the king and queen of fitzrovia

January 21, 2026January 20, 2026Leave a comment

I went for a walk around an area I don’t visit often, Fitzrovia. This is the area of London to the west of Gower Street, south of the Euston Road, east of Great Portland Street, north of Oxford Street. I got out at Warren Street and walked down that way to Cleveland Street. It’s a quieter area than you’d expect on a Saturday afternoon in central London, full of surprises. London is full of surprises. I walked down Cleveland Street and sketched one of my favourite buildings in London, the BT Tower, and then walked further and sketched the King and Queen pub, on the corner of Foley Street. I had heard about this pub, being famous as the place where Bob Dylan first played in London, and they do mention this in a few places around the pub, but I was pleasantly surprised to find this was not some tourist trap full of Bob Dylan fans, but just a normal looking proper pub with locals and good beer. They even had a Southern Comfort mirror on the wall, proper old pub style, exactly the same one we used to have on our dining room wall when I was a kid (very likely from a pub). It was quiet around here, no traffic rushing by, hardly any of those bloody delivery cyclists cutting corners and red lights, and after I had sat across the street drawing I popped in for a couple of pints. This sketch took me a bit longer than I wanted, I was getting a bit bogged down with details, but I enjoyed sitting in the pub listening to the chat and the football results (Spurs won). Proper pub. These are a dying breed in this city. I was reluctant to leave, but I had some more wandering and sketching to do before I went home.

Here is my first sketch, which I drew while sitting on a wall outside the George and Dragon pub. By the way, look at that bumpy paper the watercolour Moleskine now has, I don’t like it. I prefer the Hahnemuhle I used in the other sketch. I love this building though, poking out above those old rooftops. It’s been the BT Tower (or Telecom Tower) all of my life, though when I was a kid it was still called the Post Office Tower by older Londoners so that’s how I first knew it. I always like that it looked like a lightsabre, but also it was visible from so many places, being all up on its own and very unique in the London skyline, a bit like the Fernsehturm of Berlin. The top featured a revolving restaurant, so you could never complain about the view. BT Tower is located at [REDACTED]. Ah, yeah I forgot, it’s a secret. Yes I know you can see it, but like a rainbow, you aren’t supposed to know where the base is. This is genuine, it was designated as an official secret back in the 1970s, and was referred to by a judge as “Location 23”. This is presumably due to its importance in national communications during times of emergency, this was the Cold War after all. Apparently the tower was recently sold by BT to an American hotel company who will turn it into a luxury hotel, hopefully restoring the revolving restaurant. They will have to find it first.

oxford’s treats

January 20, 2026January 20, 2026Leave a comment

I went to Oxford with my Mum, a city I’d not been to in years. It’s been on my to-sketch list for some time. We stayed at the Randolph Hotel in the city centre, which is where Colin Dexter wrote the Inspector Morse books, in the hotel bar. That bar is called the Morse Bar now, and the drinks all have Morse-themed names, pictures of John Thaw are all over the walls. I’ll tell you, before that trip I didn’t know who Colin Dexter was, and while of course I knew the Inspector Morse TV show (it’s really famous after all), I didn’t used to watch it, and can’t remember what the famous theme tune was. I know it was set in Oxford, and that his partner was that guy who played Neville in Auf Wiedersehen Pet. So I picked up a copy of the first Morse book from Blackstones (who had a first edition of the book, Last Bus To Woodstock, behind the counter) with the intention of reading it in that bar over a fancy drink, but I didn’t actually start reading it until after I got back to the US (I was still reading an Agatha Christie book, Lord Edgware Dies, and I’m a very slow reader). The book was pretty good, I didn’t feel like reading more in the series just yet. I did get out and draw before dinner, sketching the timber-framed buildings on Cornmarket. It was pretty busy in Oxford, this is a tourist centre, lot of people about. I saw a nearly-fight between one drunk guy and a busker, I think the drunk guy knew the busker because he kept calling him specific names. I had a conversation with one bloke who was really interested in learning how to draw and was asking me for advice, hopefully I gave good advice. Hopefully I was following it myself. I think the building I drew is actually a hat shop. This was page 1 (or spread 1) of a new sketchbook, the portrait format Hahnemuhle watercolour book. I really like their paper.

