Some Time in Soho

March 27, 2026March 27, 2026Leave a comment

Back in London from Berlin, I rested for a day before heading down into central London on Friday for some more sketching before heading back to California. I had a standing ‘groundling’ ticket to see Twelfth Night at the Globe Theatre, but since it looked like rain and I was not up for a trek to the South Bank, I decided to go down to Soho and sketch around there before meeting up with my friend Roshan. If I’m going to stand for a few hours I may as well be sketching. I like exploring Soho. I made my way to St.Anne’s Churchyard on Wardour Street. I always liked the steeple of St. Anne’s. Many years ago when my mate Rob lived in Soho at the end of the 90s we could see the steeple from his living room window. It reminded me of a Teletubby. They have those big round ear things, if you remember, I didn’t really watch Teletubbies. I stood in the Churchyard and sketched the colourful bunting, love a bit of bunting, especially love the word ‘bunting’, it’s so ‘England’. Takes time to draw though. While sketching, two women (Romanian I think, I recognized some words) came in and sat in the churchyard dragging oversized suitcases with them. One of them was very noisy, yelling at the other in a loud raspy voice. It was a bit distracting, but you don’t really expect silence in Soho. I stood next to a tree, and soon an old man came up and started throwing bird seed on the ground, right in front of me. I didn’t think I thought I was a bird, but right away several dozen pigeons came out of the trees and surrounded me. This would make a good magic trick in a story, I thought, the old man throws birdseed, you are surrounded by pigeons and then VOOM you are gone, transported to a pigeon dimension. Actually that would be quite a bad story, the sort of one that would have been made in the 1970s and replayed right up to the 90s in the 5:10pm slot on BBC1 kids TV. I’d still watch it. At least no pigeons pooed on me. I was going to say ‘SHOO’ but remembered that this is an anagram of ‘SOHO’ and I thought, better not, magical anagrams and all that. It didn’t rain, a few droplets, so I drew the steeple as well. It doesn’t really look like a Teletubby, now I think about it. I looked up their website; St. Anne’s was built by William Talman, who was ‘clerk or works’ to Sir Christopher Wren, and consecrated in 1686. Then the Blitz came and destroyed it in 1940. It was rebuilt in 1990. I didn’t go inside, but being outside under the bunting was enough, like being in a village churchyard.

I remember coming down there as a teenager in the early 90s wandering about exploring London, when I would occasionally sketch but mostly just explore the city, make a map of it all in my head. This corner of Soho was a bit like stepping into a different, dangerous world, a Dickensian London but set in the 70s, all sex shops and seedy cinemas and prostitutes openly hanging about on a Saturday lunchtime. The corner below, leading into that little alley of Walkers Court just off Brewer Street, was one of the seediest spots, I remember being shocked at all the neon lights and dark doorways leading to god-knows-what, it was a world that I wasn’t part of and definitely didn’t want to be. Rupert Street facing it had market stalls and newsagents alongside shops selling bondage gear and ladies of negotiable affection calling out to passers-by, and passing down the narrow Tisbury Court back up to the relative normality of Old Compton felt like a brief passage through a frightening dimension. I found it fascinating that this was a real place in the middle of the city, and yet also just another neighbourhood where people lived their normal lives. I remember at school, we were tasked with doing a project about ‘community’, and I struggled for ideas, but I remember walking through this area (I think it was with my uncle who was going to a cool movie poster store down the street) and realizing there was a community living in Soho, even here in this bizarre world of neon lights flashing ‘girls! girls! girls!’ and shifty men in doorways. Soho is a blend of communities but it is and always has been a residential area, a village in the middle of the city. London has a lot of those. A few years later when I was at university and my mate Rob lived on the corner of Rupert Street and Winnett Street with his girlfriend, it was still an area of sex shops but already seemed less scary, and we would pass through Walkers Court on the way to the supermarket to buy milk and tea, not paying any mind to the red light district we were passing by. I remember that we stayed up and watched the whole Star Wars trilogy (back when there was only one trilogy), while from his kitchen window you could catch a glimpse into other windows, where there were other fantasies going on, some in full view (did these windows not have curtains?). These days, this part of Soho feels quite different. There are a few sex shops and the big green Soho’s Book Store on the corner of Walkers Court feels less like a seedy emporium and more like a cheeky part of Soho’s adult-themed heritage, but this mostly this area feels like it has gone upmarket now with fashion stores and such. Raymond Revuebar, the big theatre and strip club that I felt was the centre point of Soho, opened by Paul Raymond in 1958 but finally closed in 2004, having stood lighting up this corner for decades. I vaguely recall going to a gig there in about 99 or 2000, or maybe that was at Madame JoJo’s next door. When my friend lived around there he actually met Paul Raymond, and said he really was the King of Soho. There’s a fashionable clothes shop there now. I stood on the corner of Rupert Street to sketch this, thinking about all of this past, and how everything moves on.

