pretty seven dials and ugly pink riders

January 13, 2025January 12, 2025Leave a comment

A different day in London now, and after doing some work at home in the morning I made my way to Covent Garden to meet up with my friend Simon, who I had not seen since his stag party a year and a half before, and who was visiting from Dublin for a couple of days. We met at the cafe of the London Transport Museum, I love going to their shop and I picked up a fantastic festive hat. I wish I had bought the matching scarf too, but instead I settled on the socks which I wore on Christmas Day. You don’t need to know that. We then popped into the Freemason’s Hall, which I had heard you could go into, and looked around at all the masons’ stuff. You can’t wear hats in there, so my new hat was not allowed, yet there were lots of other items of silly clothing on display. We felt a bit out of place. I don’t really understand all the Freemason stuff, the secret handshakes and whatnot, but it was interesting looking around at the museum, all the information about past famous members and all the trophies; we are a Spurs fan and a Newcastle fan respectively so the well stocked trophy cabinets made us feel a little awkward. We went and had a little bit of lunch and a Belgian beer at the Lowlander Cafe, before he had to go and meet up with his dad for some shopping (and I had to go and meet my dad for hospital visiting hours). Before I took the tube up to Barnet though I walked through Seven Dials (which I kept calling Nine Dials) and sketched the pretty scene with the golden-leaved trees. It was very nice, until about seven or eight of those bloody awful unlicensed rickshaws pulled up outside a theatre, presumably to catch people coming out of a show, and all started blaring ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba at the same time on their individual speakers. I say at the same time, they weren’t all in sync, so it was just an aural mess of Abba, completely ruining the xmas atmos. Each one of them was decked out in garishly pink frills, designed as if to say “we think you are stupid and will stupidly ride around on this stupid tricycle for stupid money”. I hate these things. If I were Mayor of London I would ban them, and anyone caught doing it would be forced to ride their tricycle all the way to Scotland, going on all the B roads and everything, and then ride around the hardest estate in Glasgow or somewhere, playing bloody Dancing Queen. They prey on tourists, I always read stories about people getting in them and then suddenly being charged 300 quid to ride from a hundred yards up the road by a threatening man with a frankly scary pink vehicle. And sure people might say, well they are part of London now, that’s just what you do, we’ve had pedicabs for ages and tourists want the loud colour and music and don’t mind paying for ten minutes of dodging traffic and pavements and pedestrians. Personally I think they’re awful ugly noisy things, and they ruin any charm Central London still has. You won’t see me in one any time soon. Bah humbug indeed.

advance to mayfair

January 12, 2025Leave a comment

Mayfair is one of those parts of London I’ve frankly ignored for too long. Last year we nearly walked around there, to find the Mercato that we’d heard was cool, but after looking walking over to Savile Row to see where the Beatles played in 1969 on the roof, we ended up catching a tube to St. Paul’s for a walking tour of the City (those Blue Badge guides know their stuff). So I had it on my list to explore this area finally, for the first time in I don’t know how long. It’s that big area full of big super expensive buildings and flash cars, embassies and posh hotels, more Rolls Royces than you can dream of, all bounded by Park Lane, Oxford Street, Piccadilly and Regent Street. That’s a big area and it’s not all the same (I am not even sure all of it is ‘Mayfair’, except in the geography of my mind, but we call it that). So on this trip, I decided to make an effort to explore Mayfair again. I actually used to come through here almost every day, twenty-five years ago, on an open-top tour bus, telling the same old stories, waving at the barber, humming the Nightingale song in Berkeley Square song because I didn’t know the words (or the tune) (or the title, evidently), pointing out where the Queen was born (not the original building) and where Jimi Hendrix used to live before he died. Those well-rehearsed yarns have faded in the memory but not as much as the streets themselves; walking around it was like reading a book I had not read since I was a kid, knowing the lines and the characters but still being completely surprised by the story. I was certainly surprised by the little red Mini parked outside a fancy hotel, covered in a Christmas tree, people were stopping to take photos and so I had to grab a sketch. All along the street were expensive cars, this was Grosvenor Street. The Grosvenors are the big cheeses in this part of central London, and many other parts too, they are the Dukes of Westminster. The Grosvenors built this whole area, as well as Belgravia. This street leads up to Grosvenor Square, formerly the location of the massive U.S. Embassy, and the last time I was there, and in this part of town, was in 2005 when I completed my application for Permanent Residency, and had to go to the Embassy, hand in all my paperwork, have a little interview, pledge allegiance with my hand up (that was odd, did that happen?) and then it was all good, I can go ahead and live in America, and I’ve been doing that ever since.

