From the C Line to the High Line

June 4, 2025June 3, 2025Leave a comment

And now to post the rest of my quick people sketching from New York City. It’s good to carry a smaller sketchbook for these little rapid fire captures. I thought it was a cliche but sketching on the Subway was great. Better than sketching on the tube, it’s like there’s this little bit more distance. Anyway, I sketched the view above on the C line while heading uptown, I can’t remember why I was on that line, and I think the one below was sketched on the Q or the N, honestly I don’t remember now. The New York Subway is very confusing for someone used to the simplicity of the London Underground. You get used to it pretty quickly, but on the whole it is not intuitive and very easy to get lost. I got lost straight away, but made the most of it because getting lost is fun sometimes. Those stations, they are just like they look in the old 70s movies, I imagine it feels creepy late at night when nobody is around, if ever that is the case, but it was busy and full of your average New Yorker. People not from New York actually asked me if the Subway was scary. Nope, just a normal transportation system that people use, but for some reason is designed to make no sense whatsoever. I loved it, but maybe if I was in a deserted station at night, I’d probably be petrified.

Here’s one from the R train, which I think is what I took back from Brooklyn to get back to our hotel. I was writing down some of the announcements while orange hood man slept. Round glasses man looked at his phone. Most people do that now. People like to complain about this on the tube, everyone just looking at their phones (as if they are expecting people to get on the tube and start having random conversations), but they used to hide behind big broadsheet newspapers. I miss getting the tube or bus and reading a book, or observing that unwritten rule where someone reads a newspaper, puts it down next to them, and someone opposite just automatically without asking or acknowledging the other person will just pick it up and start reading it, whether it’s a free Metro or a 30p (or whatever it is now, probably free) Evening Standard, and the person who was reading it just has to silently accept that the paper is no longer theirs. It’s one aspect of British society that definitely deserves doctoral study. I’ve not been on the Subway regularly enough to notice the societal quirks of it. I just did a few sketches, and tried not to get lost like the newbie tourist I am.

Leaving the urban theatre of the Subway behind, we also went to see an actual Broadway show, which was very exciting. We went to the Walter Kerr Theatre near Time Square to see Hadestown, which had great music and stagework, I very much enjoyed it, but a couple of months have passed now and I could not tell you a thing about it. I can’t remember any of the songs, but the costumes were amazing. So I liked it a lot, and I think you’d like it if you’re into that sort of thing, just don’t ask me what sort of thing that is because I’ve forgotten. Because I can’t sit still while waiting for anything, naturally I sketched some of the people waiting in their seats, and also did a quick sketch of the stage and the heads of some of the audience. I didn’t sketch during the show, because that would be a bit pointless.

Next day after some time wandering Greenwich Village with my teenager, I went off by myself to look for the much-vaunted High Line that everyone goes on about. It’s a long pathway, like a narrow park, built onto some old elevated railway tracks going from Hudson Yards through Chelsea down to the Meatpacking District. All the sketchers are like, you have to go there, so I did. I mean, it was alright, but I was not as whelmed as I thought I’d be. It was like, there are the streets, I’m a little bit higher than them, and here are some plants, oh look at painting or a sculpture. Hudson Yards was very very modern, and one of the buildings looked like Avengers Tower, but I wasn’t very interested, it’s not like the Quinjet was going to swoop by. I don’t know, perhaps I had just been spoilt by the incredible views from our hotel.

I walked down the High Line with the many other slow-walking folk, passing close by one set of luxury flats after another, while people in trendy jackets took selfies and looked at boring modern sculptures. I decided not to walk all the way down to Chelsea Market, which did actually sound quite good, having gone quite a long way already. It was starting to feel like one of those TV series that everyone says you have to watch, and if you complain it’s a bit boring they say well it only starts getting good by about season three. I wasn’t getting to season three, so I took the stairs down and got back onto the streets, where things are real. I’m a street-level sketcher, like Daredevil, except when I’m looking down from the top of a building, like Daredevil. I never made it up to Hell’s Kitchen either.