Below, the spread of Wardour Street, just a few steps away from the last sketch. I feel like I spent a lot of the 90s down this street too, a busy but relatively narrow thoroughfare splitting Soho in two. I stood in a precarious location to draw this, a traffic island that has been converted as a parking spot for those electric bikes you see all over the place, with a narrow bike lane to my right. As I took a quick picture of the scene before starting to sketch, a policeman came up and said, “ello ello ello, what’s going on ‘ere then, you gotta be careful sah, there is ‘orrible tea-leaves on bikes who will nick your dog-and-bone, sunshine”. Actually he didn’t say it like that, my head was still in old 1970s films. He just said to eb careful taking pictures with my phone as there are people on bikes who will snatch it from my hands very quickly. I knew this is a particular plague of London these days and have been quite careful with this, though especially here you can’t be too careful, and I actually smiled and felt genuinely grateful that there are police out there watching for this and warning people. Though what I said was, “oh it’s ok, this is my old phone”. which it was – I used my old phone when out and about in London, just in case – but I was grateful and thanked him. Still, I held tight onto my sketchbook as I drew the scene, out of the way of the e-bike bandits. Wardour Street was always one of my favourite streets, and it contains The Ship, one of my favourite pubs in London. It used to contain The Intrepid Fox as well, the best rock pub in the city, where I sometimes would meet up with my friends from the Hellfire Club (on Oxford Street) and attempt to listen to figure out what each other was saying over the loud heavy metal music. It was sad when that place closed (it actually moved to New Oxford Street before closing for good). For a little while in ’96 I went out with someone from Italy, and she used to work in an arcade further down Wardour Street near Leicester Square, before she switched jobs to work in Las Vegas, not the city but the arcade on the left of this sketch, which still has the same sign as it had 30 years ago, a Soho relic. Cinema House is next door; this area is at the heart of the British film industry too, or at least it was (Cinema House has a fashionable clothes store now, because there aren’t too many of those). What was the Intrepid Fox next door is now a steak house, but you can still see the old stone sign of The Intrepid Fox on the outside corner. The sky was looking nice, above Oxford Street in the far distance. You can just about make out the Telecom Tower poking through on the right (follow the arrow). For some reason I remember being about 19 or 20, walking down here on a late afternoon having been to the Virgin Megastore, where I’d bought myself the Beatles Complete (Guitar/Vocal Edition), a massive book with all the Beatles songs in it (which I still have), and treating myself to a pastry and some tea at a nice cafe as a self-reward for finishing up all of my college projects and homework, and that being quite a nice moment down here. It often feels a little too busy or a little too cramped to stop and sketch on the corners around here, but I’m glad I spent the time looking at it again. Soho is always worth sketching. I’ve been back to London since this trip last summer, and I was in Soho sketching again just last month. By this rate I post my sketches on this blog, those will probably be up by about 2028. Click on the image to see it bigger.

west side

March 24, 2026March 22, 2026Leave a comment

For my second full day in Berlin, I had a few things I wanted to do. You can’t do it all; I couldn’t for example go out to Charlottenburg, where I had never been; nor to Neukölln and Tempelhof, which had been recommended to me; nor out to Potsdam, which I had explored in ’98 anyway. Things always take longer when I have my sketchbook anyway, but I spent a bit of time going about on the U-Bahn and S-Bahn. I had a leisurely breakfast in my hotel room, sat looking out of the window and strumming on the uke, then headed out to West Berlin, to the Zoobahnhof, the busy shopping street of Kurfürstendamm, and to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) at Breitscheidplatz. I was covering old ground; this is one of the first places I visited in 1998 on the day I explored the city on my own. It is the shell of a large bombed out church, with the more modern church structure next to it, a large concrete edifice made up of small windows of stained glass. The older building stands as a monument to the destruction of war, and there is an exhibit of its history inside, along with an iron nail cross from Coventry Cathedral, also destroyed by aerial bombing in the war. The two cathedrals have held a long friendship together. The original church was not that old, having been built by Kaiser Wilhelm II in the last years of the 19th century, opening in 1906. The new church doesn’t look much from the outside, but inside the largely blue windows create a thrilling effect as they surround the space, it reminded me of Liverpool Catholic Cathedral, though this is a Protestant church. I had always thought (probably someone told me when I went there years ago) that the glass was recovered from the original building, but that is not the case, the glass in fact being designed by Gabriel Loire. That makes more sense, I think that when clearing up they probably weren’t saying “collect all those little bits of glass, ja, that might come in handy”. I really enjoyed sitting in the new church and sketching, something about all that blue really calms you down. I also liked the design of the floor, all colourful circles. There is a big golden Christ with a long face flying above the altar; it’s actually made from a bronze alloy metal called tombac and designed by Karl Hemmeter. I sketched in there (below) before sitting outside and sketching the old and new, above.

This is the commercial hub of the city and it feels like it, the Capitalist island in the old Communist sea; I remember that road map of Europe I had when I was a kid, West Germany was fully detailed, but only major cities were shown in the otherwise blank East Germany, except for those three autobahns that went from the West directly into the isolated West Berlin, with little warnings telling motorists they were not allowed to leave the road. According to that old road map, East Germany was a place that geographically didn’t exist. In his talk at the symposium, Detlef Surrey said that you got used to living with the Wall and the fact that there was this other place just over there, but that you mostly didn’t think about them, or maybe were encouraged not to. It was a different time, but I wonder about modern Korea, where you can say the Berlin Wall still exists, how do the people in the South think about those in the North. Germany is all one now, ever since 1990, but I hear many Germans say that it still feels like two, those divisions from decades ago and the years of change afterwards were a lot to expect to just heal. Was Germany ever really one? I always think about the north-south divide (sometimes called the Weißwurstäquator, depending on the type of sausage you might eat in different parts of the country), and the division between mostly Protestant and mostly Catholic regions, but in truth Germany as a federal nation has always been made up of very diverse places with differing histories. It’s a country and a language (all the different varieties) that has intrigued me since I was a kid, it is not a monolithic block. I would like to really explore it in more detail, but as I said, I don’t have time to go everywhere, mostly I’ll just draw the old buildings, and I don’t even eat sausages, well not pork ones. I was thinking of the old East-West as I walked around here though, since it had not changed as much as the other side had since my last visit in the 90s. I walked through the mall to find the toilet, and half expected to see posters of Hasselhoff in record shop windows. While we are talking retro, below is another photo of me in the 90s, posing like Bono with someone else’s sunglasses down in the Zoo station. Check out the little beard thing I had then, that is how you can tell it was the 90s. I took a photo of that sign as I pass through, it hadn’t changed much.