I found the Mercato Mayfair, an incredible food court inside an old church. There are lots of different options from around the world as well as a bar over where the altar would have been. It was done up all festive for Christmas, and I grabbed some south-east Asian food and a fruity soda and had a late lunch/early supper. I still had a lot of drawing I wanted to do in Mayfair, and the daylight was already getting short. I walked over to Duke Street, near the magnificent Ukrainian church (how had I never seen this building before?) to the unusual Brown Hart Gardens. I’ve seen these on walking tour videos (tall tales about elephants being kept here) and one of the Urban Sketchers London events was around here a year or so ago, and I had really enjoyed all their sketches of these domes. I stood among the rich people in nice clothes and sketched. Behind me three suited men talked loudly about work, all business and deals and masculinity. I would have found it hard being a Man of Business, not the life for me guv. The sunset was causing all sorts of colours to appear in the sky, and made the buildings look as if they were made of gold, which they probably are.

A lot of the buildings nearby do look pretty golden. I found myself walking down past the Connaught Hotel, which is a five star hotel that looks like it needs a few more stars added to that description. I didn’t draw it this time, but I did stand outside the Pasticceria Marchesi across the road on Mount Street to sketch the beautiful window display. Their cakes were more like crowns or ornate cushions, and there was a line out of the door. This terracotta building was designed by William Henry Powell and I seem to remember having to say something about Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee when talking about it on the tour, back in the days when Queen Vic was the only one who’d ever had one.

The next stop was Berkeley Square, of the aforementioned song about a nightingale. I had forgotten how big this square is, and even though it was already dark I was amazed at how beautiful it was. I’d honestly not been there since swinging past on a Big Bus pointing out all the Ferraris. The one story I always had to mention were the London Plane trees, as there are a lot of them here, trees that were strong and particularly resilient to the infamous London pollution. I had to sketch one of course, in pencil this time, another tree for the collection. I imagined walking through here on a smoggy evening in Victoria times with horse drawn carriages and top hats and gas-lamps. Now it’s Bentleys and Maseratis, and I did notice that many of the map-posts have been converted into special chargers for electric cars, they just plug them into the lamp-post. We live in the future now my friends. I pressed my nose against the Ferrari showroom checking out a car that costs a quarter of a million quid.

Finally, a famous old pub on the corner of Bruton Street, near where the Queen was born (I suppose these days I should say ‘Queen Elizabeth II’ rather than just ‘The Queen’ in case you think I mean Camilla, or Taylor Swift), at Number 17. The Coach and Horses is the oldest pub in Mayfair, and history pours off of it. I didn’t go in this time, but I’ve been inside many years ago with my mate Tel. I have wanted to sketch this pub for years, another in the mock Tudor style (see my sketches from earlier that day for more of that) so it was always going to be my final destination, but as I stood on the other side of the street drawing the outline, and red buses and taxis passed between us, I ended up just drawing the outlines and scribbling the rest in later, as I had to catch a tube and a bus to Highgate Village. It was a nice stroll around Mayfair, well worth the 400 quid in Monopoly money. I mean, pound for pound, square foot for square foot, it’s the cheapest place on the board.