This is one of the most famous sites in Oxford, the Radcliffe Camera. I got up early to go and sketch it before the crowds came, and had a really nice view in some warm morning light. That iconic stone you see all over Oxford, which is called Headington stone, exudes a warm and highly academic feel. The amount of clever that has seeped into these stones over the years has probably supercharged it with particles of extreme knowledge. If you put your ear up to the walls you can just about hear the theme tune to University Challenge. Radcliffe Camera is a big circular library, and the building was completed in 1748. It’s not open to the public, but I saw quite a few academics going in. I believe it is part of the Bodleian Libraries; we had wanted to do a your of the Bodleian, but couldn’t get a reservation. It looked pretty incredible. I love libraries, I mean I know people all say that, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate them and apparently want them gone. I love public libraries, but I love a university library and spent so much of my twenties in them; I miss that quiet, spending all day hidden away there researching. I wonder if I would have done well if I had been a student at Oxford, or Cambridge, or Oxbridge wherever that is. I don’t know. I like to think I would have, but then I get bored with the mandatory training videos at work and I spend a month reading an Agatha Christie novel and I wonder if I ever really did have the mind for serious academia. Who knows. If life had taken a different path maybe I would be organizing ‘Let’s Draw Oxford’ sketchcrawls around the old cobbled paths. I still ended up working for a university in a college town full of bikes. As I sketched the Radcliffe Camera, morning tour groups were already passing by telling their stories to American and Chinese tourists. Radcliffe Square and its Camera are named after the 17th century physician and MP John Radcliffe, who treated King George III, and whose money helped found the library after his death. It sits in between Brasenose College and All Souls College. Just around the corner from there crossing over New College Lane is another of Oxford’s most famous sights, the Bridge of Sighs, which I sketched below (much more quickly in pencil and paint, while walking around the area with my Mum). Unlike the similarly named bridge in Venice this one does not go over a canal. Cambridge has a Bridge of Sighs too, and that one goes over the river Cam. The proper name of this one is Hertford Bridge (being connected to Hertford College).

I could spend weeks sketching around Oxford. When I retire, if my eyes and hands still work by then, maybe that’s what I’ll do. I bought a really good book of Oxford drawings at the second hand bookshop in Davis which I read to give me inspiration, and I’ve seen a lot of travelling urban sketchers drawing these same buildings and giving workshops there. It’s an attractive city. I think if we lived in England again it’s a city I’d want to live in, although I do have a soft spot for Cambridge. On the drive in, we passed through one suburb of Oxford and I saw out of the corner of my eye that house with the big metal shark sticking out of the roof. I didn’t draw it, but having seen it only online I was so excited to see it in person.

Here is a sketch of another interesting detail, the Tumnus doorway. I don’t know if it is actually called that, but that’s what it is, a big wooden door with two gilded fauns holding up the awnings around it. The fauns look exactly as you imagine Mr Tumnus from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and of course CS Lewis was a professor here in Oxford (and used to meet regularly with JRR Tolkien at the Eagle and Child, which currently is not open). This used to be the City Arms pub in centuries past, closing in 1881, and the building is now part of Brasenose College. On the wooden door is the face of a lion. Now I don’t know if Lewis saw these and thought, yeah I’ll have that, but it might have been an inspiration for him, maybe passing up here on a snowy evening lit by gaslamp. I loved that story, and adapted it for the stage when I was in France decades ago.

Now these last two sketches are quick ones I drew while exploring the Ashmolean Museum, across the street form our hotel. The big head above is about 2000 years old, probably the head of Apollo (the Greek god, not the boxer from Rocky). The smaller head below is a lot older, the skull of Homo Georgicus, about 1.8 million years old and found in Georgia (the country in the Caucasus, not the state in the deep South). As I drew it I couldn’t get the voice of George from Rainbow out of my mind, imagining the skull talking with that voice, “Oh Geoffrey, Zippy has been so naughty”. I really enjoyed the Ashmolean Museum, but we didn’t stay too long. It was a brief visit to Oxford, and I’d like to go back some time. We did stop off at the Trout Inn, a beautiful pub by the river Thames just outside Oxford, which I knew from the Philip Pullman books (specifically La Belle Sauvage, it’s where the main character of that book, Malcolm, lives with his parents). If I ever go back to Oxford I’d like to go back there for lunch.

The Theatre of the Thames

January 19, 2026January 19, 2026Leave a comment

More from last August in London. It was a lovely day down by the Thames, one of those perfect weather days, not too hot, nice river breeze, sunshine with a few wispy clouds. We were going to have a family day out down here, watch some theatre, eat some dinner, walk down the river. I came down a little early to get some sketching in, and drew the view over to St. Paul’s and the City. That skyline has changed so much since I left 20 years ago. I had bought tickets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, in the seated areas rather than standing in the groundling spots, and I got the comfy cushion too. Those seats are a lot more than the standing sections, but I thought, well it’s important to support the London theatre scene. I did donate to the Globe during the pandemic when they were closed, they were posting full performances online and they were fantastic. To my shame I had never been to see a play at the Globe, in all those years since it opened. I’ve been to the gift shop loads of times. I remember when the Globe opened, as I was a drama student at Queen Mary at the time, and I wondered if it would get confusing that there is another theatre called The Globe down by Shaftesbury Avenue (that was subsequently renamed The Gielgud). Our ‘Places In Performance’ class taught by Richard Schoch (he is a published Shakespeare expert; he also recently wrote a very well-received book about Sondheim) did a tour of the new Globe, and some of the faculty at Queen Mary were part of the Friends of the Globe. I remember trying to walk there from north of the River and thinking, we could really use another bridge here you know, a pedestrian bridge nearby to St. Paul’s; a couple of years later we got the Millennium Bridge. I remember the tour, learning about Sam Wanamaker, the American actor (and Zoë Wanamaker’s father) who was the driving force behind the idea to rebuild the Globe right here in Southwark, but who did not live to see it finished. Yet in the twenty-seven years since my visit, I never ever saw a play there, until now!