metal pipes of manhattan

June 3, 2025June 3, 20252 Comments

I can’t go to a new city and not record some of the hydrants and other metal pipes sticking out of the ground, can I. I have sketched a New York hydrant before (on a well-below-freezing day) but there is quite a diverse selection. However I am at the stage now where I see a movie or TV show set in ‘New York’ and I see the hydrants and I just know it’s filmed in like Cleveland or Toronto, because the hydrants are all wrong. I don’t care that much, but it’s like when an American Hallmark movie is set in Scotland and everyone has a fake Irish accent. Anyway, here are some of the ones I drew in New York. I liked the pipe above spouting out of the ground like a metal worm down on 23rd. The New Yorkers like to put stickers on their hydrants and pipes, it makes them look a bit more personalized, like your water bottle. The hydrant below was also on 23rd, sketched on a Chelsea morning. Nice to see the hearts around it, scrawled into the concrete. I saw that yellow ‘SK’ sticker on a lot of pipes around Chelsea.

This one covered in stickers and rust was on 6th Avenue, one of those hydrants you see with the two little poles next to it like bouncers, protecting it from errant cars banging into it. “Geddouddahere!” There was a pizza place near here where we ordered a massive New York pizza on our first night and ate it in the room, bloody delicious. New Yorkers know how to do pizza. Sorry Chicago those big deep dish pies were a bit much for me, tasty though they were.

This one above was on West 28th, sketched as I was walking out toward the High Line one afternoon. I like exploring the city, seeing what I come across along the way. This hydrant had those bouncers as well, but it also had a little metal X on its head that reminded me of a hot cross bun. Now the thing below, on the corner of 23rd and 7th, I drew on the way back, it’s obviously not a hydrant but is some sort of telecommunications post. I saw some others dotted around. Do they still work? Probably, but I just liked the look of them so I had to sketch one. “We are the Future” says the graffiti”. There’s that SK sticker again. It was busy here at this intersection, a lot of interesting characters about, I could have sat and people sketched for ages, but hydrant sketching is easier, and hydrants don’t complain if you get the size of their nose wrong. I didn’t see anyone famous, but I never do. My family did spot Michael Emerson – Ben out of Lost – on this very street while I was still sketching Brooklyn Bridge, out walking his dog with his distinctive little glasses on (on him, not on the dog). As big Lost fans this was a big deal. But that is just New York for you, and to paraphrase another former New York resident, not seeing famous people is what happens when you are busy sketching fire hydrants.

Way Up Above New York City

June 2, 2025June 2, 20254 Comments

My dream as a sketcher is always to go high above a city and sketch everything below – not too high above, I still want to see things. (Click on the sketches and you will see it all in bigger detail). New York City is easily the most exciting place for this. Our hotel was located on 6th and 28th in Chelsea, in sight of the One World Trade Center, the Chrysler, and the Empire State Building which loomed outside our bedroom window. It was too big to include in the view above but would be just to the left of that view. The above panorama was drawn while sitting on my bed. The light and colour of this view changed enormously throughout the day, and I did this in a couple of sittings, about a couple of hours total at most, but I drew much of it in the late afternoon/early evening while the sky was all purples, pinks and blues. Below, cars moving slowly in lines, the famous yellow cabs weaving in and out, and people the size of ants, all looking for the jam. What excited me most is not all the windows or the depth or the movement, or the feeling that I am in the Spider-Man video game, but the water-towers.

The distinctive New York water-towers really are everywhere you look., especially in the view above which was drawn from the roof of our hotel, just a few floors above our room, about 30 stories or more above the street. I was looking south towards the One World Trade Center on the left, and across Chelsea on the right. I was a little overwhelmed by how many water-towers there were, and on another day I might look at the pictures I took and draw a big detailed one, all coloured in. On this day I stood up on the roof of the hotel, which was open to the elements with just an elbow-high glass fence keeping me safe. It was thankfully not too windy. It was late afternoon/early evening, the sky was an interesting collage of shades, and the tall towers in the distance were just blue-grey silhouettes. I drew fast (this took less than an hour and a half) but could not quite finish it, and left a gap which I never had time to fill, and felt that my mind’s eye would fill in the gaps. My eyesight is not that great anyway, and while I sketched one of my lenses actually fell out of my glasses, thankfully falling on my side of the barrier and not hundreds of feet to the sidewalk of 28th Street. I popped it back in. There were taller buildings to my right, and my eyesight was not so bad that I could miss the sight that greeted me there, a man at the window completely, well, ‘stark bollock naked’ as we say and possibly oblivious to the fact anyone could see him at all. I tried not to stare, and thankfully he was not very long. By the window I mean. I think I understand that song about being ‘caught between the moon and New York City’ differently now. I kept drawing (not that obviously) until I could draw no more, and we went for dinner. I was so glad to have the opportunity though to draw New York from above, which is always a dream, and to stay in a hotel where I have the time to actually do it and not feel rushed to leave, even though I still drew faster than usual. New York, all those movies, all those photos, all those paintings and songs and stories, all that culture that has played with our imagination, all right there below me. I want to draw more of it!