liberty’s before lunchtime

January 11, 20252 Comments

While in London last month I took a day to sketch and explore Mayfair, and area I have not really walked around in a long, long time. It’s good to not stick to the same places each time I go back. However I wanted to start my day somewhere more familiar, draw a lot of old timbered beams, and maybe do a bit of Christmas shopping along the way. I have sketched Liberty’s of London before, but it was a long, long time ago, when I drew smaller snippets of buildings, and in that case not very well. It’s such a big old building, a massive department store in mock-Tudor behind Oxford Circus station, that you want to spend the time to really catch all the details. I chose a spot on Great Marlborough Street that looked down Kingly Street on the right, a street well worth a day of detailed sketching in itself (but which I always associate with fancy bars and cozy pubs, having spent a few evenings down there with friends back in the old days either drinking cool cocktails among media types or room-temperature beer among tourists). It’s an intriguing little corner of the sketch that, like a window that you open on an advent calendar. There’s a fun idea for an advent calendar, one that for each window, you are taken to a new place full of other windows. I’m not sure how it would work but I can imagine quite a bit. The sun was blue and the sky was shining, there were clouds dotted about to make it more interesting for me when I drew the little triangle of colour on the top left. I wasn’t sure how much colour I would add to this drawing, it being an essentially black and white building, so I just added spots here and there, such as the golden parts (with my gold gel pen) and flags. Unfortunately I did not colour all the trees in, just putting in some green, the uncoloured ones were purple. I should have added that, I’m not averse to colouring-in later after all (I’m the king of colouring-in later, saves so much time on those days of exploration), but I never got around to it and the moment’s passed. Purple is very much the corporate colour for Liberty’s, though at this time they were also very invested in green as they were promoting the movie ‘Wicked’, and had large displays about it in their windows and interior. The whole sketch took me about an hour and fifty minutes (yes not quite two hours, I was determined to finish by midday and press a hard stop, though I spent some time faffing about taking pictures of it). I did go inside and look around, bought some Christmas ornaments and stocking stuffers in their amazing festive department on the top floor. I don’t remember ever walking around here before, it’s very wooden and unusual inside, well worth a look. Some of the things they have for sale are a bit expensive mind, the designer goods. I’d like to make a point of sketching more of the big old department stores of London, I drew Fortnum’s already, now Liberty’s. I tried to draw Harrod’s last year but it was covered over with scaffolding (to hide their shame presumably, given news reports about their former owner) and then there’s Selfridges on Oxford Street. I always took that for granted, but when I passed by it later on this day I remembered how absolutely immense it is, so I’ll leave that for another time.

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I could have spent the day sketching just around this little corner, looking across Regent Street with this winter sunlight hitting things just right. Carnaby street is nearby, but I don’t like it there much any more, it’s too bland, and there are just not any football shirt shops any more. The best was SoccerScene, a shop that did more than anything to enflame my lifelong obsession with interesting foreign football teams and their shirts (and their metal pin badges, they had a huge array of those). I remember further down Great Marlborough Street there used to be a fantastic foreign language bookshop, the best one in London, and when I was in college I spent a lot of time there looking at all sorts of interesting books in French, German, Italian, Danish, whatever was tickling my linguistics at the time. It’s gone now. Grant and Cutler, that was it. It seems they have merged with Foyles and have a section of that massive bookshop on Charing Cross Road, but I miss the feel of that other place. Anyway I was wasting time reminiscing in nostalgia again, I had to go to Mayfair.

I’ll put the Mayfair sketches in another post, it’s only fair, but this is another timbered building that I drew next, the Mason’s Arms on Maddox Street. It’s opposite a really interesting church which I’ll draw another time called St. George’s Church Hanover Square. This is across Regent Street, and I came across here rarely, probably feeling that this part of town was not for oiks like me from Burnt Oak. People get progressively richer with each passing square foot. I think I only had about a square foot of pavement to sketch on, the streets were a little tight, probably why they’re so rich eh. All the old tour guide jokes coming out now. I remember going down Regent Street on the bus once talking about Soho when an American tourist asked me why it was called Soho and is it named after the SoHo in New York. I said no it isn’t, that area is a contraction of ‘South of Houston’, whereas the one in London is ‘South of Hoxford Street’. After finishing my sketch of the Mason’s I popped in to sit down and grab a drink. I ended up not eating, saving my appetite for the Mercado in Mayfair which was my destination, but it was a nice little pub, historic (1721, though rebuilt as it looks now in 1934 in that Mock Tudor style; a new Lego set has just come out which reminds me of this, I might have to get it). The Rolling Stones had offices on Maddox Street and used to record at Chappell Studios a few doors down, as did the Beatles occasionally. It’s good to read the signs on the pub wall.