I had planned to take a wander through the Tiergarten. I wasn’t planning to go to the Zoo itself, who has time for that, but I love a massive park. This one is pretty big, and I only covered a small part of it. I started drawings some old lamp-posts, which were from all over the German-speaking world, plus some from other countries, a really interesting display of civic artistry all hidden together in this corner of Berlin. It was well past lunchtime now, and I was feeling hungry so decided to find the S-Bahn station and go back to the hotel for a rest before exploring the East Side. I wish I had been reading a novel set in Berlin, and that time passed a lot more slowly, to sit in the park or on the S-Bahn reading would have been perfect. As it was, I was still reading Agatha Christie’s Lord Edgware Dies (spoiler alert by the way) and it was taking me forever, because I’m a painfully slow reader.

Back To Berlin

March 16, 20262 Comments

Ok, a month of not posting (I went to England) but let’s get back to last summer before this summer comes around. After Poland, I spent a few days in Berlin, a city long on my go-to-and-sketch list (a list that includes all of the cities, but some are nearer the top than others, like Berlin). I was last there in 1998, which may as well have been in a different century. Which it turns out it was. I was staying in Mitte, in a hotel not far from Alexanderplatz, a good central location to explore from, but in the heart of the old East Berlin. This was a changed city from the last time I was there, but so am I. I arrived by crowded train from Poznan, which was headed for the Hauptbahnhof (a station that wasn’t even there in 1998) but ended up diverting to a different station at the last minute, confusingly. It was all good in the end. I got to my hotel, and then met up with fellow Urban Sketcher Omar Jaramillo, who has lived in Berlin for many years now. He showed me around on an extensive walking tour of the city centre, giving me all the histories and showing me all the details that I might have missed on my own. That was really great, and a nice introduction to the city before my sketching adventure (plus Omar’s awesome and I’ve been a big fan of his art since the first days of USk). I didn’t sketch him though! The first sketch I did of Berlin was the one above, of the massive Fernsehturm. The iconic TV Tower which can be seen from all over Berlin, a real Ost-Berlin landmark. I didn’t go up this time. I thought about it. I did go up in 1998, and there was a revolving restaurant up there. I love big telecommunications towers. I drew the BT Tower while I was in London as well. In the foreground there is St.Marienkirche. I stood out on Karl-Liebknechtstrasse as it was getting dark and looked up. Birds were circling the steeple. I had to remind them this was not a 1970s art film. When I was done I went to a small restaurant near the hotel and ate some spaetzle (which was not very good) and had a beer (which was also not good). Ah well, can’t win them all.

I got up and it was Monday. I had two entire full days on my own just to wander the whole of Berlin sketching what I can. I had a rough idea of where I wanted to go, but all the best Berlin stories start with a meeting under the big World Time Clock, Die Weltzeituhr, at Alexanderplatz. I wasn’t meeting anyone but myself on this day, and I was late, so while I waited I sketched. Those yellow streetcars hummed along dodging stray pedestrians, and the base of the Fernsehturm can be seen behind the big arch of Alexanderplatz station. I love this sketch. It was not that early in the morning, and the sky was threatening some light rain, but people were out and about and the city moved around me. I didn’t see any people meeting underneath the clock, unless they were spies, in which case good job lads, I never noticed you. I probably wouldn’t have been a good Cold War spy, I’m too obvious standing there with my sketchbook, or maybe that’s the most genius spy design. Anyway before we start my journey through Berlin, here are some other Berlin things I drew that I though I should share here.

If you have been to Berlin you will recognize these, the Ampelmännchen, which were the old East German street crossing lights that have become a big symbol of Berlin. You can’t move for tourist tack featuring the green Ampelmann in his hat and the red Ampelmann with his arms outstretched. And I couldn’t get enough of it, I bought the lot, even got Ampelmann socks, candies, stickers, one of those plastic reflective things you put on your bike, I loved them. When I did that 1998 trip I took notice of these, and the street-crossing signs, in many of the countries I visited, and drew them in my journal. Seeing these everywhere reminded me of that obsession. I don’t care, I love street furniture. Speaking of which, below is a fire hydrant from Alexanderplatz. Like London these are mostly underground and have to be brought up.

And finally, a sketch of the Fernsehturm that I did the next morning while looking out of my hotel bedroom. I stayed at the Lux on Rosa-Luxemburgstrasse, nice hotel but very slow elevators, especially when I need the loo. It was a lot sunnier that day and I ate breakfast in my room and played my blue ukulele a bit while watching the city. I sketched, and made the decision to add a little paint, golden yellow and turquoise blue, but unfortunately it was on that horrible new Moleskine paper and didn’t have the effect I was after. Still, I had a nice time drawing it. See you in the next post…

