angels on silver strings hang from above

December 21, 2009Leave a comment

After spending some time among the wild stones of Highgate Cemetery, I strolled through the park and back up to the village and sat in the middle of a traffic island, sketching the Angel Inn. Yup, another pub drawn. It’s a nice, warm pub with a good atmosphere and nice beers. I didn’t have the time (or energy) to draw the inside – some other occasion maybe. I would sometimes pop in here when I lived on Hornsey Lane, just down the hill. When I came out of the Angel Inn, the Sun had long since flown and the pretty garlands were zigzagging down Highgate Hill.

I hear there is a lot of snow in London these days. Have they learned to grit the roads on time yet? I remember back in, ooh, ’04 I think it was, the second annual Arctic Blast that caught us all by surprise (by giving us three days’ notice), and how my boss gave me a lift back from Finchley to Crouch End, bypassing the strangled traffic on the main iced-up roads by cleverly taking the back streets, but then having to navigate through stranded cars and sliding buses down Highgate Hill. It was like something from the Winter Olympics, but in extreme slow motion. Pretty scary. Highgate is a very steep hill.

prince charming

December 20, 2009December 21, 20092 Comments

It wasn’t as grey as it looks. It was a bright cold morning (with a chance of scattered showers turning cloudy later in the day), and so after a morning spent christmas shopping in Edgware I popped back down to Burnt Oak Broadway to do a sketch of a building I’ve always quite liked, but a pub I’ve never actually entered: The Prince of Wales (just known locally as the Prince). I thought it would make a nice drawing, since I’m into drawing pubs these days. Naturally, standing on the open street like that I kept my eyes open; I grew up trying hard not to stand out too much around here (not easy for a gawky red-head kid who held his pen in a funny way). I didn’t have to worry, nobody cared, no hoodies shouting “oi!” I quite like drawing Burnt Oak, in fact. You grow up there thinking about how grim it feels but there really is a lot of interesting stuff to draw.

when i first saw your gallery

December 15, 2009December 15, 20096 Comments

The National Gallery, and the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. I ksetched there while there was still daylight to draw in – the Sun goes down so early in London, earlier than in California (by about eight hours or so). It was bitterly cold of course, but I braved it, and not only because I happened to see other sketchers out doing the same. One artist did stop and chat with me, asked if I was part of the group of people out sketching the square for some drawing day; I said no, but wish I’d known! Someone else asked if I was an architect.

I love that the north side of Trafalgar Square is pedestrianized, it will never cease to be a novelty to me. I remember when the very idea was deemed unthinkable, back when traffic ploughed endlessly through this very spot, but when they paved it over they turned it into an incredible open space, a public plaza that was actually worth visiting (cheers Ken!). I used to work on the open-top tour buses that would stop right outside the National Gallery – which by the way is one of the wonders of the art world, and like so many such places in London is completely free; I used to joke that my favourite room was the shop, because it had all the artwork in mini postcard form and took a fraction of the time to see them all. But for me, this spot will always be where I used to catch the Night Bus in the wee hours (that is quite literally the wee hours, with drunken people peeing all over the place). Along with the rest of London. I would stand here, sometimes for hours, waiting for my elusive N5 (they are far more frequent these days – cheers Ken!), to take my tired self home. You had to catch it from here to be sure of a seat in those days. Oh the memories. I’m glad they paved it over.

i lift my lamp beside the golden door!

December 12, 2009December 13, 20092 Comments

A second Soho sketching day was called for. One is never enough. This time I chose an even colder, wetter morning. The rain had stopped by the time I reached Oxford Circus station, but nonetheless I found a spot under some awnings and sketched the fabulous mock-tudor building of Liberty’s, the big old department store near Regent Street. I was looking through the archway into Kingly Street, where there are lots of cool bars and pubs. I actually used three pens for this drawing, because in the cold they kept failing me – I had to rotate them, using one for a while, putting in my inside pokcet to warm up, using another – I had quite the system going there. Makes me appreciate California’s warmer climes (though funny enough it was colder here in Davis when we got home).

The London sketchbook continues…

your golden section

December 11, 2009December 11, 20093 Comments

Another from the afternoon sketchathon in Soho. We made our way through art shops (I love Cass Arts on Berwick St, and Cowling & Wilcox on Broadwick St) and questionable alleys to the slightly more upscale edge of Soho at Golden Square. I had forgotten how early the Sun goes down in England in November – it was getting dark at half past three – and it was getting colder too, so we sat in the square and drew some architecture, while the Moon shone down upon us (that’s that little white circle up in the sky on that sketch there).