I selected our seats carefully, considering how the sun might move in this afternoon play, but obviously I completely miscalculated that because for the first half we were baking in the sun. Note to self, evening performances next time! It was great though, the performances were fun, I couldn’t tell if everyone was really following it but the costumes and physical humour was top notch. I did try a quick sketch before the show started (above) but didn’t draw during the show. I would like to do a proper sketch of the Globe’s interior some day, I’ve drawn the outside as few times.

This was not the only theatre I saw while I was back – I booked tickets to see My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on Drury Lane, a stage adaptation of one of our favourite animated Miyazaki films. It was without doubt one of the best things I have ever seen, so good that I immediately booked tickets to see it again when I got home. It was that good, especially how all the live music was performed. Looking at the program I realized that the director was Phelim McDermott, who co-founded Improbable Theatre Co, and I’d forgotten that name until that moment. I had seen his production of Shockheaded Peter many years ago at the Battersea Arts Centre, in about 2000 or 2001, and it erupted my imagination; some of the style of Totoro rang a bell with me. There were some elements of my own production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in Aix-en-Provence in 2002 that were definitely inspired by that show. As a former drama student I don’t actually go to the theatre very much at all, so to go several times in one trip felt like making up for lost time. I even bought cheap five quid groundling tickets for Twelfth Night at the Globe a couple of weeks later, after my trip to Poland and Berlin, but ended up going sketching instead. I must go and see some more theatre though, and make more of an effort to see more in London.

Sometimes the best theatre is out on the streets though eh. Ooh, cheesy and not actually true. No, the streets is not the same as the theatre which takes a lot of effort in writing, acting, costumes, lighting, front of house; no, just standing on the streets and looking at things is not the same. The view above is quite a theatrical backdrop though. But nevertheless I do just that, I like to fill the sketchbooks with the stories of the world I see, and that is all my own story, my own theatre. I have often thought about the interaction between theatre/performance and urban sketching. As urban sketchers we ourselves might not see ourselves as performers but in a real sense we are. The act of standing on a street and observing makes us the ‘watched by C’ part of the Peter Brook equation of “A plays B watched by C” (that’s a very rough and probably inaccurate summarizing of his ‘Empty Space’ idea but I learned this in the first term of my drama degree, and that was in 1997 and I barely understood anything about theatre then, and probably even less now, but this ideas we discussed stuck with me, that everything can be boiled down to performance in some way). If I decide to observe and describe the scene in my sketchbook, I then become both observer (C) and performer (A), while the scene I am sketching becomes (B), the thing I am performing. I am starting to see why we drank so much at university now. That confusing calculus aside, the urban sketcher themself becomes a performer and attracts observation from people passing by, or sketched by other sketchers (A performs B watched by C who becomes A making the original A become B who is also performing another B which is also A; I’m surprised I didn’t get a D for that class). So we urban sketchers are performing in the act of drawing, and also in the act of sharing online with our fellow sketchers, who are the audience who then hopefully become inspired to keep sketching themselves. The thing I think about most though is that urban sketching, perhaps unlike more fine art styles, is an accessible art form that people feel more of a connection to when they see it. This is the everyday world as seen by the people living in it, who draw it because it’s there with the tools they have. I was always more interested in the basic idea of theatre as a storytelling device, one that anyone can take part in. I appreciate amazing acting, and the incredible hard work that goes into it, but it never interested me personally as much as the storytelling itself. We learned about interactive and forum theatre and the work of Boal, and I was very interested in Brecht. I look through the hundreds of posts each day that my fellow urban sketchers across the world are posting (that is, as much as the dreaded algorithms allow), and in very small and very big ways we are telling the story of the world we live in. It’s not necessarily in big determined narratives or five act structured entertainments but it’s all theatre of a sort, storytelling is at the heart of it, even if you don’t realize you are telling a story. I think a lot about this and try to get this small idea across in the sketchcrawls I organize. As with the interactive theatre work we did it’s all about accessibility and inclusiveness (in those first sketching events I ran, I brought along extra art materials and mini sketchbooks for people who saw us and might want to start sketching themselves) and what tools you have to tell your story with, that’s how I approach urban sketching. Or maybe, as with so many things with me, it’s just another excuse to draw.

