current bag

July 12, 2023July 11, 20232 Comments

Slight break from posting London sketches, here is a drawing of my shoulder bag. Getting the right shoulder bag is essential, it needs to fit my 8″x5″ sketchbook, pencil case, paints, sunglasses, my iPad mini, and have room maybe for a drink and another mini sketchbook. This one fits all that easily. It still feels a little big sometimes but it has enough small pockets without being overloaded with them. I also love the colours. I’m really into yellow and grey, or yellow and black, especially a warm yellow like this one has. It’s Timbuk2, which means it just folds over and doesn’t have a zip (I do prefer a zip) but it’s lined well so it keeps things dry. The strap is very comfortable too. Trusted companion.

as long as I gaze on, i am in paradise

July 11, 2023July 10, 2023Leave a comment

Before heading over to Mile End, I got out at Embankment station and onto Hungerford Bridge. Sorry, I mean the Golden Jubilee Bridge (Hungerford Bridge is just the rail bridge in the middle now, but I still remember the shaky old walkway on the side from years ago, it’s much nicer now). I wanted to start my day with a little bit of my favourite river, and draw this view towards Waterloo Bridge once again. I had intended to add in the blue and white sky, the brownish tinged Thames, but I got too hot standing on the bridge. I went and sat on a bench on the embankment beneath a tree to add it all in, but by that time the moment had passed, and my perspective changed all the colours, (that can happen with reflective objects like a river), and so I went to Mile End instead. But I’m glad I got this sketch done, as it’s been a while. Below are two other panoramic sketches from a similar location (not exactly precise, but same half of the bridge). The colour one is from 2016, the other is from 2012. Well, you can see the difference in the skyline. Obviosuly the bottom one includes the Shard but I didn’t go that far in the other two, but in the City itself, the buildings are all change. When I left London, it was just Tower 42 (the old Nat West Tower) and the Gherkin (Swiss Re as it was called, but it was always the Erotic Gherkin), just to the right of St. Paul’s. Now those are all but invisible from this view. There will probably be more coming, unless the economic downturn means fewer novelty skyscraping, but next time I draw this in about four or five years, we will see. I’ll need better glasses then, my eyes ain’t getting any younger.

Click on any of these sketches for a slightly bigger view, that will save you just moving your face closer to the screen.

mile end afternoon

July 10, 2023July 9, 2023Leave a comment

I was done pretty early with exploring Queen Mary University of London on my first day back in Mile End in over 20 years. I walked round the corner to Burdett Road, and decided to draw this old building that was mostly boarded up, I do remember using the post office back in the late 90s. I didn’t live in Mile End while I was at university, I stayed back home in Burnt Oak, so I would commute in on the tube. I knew quite a few people who did decide to live locally, or a bit further out, and there would always be parties in those days. I took a lot of Night Buses as well, the old N25. Fall asleep on that, it bounces you back from Trafalgar Square right out into like Essex or somewhere. I stood by Mile End Park to draw this, but only got as far as the outline, because I was getting hot, so I drew most of it later on. I had another part of Mile End to look for.

A couple of years ago my wife (who is American) and I were looking at this impressive family tree document that her great aunt had put together many years before, and I noticed that there was a ‘Sir’ on there, Sir William Morgan, Earl of Tredegar. It was exciting to discover, and it turns out the Morgans are a pretty storied family, both from their Welsh aristocracy days, through the British Civil Wars and subsequently those that emigrated to the US and became big names in the fledgling country (founding the city of Springfield MA for one thing). In short, it turned out my wife had some pretty interesting ancestors, the Earls of Tredegar, and then all of a sudden I started seeing that name everywhere (we even chanced upon William Morgan of Tredegar’s memorial in Westminster Abbey last month). Pretty much the same day we were looking all of this up, my friend Simon (an actor and and former QMUL alumnus) told me about a film he’d just appeared in, Once Upon A Time in London, so I watched that, looking out for him. One of big scenes involved being beaten up in a pub, anyway right afterwards the gangsters involved walked out of the pub and it was called “The Lord Tredegar”, of course. I had to look up the pub – and it was in Mile End, very close to “Tredegar Square” and “Morgan Street”. Presumably the family had owned land round here. Well I found the pub – it’s in quite a nice part of Mile End, some impressive old houses around here – though it was closed, so I drew the outside, although I didn’t bother finishing all the colour later. A block away, there was a lovely post-box dating from Queen Victoria’s reign, which I drew with the Morgan Street sign in the background. This was right by Tredegar Square.

