I had another day of London sketching ahead of me. On this particular trip, I often worked remotely in the evenings, but got some much needed sketchbook exploring done in the daytime. I like South Kensington, so I headed in that direction. I didn’t have much of a plan, maybe I’d go to the Natural History Museum (add a dinosaur to the sketchbook) but I got out at the station and remembered I really wanted to draw that station. South Ken is a world away from Burnt Oak. Whenever I come back to London from California, one of the first things I notice is the litter on the streets. People really don’t just throw their garbage on the ground in Davis, but they definitely do in Burnt Oak, you see cans and broken glass and (the newest litter item) those thin vape packets, because the past few years has seen loads of people suddenly start vaping, way more than you would see here. So in addition to the cigarette butts thrown liberally on the ground, now people just throw their vape packets too, along with sweet wrappers, bottles, bits of old furniture, someone else’s problem. The top of my mum’s street especially has random trash just left there for weeks, broken glass all over the pavement. It’s very noticeable when you live somewhere where people generally don’t litter. That’s why I notice it when I go to South Kensington, because the streets there are usually well kept and clean, much more than in north London. Anyway, as I stood in this sparklingly clean utopia, worried that my dirty Burnt Oak feet would smudge the posh pavements, I whipped out the sketchbook and drew the tube station, using that gold pen again. I have this idea of drawing all the London Underground stations, but not just from photos as I did when I was drawing all the Leslie Greene stations (and as I have seen some other online sketchers do – drawing tube stations is very popular as a subject, I wholeheartedly endorse it!), but in person, which is a bit impractical, given that I live 5000 miles away and usually have better things to do when I come home. But it was good to notch another one off my list. I went to explore the area.

I remembered that I had wanted to draw the V&A building at some point. I always loved that massive museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, but I realized I had not been inside in about twenty years, maybe more, yes I think maybe twenty-five years, I think I went to an exhibition with my mum and my sister in the late 90s. Wow. I used to pass by it on my old bus tour, and tell tourists that it was one of the gems of London, free to go inside, packed full of visual decorative delights. We used to have to go there on school day trips with my art class, as they would encourage us to go around with our sketchbooks looking for patterns to inspire us, and take them back to make into some sort of graphic art. I used to sketch in those days too, out and about, though not quite as much as now. More often than not those school day-trips would be an excuse to mess about with my friends. I found a shaded spot opposite the building, on the very busy Thurloe Place (I always thought that was still Brompton Road but checking the map I guess that I was wrong). I had penciled an outline to draw a two page panorama, but I got a bit impatiend with that idea and kept it to just a page and a bit. It’s an amazing building. On a little green a minute or so away were about five or six burly police officers, standing just away from a group of young people all sat in a circle carrying “Just Stop Oil” banners. This might kick off I thought, so I stayed away, but not too far away that I wouldn’t see what would happen. Nothing did. When I was done with the drawing, I sat on a bench and thought about lunch, I was hungry. However, I really wanted to go inside and explore. Hunger be damned, I went in.

I am a bit annoyed with myself that I have not been going to the V&A on every trip back to London for the past two decades, because it really is amazing in there. I could have spent the entire rest of the day sketching and exploring. I found myself thinking, I should not look at too much, I should save that for when I come back next time with my wife, she’d love this. But I had to finish off this Fabriano sketchbook, I only had one page left. I filled that with a few items seen above (coloured in later). What I love about the V&A is seeing other lone people in there with their sketchbooks, just drawing random statues or sculptures. My people. I then got to finally open my new Moleskine watercolour sketchbook, and I sat in the Weston Cast room, which I remember coming into drawing when I was a schoolboy. It was a good Page 1 for the sketchbook, and (hidden away from the view of guards who probably wouldn’t allow it) I sneakily added in a little bit of watercolour paint. I had this small set of metallic paints I was eager to try out, and I’d been messing about with the gold pen enough on this trip, so I added in this bronze/gold paint to see what effect it would have. As you can see, in the scan it just shows up as bit dull, but in the real photo you can really see it shimmer, as the real objects did in real life. I stealthily snuck my little paints away, like a ninja, and explored the museum a bit more. I was really hungry though, so I walked up Brompton Road towards Knightsbridge, and had a pretty unsatisfying McDonalds.