The scene above, of the 2025 version of the City of London skyline, was drawn before the sun started setting, stood by Hay’s Galleria while people around me enjoyed an evening pint by the Thames. That skyline has changed so much in the 20 years since I left my home city, it’s unrecognizable. After this, my wife and I decided to walk down the Thames, and we walked and walked all the way to Charing Cross Station, for some reason. It was a really long way, and the South Bank was busy, really busy. London’s great, the Thames is my favourite, but it can be long and exhausting, just like some Shakespeare. Or some blog posts.

Richmond, by the river

January 17, 2026January 16, 2026Leave a comment

We met up with my friend Simon who was back visiting from Dublin, and took the Overground train down to Richmond. I was there last in the previous winter with Simon exploring the old pus and riverside walks, and wanted to go back in the summertime with the family. Richmond is London, but I hardly ever go there, it’s quite far but always worth a visit. I drew the White Cross pub, above, which we never went into but I know if it from videos I’ve seen online, apparently when the river tides get a bit high it cuts off the exits, and they lend you wellington boots to wade through to higher ground. I’d probably just stay in the pub. There are a lot of ducks around here, not surprising really. We had a nice refreshing drink at the cafe on one of the boats floating on the Thames. It didn’t go anywhere, but it was nice to sit and catch up. I sketched Simon (below; I was worried I was making him look like Pep Guardiola or Enzo Maresca, but it looked more like him this time, I always struggle sketching him for some reason). I was starting my new small Stillman & Birn brown paper sketchbook which would be my ‘people sketching’ book for this trip, and indeed I would get a lot of use from it in Poland at the symposium, Simon was a good page 1 subject. Some ladies were watching me sketch and asked if I could draw them, I respectfully declined (as they weren’t all that respectful themselves).

I tried to draw Richmond Bridge while sat on the boat but only got as far as outlines, I ended up finishing the rest off later on. The bridge dates from the 18th century.

On the train back into central London I sketched a little more in that brown book, this time using some interesting Derwent ‘Inktense’ paints I had picked up, fun to test those out, I don’t think I’ve used them since. I drew my wife, and also drew Simon again looking very different this time. Outside, it started raining, and got very heavy by the time we reached central London. Nothing more English than a mid-August downpour.

an afternoon in hampstead

January 13, 2026January 12, 2026Leave a comment

From Hemel Hemstead to regular old Hampstead, a place I’m a lot more familiar with. It was a nice summery day, and we went a few stops down the old Northern Line to look around. I did a quick sketch of Heath Street looking uphill past the tube station. These quick pen sketches while I’m waiting for people are often my favourite types, getting as much in as quickly as I can in a busy city. I love taking my time but dashing with a fountain pen is very liberating. I picked up a new book in Primrose Hill this summer by the artist David Gentleman called ‘Lessons for Young Artists’, a signed copy full of simple but powerful advice. I know, I know I’m not a ‘Young Artist’, but hey I’m significantly younger than David Gentleman so comparatively I still qualify. I’m a huge fan of David Gentleman; his book ‘London You’re Beautiful has pride of place on my shelf, and I look through it more than most books. I don’t often draw in a looser sketching style like he does, but when I do it feels like I’ve caught a bit more of how I really see London. It’s not static or linear, but organic and full of often incompatible personalities. London annoys me, but I can’t get enough of it, I don’t live there any more but my head is always in its space. The tree below, a huge London Plane in the shaded backstreet of Oriel Place is one of my favourite trees in London. We sat for a while eating our crepes, I did a quick sketch.

We walked down to St. John-at-Hampstead church down Church Row, looked about for a bit, then I stayed down and did some sketching, drawing the tall house next to the graveyard that comes right out of an old novel. This street has had a lot of celebrated residents. H.G. Wells (he of the Time Machine) lived at number 17; Giles Gilbert Scott (he of the red phone box) lived number 26. Peter Cook also lived at number 17 in the 1960s, and would write here with Dudley Moore, as well as hosting parties. Famous scientist Henry Cavendish lived at number 34; he discovered Hydrogen, though he called it ‘inflammable air’ (he got that right). The most well-known resident of number 12, which I drew, was a 19th century Christian Socialist called Edward Vansittart-Neale, who opened the first co-op store in London. Everybody needs good neighbours. It’s very picture-book Hampstead around here, the sort of place a main character walks down in a soppy movie before bumping into a rich American out walking a small dog and spilling their big coffee before opening a small antiques shop or bookstore and we’ve all seen those films. It’s nice down here though. I drew the graveyard a couple of years ago.