The Bridges to Brooklyn

May 30, 2025May 29, 20252 Comments

After a morning spent around Washington Square, the West Village, the World Trade Center monuments (the first time my wife had been there since 9/11 happened) and Wall Street, we decided to take the long walk across the very famous (and rightly so) Brooklyn Bridge. Pedestrians walk above the cars, but it was still very busy with people. The sky was busy too, clouds and sunlight intermingling. We took a lot of photos. Once we reached the end it was a bit of a walk around to DUMBO, the area named after the elephant (not after a political leader, as you might think). Actually it stands for ‘Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass’ which is a pretty brilliant acronym if you ask me. Literally anything else, they could have called it. It’s like renaming the South Bank in London, what shall we call it? How about ‘Thames Waterside Area Trail’, or ‘Along the River’s South Embankment’. Still DUMBO it is now, until a better name comes along. It started raining when we got there, and the view became a bit foggier, so we went inside the Time Out Market Food Court, which had a lot of choices. I had this very spicy fried chicken for some reason. Our legs were feeling distressed and ready for a sleep, so after a little look along the waterfront and a few photos, we decided to get the Subway back to Chelsea. Then I looked back as the rain was stopping and decided, wait I’m probably not going to be back here for ages. How about I skip the late afternoon nap and sketch this? So I did, while the family went back to rest at the hotel. I mean, what a view. This is one of the world’s best views. The last time I was here it was like being in the Arctic, and the time before it was so foggy I couldn’t even see across the river, so I took advantage of the momentary good weather. I sketched the view above, looking out to the new World Trade Center building. You can’t get this far in the Spider-Man game, it blocks you off halfway across the bridge. Brooklyn Bridge is older than Tower Bridge, and those iconic cathedralesque arches give you a chill as you walk beneath them. I also stood down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass to draw the iconic view of that bridge (which I have sketched before on a trip 17 years ago). This time I caught it with the outline of the Empire State Building in the distance. I had to get back over there to rest before going out to see a show on Broadway, so once I was done I looked for the Subway, and left Brooklyn behind. It would be nice to explore Brooklyn a bit more some day, it’s so big.

Sketching the Stonewall Inn

May 29, 20252 Comments

As Pride Month starts, here’s another place I sketched New York that is so important to LGBTQ+ history, and present, the Stonewall Inn National Monument. I remember hearing about Stonewall from my old professor at university but never really knew much about it, other than it was in New York, and central to the civil rights struggle for the Queer community. The Stonewall Riots began here in June 1969, kicking off a fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights and a larger gay rights movement in America and around the world. That fight goes on, and it’s not a fight that is going away. The current lot in charge have removed the ‘TQ+’ from LGBTQ+ and expunged any references to trans, non-binary, intersex etc individuals on the official government run Stonewall National Monument website, in an erasure of the monument’s actual history. they even took down the recommended reading list. I won’t link to that site now. I’ll link instead to the Stonewall Visitor Center, that was very interesting. I came down here twice, once to sketch it in pen and some paint (finished off the paint at the hotel), stood in the little triangle across the street which is part of the Monument, which has some very moving memorials and a lot of flags showing support for our trans friends, and then back again to get my sketch stamped at the Visitor Center, and look around some more. I got some nice metal pins. I didn’t go into the Inn itself, but I was glad to finally visit this important place, and walk some more around the Village. This area is cool. More New York sketches to come…