the last day of the long February

April 7, 2025April 7, 2025Leave a comment

Been a little while since I posted, nearly a month in fact, but in my defense I’ve not felt like it. No that’s not really true, I always feel like sharing my drawings and random thoughts, and in this ever-changing world in which we live in, that’s more and more and more important. As much as we are allowed to share our random thoughts. In my defense, I have been very busy, not just in general life and the labours of the world, but also in my sketchbookery. In fact this March was probably my most sketch-tastic March in a while, since maybe the last one. I did draw quite a lot last March now I think about it, when I went to LA and Riverside, and then later to Zion and Bryce Canyon, with some Vegas thrown in. This time I went to San Francisco, Washington DC and New York City, which was not bad. I did a lot of sketching in the last two places, I’ll tell you that. New York is a great city, I have to stop leaving it so long between visits (nine years since the last trip). But before all of that, more of Davis, the usual places, the same old streets. My task is to draw the whole town over and over, and that I will keep doing. Above is another panorama for my Davis-in-landscape-format book that I have been publishing in my head for well over a decade now. If I ever publish it outside of my head, well you should take a look at it, it’s brilliant. Until then, it doesn’t exist, except on these digital pages. I think in this non-existent book the best bit is that I don’t really write much, I just let the drawings do all the talking, to give myself the air of an ‘artist of mystery’. “I bet he is really deep, this artist,” they will say, inaccurately, “or maybe he is really boring and has nothing to say,” their friends who also read the book will say, half accurately. I keep thinking about one review on Amazon (a 1 star review, I’ll have you know) to my last book which came out nine years ago now, which said: “The writing is so long-winded that by the time he gets to the point I have forgotten what he was talking about.” Or words to that effect. In that book I actually edited my writing down really well, it’s not my blog, but my first reaction was “they must know me in real life!” I stopped looking at Amazon user reviews after that. I do like to tell a story though. I decided when I was a kid that I never wanted to be rich, I just wanted to have a lot of stories to tell. Which doesn’t help when someone wants to borrow a tenner. Most stories are boring anyway, so I draw. I think if I just have a book full of pictures it may be missing the personality behind them, but it also may give others the chance to look at them and pretend that the pictures are illustrations of their own life, or could be, and they put their own stories on top of them, stories that have a lot more meaning to them. I always think back to the two books I have by Karen Neale, “London in Landscape” (vols I and II), as inspiration behind the idea of a book just of my two-page spreads, with no stories attached (although she does write some stuff around the edges, it doesn’t get in the way of or alter the story of her very detailed and lively on-location sketches) but there is a glossary at the back with her notes and stories related to each of the sketches. I look at those books quite a bit for inspiration, and to remind me of London at the time I left it behind, the mid-2000s, but I really love the little bits of writing that are in there too. I’ll get around to my currently non-existent Davis book some day. Some day.

Oh by the way, the drawing above is Davis Community Church, as seen from the edge of Central Park on 4th block of C Street. It’s a couple of blocks up from the panorama in the previous post on C Street. There were not a lot of people around. A car did park there for a while, and a man even walked over and said something to me cheerfully, but then it moved before I even noticed it had gone. Another car was parked to my left, a woman sat in there on the phone for a very long time. Someone else came and sat on the bench for a while, pushing a shopping trolley full of bags and clothes, and the local ice-cream van also pulled up for a bit, playing its horror-movie music. The ice-cream van that you see prowling around these parts is not the colourful big-windowed Mr.Whippy type van that we used to chase down the street back when I was a kid. This one is more the type of vehicle that would show up in those kids public information films that your loud-meowing cat would warn you not to go near. It gives me the creeps. Anyway I kept an eye on it in case it tried to lure me away and show me some puppies, and carried on with this unreasonably detailed drawing. After spending so long drawing branches and windows I coloured in some of the trees but then did the rest of the painting at home. I was listening to more Terry Pratchett audiobook. Now it is April and the sneezing has begun, and I am still nowhere near finished with scanning all the sketches from my trip. I’ll add in posts here and there, maybe even with more interesting writing, or not.

In fact, I just realized I already posted this sketch, as the secondary drawing in the previous post. But I have taken the brave decision to keep this one up, because I added to the story of it, and it was a good sketch so I am just giving it some more airtime. Like when you release a single off of an album that has already sold well, except not really anything like that. Hey, it’s a confusing time. Stay tuned for a lot more sketches.

across the C street

March 10, 2025March 10, 2025Leave a comment

Two more from February, both panoramas (that is, two-page spreads in my watercolour Moleskine), both from C street in downtown Davis, albeit a few blocks apart. Above, the symmetrical apartments called ‘McNeil Manor’, near 1st Street, which I have wanted to draw for ages. It was a bright late afternoon and I wanted to draw it from the very middle so I could show the mirror image reverse identical twin look of the two main buildings, with the shadows of the trees breaking up the uniformity. I was happy with how this turned out. I was listening to another Terry Pratchett audiobook, both while drawing onsite (where i did the outlines, many of the details and about a quarter of the colouring) and back at home, where I filled in the rest; now when I see this I can hear Jon Culshaw’s fantastic character voices in my head. I think it was the last one in the City Watch series, Snuff, which one of the only few Discworld books left that I have not read. This week marks ten years since Sir Terry Pratchett died, far too young, and so he is on my mind a lot. I started reading him while I was at school; I have been saving reading those last few, plus some of his non-Discworld books (I heard ‘Nation’ is very good), because while they are still unread it’s like he is still alive. I have been devouring the newer audiobooks lately, all of the City Watch ones first (except ‘Night Watch’, which wasn’t available; I have bought the paperback to read myself, though I read it when it first came out and loved it, almost all of my Pratchett books were left in England when we moved, and are now lost). I don’t know why, but these buildings remind of some flats in Mill Hill, London; they don’t actually look like them, but they remind me of them. The ones where my cousin lived when I was a kid maybe, or other ones that I sometimes pass by on the 221 bus, but these would not look out of place there.

Above, a building I have drawn a lot of times, the Davis Community Church. Sorry it looks so small on thei blog. If you click on it, and the one above, it will take you to my Flickr page where you can see it bigger. I like the view from the side. This was a Friday, end of a long and frankly stressful week, a headache inside a tumble dryer, and scenes like this bring some serenity. I drew much as I could there and then, and coloured in the foreground trees to get them looking the way my eyes see them, but finished the rest at home. February was ending that day, and I was glad of it, though March has not proven to be any improvement. The news of the world continues gloomily onwards. The clock went forward a couple of nights ago, nobody told me, though I wish they could have gone a few years further forward. I don’t wish that, of course, don’t wish your life away. There weren’t many people passing by, the occasional one, maybe a car that would park in front and then leave a little while later.