afternoon tea at fortnum’s

January 10, 20252 Comments

One afternoon while in London I took my Mum for tea at Fortnum and Mason, on Piccadilly. It was an early treat for her birthday, something festive to do before Christmas. I took her there once before years ago (I think the prices were about half what they are now) and have wanted to take her again for ages. It’s up in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, though to get up there you need to brave the packed store full of Christmas shoppers and squeeze into the tiny elevator. It’s lovely though, and I still put Fortnum’s among my favourite London shops. During the pandemic for Mother’s Day I ordered a hamper for my mum and another one for my mother-in-law which had to be shipped over to California, they do really nice tea and cake hampers. Piccadilly at this time of year, the start of December, is even more crowded than usual, but I don’t mind. It means London’s doing alright. We walked about a bit looking at expensive cars in the Lotus showroom (they had Ayrton Senna’s old F1 car), expensive jewellery at Bentley and Skinner, and expensive glassware at the Lalique store in Burlington Arcade. I took the opportunity to draw Fortnum and Mason from across the street, as during Christmas time the whole store is made up to resemble an advent calendar. As you may know, I have a long history of making advent calendars so the idea of turning an entire building into one makes me happy. A lot of people were stopping to wait for the little statues of Mr. Fortnum and Mr. Mason to come out from the ornamental clock and tell us what time it is. Fortnum and Mason dates back centuries, 1707 in fact, the time of Queen Anne, Fortnum being one of the Queen’s footmen. I sketched for a while as my Mum looked around some shops, and by the time I was about done there was a woman who had set up a little camera on a tripod to film herself talking about the Bible and singing psalms, fair enough but when they get a microphone out and start going on about sinners that’s enough for me. Anyway it was time for our tea. We each got the regular Afternoon Tea with scones, sandwiches, cakes and tea, as much as we could eat and drink, and we ended up taking many of our cakes home with us and eating them over the next couple of days, they were quite rich and filling. We started off with a drink called a ‘turtle dove’, a kind of cocktail that was so good, a nice way to kick off Christmas. For tea I had the Afternoon Blend, Mum had the Queen Anne. I think, I can’t remember now. I think I had a couple of different types actually. I had to draw the teapot and cap along with a cake that looked like a present. When we were done I spent more money downstairs picking up a few things here and there to bring home for family, but I could have got so much nice stuff. My Mum bought a nice Fortnum’s ornament for my wife (when they wrapped it, it was like that scene in Love Actually with Rowan Atkinson and Alan Rickman), and I bought chocolates and tea and fancy greeting cards. I bought a lot of fancy greeting cards on this trip, Britain does the best ones, by far. So that was our tea at Fortnum’s, a nice treat and a very festive thing to do before Christmas.

tamara’s book signing at jam

January 9, 2025Leave a comment

While I was back in London I went to a book signing at a small independent bookshop in Portobello Road. It was a special treat because the author was my old friend and German theatre pal from university, Tamara Von Werthern, who I’ve not seen in more than ten years. In fact the last time I saw her was on one of my Christopher Wren sketchcrawls in the City (the one in 2014), when she came along to sketch with her husband (also an artist) and young children. She’s a playwright with many published and performed works and in recent years has also become a detective novelist, writing a series of books in German based on her father Philipp; ‘Ich Glaub, Es Hackt’, ‘Ach Du Liebe Zeit!’ and the newest one, ‘Adel Auf Dem Radel’. These have even been included on the curriculum of the German department at our old school, Queen Mary, and she has been invited back to talk about them. The first two books have been translated into English, as ‘Only The Lonely’ and the most recently published book, ‘Silent Night’. It was this book that was being signed, and Tamara has done a series of book talks recently accompanied by her father visiting from Germany. I’ve seen Tamara post about her books for a few years now since the first one came out in Germany, but as I’ve not been able to get hold of any I hadn’t read them. So at the bookshop I took the chance to buy the first two in both languages (I will save buying the third German one for another time). I drew them (above) when I got back to America, and so far I’ve read the first one ‘Only The Lonely’ which was really fun with an interesting twist, well not a twist but a surprise I didn’t see coming. I am going to try to read the German original next; I am so out of practice with my German, it’s twenty years since I last visited!) but I’m looking forward to reading Silent Night. I kind of wish I’d read it over Christmas, but I’m a very slow reader.