Washington Square people

May 28, 20251 Comment

Big fan of Washington Square Park. Always enjoy coming here when I’m in New York. If there’s anywhere to just sit and chill, with New York all around you, this is it. On my trip here in 2016 we stayed nearby here on Bleecker, right in the heart of Greenwich Village. On the first morning in New York City this time, I headed out a little early, planning to meet the family downtown later, and headed to Washington Square. I noticed my Pigma Graphic pen was running low on ink, which would usually mean that oh well, nothing I can do about that. But I’m in a big city, of course I can find a replacement pen in one of the first shops I come across. This is New York, you don’t have to look too hard. New pen in hand I went to the park with the big arch to sit and draw the people. Well I drew the Washington Square Arch first, above, looking up towards the start of Fifth Avenue. It’s not Marble Arch, but what a world-beating location. Greenwich Village is where NYU (New York University) is located so there are a lot of students around. I would have liked to have gone here. I remember looking around here on our trip in 2002 when I was thinking about doing a Masters degree, but I saw how much it would cost, and ended up staying in London to do a Masters at King’s, and then moving to California in 2005. All worked out. It was funny listening to people talk, I wrote some of it into the sketch, some students who I think were visiting NYU or maybe just new here, talking about their experiences. “I don’t want to sound dramatic,” one young woman said dramatically, “but the three hour time difference has literally ruined my life.” Most overheard conversations are generally boring as hell but this one made me laugh. In fact I overheard a lot of amusing conversations in New York, it’s almost as if being in a big city is more interesting in general than, you know, Davis. I overheard two guys while walking around in Chelsea who spoke in the most thick and colourful New York accent, completely opposite to the regular vanilla-flavoured California voice (which I like, don’t get me wrong, but we are kings and queens of the generic). These guys would have needed subtitles on American TV. One had a scratchy throaty voice and the other was pure cartoon Noo-Yoik, discussing some TV show or movie they had seen, it was the highlight of my year.

What is it about New York that makes me want to draw more people than in other cities? Big city people are different, they dress different, they move and stop different, they talk about different things, and they sound different. I don’t know, I like the diversity. I notice it in London, and in a place like New York my urban sketcher radar is on overdrive. I drew people in Washington Square with the thicker black pen that allows me to just go quickly. Here are a bunch.

I liked the guy sitting with a tall wizard hat, I think he was reading tarot cards or telling fortunes or something.

I was walking this area with my teenager after a morning at the Guitar Center (a morning well spent) when we sat in Washington Square for a bit and I drew this group of young women sat near to us, chatting animatedly. The big bushy jacket of the one on the left was interesting.

Return to Pete’s Tavern

May 16, 2025Leave a comment

A little place of mine in New York is Pete’s Tavern, down in Gramercy Park. For really obvious reasons. It is one of the oldest bars in the city and still a very popular pub, in a well-to-do neighbourhood, on the corner of Irving and E 18th. On the first day while the family rested at the hotel I walked down as far as Pete’s, and stood across the street to start the sketch above. I didn’t get that far, because I was eager to go inside and have a beer after the walk through the city, so I drew the outlines and did the rest later on. I came in and ordered a Pete’s Ale, and spoke to a guy at the bar who was waiting for his friend to arrive (when they did he said “this is Pete” and I said “welcome to my Tavern!” because I am cheesy). Pete’s has been going since 1864, same as my jokes, and is a great place to sketch. I remember first finding it on our trip to New York in 2008, but I spent a fun day here celebrating my 40th birthday with two of my best friends from London back in 2016. Here’s my post from 2016. On that day I sketched a similar view to the one below, but in the afternoon, and on the way through several more beers than I could have now.