Burnt Oak Broadway, corner of Stag Lane

January 10, 2026January 9, 2026Leave a comment

Here are a couple of drawings from Burnt Oak that I did last summer. Specifically, Burnt Oak Broadway. I mentioned in a previous post that Edgware High Street was part of Edgware Road which is part of Watling Street which was an ancient Roman Road running from Dover to Wroxeter, passing through London and running in a north-westerly straight line, give or take. The A5, in modern parlance. It was probably a route before the Romans came as well, used by the ancient Britons, and we don’t really know what it was called before the Saxons migrated here from mainland Europe and called it Watling Street, or Wæcelinga Stræt, after a tribe that lived around what we call St. Alban’s now, the people of Waecla, or Waeclingas. Watling Street also marked the border between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms under Alfred and the Viking-ruled territory of the Danelaw. Our side of the street, in Burnt Oak, that would have been in the Danelaw, which explains a few things about us (what’s the Old Norse for “yeah what you looking at, come on then”), with our longships and our Odins, while those posh Saxons lived over there in Harrow with their burnt cakes and their Wodens. Burnt Oak is where I was born and grew up, and supposedly has its origins in Roman times (what’s the Latin for “yeah what you looking at, come on then”) and refers to the old practice of burning an oak tree to mark boundaries (a simple sign would have probably been easier). When we say we are going ‘Up the Watling’ we are not referring to Watling Street, but to Watling Avenue which turns downhill from here. This part of Watling Street, Edgware Road, the A5 whatever, is called Burnt Oak Broadway. Hey this is Britain, we can have as many names for things as we bloody well like. One summer morning I got up and walked up to the top of the Watling, and stood on Burnt Oak Broadway looking over at the junction with Stag Lane. This junction is ancient, and you could grow ancient waiting for the bloody lights to change, and is probably named after the Bald Faced Stag pub which would have been to my left on the Broadway before it was closed about a decade or so ago. All the old pubs are closing, there will be none left soon. There are none left around here. That’s a different story. The large building on the left with the clock on top has stood there for many years, and reminds me so much of being a kid. It was a department store for a long time, but it reminds me of my Nan, because I would see it when going to her flat, which was just across the street further down the Broadway, or in the Stag, where she would spend most days. Across the junction on Stag Lane, that building painted an ugly blue is now an amusement arcade and casino called Silvertime, well I say amusement, who really knows. It’s in the former location of Nat West Bank, and this was my branch when I opened my first account as a kid, do you remember those porcelain NatWest piggy banks? My mum or dad still have them somewhere I think. Sad to see the bank closed. There used to be two NatWests in Burnt Oak, both closed now. There is another blue Silvertime across the street, also located in a closed down bank, where the old Midland Bank (later HSBC) used to be. Funny how these casinos open in old banks. I really don’t know why they have to paint these old buildings bright blue though. Next door is a Romanian food market, and a restaurant next to that. There’s a sizeable Romanian community in Burnt Oak now, that was not there when I left. My mum did have a friend from Romania when I was a kid, she used to work with him and we would often meet with his family. He had escaped Ceaucescu’s brutal regime in the 70s or 80s (hiding in a box, apparently), and was able to bring his family over after that. I still remember when the communist regimes fell, and he was finally able to go and visit his homeland. Last time I saw him he had opened a bakery on Burnt Oak Broadway, about seventeen years ago just down from here, and he gave me a massive plate of pastries, but that’s gone now. Everything changes, you can’t stop it, but we’ve all got our stories in these places.

Further down the Broadway, opposite the flats where my Nan used to lived (when she wasn’t in the Stag), I stood under a tree and drew this on the morning before heading off on my trip to Poland. This building is in a sorry state, disused, boarded up. When I was younger it was a Mecca bingo hall, but closed more than ten years ago. We love leaving this big old buildings empty and derelict. Years ago it used to be a cinema, when my Mum was a girl, the Savoy, she remembers seeing Calamity Jane there as a kid. Someone contacted me to let me know that there are proposals to convert this space and the spaces next to it into new flats, with concerns about some more local history being lost to the march of redevelopment. Luxury flats are probably better than bright blue ‘adult gaming centres’, but London is at the mercy of big corporate property developers these days. Communities would be nice, and they still exist, if you want it. Pubs would be nice, and newsagents, and a post office, and banks with humans, and a cafe where you can get a nice cup of tea. It’s funny, I like drawing these big old buildings whose presence echoes so much through not only my own history but that of my family and local friends, yet I think I only ever stepped foot in here once in my life, when it was a bingo hall when I was a kid, and I am probably misremembering that for somewhere else. Memory and Nostalgia are funny things. I was considering writing a book called “I Remember When Things Used To Be A Little Bit Different From How They Are Now” but things keep changing and changing again. So I will just keep on drawing what I see, until it does. These were the only sketches I did in Burnt Oak in this trip but I did more around London, stay tuned for those, they won’t all come with maudlin’ nostalgic stories, but most will.