Jam Bookshop was small but really well stocked in some great titles, and very much an artist-friendly shop. I did also buy a beautiful novelization of My Neighbour Totoro for my son (we both love the Ghibli films), as well as a zine about Rediscovering Colombo (apparently this was a thing during the pandemic; I did not know, but I had myself started watching them online too just recently. I’m getting into detective stories, reading a bunch of Agatha Christie books lately). I also got a couple of drawings on notecards (one of Totoro, one of Columbo) which were drawn by the shop’s owner. I didn’t realize he was the artist, David Ziggy Greene, until he offered to sign the back of them for me (though he signed mine to ‘Paul’), and he is a cartoonist for the magazine Private Eye which was very cool. Anyway of course I wanted to sketch Tamara actually doing the book signing near the front of the store, and she signed all four of my books, as well as signing the sketches I did. It was great to catch up with her after all these years; I had just run my first 10k the week before and she shared with me her own running stories. I sketched fast, preferring my second one (below), while people came in and spoke with her and bought her books. Very cool indeed.

IMG_0794s, When it was time for me to move along and get sketching the rest of Portobello Road (and meet several other artists along the way, as it turned out), I did stop for a little while outside the shop and started drawing the exterior, which is actually inside an indoor section besides the market. I was thinking, I mist take my son here if we come back to this part of London, I think he’d like it (though maybe not the crowds of the market). Unfortunately, I saw their posts last week that the shop has closed. Being in that inside passageway did not bring a lot of foot traffic, and it’s such a hard time for bookshops these days (I used to work for an independent one in Finchley that is now long gone). I’m sorry to see it go but am glad I was able to visit and draw it while it was there. Tamara said they had been very good with supporting artists and local authors, and had moved form another location in east London.

Anyway, despite that news, I’m glad to have been able to go to Tamara’s signing and hope that her books do really well, and I am looking forward to reading the rest. Finally – a fun fact, Tamara is the only person I have ever allowed to draw in my Moleskine sketchbooks. It wasn’t on this trip, it wasn’t even on that sketchcrawl, in fact it was on an evening out with friends in London in late 2009 at the Ship pub in Soho, when I had my purple pen and was not very comfortable drawing people, so she drew us instead.