On the last evening in New York, after dinner and a walk in the rain, I decided to get on the Subway and go down to Pete’s for a last time to sketch the inside. It was a busy evening, but I found that same spot at the bar, got a Pete’s 1864 Ale and sketched fast before jumping on the Subway back. I enjoyed this one, plus I got a couple of beermats that say ‘Pete’s Tavern’. Until next time, Pete’s!

new york evening, chelsea mornings

May 13, 2025May 12, 20251 Comment

New York is not my favourite city. My favourite city is London, but New York is a very close second. Sometimes when London isn’t listening I tell New York that it’s my favourite, but when London walks back into the room I grin suspiciously and go on about how the Underground is better than the Subway and curving streets are so much nicer than straight ones, but it’s hard for a proper city person like me to hide it, New York is just great. It literally does feel like you’ve stepped onto all those TV shows, those movies, those great records, and certainly all those Spider-Man video games I like so much. It’s an urban sketchers paradise. Arriving by train through New Jersey I was filled with excitement at a glimpse of the skyscrapers. There seem to be more of them than last time; my most recent visit was in early 2016, which in historical terms was a long long time ago now, a special birthday trip with two of my oldest friends. Obama was still president. Leicester were going for the league, with Spurs and Arsenal chasing. My visit before that was in late 2008, with my wife and baby son, just before Obama won his first election, just before Lewis Hamilton won his first championship, and Spurs had just recently won the league cup, which would surely be the first of many trophies to come. And my visit before that was in another age still, at the end of 2002, the middle of the first George W. Bush term, still in the recent post-9/11 world, my first trip to New York, a city I’d wanted to visit my whole life. It was exactly as I imagined and it remains so, but my gaps between visits keep getting inexplicably longer. We got to our hotel on the corner of 6th and 28th, in the Chelsea neighbourhood, staying on the 28th floor with an incredible view down towards the World Trade Center, looking up at the Empire State Building and over to the Chrysler. Not gonna lie, that view was pretty world-beating. I could not wait to get back down to ground level though, and explore the streets, so I went for a walk towards Madison Square Park. The traffic, the people, the sounds and the smells, I love being back in an urban environment. The Flatiron Building was all covered over, but I sat in the park with a milkshake and sketched up towards Midtown, as that Empire State dominated proceedings. I walked about the neighbourhoods a bit before heading back up to the hotel, where we got a massive proper New York pizza and watched The Avengers.

I have a lot of New York sketches and will try to present them thematically or geographically, but for this post here are some sketches from the area of our hotel. There were lots of florists everywhere, this may well be called the Florist District. It isn’t though. I looked up the Manhattan neighborhoods on Wikipedia, and while this is very much within Chelsea, it was historically called the Tenderloin, the area between 5th and 7th, 24th and 42nd. I don’t know if people still call it that. There were a lot of flower shops though, and hotels. I drew the one above while on my morning sortie.

I always like a morning stroll when I visit a new place, before the family get up. Chelsea is a good area to explore. One morning I was walking down 23rd Street, the sun was casting Spring light down the long streets making everything look like an album cover, when I spotted a place so steeped in musical history it knocked me off my feet to see it. The Hotel Chelsea on 23rd Street has so many pop-culture names associated with it that it could be a six season Netflix series all of its own and still have secrets to share. Writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers. Maybe urban sketchers, though I have never stayed there. Bob Dylan stayed there, and Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, Madonna, Edith Piaf, Alice Cooper, Bob Marley, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen, Jim Morisson, you name it. This is where Sid Vicious stayed with Nancy and where she died, allegedly killed by Sid. Rod, Jane and Freddy probably lived there for a bit, for all I know. Writers like Kerouac, Burroughs, Miller, Twain, Ginsberg, Quentin Crisp. Dylan Thomas lived and died here in 1953, so did Brendan Behan a decade later. Sarah Bernhardt slept in a coffin while she lived here. Stanley Kubrick, Al Pacino, Eddie Izzard, Bette Midler, they all stayed here and I’d like to have been in the hotel bar that night. Ironically I don’t think Jose Mourinho or John Terry have ever stayed here. I stood across the street with that Joni Mitchell song in my head, while the traffic wrote the words. I had to check on my phone this was definitely the right place, it would have been embarrassing to have sketched it with all this cultural history going through my head only for it to be the wrong place. I bought some cannoli from a place down the street and went back to the hotel. Check back for more New York explorations…