I was done with exploring Mile End, and decided to head back into central London, but I saved one last very quick sketch for Mile End tube station. This is where I’d come in and out every day while at university, after an hour-long packed tube ride from Burnt Oak. Another tube station sketch for the collection, I think I expected more stories to come flooding out of this one, but not really. I do remember one thing, it’s opposite the Territorial Army (TA) centre. Back when I was doing Richard III in early 1998, I was charged with arranging for props for the production, and asked for a bunch of army materials, including an army table. How I thought I could do that given that I had no car or means of transporting it, I do not know, but I was resourceful enough. There’s a big TA centre in Burnt Oak near where I lived, so I went there and kindly asked to borrow some equipment. To my surprise they said yeah sure, just bring it back. I got lots of army cups and hats and things like that, and a table, a big heavy green wooden table. Like, really heavy, like impossible to actually carry heavy. Carry it I did, halfway down Deansbrook Road, like an idiot. I would have called my dad, if we lived in the era of the mobile phone, but we did not just yet. I think I ended up leaving it, coming home, and then having one of my parents come and help me get it in the car. And I was going to bring this to Mile End to use in a play? What, on the tube? That wasn’t happening. I felt a bit stupid, but I had the other props, Richard III was just going to have to make do with a regular table to plan his battle with Richmond. Anyway the next day I came to Mile End station, walked out and immediately saw the TA Centre across the street, which I had hitherto never noticed. I didn’t bother going to ask them if I could use a table, I’d give myself a bad back carrying that, I’d end up looking more like Richard III myself. So, I do think of that when I think of Mile End station.

well it happened years ago

July 9, 2023July 9, 2023Leave a comment

One of the ideas I had for my short May visit to London was that I would try to go back to places I had not been in a long long time, especially places that mean something to me. I couldn’t quite believe that I have not been back to Mile End since I graduated from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) back in 2001, but sure enough, it’s been that long. On Tuesday morning (after sketching down at Embankment) I took the District Line up to Stepney Green, and walked up the Mile End Road towards my old uni. I went to QMUL – actually it was QMW, that’s ‘Queen Mary Westfield’, when I first started, though it was already part of the University of London, they had a slight name change during my tenure there – between 1997 and 2001, including a year abroad in Belgium. I studied French and Drama. In those days I did not get the tube to Stepney Green, rather I would go to Mile End tube station, which was on the Central Line and a quicker change from the Northern, and closer to the Arts Building. I went the reverse way today. I walked through the Student Union area, many an evening spent there, past some of the on-site dorms, not much had changed, but there were a few impressive newer buildings such as the Mathematical Science building (swankier than our one, though not really any bigger). I reached the People’s Palace and the Great Hall, which is where I spent a lot of time in my drama days, and even made my way inside to use the toilets by our old drama studio – still in the same place – and ate a sandwich in the lobby, trying to remember all the performances we did there back then. I often took care of the lighting in those days, getting to know the tech rigs and all that, but occasionally performed myself. In the Great Hall of the People’s Palace, which is a storied old east London venue, I remember doing Richard III back in early ’98 (I certainly wasn’t playing Richard, I was just part of the production team, I handled some of the artwork and helped with stage management, the latter being just quietly barked at when to open doors). Most of my memories have faded; I can’t remember most people’s names any more. When coming to old places like this to draw, I always do it with the intention of telling stories, but sometimes the stories are all a bit too jumbled up. I wanted to draw one particular building, the Queen’s Building (above). I stood outside the old pub across the street, chatting a little with the landlord who was sweeping the pavement, to draw the iconic clock tower with the magnificent white Queen’s Building behind it. I do still have memories of this building, spending many evenings in here using their computer labs, taking exams in the Octagon. Mostly this reminds me of my graduation day, taking photos outside here with my family and some of my other graduating friends. As I did French and Drama, most of my main friends (some of whom I am still close friends with) were in Drama, but they had largely graduated the year before in 2000. As a French student I got to spend a year in a francophone country – in my case Charleroi in Belgium – so I graduated in 2001. I still had friends in that year though, and many of them I’ve not seen since, but I have some warm memories from that day. I remember in my photos I wanted to turn my head more sideways, because I had recently gained a large scar on my face and didn’t want it showing up as much. Afterwards, my mum and dad and younger sister and I all went for a nice dinner. At the end of that summer I moved out to France, along with one other of my cohort from the French degree (Emma) to spend a year teaching in Aix, arranged by the university as a post-degree work placement. I do remember coming by Mile End a couple of weeks after graduation to those dorms down the road, because I was asked to lead a walking tour of London for visiting international students, but since then I have never actually been back to QMUL at all. It was bizarre to think about. I finished my sketch and explored the campus.