a saturday down portobello

January 7, 2025January 7, 20255 Comments

On the last day of November, exactly a year since Shane MacGowan died, I found myself in Ladbroke Grove, heading to Portobello Market. I was going to a book signing by an old friend of mine from university at a little bookstore. I was up early; my Mum and I were playing the Pogues music in honour of Shane, and having a morning singalong with a bit of the Wolfe Tones on my ukulele, and then I headed out for my day of sketching and literature. I decided not to take the tube, but caught the 302 bus from the end of my street like I would do in the long-ago old days. I hadn’t been this way to Notting Hill in over 25 years, I think, changing bus in Willesden for the 52 towards Victoria. The 52 used to run all the way from Victoria to Mill Hill before they split the route in two. I sat at the top looking out of the window, trying to remember and recognize all the places along the way, seeing some of them in a new way as an urban sketcher. I must explore Kensal Green and its big old cemetery some day. I got out at Ladbroke Grove, which was already quite busy with foot traffic for the market, and sketched the tube station from across the road. It’s not the most visually exciting tube station, but worth sketching. I am really into sketching tube stations, and old pubs, and bookshops. I like sketching markets too, but they get so busy that I often shy away from it. I stood outside an estate agents; as I sketched, tourists stopped by to look at all the places that were listed, massively overpriced tiny flats in a massively overpriced massive city. Tour groups gathered outside the station. Portobello has always been popular with tourists; growing up Ladbroke Grove was always seen as a little bit rough, but definitely a big area of music and culture. I’ve only been to the Notting Hill Carnival once, on a baking hot day in 1996, and spending a day squashed in a slowly moving crowd that moved like a thick sauce through these wide streets before ending up watching Jamiroquai in his massive hat, that was once enough for me. I thought about that as I sketched. I am better in a crowd when I’m by myself. I headed into the crowded market looking for some food, and smelled out what looked like a delicious paella. It really wasn’t, and I ended up throwing it away. “More like a paella shite” I said to myself, making a mental note to remember that if I ever came back. I went to my friend’s book signing at the nearby Jam Bookstore (more of that in a different post).

After I left the book signing at Jam I went back into the busy world, and stood in between two parked vans to sketch this book stall. I had books on the brain, and also on my arm, carrying a bag with five new books in it. I didn’t have space to buy any from this stall, but they were getting a fair bit of foot traffic. As I sketched, there was a fellow behind me taking photos, photos of me sketching as it turned out. I didn’t much mind. He introduced himself to me and offered to message me the photos. His name was Trevor Flynn, and he’s an artist himself who has sketched around Portobello for years, and runs a company called Drawing At Work (http://drawingatwork.co.uk/), he has got people out sketching for years. He also knew about Urban Sketchers London and has worked with sketchers I know. Always nice to meet other sketchers. In fact he told me he did all the sketching and storyboarding for the film Notting Hill, back in the 90s. I loved that film, I remember I had a really long and stressful day at university, I studied drama and they were usually long hours, and I would often stop at the cinema on the way home (either in Stepney or in Camden) to catch a film and relax, and this one night I watched Notting Hill and it cheered me right up.

I kept strolling further down the market; I had sketched down here last year so wasn’t necessarily going to do too much today, as I was heading towards Notting Hill Gate with the idea of walking down Kensington Church Street, but this colourful art market area on Tavistock Road caught my eye, especially the bits of orange on the trees in the background. Well I had to sketch the scene. As soon as I did, a lady in a pink high-vis vest came to talk to me, she told me this was something called Open Art Spaces (see openartspaces.co.uk), and these were all independent artists selling and showing their work, and she gave me their card (a Moo card; I had forgotten mine). As I sketched, I was joined by one of those artists, Chen Xi, who is also an urban sketcher. He is from Singapore but is in London doing a Masters, and he knew several of the Singapore sketchers that I have known over the years, even been taught by them. I chatted with him for a while sketching the scene, and when I was done I bought some of his cards and walked around the market talking to other artists and buying more cards, coasters, bookmarks. It was fun getting out and talking to people in my favourite city, I should do it more often.

I walked down Portobello with that Al Green song from the movie stuck in my head, though the seasons didn’t change, and I don’t look like late 90s Hugh Grant, well not much anyway. I saw the Electric Cinema and decided I really needed to draw that, with the Christmas trees for sale outside. I never saw a movie here, but I have a vague memory that they had a small bar here back in the 90s and I came in for a drink with an ex, though it might have been somewhere else, or maybe I imagined it. I’ve been dreaming about London for so many years now, I mean actual dreams when I’m asleep, that whole areas have grown that my sleeping self is convinced are real but actually don’t exist at all, built as if from broken Lego sets of real places and experiences; I wish I could draw them. There is a lot of London that I’ve not been to in over 25 years that I have almost entirely forgotten; later that week I walked around parts of Mayfair that I had honestly set outside my mind completely, not since I was an open-top tour bus guide, but when I walked through certain squares and down certain roads, memory and story came flooding back. In some cases, they trickle back, and it’s like that around here. Sometimes the mystery of memory is more exciting. I was standing next to a stall that sold quite posh looking ham, if memory serves (and we know it doesn’t), and the market was getting busy but I wanted to press on.