habemus papam

May 12, 20251 Comment

And so, we have a new Pope. I happened to be working from home last Thursday when I saw the news headline pop up that there was white smoke seen from the chimney at the Vatican, indicating as you all know that the Conclave had reached a Conclusion. I switched on the live footage (actually turned on Sky News for some reason) and watched as the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, as all the speculation mounted and people tried to predict who the next pope might be. It’s not like predicting the next Dr. Who or James Bond, because these days you have a fair idea about that, but with the Conclave they say you enter as a Pope and leave as a Cardinal, meaning the list of favourites never win election. Nobody was predicting Robert Prevost from Chicago, so when the cardinal came out and said “Habemus Papam!” (not “abemus”, as I wrote, my Latin is bad) and announced who it would be, it was for sure a surprise. He took the name Leo XIV, and is the first American* Pope. (*from the US; the first American Pope was the last one, Pope Francis, who was from Argentina, but this is a question for trivia bores next century). Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, I liked him a lot. I’ve not seen many Popes in my lifetime, John-Paul II came in when I was a baby and was Pope until just before I moved to America* (*the US), and I remember that Papal Conclave back in 2005 when they got Ratzinger. I’m not a Catholic myself but many of my family are, and a lot of my neighbours growing up in Burnt Oak so the Pope was a big deal for a lot of them. I thought there might be an Italian Pope again for the first time in my life, or maybe even an African Pope, but I was very surprised to see an American* (*US) Pope emerge. He’s spent a lot of time in Peru and is strongly connected there, and even spoke in Spanish for a bit while addressing the crowd at the Vatican. I sketched the TV and wrote down some of what people were saying on the news. He’s young at only 69 (so people kept saying) so might be the Pope for a good while yet. So there we have it, a new Pope, and he’s from Chicago. That’s pretty cool.

DC Part 5 – Ben’s Chili Bowl

May 8, 2025May 8, 2025Leave a comment

The final sketches from our recent trip to Washington DC were very different from the other places, as this is not a museum or a marble monument, but a humble diner up on U Street, a few stops up from downtown on the Metro. This is Ben’s Chili Bowl. I’d seen it in an Anthony Bourdain episode on TV and even the thought of it made me feel hungry, indeed I’m feeling peckish right now thinking about those cheesy fries. Ben’s Chili Bowl is, as the sign says, a proper historic Washington landmark, having been an important local staple during DC’s era of the fight for civil rights. This area around U Street is historically known as the ‘Black Broadway‘, with the large Lincoln Theatre next door to Ben’s being one of the most iconic venues of a cultural and musical renaissance showing acts like Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. A couple of blocks down, the Bohemian Caverns (formerly Crystal Caverns and originally Club Caverns when it opened in 1926) was the preeminent jazz club of the city. While Ben’s wasn’t here during the golden age of jazz, it opened in 1958 by Ben and Virginia Ali in a period of great cultural change in DC, a time when segregation was only just starting to end. Martin Luther King Jr regularly ate here, and the March on Washington in 1963 led to the Civil Rights Bill; Ben and Virginia were there and donated food to the marchers. During and after the DC Riots of 1968 Ben’s kept its doors open to provide food and shelter. Check out this fascinating interview with Mrs. Virginia Ali, widow of Ben and co-founder of the diner, who tells some amazing stories. You can learn more about Ben’s Chili Bowl on their website (but it will make you hungry).

I had the cheesy fries (not being a meaty chili eater myself) and sat inside to sketch quickly; I only did outlines and the people because I wanted to eat my cheesy fries, and go outside the draw the outside. Next door to Ben’s is a bar called ‘Ben’s Next Door’ which was quite popular, but I didn’t go inside. A massive group of schoolkids arrived with their teacher on some sort of field trip, and they were all going into Ben’s for a milkshake after looking at the large murals in the alley between Ben’s and the Lincoln Theatre, ‘Ben Ali Way’. The murals were painted a few years ago and show a series of black leaders and heroes, with the faces of Barack and Michelle Obama prominent at the alley’s entrance. Obama came here in 2009, knowing what an important landmark this was during the civil rights era. I miss them.

And so that concludes our little trip to DC, it was an interesting place and I’m glad I finally went; if I ever come back, I would want to spend more time in the museums, appreciating them while we can, and then come back up to Ben’s for some more cheesy fries. Next up, sketches from our trip to New York City. There are a lot!