highwaymen on the high street

January 5, 2026Leave a comment

Time to get on with 2025, because 2026 isn’t starting too well. So, let’s go back to last summer and my trip back across The Pond. Just around the corner from where we left off (“Edgware and its Ghosts“) is one of the oldest buildings in Edgware, having been here long before it became part of Metroland. If there are ghosts anywhere in Edgware, surely it would be here. This row next to the old War Memorial on the High Street, around the corner from Station Road, are some of the oldest buildings still standing in Edgware. These date from about the 16th Century, others on the row from the 17th and 18th. Hundreds of years ago this was a coaching inn on the Edgware Road, which is the old Roman road of Watling Street that runs north-west out of London in a straight line across England. Imagine the people that would have stayed here. One of them was reputedly the infamous highwayman Dick Turpin. I don’t know if he stayed there, but Turpin and his gang of thugs (the Essex Gang) did commit an extremely violent robbery at the nearby farm of Joseph Lawrence in 1735. I won’t recount the whole story, but Turpin was a horrible thug, not a dashing hunk on a horse. Still, we grew up knowing that Turpin spent time around here. Turpin time. I had a Dick Turpin ‘Wanted’ poster on my bedroom wall when I was a kid that I got on a school trip to York, where he was hanged. His ghost probably isn’t floating around here anywhere, in a tricorn hat and holding one of those flintlock pistols, but let’s say it is, what the hell. Highwaymen were a big thing back in the 18th century weren’t they, and they all had similar-themed names, your Dick Turpin, your Tom Cox, your Willy Plunkett, and there was also James Hind whose middle initial may have been B. These days the old coaching inn is a restaurant called Himalayan Spice. So it went from ‘ave a rest’ to ‘Everest’. They went from ‘mounting horses’ to just ‘mountains’. Sorry, these puns are much, much worse than usual. Wait I have one more, they went from ‘Stand and Deliver’ to ‘Sit-Down or Take-Away’. That’s not bad, I might use that if I ever eat there. I didn’t eat there this time, but did poke my head in the door, it’s still pretty historic looking inside (and the food smelled really good). I haven’t been in there since I was a kid. Back then it was an Italian restaurant, the Vecchia Romagna, and my mum actually worked there. This building will always be the Vecchia Romagna to me. I’m amazed I have never sketched it before now. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a waiter like the ones my mum worked with, tea-towel over the arm, white shirt, handful of plates. Then I got old enough to actually do that, and that’s how I earned my spending money as a teenager. Not here though, but in many places around Edgware and across north-west London, waitering jobs, serving tea and wine, laying tables, washing up. Even though I’m still alive, there’s probably a ghost of me floating around Edgware carrying a small teapot and a platter of vol-au-vents. Or a sketchbook, there will definitely be a ghost of me holding a sketchbook on the streets of Davis. Since ghosts don’t really exist I say you can choose to have loads of them in all different places, even when you are alive.

Hopefully I get around to posting the rest of my sketches from Edgware and Burnt Oak soon, because I have some more. This is a really interesting document from 2013 on the London Borough of Harrow website (because this side of the street is in Harrow, not Barnet), which goes into the history of this part of Edgware and focuses on a lot of the historic architectural details of these old buildings. I really should get around to sketching Whitchurch Lane, just around the corner from here, that has some really interesting old buildings. Next time.

newman center on fifth

November 1, 2025October 31, 20254 Comments

Here is another one from July, drawn on 5th Street, the Newman Catholic Center building. There was work being done on this place and it’s large green area on the corner of C St, where the grass in front of the building had been paved over. I’m always drawn to triangular shapes, and the way that the overhanging shadows create an interesting contrast, and I like blue and old wood with character. I’ve drawn the building before (even drew it a few months before in April, from across the street. This is another panorama over two pages that I like to draw because I think, oh yeah this would be good in a book about Davis in that specific format, and as yet more than a decade after having the idea I have not published that book, but technically I am working on it because I keep doing more drawings, that’s the same as writing. I stood behind the picket fence, and you can see the top of it. I love a picket fence, it reminds me I am in suburban America, which twenty years later is still funny to me. I don’t love drawing picket fences though, it becomes tedious very quickly. Anyway I sketched not realizing the view would change very soon after and this would be the last time to catch it in this particular guise, I am glad I got the picket fence in.

Here it is in October, sketched from across the street. As you can see, it’s now a different colour, creamy, the picket fence is gone, even around the grassy enclosure which now has a more solid wooden fence. There are two metal structures (pergolas? I’m not good with architectural terms) in front of the building now to create some shaded space I suppose. I love drawing that tree, so I focused a lot on that. You can see the bench commemorating Natalie Coroner, the young police officer who was killed by here several years ago. The city just opened a new splashpad for kids in the down the road named for her memory. And here is the sketch I did in April for comparison from roughly the same view across the street, stood maybe a few feet to the left, and a bit more coloured in. You can see the grass that was there (behind that picket fence, it takes a lot more effort to colour in the areas behind a picket fence). It is interesting to see how a place has changed over the course of just a few months. Here again is one of the reasons I sketch, the track the changes in the place where I live, even if I don’t always realize that’s what I’m doing, I don’t necessarily sketch places knowing they will soon change.