Kaua’i part 1 – Kalalau Valley, Hanapepe

November 6, 2024November 6, 2024Leave a comment

Last month my wife and I took a long-awaited trip to the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i to celebrate our 20th anniversary. We had meant to go in September but ended up moving it to mid-October, which worked out nicely, as it wasn’t too crowded and the weather was great. Kaua’i is called the garden island, and you can see why. It’s a lot more lush and not as over-developed as some of the other islands, and geologically older. I counted that this is our sixth visit to Hawaii since 2017, and our fourth different island, after Oahu, Maui and the Big Island, all of them quite different. We landed in the evening, driving through the tree tunnel towards our hotel near Poipu Beach, and went straight out for a nice dinner at Keoki’s Paradise, having our favourite, Hula Pie. I got some Hula Pie stickers for my new sketchbook which I was starting on this trip, returning to the classic landscape format Moleskine (but this time with a white cover). On our first day we drove up to what’s called the ‘Grand Canyon of the Pacific’, the Waimea Canyon. For such a small island there is a large amount of natural diversity and geology. We stopped at the Waimea Canyon Lookout and took photos, but there was no way I was going to be able to sketch it, it was enough just to look at it and try to take it all in. We have been to some amazing canyons in recent years and this was up there with them. We drove up further, through twisting tropical roads, towards the Kokee State Park. We knew that we would not get to view the famous and dramatic Napali Coast in the way that a lot of people see it – by boat (too long a trip), or by helicopter (no way man), or by small plan (aint gettin me in no plane sucker!) – and a lot of the hiking trails were closed due to them being a bit unsafe. However, the views of part of the Napali Coast from the elevated Kalalau Lookout were some of the most unbelievable that I have ever seen. We got out of the car, and it just didn’t look real. We stood there a while just looking at it. Or rather I started sketching it, which is the sketch at the top of this post (click on it for a closer view). The turquoise blue of the pacific, the hints of golden sand and red dirt, the verdant volcanic rocks, the jungle of plants and trees, and that one big cloud that was just sitting there all by itself right over the cliff on the left, like an airship waiting to depart. It was the furthest I’d ever been from Burnt Oak, geographically and in every other way too. We took a hike up a jungle road about a mile to another lookout which was supposed to have even more amazing views. When we got there, it had fogged up, the clouds coming off the sea and into the valley blocking out all visibility. The magic view was gone, utterly. So we decided to wait, and see if it would burn off. A few other visitors waited patiently, some giving up, but I was optimistic. This was opti-mist. And slowly we could see some shapes, and even a hole or two of blue, and bit by bit the world opened up again, a little bit like in that show Catchphrase when you see a small part but have to guess at the whole picture. In the end, it looked like this, see below. I wasn’t Not a bad looking place!

IMG_0044(1) - Lowres

We drove back down the long road out of the Canyon, and went to the town of Hanapēpē. It’s a small place with an old Hawaii feel, and I think it’s the inspiration for Lilo and Stitch, though I’ll admit I’ve not seen that film. There are a couple of painted murals of them. They call this the Art Capital of Kaua’i, perhaps for all the little gallery stores. We grabbed a simple but tasty lunch at a friendly place which served from a table in a doorway and sat outside, feeling tired already from our hike and drive. We walked over to a very cool little bookstore called Talk Story Bookstore, which is apparently the westernmost bookshop in the U.S.! They have a cat that rules the shop, and lots of stickers of the boss-cat called ‘Mochi-Celeste’ (based on the previous boss-cat). I spent a small fortune on stickers of all kinds. They sold records too, and comics. It was pretty busy, so I stepped out to sketch the place from across the street.

I walked a bit further down while my wife went into other shops, and I drew a quick one of the little church with the picket fence. I started getting a bit hot so I outlined and drew the rest later. We walked over to the Swinging Bridge, dating back from Hanapēpē’s days as a military town. It was a very warm day, and humid, and we drove back to the hotel to hang out in the pool before dinner in Kōloa (at the ‘westernmost brewery in the world’, Kauai Island Brewing). We were pretty far west, furthest west I have ever been. From here there is only the small island of Ni’ihau, but that is off limits to visitors. After that, you move into tomorrow. Far from home.