Down Notting Hill Gate I went, and there’s a lot to sketch around there, but I just wandered about, thinking about stories. I was near Campden Hill Road; back in the mid-90s I actually took an evening course in screenwriting here, not a very long one, but it was enjoyable. I remember quite liking the people in the class, and the teacher was nice, and I had to write a short screenplay; I think I wrote one about a priest meeting a woman, it wasn’t very original, and in fact the instructor complained it was too derivative of a TV show called ‘Priest’, which I had never seen, and didn’t sound like the sort of thing I’d watch. Then I wrote another about a woman who was in love with the grim reaper and would murder people to see him again; not very sophisticated, and my heart wasn’t in it. I’ve never written a love story since. I remember there was an Irish guy on the course who was writing a screenplay about the Battle of Brunanburh, but this was before I studied Old English poetry so I wasn’t really familiar with it, but I remember he did a good job. I should do more evening courses, though there’s not as much choice in Davis as there was in London, and I don’t know what I’d want to do. Not screenwriting again. I walked down to Kensington Church Street as I wanted to visit the Churchill Arms, or at least watch their Christmas lights come on. This is a famous pub, often winning pub of the year awards for its unusually over the top floral arrangements outside, though for the festive season they deck out in thousands of lights, and as you can see from the sketch lots of people gather to watch them come on. I stood across the busy street and drew fast. My waterbrush ran out so I had to add the paint in afterwards. As I sketched, a woman with a thick Texas accent asked me without prompting or introduction if I had visited the Tim Burton exhibition. I said I had not, and she proceeded to tell me I should go, because they had just been there and it was wonderful. She said my drawing reminded her of his sketchbooks, which was a surprise to hear. she then asked if I knew who Tim Burton was; now the thing is, whenever anyone I don’t know randomly asks me if I have heard of someone, my natural instinct is to say I haven’t, so I said “no; is he the guy who invented trousers?” It just came out; I was thinking of the clothes shop Burtons. So she listed all the films he had directed, and by this point I had to keep pretending I didn’t know who he was, in case she thought I was taking the mick, so I ended up making the “no, don’t know that one” face to films like Batman and Edward Scissorhands. I did like the sound of this exhibition though, and said I would try to go and see it; “Tom…Barton?” “Tim Burton, you’d enjoy it.” “Thanks, I’ll check it out.” “You should. Have a great vacation!” and off she went. It’s nice to meet people, I’m getting good at it.

I did want to rest my legs and have a festive pint before heading back to Burnt Oak though, as it was now dark and my legs were feeling weary. I stand when I sketch because I don’t like being hunched over on a stool, and getting some rest is good. The Churchill was packed, there was no room at the inn, even though the interior of that pub is on my list of must-sketch places. I used to go in there sometimes years ago and marvel at all the stuff on the walls and ceiling, the landlord was from Tipperary I think because I remember lots of Tipperary hurling memorabilia, had some good nights out in there years ago. They also did a lovely Thai curry, but no chance today. I walked about to some other little pubs I was surprised were still there, but didn’t look much like they did in the 90s, but I ended up in the Prince Albert, where a load of people were watching the football, Arsenal against a really bad West Ham. I sat down for a while with my back to the screen, nursed a pint and sketched them watching it, lads with no faces. The food smelled expensive and not very enticing, so I didn’t eat, and then I got the tube back home. It was a year since Shane MacGowan died, and I went back to Burnt Oak to spend the evening out with my Mum and some longtime family friends, and several pints of Guinness. That was a busy day.