There I am, uni-pin fineliner in hand. After this, another old pub, The Old Coffee House on Beak St.

whenever i walk in a london street

December 9, 2009December 9, 20091 Comment

…I’m ever so careful to watch my feet. Sometimes though it is good to stop and look up. So this is Tottenham Court Road, by Goodge Street, looking out at BT Tower. I was meeting my friend Simon one chilly Friday for an afternoon of sketching in Soho. They don’t sell Micron Pigma pens in London (I asked), so before I depleted my supply I popped into Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road and picked up a Uni-Pin fineliner, which works very nicely. I did find, on my sketching outings, that I would often have to use several pens in each sketch – they don’t react too well to freezing temperatures and often give up the goat (or is it the ghost, I forget), so I would have to put one in my jacket pocket to warm up while a subsititute would come on for a little while. I tended to rotate three pens on an given sketch. It reminded me of playing football when I was a kid and they would take you off for a while to give another kid a go while you put your warm coat on. Anyway, it was with cold fingers that I drew this scene, thinking about when I used to catch the bus home up here, the 134 to Archway, several years ago.

Passsers-by were very friendly. Several people stopped and asked me about the buildings I was drawing. I told them, in this city so few people look up, just staring at shop level or avoiding the masses of bears who wait at the corners all ready to eat the sillies who tread on the lines in the street, and though those old facades are grimy and ridden with pigeons and pollution, the architecture hidden in plain sight is really very interesting.

also posted at urban sketchers

assumed by arts unknown

October 8, 2009Leave a comment

I’ve been having a little sketching break – I don’t know if I meant to or not, but my mind has been under important things – but managed to draw on tuesday lunchtime. It’s not a good drawing, and is just of the Silo once again, but even during these periods it is important to at least exercise the fingers (in fact I brought two end-of-life micron 01s to a shuddering end with this particular sketch). I feel as though this drawing is like a few words spoken in the middle of the night, before going back to sleep. I’ll be back drawing again, I know it.

I like October, the month of changes. I don’t know if I like this October in particular much, but at least the air is cooler, crisp and inviting.

a very mini sketchcrawl

September 20, 20094 Comments

Yesterday was the 24th worldwide sketchcrawl. I went to the zoo in the morning, so my son could see the monkeys and, er, tractors, and afterwards I popped into Sacramento to do some sketchcrawling. Against my better judgement; it was so hot, and I had such a headache, that I only managed the one before wandering about and calling it a day.

This old building is on the corner of L and 15th, Sacramento.

maffs

September 13, 2009September 13, 20094 Comments

Summer’s not finished with us yet, though the Fall presses its nose against the window and demands an earlier opening time. It was over a hundred degrees again on 9-11, and I took a lunchbreak from the busy-ness and drew the outside of work, and not for the first time. Purple Micron. The Math Science Building. I still, even after four years in America, feel funny calling it ‘Math’. To me, and other UKsiders, it’s ‘Maths’, or more properly ‘Maffs’.

A B C, easy as 1 2 3

September 12, 2009September 12, 20091 Comment

Drew this one a couple of weeks ago and forgot to post. This is a typical scene in Davis. Guilbert House on A Street. And that is ‘A’ Street, not ‘a street’. These imaginitively titled streets so many American towns have; seriously, all those A, B, C, D, etc, and 1st, 2nd, 3rd…come on, they could be anywhere, let’s have some soul, something with spirit of place. They are just points on a grid, and look bad on street signs. A, B, C, they feel like placeholders rather than names, as though the town planners when dreaming up their grids thought, we’ll come back to those. Well, A follows B, etc so surely that makes it easier to find yourself if lost? Except in Davis, between A and B is ‘University St’, so that doesn’t work. Ok, so keep the alphabet, well how about we rename (as some cities do, such as San Francisco) those streets so they run alphabetically? And we could have them themed with things relevant to Davis, a college town, they could be named after subjects taught there, so we’d have Applied Math St, Biophysics St, Chemistry St, Drama St, Electrical Engineering St… If you’d rather see the letters remain, and I don’t doubt people are very attached to their lettered streets, then we could make it more academic, so you’d have A+ St, A St, A- St, B+ St, until you get F St, which is just before U St. You don’t want to live on U St.

Then we have the First, Second, Third Streets, well they sound remarkably like grades you get at British universities, so we could Americanize them a little and have them on a US scale of four, so First St would be 4.0 St, then 3.9 St, etc etc. Alternatively, name them after Amendments to the US Constitiution, so First St becomes ‘Free Speech St’, then ‘Bear Arms St’, then ‘Don’t Quarter Soldiers in Peacetime St’, and so on. Let’s face it, a lot of people would be lost after streets one and two. Imagine telling someone you live on the corner of Film Studies and Revision of Presidential Election Procedures. They’d never come visit.