hundreds of others trees. It’s left quite a gap, it provided some good shade in the summer for those sitting outside, although we still have the big wide spread tree you can see there that will keep us cool. I have drawn the building in panorama a few times over the years, we use those on our mugs and stickers and Stats department website, though each new drawing there is another tree missing. Be nice if this building were just a little bit bigger though, so we could have more office space. The perennial problem. The winter storms and rain look like they are finally over now, here in late April, and suddenly BAM it’s summer. It will be 90 degrees most days this week. The allergies have kicked into full gear, as always happens when the heat cranks up, but with everything being watered so much this year there has been a lot more growth, so the pollen is through the roof, as it were. I had to stay home today, the allergies were so bad that I didn’t actually sleep at all last night. At 5am or so I messaged work to say I wouldn’t be in and then worked from my bed until I eventually fell asleep around 7am, though not for long. Stupid allergies. I also saw that Spurs sacked their interim manager today, Stellini, the Tottenham merry-go-round continues, not so merry after losing 6-1 to Newcastle. But back to the MSB.

Below is another panorama sketch I did last month, inside the MSB Colloquium Room, at a mini-conference we held in honour of our emeriti faculty. It was really great having our eminent retired professors back, I’d not seen some of them since before the pandemic, and we had several presentations by our younger faculty, such as this one by Asst Prof. Mina Karzand. I’ve been with the Stats department a long time myself now so I gave a little speech as well with my memories and moments with each of them, and thanking them for establishing a welcoming culture in our department that we’ve tried to maintain. It was a nice event, and so I had to sketch it.

another view of university house

April 11, 2023Leave a comment

Another building I have drawn before. University House, UC Davis, first day of February 2023. I’ve drawn it a few times over the years, from slightly different angles, but usually, curiously, in the winter, February or March. Below, sketches from 2017 and 2013. The first time I drew it, this was where SISS was housed (they handle the international scholars, visas and so on, for the university), but they have since moved over to the big International Center that was built a few years back.

University House was built in 1907/1908 as the house of the farm director when the campus first opened as University Farm, an agricultural research offshoot of UC Berkeley. It’s one of the oldest buildings on campus.

stump

April 7, 2023Leave a comment

Did I post this one already? With time moving along so quickly I cannot remember. January seemed to go on forever, and now suddenly it’s April. This is the stump of one of the trees that blew down in the massive storms that opened 2023. I sketched it, needing to sketch at lunchtime as I do, listening to a podcast about the Beatles as I do, documenting. The very next day, even the stump was gone. Goodbye big old tree. Gone to the great big forest in the sky, as they say. This was on Mrak Lawn, that green are in front of Mrak Hall, shaded with trees (well, fewer than before) and a nice place to walk through. As I sketched a couple of people said “hello Pete” and I replied although I don’t think I actually recognized them. When I’m in sketching world it takes a minute for me to remember people. This was a nice sunny day, not rainy and windy as so many days have been. This is a very unusual year for Davis, it’s never this wet. We were inviting in faculty candidates from all over the country, and I always use the pleasant weather compared to say Michigan or Washington at this time of year as a pulling point as to why Davis is a great place to live. It was a bit harder this year with so much fun weather. One thing I like about January on campus, you can always tell if someone is there for a job interview, because they are the ones walking around in pristine suits with well brushed hair, unlike the rest of us who are casual Californians. Anyway, it is now April, we’re still getting rain, but the sunshine is coming. It always does.