that was the 2024 that was

January 1, 2025January 1, 20254 Comments

2024 sketches sm

And so 2024 is over, and 2025 has begun. I always find it odd that we celebrate the new year starting in January when January is often the worst month of the year, back to work, back to school, crappy weather, very short days, putting away all the festive stuff and start getting on with the grind. At least birthday season starts towards the end of the month in our family, and then before you know it Spring Break is here, but Januarys can be hard work, and this one, with its geopolitical shifts, is going to be a slog. Sometimes I do a lot of drawing in January, as a way to fight off the mental nature of this long gloomy month. I just started a new sketchbook at the close of 2024, and new sketchbooks are always filled with hope, though I know I’ll fill it with the same old stuff, drawings of Davis buildings with a tree in front of them. While I still have a lot of sketches yet to post, most of those from December, here is the annual sketch list for 2024. I put these together as I go along to keep track of how much I am drawing, and then do a comparison with previous years. It’s not exactly scientific; this year for example I started using the portrait format for two of my main sketchbooks, and that format takes up less space in this list, yet would often be the same amount or more of drawing as a longer format which can take up more space. Below is the comparison with all the years going back to 2013 (I am not going back and manually doing the previous years) but you can see, 2024 was perhaps my most productive year, certainly since the big year of 2019 (the last year I went to an Urban Sketching Symposium). I am hoping to go to the Symposium in 2025 in Poznań, Poland.

What happened this past year, art-wise? I had a series of sketches from over the years published in SacTown magazine, I was interviewed in a KDRT radio show with Bill Buchanan, I was also interviewed in the California Aggie in November, and I also appeared on the Robert Elms BBC London radio show, though that was not about my drawing and more about growing up in Burnt Oak. There was also an article in the UC Davis L&S Magazine about a fun project I did at work in the summer where I created an academic family tree for our Stats department, based on the London Underground map. I also had a couple of pieces displayed in the Pence Gallery in Davis. There was a good amount of travel; we started off the year in Maui, also visited Los Angeles (dinosaur sketching) and Riverside (conference, but stayed at the historic Mission Inn), and a family trip to the national parks of Zion and Bryce Canyon in Utah, as well as Las Vegas to watch the Beatles Love show. We went to London in the summer, and I went back again in the winter. We went to the south of France, to Aix and Nice, as well as a day out in Monaco. And of course, our 20th anniversary trip to Kaua’i which was amazing.

These were the sketchbooks I used in 2024, not counting stuff done outside of sketchbooks such as larger pieces:

SKETCHBOOK #54 – Landscape Watercolour Moleskine #27 – December 2024 to present – Davis…
SKETCHBOOK 53 – Landscape Watercolour Moleskine #26 – October 2024 to December 2024 – Kaua’i (Hawaii), Davis, London, Santa Rosa
SKETCHBOOK 52 – Portrait Watercolour Moleskine #2 – July 2024 to October 2024 – Half Moon Bay CA, Davis, Muir Woods, San Francisco
SKETCHBOOK 51 – Portrait Watercolour Moleskine #1 – June 2024 to July 2024 – Davis, London, Aix-en-Provence, Nice, Monaco, San Francisco
SKETCHBOOK 50 – Landscape Watercolour Moleskine #25 – March 2024 to May 2024 – Riverside (CA), Davis, Zion (Utah), Bryce Canyon (Utah), Las Vegas (Nevada), San Francisco
SKETCHBOOK 49 – Landscape Moleskine #24 – December 2023 to March 2024 – Maui, Davis, Truckee, Sacramento, Los Angeles
Davis/UC Davis Summer 2024 Accordion Sketchbook – Seawhite of Brighton accordion sketchbook (medium) – July 2024
Small Moleskine 2024 – April-December 2024
Fabriano Venezia Small Sketchbook – April 2023-March 2024

So 2024 was quite active creatively, not including all the projects like the advent calendar, organizing sketchcrawls, and I’ve also been a lot busier with my guitars and ukuleles. Resolutions for 2025, well I really need to work on that long-awaited Davis book, let’s try to get that moving. A lot more writing, that’s always good. I probably don’t need to increase my drawing output, maybe relax a bit more, do some new things. Read more, a lot more. 2025 is going to be stressful enough, so make time for the creative and hopeful things, put the scrolling down, Happy New Year, stay safe.