15 June 26
Drawing Signs
One of my favorite photographers is Walker Evans, who was a master at photographing the American vernacular landscape. We were fortunate enough to see an exhibition of his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art eight-and-a-half years ago. There is a collection of his work published in 1998 that is entitled simply Signs and consists of 50 photographs he took of signage across America.
Signs are important in forming the character of an urban landscape. I was reminded of that a couple days ago when I read through The American Dream? and enjoyed all the illustrations of signage along Route 66 sketched in pen and wash. I decided I needed to sketch more signs, so yesterday I drew the building shown here at left. This hair salon is on G Street in Davis, on the opposite side of the street from the Davis Food Co-op.
13 June 26
Russell and A
Here’s my sketch today of the house at Russell Boulevard and A Street in Davis looking across from Russell. This is right across the street from campus; in the lower right corner of the sketch one can see light towers on a campus playing field. The house belongs to the Chi Omega woman’s fraternity.
Pica has a good collection of graphic memoirs on our bookshelves, and looking for something to read there late this morning I found a copy of The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66, by Shing Yin Khor. A lovely little book chronicling a road trip the author took in April 2016. I was heartened to see the technique the author uses for their illustrations which is similar to the way I’m sketching now. There are three layers in their illustrations — an underdrawing in blue colored pencil, black ink line work. and watercolor washes. I’m finding I really like having an underdrawing before putting in the ink line work.
7 June 26
For Lease
Here is yesterday’s urban sketch. This is the northernmost corner of the retail mall on G Street north of the Davis Food Co-op. Three of the nine spaces in this mall are vacant, though it does contain a good bike store and our favorite local bakery.
3 June 26
Buglets On The March
Pica this morning spotted about sixty or so small creatures in formation on the wall of our garden shed. When she moved her hand towards them, they would retreat away a few millimeters. We at first thought these were spiders but looking closely at the photographs they have six legs, not eight. Their body length is about 2 millimeters long.
I ran this photograph through a number of visual identification apps without a great deal of luck, but did come up with some possibilities. They appear to be early instar nymphs of some sort of bug, possibly Rediviidae (assassin bugs) or Rophalidae (e.g. boxelder bugs). Insects are tough to identify, immature insects even tougher.
1 June 26
A Time For Swarming
Yesterday afternoon I stepped out our front door and heard a whirring roar coming from the trees immediately to the north. Looking up there were many bees about and clearly there was a bee swarm nearby. The swarm turned out to be in a sumac tree in the yard of our neighbor immediately to the north.
Our neighbor quickly found a response to the new inhabitants of the backyard. There is an organization called Swarmed that is a community-based bee rescue network. At the Swarmed website there is a form to report a bee swarm; soon thereafter a beekeeper gets in touch and volunteers to retrieve the bee swarm to add to their own apiaries. The swarm yesterday was handled by an 83-year-old beekeeper who gathered it up with some sort of vacuum device and transported it (estimated at 60,000 bees in number) to its new home near Marysville.
This morning another bee swarm showed up in the same sumac tree, but about five feet higher. The photo is of this second swarm. Our neighbor reported it through the Swarmed site, summoning a different pair of beekeepers. They don’t seem to be as skilled as yesterday’s beekeeper, and as of 5 PM today the swarm is still up in the tree.
27 May 26
Weather in May
Yesterday afternoon a thunderstorm dumped half an inch of rain onto us in five minutes. There is no more “normal” weather other than that everything is getting more extreme. I was able to get into one of the flower beds this morning and pull the last of the delphiniums in order to put in some chili peppers (and found five buried potatoes, which made their way into the soup).
One of the roads through Yosemite is now closed because of snow — I’m usually pleased to hear about snow in the mountains but it’s getting late enough to start affecting nesting birds. It will be hot again soon.
24 May 26
Craft Fair
On Sundays twice a month the Davis Craft and Vintage Fair takes place in Central Park. It is pleasant to wander through, and there is almost always live music at one end of the concourse. Here is a sketch from today of one of the stalls.
22 May 26
Drying Days
It reached 95° F today with 26% relative humidity. These are good drying days. But if you are neither a) drying your clothes on a line outside or b) a watercolorist this may be an unfamiliar concept. How rapidly do wet materials dry given the present combination of relative humidity and wind speed? It doesn’t seem to feature in weather websites in the United States, though I did a Kagi search on “drying days” and came up with a laundry drying guide for London. Today’s weather there was rated “Superb”.
I am now trying sketching experiments with layers where I am painting first with loose watercolors, and then drawing over the watercolor with my Derwent drawing pencils. This calls for good drying days, since the paper needs to be perfectly dry before drawing on it. Here is a sketch I did earlier today in this manner of our laundry on the drying rack.
19 May 26
Overnight Visitor(s)
When I went outside this morning, I saw that this table, which was clear last night, was now covered in large bird droppings.
I didn’t sleep well (back spasm) and I got up well before dawn. I heard a great-horned owl calling outside. (This isn’t unusual; we have barn and great-horned owls nesting in the neighborhood.) But this is a lot of droppings for one owl in one night. My guess is that there were young owls sitting in the persimmon tree, getting fed by an adult. The fact that there was no evidence of food indicates that it was probably regurgitated for the young.
I’m glad there are enough mature trees where we live to host these species along with nesting Swainson’s hawks.
18 May 26
Redemption In A Walnut Orchard
Last weekend I watched the Errol Morris documentary from 2003 on Robert McNamara, The Fog of War. I followed this up with listening to a podcast interview from 2022 with his son Craig McNamara, which was produced not too long after Craig’s memoir of his difficult relationship with his father came out, entitled Because Our Fathers Lied after a line in a poem by Kipling.
Craig’s journey landed him not very far from here. In fact his interviewer, Michael Dimock, is somebody I have worked with: Michael is a regenerative food system activist who leads a group called Roots of Change. Craig became an organic farmer who has a walnut orchard near Winters, about 25 km west of Davis. Craig’s response to the Vietnam War as a young adult was in 1969 to wander south: he spent several years traveling through Latin America, working on subsistence farms, eventually ending up staying for a while on Easter Island. Agriculture got into his bones, and he returned to California and enrolled in UC Davis to get formal training in the agricultural sciences. He later bought the land and orchard near Winters with his father coming in as a financial partner.
This is one of these stories whose arc is multigenerational. After Robert left (or was fired from) his position as US Secretary of Defense he becomes president of the World Bank for 13 years, and meets with many heads of state all over the globe. Such travel does not make for a grounded life, but his son discovered such grounding on a bit of land near Putah Creek. The generations continue on there: Craig’s children Emily and Sean are both partners in the organic farm.