Downtown at the Start of July

October 30, 2025Leave a comment

And so we continue our journey through Summer 2025, and it’s really and truly summer when you hit the first of July. Davis is a bit quieter in July, with most of the students being away, but it’s not exactly a ghost town, and the lunchtime food spots were surprisingly busy. There’s a lot of summer activity here, and on campus the fiscal close period keeps all the financial-minded staff busy. On this lunchtime I ate downtown and then stood 2nd Street next to the Institute of Odd Fellows (IOOF; I always think it says “100F” as in degrees Fahrenheit, average temperature in a Davis summer. Or more. This summer was not as bad, as it turns out, at least with the weather, not so much with the political climate. I stood next to the Handheld Pie truck that is parked underneath the big mural, I have only ever had their pie once at the Farmer’s Market. I listened to a football podcast or an audiobook or something. They say as an urban sketcher you should never sketch with headphones on, because you want to listen to the environment and soak in the senses of the world around you, and yeah sure if I was going to somewhere exotic or new, but I know what Davis sounds like, I’m wearing my airpods. I have been inside the IOOF, once, for an AYSO volunteers’ event about nine years ago (I sketched it).

This is on 4th St, it;s a Law Office I think, I’ve drawn it before. Triangular house with, not a tree but a telegraph pole in front of it, pretty standard stuff for me. I used to wonder what I’d have been like as a lawyer, I used to think I’d be good at it, but I couldn’t handle the stress. I don’t like whiskey either, I hear they like their whiskey in a crystal decanter. When I was at school one of our teachers (Mr Dadswell) started a Law GCSE, a one year program for those who were interested, and I decided to sign up along with a mate of mine who ended up being far more interested in it than he expected and even (several years later) did some law as part of his degree program at uni. However I found myself bored almost straight away, learning about torts (which it turns out are not German cakes), and long words like jurisprudence and adjudication (I was more interested in the etymologies), plus some useful Latin phrases like Ultra Vires and Res Judicata, which meant nothing to me, though one phrase stuck with me forever and I still use it: ‘Volentia Non Fit Injuria’. Great phrase to bang out in a Cockney accent, “Nah mate, volentia non fit injuria, up yours innit.” I think I only ended up going to have the classes due to being busy with my art A-Level, and ended up giving up the Law GCSE after less than a couple of months, it wasn’t my thing. There were so many books, so many laws and precedents and trials to read. Imagine being a law student. People used to say, you could be a courtroom artist! We did visit Hendon Magistrates Court one time as part of the class to watch how proceedings happened, but it was a bit boring. I didn’t expect it to be like some TV legal drama, which I never found interesting anyway. I hated all those American law shows, with their good looking attorneys and their tense courtroom battles, “Objection!” “Overruled!” “No more questions Your Honor!”. I was never much into the British ones either, with their wigs and robes and confusing titles. I didn’t even watch Rumpole of the Bailey, though I liked Leo McKern, who wouldn’t. There was a daytime show called ‘Crown Court’ when I was a kid and it was so boring, I swear they used to put it on during the daytime just to bore kids into going back to school. It was actually a drama, but so dull and wooden I assumed it was just real events. I was never going to be a lawyer.

Here we are again on 3rd Street, outside Dunloe Brewing. I have been in here a few times, usually a mid-afternoon beer on a Saturday after some sketching, though I don’t really enjoy beers that much these days, so many are just so hoppy or bitter, I am losing my taste for them. So whenever I’ve been in here, I don’t think I’ve finished my beer. I like the place though, it usually has a welcoming atmosphere, though the decor is very minimalist brewery, it’s built so you might strike up a conversation with people. Big tables for finishing off those sketches too, though I didn’t pop in after drawing this one. The fourth of July, most people on campus got off early. I enjoyed drawing the brickwork, and that big tree as well, which hides the vanishing point so people can’t check if I’m getting my perspective right. This was a bike shop years ago, I do remember coming in and getting new handle grips here once. I can never get those on, you have to push really hard and I’m just not that hard.

I’ve never been in this store either, it’s called ‘Yesterday’, on the E Street Plaza. There have been a few things here in my time in Davis, none of which I’ve ever been into. The old Avid Reader kids book store used to be next door, 20 years ago, when I first worked there I had to help move them out and rearrange all the books in the upstairs section of the main store on 2nd Street. That was less interesting than it sounds, but I remember I had a nice co-worker to talk to. I stood next to the Basin Robbins store on E St – been in there a few times, I like a milkshake every now and then, more so this year, it’s been a tough year – and bumped into my old friend from the Soccer and Lifestyle shop while I sketched, we talked about football shirts obviously and our trips abroad, he’d been to Italy, told me about the places in the Cinqueterre that I would definitely love to sketch, and we talked about the brand Kelme that used to make Real Madrid kits in the 90s and now make Watford’s shirts. I think Yesterday is a clothes store, I would see quite a lot of teenagers going in there, they like fashion, the teenagers. And that haircut they all have now, the one where it’s a bit curly at the front and shorter at the sides, they love that, the teenagers. When I was a teenager I was into football shirts, drawing, and guitars, so a bit like now. I didn’t have too long to sketch so kept this minimal, and did not finish off later and colouring-in later.