morning walks in Burnt Oak

August 2, 2024Leave a comment

And so to the end of my sketches from the recent trip (over a month ago now). I’ve been back in the excruciatingly hot summer of Davis, a record set of July temperatures, and trying to get back into the groove (what’s the difference between being in the groove and in a rut?). The summer is long, and I’ve been wishing to be back in London again. It won’t be long, I hope, but it is nice being there when the sun rises early and sets late, and now there’s finally a new government too after the mid-summer election. England losing the football final was a sour note. Lewis Hamilton winning the British Grand Prix (and British drivers suddenly winning F1 races in general after a long dominance by Max Verstappen) was a nice moment to celebrate. I prefer watching those races early in the morning over here in California anyway, on my couch with a cup of tea. I wasn’t always an early riser, growing up in Burnt Oak I wasn’t anyway. When I travel though I’m usually up first, and I’ll get some time and some nice breakfast with my Mum, those are the times I miss when I have to fly home again. I also like my morning walk around Burnt Oak, where I can see all the things that have changed or stay the same. Here are a couple of sketches from those morning strolls, after we’d returned from France and before we were going back to the US. Above, that is the Annunciation Church on Thirleby Road, though I sketched it from Gervase Road. I always loved this building. This is the main Catholic church for Burnt Oak, and so most of the Catholics I knew would go here, and go to school at St. James’s, or St. Martin’s for the juniors, or at the Annunciation Infant School next door to the church for the very young (my little sister went to those). I’m not a Catholic myself (having been christened at the local C of E church St. Alphage when I was a baby), and I’ve never been religious, so I didn’t have to go to church; I’d get to stay home on Easter when I was a kid and eat my chocolate eggs, but I also had to hoover the floor and dust the shelves, small price for being a heathen. I did go here many times though for one reason or other, weddings, christenings, funerals holy communions. My mum and dad were married here when I was 15 (though I was late, as I went to collect my great aunt). Mostly I spent time here in the community centre, in the Annunciation club upstairs where our local community would drink regularly (we would do the Quiz Night regularly, and my Mum would always win that; we loved a Quiz in those days, and when it was my Mum, my older sister and brother, and me together, we were an unbeatable quiz team in the Irish pubs of our neck of London back in the 90s). I remember watching USA 94 in there, the great moment when Ireland beat Italy and the place erupted. I spent a lot of time in the Annunciation Youth Club as well when I was 16 or 17. My (also non-Catholic) mate Terry and I would go there, hang out with the other kids, play pool, and watch TV; I remember watching the Euro 92 final in there, Denmark beating Germany. It was a good place for local kids, give us something to do, keep them off the streets and out of trouble, not that me and Terry were out getting into trouble, we used to just play football down Montrose, and walk over to Vibratanks the tropical fish shop to look at guppies. The youth club all went on a camping trip to Devon one summer, to the little town of Watchet, looking back at it they were great memories, you don’t think too much about them at the time. I remember telling ghost stories to everyone by the fire on the beach, the Hairy Hands of Dartmoor, the Beast of Exmoor, all those old chestnuts I used to read about. My mate Terry, now in Japan, used to live on Gervase Road so I would be down there all the time. We actually went top school on a different school on Thirleby Road, Goldbeaters, just a short walk from here. As I sketched, being morning there were young kids being walked to school by their mothers just as we had been decades before. I heard quite a few speaking Romanian, Burnt Oak has a big Romanian community now. I thought to myself, I remember the language our parents used to use in the mornings, when we were late for school. All the memories, I spent a good deal of time around here growing up.

And on my second last morning in Burnt Oak, I walked down Abbots Road, cutting past the old allotments and over to Deansbrook Road. I stood in the shade of a tree on the corner of Cressingham, looking out over the little parade of shops. There’s still a newsagent there, I got myself a cold fizzy drink. No Lilt any more, that delicious drink has now been replaced by yet another flavour of Fanta. I used to pick my little sister up from school when she went to St. Martin’s juniors in the Meads nearby. I hardly ever come down this part of Deansbrook any more, except for fish and chips. When I was a kid there was a good Chinese shop here that I’d be sent to pick up the takeaways from. My big sister lived nearby so I would also come into the shops on the way there when I’d walk over, usually on the way to babysit her kids. Of course the main attraction of Deansbrook was the Dassani Off License, which I note is still there. They had a video rental store at the rear, and that’s where we’d go on a Saturday night and pick out whatever action film we’d watch with my dad, and get some Munchies. They also had video games you could rent, so I’d get Nintendo or SNES games to play for a few days, when I couldn’t afford to have the actual thing. On the whole though, I’d often avoid this part of Deansbrook growing up, it was always seen as a bit rougher; even if the Watling was probably rougher, it was a bit closer to home, though geographically it really wasn’t; I lived between the two. You get this sort of thing into your head when you’re a kid, it might just be that the kids over this street were more likely to beat you up than the kids over that street, who might know you or your mates more, it’s all a bit random now looking back. Anyway, I finished this sketch but added in the colours later, on the plan back to California.

We flew back next day, into the long Davis summer, fiscal close, triple digits, and scanning the travel sketches, and a huge desire to just go back to London again. A day will come when I can’t go back as much, and I’m always wanting to get as much of it as I can until then, and bring my sketchbook to watch it as it keeps on changing.

rainy days in the south of france

July 26, 2024July 25, 20242 Comments

Provence is usually sunnier than this. I woke up one morning for my usual early sketch and pain-au-chocolat run, to the sound of heavy rain against the cobbles. We were heading to Nice that morning, but with this storm rolling over it looked like the Cote wasn’t going to be as Azur as we’d hoped. We get enough sunshine in California. Still a little bit of rain didn’t deter me. I remember that it poured down the last time I’d been in Aix-en-Provence, a torrential downpour that nearly caused me to miss my TGV to Strasbourg. Doesn;t stop me from sketching. I walked over to Place Richelme, where the mornings are alive with colourful fruit and veg stalls before being whisked away by lunchtime for the cafes. It’s one of our favourite squares in Aix, and I found a dry doorway to stand in and draw, and listen. People passed by me on their way to work in the building, each one with a pleasant “bonjour” to me on the way, this is how they do it in France, people say “bonjour” to each other, and I like it. Looking across the Place, I remembered there was a pizza stand on the other side years ago where you get big slices of Neapolitan style pizza very cheap, the ones so big you fold them to eat them, and we’d get those at night after a couple of drinks at the nearby bar Le Brigand, we had many evenings sat outside there. When I first met my wife we went there with some friends and I think I surprised her by having three conversations at once, one in French, one in English, one in German, with people I knew around us. I would struggle to have one conversation in English nowadays. Le Brigand is still there, unchanged. There was another place nearby called Happy Days, which is now gone. I would sing the theme tune to Happy Days as we passed, but in French, and deliberately bad French for comic effect. I hummed that to myself as I sketched the market. I listened out to the market people greeting each other, the thick Provençal accent I once heard described as ‘soupy’, or “le Parlé de Chez Nous” as my old barber would call it. “Dang dang dang,” they would say, meaning “Wait wait wait” (“Attends attends attends”), and “ah put-aing!” when they swore. “Vous dessinez bieng!” one man said to me as he looked over my sketch, I smiled in thanks. I love listening out for that southern accent. I drew as much as I could, and dashed off to get breakfast.

