More from London; that’s what you can expect for a while, still more to scan! These were drawn on the Northern Line, my line of the London Underground. It’s not easy to draw while the tube is bumping all over the place, though I see many people who seem to manage it just fine. How do they do it? I have no idea. But I gave it a go, and of course the bumping-about effect is really just part of the experience, added into the ink. The Northern Line is a lot better than it used to be. back in the olden days when I was a lad. That isn’t to say it’s not still without its considerable faults – coming back as an occasional visitor it works like a dream, but put me on it day in day out and the full experience would all come back. And it’s an expensive business, travelling on the tube. On this past trip alone I spent, ooh I have no idea but it was a lot, updating the Oyster Card. But that said, as a Londoner I almost have to complain about it, like the changeable weather, but I’m eternally thankful we have it at all.
Tag: drawing
observing the olympic village
We really wanted to see the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, East London, and here it is! As close as we are able to get to it anyway. The Olympic Village is not quite ready, and the public cannot access it, but you can get a great view from the new, massive shiny Westfield mall, opened as part of the Olympic regeneration project, and pretty much the only way into the Village from the station. Stratford is completely unrecognizable to me now. I used to come over here occasionally when I was at university in nearby Mile End to visit friends, and the idea of the Olympics, the actual Olympics, coming to Stratford back in those days was a laughable idea. Well it has happened! But of course they have had to remove a lot of Stratford to make it happen. From what I saw, I was impressed. Even the train from Camden Road, now part of the modernized ‘London Overground’ system, was a much improved pleasure. I got this quick sketch in from the viewing area inside the Olympics giftstore on the top floor of John Lewis; that tall red metal thing is a bit odd, its as if Wembley Stadium has had an argument with Magneto or something. It’s an imressive site, the Olympc village, though the stadium is not quite the eye-catcher that the Bird’s Nest was, and as for those other big expensive-looking modern buildings, I cannot recall what the signs said they were to be used for, clay-pigeon shooting or roller-skating or something. Still it’s exciting isn’t it! All the Londoners I spoke to seemed less than excited, sick of it already, too much money, blah blah blah. I can understand. The Olympics is a couple of weeks of sports you would never watch otherwise but it is such an honour you need to flatten decades old businesses to make it happen. I don’t like the corporate sponsor nonsense, how in the Olympics area you can’t use your Mastercard because Visa is the sponsor, I hate all that nonsense, making it more difficult for people. It will I believe ultimately be good for London – the city had its best face on, and I was impressed at the overall vibrancy in the city, being the Olympic and Jubilee year. I am happy for East London too. I for one was hugely proud of my city when it was selected (July 6, 2005), and then of course we had to deal with the terrible events on the day after. It may be a bit crazy when it’s on – security will be unbelievable, media rabble-rousing even more so, but despite the price-hikes it will be a great time to be in London, to show it off to the world.
I’ll be in Davis, watching it on the telly.
notre dame, the beautiful
Oooh, you don’t get scenes like this in Davis.
This is the Cathedrale de Notre Dame, on the banks of the Seine in Paris. As if this magnificent building needed an introduction! At the end of a warm day full of sightseeing and playgrounds and puppets, we went to see Notre Dame in the late afternoon sunshine. Ever since I was a kid it was one of my favourite buildings; I visited there when I was about 12 or 13 with school and loved all the ancient cold stone and gargoyles and colourful rose windows. The grey pollution has all been scrubbed off now, and it glows in the golden early evening light. After some time playing in the sandpit next to the cathedral, my son went home for a pre-dinner nap with my wife while I stayed on to draw by the Seine. I stood next to those guys who draw all the portraits for the tourists (they seem to speak so many languages fluently) and drew this remarkable view. I think I have wanted to draw this for so many years now, so I savoured every moment.
les petites marionettes
We went to see the puppet show at the Luxembourg Gardens. I think I was expecting a kind of seaside type Punch and Judy thing in one of those little striped tents, but they had an acual theatre, the Theatre du Luxembourg, complete with cast photos of the famous marionettes lining the walls. I was pretty excited; I love puppets. It’s my secret ambition to be a puppeteer. As we entered, the lady at the ticket office informed us that the first four rows are reserved for the children; grown-ups must sit further back. We were not sure if our son, shy as he is, would want to sit among all the other kids all speaking French, but he loved the idea, bounding away without a thought, chatting in English with the odd French word to any kid sat around him (“I went to the Eiffel Tower! It was grande!”). All the kids were excited about the show, which was to be the Three Little Pigs, “Les Trois Petits Cochons”.