Right, so that took about ten minutes. I remember the Mile End campus as being this large sprawling place, stretching across East London from Mile End to Stepney Green and having to run between classes and always being late for my Performance class because I would be in French Literature just before. It’s actually not that big at all. Having spent the best part of two decades on the UC Davis campus which is an actually huge campus (we have an airport), QMUL felt like going back to my old primary school. I was a little disappointed by the lack of branded merchandise, hardly anything compared to a US university. I found the big library in the middle where I spent so many late nights (often watching old German films in their video labs for my German film course), the cafes where I’d eat my snacks, lots was new, a lot was still the same. I sketched the building above, which was I believe a chapel, I seem to remember it forming part of a logo for QMW but I’m certain that’s a mistaken memory. I do remember knowing some people that lived here though. Very close by is this phone box. I am sure I used that back then – I went in the days before most of us had mobile phones, they were only starting to become a thing. By the time I left, most people had one, usually a great chunky old Nokia thing, but when I was there, the payphone was still the way to go. I did have a Pager which I would use up until about 1999 but I didn’t really like it much. It was liberating, looking back, not having a phone always on you. You made plans and pretty much had to stick to them (I was always late anyway). But there were phone boxes, if you happened to have some change on you. I spent a lot of time broke back then. I ate chips a lot, and Super Noodles (no change there then).

I did go to the Arts Building, which is where my undergrad programs were based. I walked about the building – a lot had changed, but a fair bit was the same. It was an unusual feeling, like sliding back in time, I felt like an interloper. I recognized pretty much none of the names on faculty doors – well I did recognize a couple, who were not there to recognize me back, thankfully – and I didn’t stick around too long, as I was starting to worry that I had homework overdue. I enjoyed my years at Queen Mary, studying French and studying Drama, but I didn’t fancy sticking round to draw anything else, so I explored Mile End a bit more. It was a hot day, I considered going into the New Globe pub for a pint, our favourite watering hole next to the Arts Building, by the canal, but that’s called something else now, so I thought never mind. I walked underneath the huge ‘Green Bridge’ (which opened while I was there, in fact I took part in a special performance piece to mark its opening, along with the Art Park gallery nearby) (I had to pretend to be a room in a house, and then I had to pretend to be a tree, my arms hurt) (Drama student, yeah). I did some more Mile End sketches, but I’ll post those next time.

monday evening in covent garden

July 7, 2023July 7, 2023Leave a comment

Later that day – sorry, I realize several weeks passed by in between writing the posts for my London sketches from Monday May 15th, but I had another trip back to London in June, which included an eight-day trip to Scotland, and now suddenly we are a week into July and my ears are still ringing from the plane – anyway, later that day, I walked over to Covent Garden to do some more sketching. The previous Saturday night I had spent a very fun evening out around here with my old friends Roshan and Frenchie, which involved many laughs during dinner, ending up at the Nag’s Head pub which features in the background of both of my sketches here. Incidentally this is not the only Nag’s Head pub that I would sketch on that trip in May, but the other one will be posted later. I decided to take up position opposite Covent Garden tube station (one of the beautiful oxblood-tiled Leslie Green tube stations), to draw a two-page panorama, which I like to do. There were a lot of people around, being about 5pm on a Monday. In the place where I sketched there happened to be a group of Hare Krishnas who were out chasing people up and down Long Acre asking “have you thought about meditation?” One of them was very enthusiastic, following people like an eager salesman. Nearby, those pedal-cab things were congregating as they do. People were out shopping, this is one of the best shopping areas of the city. One of my favourite shops, Stanfords (they sell maps and travel books) is very close by. Posters advertised musicals like Frozen and Mrs Doubtfire: the musical. I swear, going by all the posters I saw in London, there is nothing that city will not turn into a musical. I’m waiting for “Urban Sketching: The Musical”. Taxis pulled up, letting people in and out, on their way to see a musical probably. People hurried by me on the pavement to get to wherever they were going. I used to be one of those people; I would pass by this corner on my run (I would literally be running) from the 134 bus stop down to the King’s College campus, when I was doing my Master’s in medieval English almost two decades ago. Now, I just focused on my sketch, on all that perspective. I think I had intended to make this full colour, and I had the time and the daylight, although after a while not so much of the energy, so I left it as is. Getting the sky in was important. It was a really lovely mid-May day, the sort where standing out on a London street is pretty much the right thing to do. I was in no hurry, I did not need to be back anywhere, I had no plans. But I was getting hungry, so I went to a nearby Pho place and had a delicious big bowl of pho. I’m going to put a picture of it here just to make you hungry.

IMG_2189s

And then I went to Floral Street, and did one last sketch of the day, a block over from where I did the first. I stood outside the White Lion pub, looking towards the Nag’s Head again (in the top sketch the Nag’s Head is in the far bottom left of the scene). There were many drinkers outside the pubs; again I had intended to colour this in, going as far as adding in some yellow blotches for the flowers, but in the end I didn’t have time and didn’t fancy adding it in at home, as I was a bit tired. I didn’t stop into either pub though; instead I went over to the Lamb and Flag for a quick pint before grabbing some food from Tesco Metro and getting the tube home to bed. A very productive day of London urban sketching.