This is one of those trees that goes very bright pink all of a sudden, a bit like me when I get embarrassed for not knowing the names of any of these trees. People do tell me as well, but I forget. I stood on the corner of 2nd and D one lunchtime and drew this tree, outside a frozen yogurt place of which there are so many in Davis (I’ve not been in this one). Yogurt, I spell it ‘yoghurt’ of course. It’s nice, but I don’t eat it much, not when there is Baskin-Robbins milkshake nearby. In fact this is very close, on the same block, as the first sketch in this post so it’s like we have come full circle, which is not easy on a grid system where everything is square or rectangular. Sketching every part of downtown feels like a sketch safari, except if I was on a real safari I’d be a bit useless at identifying anything, “there’s one of those big cat things with the spots, and over there is of those big grey animals with the long noses and the ears, and look there’s a stripy horse thing, I call it a Zebra but you would call it a Zeebra, oh no wait it is a horse standing next to a fence, never mind.”

Moe’s Books

October 28, 2025October 28, 20254 Comments

There are certain themed subjects I like to fill my sketchbooks with if I can. The old urban sketchers rule that every sketchbook needs a dinosaur and a classic car, well I try my best there, even if the dinosaur is me. Fire hydrants, I try to sketch ’em all, like Pokemon Go. I never see people out playing that any more. Pubs, especially old pubs, I try to draw as many as I can especially in England, because they are all disappearing, like the Pokemon Go players. Tube stations, they might not be disappearing but some of the older ones are getting knocked down and expanded into bigger more modern stations, and I like those old historic buildings. Some of them. The other thing I always feel a great need to sketch are bookshops, independent bookshops preferably, as they play a major role in their local communities and are also constantly under peril. Before moving out here I worked for a small bookshop in Finchley in north London for a few years (not in the shop bit, but the office in the basement) and it was a good place to work (and I like Finchley as an area), but also a real insight into how hard it is for small businesses in the face of current market forces. They ended up closing less than two years after I moved out here and I wish I had at least sketched the store for posterity. Many other small bookshops were closing at the time, and replaced with what, more estate agents? So fast forward twenty and I’m pleased to see that, over here and over there too, there are still many small bookshops hanging on, and in many communities really finding their place again. The first place I worked when I came to California was a small independent bookshop, the Avid Reader, and they faced the challenge of Borders and Amazon until Borders went away and Amazon didn’t. They are still there (with new owners now) and always busy, I’d say one of the most important places in downtown Davis. However one of the first bookshops I went into when we first moved to America 20 years ago was this one, Moe’s on Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley. It’s a big store with new and used books over several floors, and feels like an old-school well-used bookshop. Anyway, Summer holidays had started and so one day I went down to Berkeley with my seventeen-year-old to get out of Davis and look around Berkeley, we spent our time walking about campus, visiting that big games shop, spending ages in record shops, and looking around Moe’s, among other shops. We were having those massive waffles at the place next door, and while waiting for them I dashed across the street to start a sketch of the bookshop. The big red and white awning is characteristic of this store. Inside I found a big old illustrated book about old myths and witches that I used to have when I was a kid, I would be obsessed not only with the stories but mostly with the drawings, which would inspire me to draw and write my own stories. I should have bought it, but instead I bought a copy of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda for some reason. I had to stop myself buying this big illustrated book of Celtic legends (Celtic as in Irish and Scottish, not as in the football club from Glasgow, it wasn’t full of pictures of Henrik Larsson or Roy Aitken). I had to save some money to spend in Amoeba music. I’m glad to see Moe’s is still there and doing well, and now it’s another bookshop in my sketchbook. I see this though and it makes me hungry for those waffles.

Here are some sketches from the Amtrak train we took down to Berkeley from Davis. Above I am practicing my perspective as I always do on the train. There’s California outside the window, the view going over the Delta (the yellow bit on the right is higher than the eye-level yellow bit on the left, perspective fans, because of ‘hills’). It was a bit bumpy but I enjoyed sketching quickly in that brush pen. I sketched a couple of characters too, below, I mean passengers not characters, they are not in a story. Well maybe they are in a story, but who am I too judge. I’ve done a lot of quick people sketching this year, it’s good practice. I heard that they have recently ended the UC Berkeley-UC Davis shuttle connecting the two campuses, which is terrible news, especially as I never took it in twenty years of living here.