The host puppet, guignol, introduced the show, and all the kids joined in the singing. It was very entertaining – while it’s not exactly Cirque du Soleil, it is loveable puppetry of the sort I can’t get enough of. More entertaining was my son, who was very animated in his reactions to the story (which depsite being in French he could understand well enough). When the Big Bad Wolf (“le Vilain Loup”) failed to blow down the brick house he leapt to his feet shouting and pointing, “ha-ha!” At one point he recognized a French phrase and jumped up calling out to me, “Daddy! Daddy! They said ‘ça va bien’!” During the break, all the kids had their snack with parents and juice-boxes at the ready, before resuming the second half. It was all great entertainment, and afterwards we went and got an ice cream.
après-midi in the luxembourg gardens
After a morning of Parisian sightseeing (principally the Eiffel Tower), we had lunch at Quick* and visited the Luxembourg Gardens. I had never been there before, but heard they were pretty, and they are. They are also a great place for kids – in addition to the puppet theatre (which I’ll write about in the next post), there was a large pond on which little wooden boats could be sailed, plus an absolutely enormous kids playground. You had to pay to go in there, but really it is massive, so while my wife took my son there to play among the Parisian children, I took twenty-five minutes to go and sketch the impressive Palais de Luxembourg. The Sun was shining so I found a nice shaded spot and sketched away, finishing the colour later. I really like Paris, it’s a sketching paradise. I really don’t know how you could live there and not sketch everything every day.
*Quick…my favourite French (well, it’s Belgian actually) fast food place. So nice to taste their ‘Long Chicken’ again after all these years.
en bas et en haut
So, there are no fire hydrants in Paris. None that I could find anyway. What I did find were nice drinking fountains, such as this one nearby to the Eiffel Tower, at Champs de Mars. Oh, and look, there is La Tour Eiffel herself. I just had to grab a quick sketch, while my son played (who was so excited about seeing the Tower that he had to pretend to be a race-car for a little while and do a few laps of the park). Sketched in the Miquelrius ‘Lapin’ sketchbook. When we got to the Tower (and we didn’t go up it), it was very foggy in that Parisian way, but as we passed beneath it the fog suddenyl burned away and the sun shone, in that very Parisian way. It was lovely weather we had.
More Paris sketches to come…
under the sea to paris
We went to Paris!! It had been a very long time, for me at least; France 98 I think was the last time, except when passing through en route to somewhere more southerly. We took the Eurostar from St.Pancras; my four-year-old son had been looking forward to this for a long time, the TGV Eurostar that goes under the sea all the way to Paris. He was so excited he had the hiccups. “This is the first time I’ve been to Paris with the hiccups!” he said. When we sat down however his window seat didn’t actually have a window; thankfully the kind French lady in the seat behind offered to swap seats, so he got his wish. We really had to go back to France this year; it’s ten years since my wife and I first 
met in Aix, and we have been away too long.I sketched the above drawing in my Miquelrius ‘Lapin’ sketchbook, in dark blue micron and watercolour. I have taken the Eurostar many times to Brussels, but only once before to Paris. It’s quicker now, and St.Pancras is a beautiful station, but I do miss the old Waterloo departure, seeing the Thames as you rumble out of London.
We got to Paris, and packed onto the RER and the Metro to our apartment down in the 5th arrondissement. We rented an apartment in the Latin Quarter rather than stay at a hotel, and I must say it was an excellent decision, though we were only there two nights. This part of Paris is completely unknown to me, and I just loved it straight away; it’s nice south of the river! There was a bakery on the corner of the street, opposite the Metro, and a small supermarket around the corner, which was like heaven – so many familiar everyday things from ten years ago: my favourite French cereals, all the different Oranginas, all the different cheeses. It’s the miscellaneous details I like. The area had lots of shops, and I particularly love French bookshops (except that I can never work out the prices of things due to their card-shop-esque coding system). I picked up for my son a story book about the Eiffel Tower running away to see the world.
I had to draw the view from the apartment at night, and got a large bottle of Leffe Ruby (which was a lot fruitier than I expected it to be, and bubblier – it fizzed all over the place, so I only had less than one glass) and some cheese. It’s nice to be in Paris. Must go back more regularly!
More Paris sketches to come…
urban sketching london!
A couple of weeks ago I organized a sketchcrawl in London (“Let’s Draw London!”) around the Temple and Fleet Street parts of London, one of my favourite areas. It was organized alongside the recently launched Urban Sketchers London, and was also picked up by members of the Meetup group ‘Drawing London on Location’. My hope was that a fair few London sketchers would come out and come together, and boy did that happen!