This church tower rises above the narrow and busy Rue Espariat, which sneaks uphill through the old centre-ville. This street always brings me right back to the early days in Aix, a sit was easy to get lost but here you knew where you where, more or less, and it is always a short hop over to the wide Cours Mirabeau. On this day, I had left my family at the shops to go and sketch, but no sooner did the sketchbook come out then so did that warm dusty rain, turning the air as soupy as the accent. I’m really doubling down on that word ‘soupy’. I still wanted to draw, so I stood tight against the wall and did my best. I had to go and sit down somewhere to add colour and shading, the raindrops were starting to glomp onto the page. I walked down to the Place des Augustins to a familiar old pub.

I do wonder when I write these posts, show these sketches, who is reading, is it anyone I know? Anyone that I knew from Aix, that has stumbled across all of this? If so, hello there, bonjour, I hope you’re doing well. My memories of people have faded a lot over the years, names and even faces, , though I still have a lot of old photos, and my year in Aix was during the time of physical photos that you had to get developed at a shop, then keep in a box in a cupboard, unseen. Anyway I went into O’Sullivan’s, a pub we all used to meet up in back in the old days, and it’s unchanged. I did last come here on that trip nine years ago and sketched the bar, just as I had done once in 2003, though much better. I didn’t want to sketch the bar this time, I just sat with a beer outside under the dry eaves, and I sketched a couple of people sat evading the rain opposite me. I remembered the street opposite, there was a little kebab shop I think, where my flatmate Emma and I would sometimes run into a local guy we knew called Corentin who played a djembe drum. He was a sweet guy, I remember he liked to climb trees. It was in that very little square that my future wife and I had our actual first date, eating tapas at a little restaurant across from me. We had met at my birthday party a few days before, on a much rainier night than this.

It was time to go and have dinner, but before meeting up with the family I had one more sketch, a fountain that I definitely also drew back in 2003, the one on the corner of Cours Sextius. I used to pass it on my way to visit my future wife, so it always reminds me of that walk. Cours Sextius is another tree lined boulevard, busy with traffic, well shaded, and I remember there was a club there called the Bistrot Aixois which I didn’t really like much, very popular with the American frat boys spending their semester abroad in France. I had never heard the term ‘frat boy’ before coming to Aix, an American guy I knew brought me to a party held by some frat boys. I remember having a lengthy discussion with one guy about how Robert De Niro is not actually a good actor, he just plays Robert de Niro all the time. There were a lot of American students in Aix, for many it was their first time outside of the US, and it’s not a bad place. I got to know a lot of art students while I was there, though I was only just starting to get back to drawing myself. And of course I met my wife, from California, and that’s how I am now living in Davis of course. This was a short visit to Aix, it was nice to see how the place is doing, though we’ve come a very long way since then. It was time to leave for Nice. Until next time Aix, jusque’à la prochaine fois.

among the stones in hampstead and highgate

July 15, 2024July 15, 2024Leave a comment

I think I sought out quieter spots on this London trip, I wasn’t really looking for the busy crowds and bustle of the city, it’s been too stressful a year for that. I found myself in Hampstead a few times, only a few stops down the Northern Line from Burnt Oak, but a world away in how it looks. It’s a bit nice round there. We went down one afternoon to walk about a bit, before I would be meeting up with a friend in the evening for dinner. I had a bit of time to myself to go and do some sketching, and I stood on Fitzjohn’s Avenue and sketched this weathered old post box (below), which bore the royal cipher of King Edward VII, so it’s quite old. I love old pillar boxes. I saw one from Queen Victoria’s reign on Hampstead High Street, although it was kept as a relic and was not in actual use (despite being opposite the post office). My brother called me up, and as I spoke to him I found myself wandering down old streets I had never been to, not really paying much attention to where I was going. I found myself at the Parish Church of St. John at Hampstead, an impressive old church with an adjacent burial ground, rows of gravestones poking out of long grass. It was quite peaceful, and I do like a graveyard. Real England is old brick and stone and greenery. Local ladies walked their small dogs about, and I sketched this scene above. I felt it had to be in pencil. If I still lived in London I would probably spend a lot more time sketching graveyards.