Above is part of the group that met at 10:30 outside Temple station. I passed around sign-in sheets, and all in all we had more than 50 sketchers on this sketchcrawl, and we all set off in groups or individually to draw London. What a sunny day it was too! I met several of the London Urban Sketchers, including Katherine Tyrell who thankfully took some great photos to record the day – you can see them on this post on USk London.
I printed out fliers for everyone (I had just enough!), and provided a little hand-drawn map with interesting sketchable spots, though really anywhere is interesting. Here it is:
It was great to walk around and see so many Londoners out sketching, and also to identify each other by those carrying the little fliers I made. Below are some of my photos, taken at the end meeting at Gough Square. I wanted to meet up at the statue of Dr.Johnson’s (Samuel not Boris) cat, Hodge. We decided to do the now common laying-down of the sketchbooks on the ground, all around the cat, for everyone to admire. I found this common at the USk Symposia, and while it’s a good and fun way to display them all, it’s also very humbling (and a little scary) seeing my little drawings beside so many great pieces of art! I still prefer the one on one sketchbook exchanges at the end of a sketchcrawl, and it was nice to do some of that with people. Many of us reconvened into the Olde Cheshire Cheese for a pint, some sketchbook viewing and lots of sketching talk! I’ll post my sketches in the next post, but in the meantime…
To all who came, THANKS for coming! I did meet some truly fantastic London sketchers whose work I have followed for years (especially nice to meet Olha Pryymak, her work is beautiful), met many more whose work I will now eagerly follow, but missed meeting some others whose work I love. Not enough time! Even an old schoolfriend, Joan, from my art class 20 years ago came – I had only seen her once since leaving school so it was nice to catch up. And excitingly, I was joined by my two long-lost (and Facebook-found) cousins Claire and Dawn, who are both superb artists. We haven’t seen each other since we were kids but have grown up with an avid love of drawing, so what a great way to reconnect at last. Everyone I spoke to had a great day, and some others on the sketchcrawl are returning this Saturday to follow the same route again (wish I could join them!). In the meantime, if you’re London based or nearby, you may wish to keep an eye on the regular meetings of…
- Drawing London on Location on Meetup.com
- Urban Sketchers London : Sketchcrawls page
- Worldwide Sketchcrawls (the sketchcrawl.com forum, next one on July 14)
And finally, check out the newly set-up Urban Sketchers London flickr group, which any London based sketcher can join and where many great sketches and photos from the sketchcrawl are posted.
…I really must do this again!
and far away, a city stands
After flying in an antique tumble-dryer across the Atlantic, I’m back from London full of jetlag. United Airlines really know how to show you an awful time! Fortunately, London knows how to show you a fantastic time, and I had a really nice trip back there. Family, friends, festivities, and a couple of days in Paris as well. I also opened up a new Watercolour Moleskine, #10, and christened it with a skyline from the start of the world.
Watling Avenue is the main thoroughfare of Burnt Oak, the area of London where I was born and grew up. Like the neighbourhood, it has changed a lot over the years, except for the odd stores which seem frozen endlessly in time – Vipins, Hassan, Pennywise. One thing that never changes is the skyline, a weather-worn row of chimneys snaking up the hill towards Burnt Oak Broadway (part of Edgware Road, the London section of the historic straight Roman road called Watling Street – hence Watling Avenue). It’s always hard to find a good spot to sketch on Watling Avenue – sure it’s a busy street, but that hasn’t put me off anywhere else in the world. Probably because I know this area as I do, I feel very self-conscious about standing out (having spent my youth trying to be invisible), so I chose a quiet spot, outside the Ming takeaway next to the Co-Op funeral place. It was a sunny Tuesday morning. As I sketched, the occasional passer-by stopped and smiled, or passed a comment on how different Burnt Oak is from when they were younger. Everyone there seems to have an opinion on the matter. Looking up at those chimneys, it’s hard to be sure that it is, really.
there will be blood orange
Oh man this stuff is good. I’ve liked San Pellegrino orange drinks for a while now, since discovering cans of it at Zia’s deli in Davis, but this new flavour, blood orange, is the business. I found it at the Davis Co-Op. I feel like Dracula. I drew this in my new sketch/notebook, the Miquelrius ‘Lapin’ book – the cover is illustrated by Barcelona-based French illustrator and fellow Urban Sketcher (and top bloke) Lapin, and it goes with the Lapin pencil case I have, both bought at the UC Davis bookstore, where I also bought my Paul Wang (Singapore based artist and fellow Urban Sketcher and also a top bloke) Moleskine, which I’m using a lot as my ‘big ideas’ book. I’m having lots of big ideas lately, but all just in idea form. Must be all the blood orange.
petescully 