On a different day, I came through Hampstead to pick up some photos I had put in to Snappy Snaps on Hampstead High Street a few days before to be developed. That’s right, an actual roll of film. I haven’t developed a roll of film in nearly 20 years, and in fact I still have some rolls of undeveloped film that I brought with me when I emigrated to America, memories still waiting to jump out at me from the past. Well this roll of film was from just the past few months. A friend got me a basic film camera for Christmas, and so I bought some film (not cheap any more like the old days!) and was taking pictures on some of our recent travels. I maybe got the film wrong (it was good quality and cost me enough), but the photos turned out terrible. Like almost unanimously awful. The ones in Zion Canyon for example were just big dark masses. It wasn’t cheap to develop either, but there you go. Fun experiment, I suppose, but I’ll stick to digital, and sketching. My son was using the film camera on our Europe trip this time, so we will see how they turn out. Better than mine, I hope. Anyway, on my way back to the tube, after stopping in Cass Arts to pick up yet another sketchbook (I never seem to not need sketchbooks), I stopped in Flask Walk to draw. The sketch is below. I like Flask Walk, it’s narrow and full of interesting little shops. I like the Flask pub, I usually pop in there when I’m back in London. When my son was little, I took him ghost hunting there, because it is supposed to be one of those haunted pubs London has so many of. I like all the little antique shops, though I’m not the sort of person who shops at antique shops. I stood nearby and drew the view looking down, trying to catch some of the things people were saying to each other, like the older woman saying “bye darling! bye darling!” to her friend. I got asked by someone passing by if they could take my photo while sketching. I said of course (I get that occasionally when I’m in London, I think it must be the way I hold my sketchbook). They had a nice digital camera; I said I had tried taking photos with a film camera but just got them developed and they had turned out really bad, so I will be sticking to the sketchbook in future. I asked if they drew and they said they did but not much, and would like to do more, so I gave them the information about Urban Sketchers London, and said they should join them on their regular sketchwalks. If you are interested, check out their calendar for the rest of 2024 at the USk London website. When I was done with my sketch, it was time to head home.

But I have a couple of other sketches to show from the area. On a different day, we all came back down to Hampstead to look around before taking a walk across Hampstead Heath. I love Hampstead Heath, it;s easy to get lost along its tree covered paths. I have a photo of my holding my son by the ponds when he was only four months old, he’s sixteen now, so we took the same one, though I wasn’t carrying him this time. As we rested on top of the Heath, looking towards Highgate Village, I did a quick small paint sketch, below. It’s hard to imagine, we lived over there before moving out to California. It was a bit of a walk, but we’d sometimes come over this way on a Sunday, enjoying the peaceful English day. We lived on Hornsey Lane, and I still love that area. We went over there on of our first days back, it had been so many years. In another universe, if we had not moved to the US, we might be over there still, my son might have grown up there. We joked about that; the truth is, working for universities which don’t pay much in England, and with the extortionate cost of living in London, there’s no way we could have afforded a bigger place in Highgate unless we got very lucky, and would probably have moved our further, or back up to Burnt Oak, or just moved to California anyway. You can’t see the multiverse. There are a lot more hills here than in Davis. We did explore Crouch End again though, I miss that neighbourhood so much, and Highate Village, and Waterlow Park. We walked down our old street and took a photo outside the house where we rented a flat, those horrible old windows were unmistakable (except they were mistakable, because we were stood outside the wrong house; our old one was a couple of doors down, so we took a photo outside that one instead).

After the walk across the Heath, the final destination beckoned: Highgate Cemetery. That is the literal final destination for many people, from your Karl Marxes, your Douglas Adamses, your Jeremy Beadles, even your Eric Hobsbawns, your Malcolm McLarens. We only walked about the East side; I’ve never been to the West side, some day I will, but I notice that David Devant (the magician after whom one of my favourite bands is named) is buried there, as is Prof. Lisa Jardine, who I actually knew from my days as a drama student at Queen Mary, and Michael Faraday, one of my favourite scientists. George Michael is in the West side too; he was a local lad from near where I grew up, and he also lived in Hampstead in his later years, and speaking of the Snappy Snaps on Hampstead High Street, that was, er, the place where he crashed his car back in 2010. Anyway, we just looked around the East side, found the big Karl Marx, found a few other names I was looking for, talked about vampires, and then went down to the village at Parliament Hill for an overpriced pub lunch. Anyway, some nice times spent in Hampstead and Highgate, still some of my favourite parts of London.

piccadilly to tower hill

July 31, 2023July 31, 2023Leave a comment

I didn’t do a lot of London sketching on the first few days of our trip, just what I could get in quick moments. The one above was drawn while waiting for my wife, I was outside Waterstones in Piccadilly (in the building which used to be Simpson, Piccadilly, the old department store which was the inspiration for the TV show Are You Being Served). Looking towards Piccadilly Circus. It was the sky that interested me.

We walked into Mayfair and up towards Savile Row. It’s incredible, I’ve never actually been up Savile Row. I explored London for years but for some reason Mayfair a lot less so, though I would give open-top bus tours round a lot of the fancy squares and high-end streets, twenty-odd years ago. I had it in my head that Savile Row was further up, on the other side of Oxford Street somewhere, but of course it’s just a block off Regent Street. I do love that even in London I can be surprised and find places I’d not really been to before. The only place on Savile Row I was interested in seeing of course was #3, now an Abercrombie and Fitch, but that was once the HQ of the Beatles’ Apple Corps, and where they played that concert on the roof in January 1969. Watch ‘Get Back’, it’s my favourite thing ever (right up there with Star Wars and The Dark Crystal). There’s a blue plaque to commemorate the historic event, and so I put that in my sketchbook.

We were on our way to take a London Walk, over by St.Paul’s. It was the walk called “Old London”, and was a two-hour-plus stroll through ancient streets in the City, ending up at Tower Hill. It was a hot day, but our guide was excellent and she took us along streets I hadn’t explored in years, or didn’t even know about (and I have given walking tours in this part of London myself years ago). See https://www.walks.com/ for details on all their walks, given by accredited blue-badge guides, they are great and know a lot more than me. I was remembering some of the old stuff I used to know, but was fascinated by the stories. I did one sketch of St. Vedast-Alias-Foster, one of the many Christopher Wren churches, while we waited.

When it was over my wife got the tube back home while I stayed out a bit longer to do some sketching before dinner. I decided to draw the Tower, with that big sundial thing in the foreground. I was pretty tired though, my heart wasn’t really in it, so I left it as it was and got on the District Line. We were off to Scotland next day.