sketching south of the river

June 22, 2012June 22, 20126 Comments

‘Bunting’ is a word which, sure I had heard of, but had completely forgotten. It’s not a verb, not that I know of, it’s the stuff you hang up all over the place with the coloured triangles, to decorate in times of celebration. Not a word I hear very often, I don’t think it’s used in America. Anyway, the bunting was blowing wildly in the wind on this day, while I was sketching beside Southwark Bridge on the south bank of the Thames. It was the first day of the Jubilee weekend, the Jubilee stewards were already out keeping an eye on things (one kept coming over to see what I was sketching, but in an interested way not an ‘oi what you doin’ way), and people and tourists (who are people too) strolled this way and that. A rather terrible street band played in the underpass behind me, correctly thinking that the tunnel would amplify their music. Nonetheless, the general mood was upbeat, and I rather enjoy sketching this part of London.

Here is another sketch drawn by the river – it is a pretty looking house right in between Shakespeare’s Globe theatre and Tate Modern. I was drawn to the red door, though workmen kept coming in and out, busy preparing for some big event it would seem. When I was done, I went and read the little stone plaque beside the door. It turns out that none other than Sir Christopher Wren lived here during the construction of St.Paul’s Cathedral, which is directly opposite across the river! For those who are not familiar with London’s architectural history, Wren designed and built many amazing churches in London after the Great Fire of 1666, but St.Paul’s is his masterpiece and greatest legacy. Pretty convenient location then, you may think, well they didn’t have Millennium Bridge in those days, or even Southwark Bridge, so he would probably have had to take the ferry across. I’m actually a little surprised he didn’t think to be a bridge builder as well (actually, he did design a bridge built in Cambridge).

More London sketches to come…

camping by the river

June 21, 2012June 21, 20123 Comments

As some of you may have been aware, this year is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee – celebrating 60 years on the throne. It’s only the second time in the history of the country that a monarch has reached that milestone, the previous one of course being Queen Victoria. Long live our noble Queens, eh. On Sunday June 3 (59 years and 1 day since the actual coronation) a huge and historic River Pageant was planned, taking the royal party down the Thames followed by a large flotilla of boats. I was going to a street party in my old road so was unable to stand by the Thames in the rain with thousands of others (ah well, next time), so I went down to the river on the Saturday (June 2nd, 59 years since the coronation!) and sketched some of the people who would be braving the elements to see the Queen. This was down by Tate Modern, and the weather, while overcast, was very pleasant. The folks setting up camp had come from all over the UK, and the atmosphere was very happy. I think they were even looking forward to Sunday’s impending rain – nothing like a brolly, a cup of tea, a nice bit of cake and the Queen sailing by, Rule Britannia. Fair play to them. I sketched, and then moved on down the Thames to sketch some more.

the clock at the top of burnt oak

June 21, 2012June 21, 20126 Comments

This was sketched on Burnt Oak Broadway, at the top of Watling Avenue, on the corner of Stag Lane. This is another from the part of London where I am from, and this is the iconic building with the clock tower that was originally the Co-Op’s ‘finest grocery store’. That was long gone by the time I came into the world, and it was several things while I was growing up (I recall buying a stylus for my record player in there when it was a department store), I think it’s Peacocks now. Either way, that big clock tower sits at the top of Burnt Oak looking over us all, and it always reminds me of my Nan, who we called Nam, who lived in the flats across the road and spent many days in the Stag pub, directly opposite. Looking at it makes me feel very sad, and very happy.

On the other corner of Stag Lane there is the Nat West bank. This is the branch where I had my first ever bank account. Kids form the 1980s in Britain will remember the Nat West piggies, and I had the whole set of piggy banks, awarded when you saved to a certain level. My dad still has them, though one of them broke falling from a shelf when I was a teenager (yes, I had old piggy banks on my shelf as a teenager, and I used them too).

It was a cloudy day when I sketched this, the first day of June. We were coming to the end of our trip, and I was feeling pretty exhausted. Travelling back home takes it out of you, so it’s nice to unwind and just draw stuff. I haven’t done much drawing since I got back to Davis, hardly any in fact, and stress is getting the better of me, so I think it’s time I took my own advice and made time for it.

two cities, two views from the bridge

June 20, 2012June 21, 20122 Comments

I love Hungerford Bridge. I can’t express this enough. Not so much to draw, but to draw from. The old Hungerford Bridge was a nightmare, rattling and rusty, a walkway tacked onto the side of the real bridge itself (a railway bridge, stretching south from Charing Cross station). My memory recalls it as like an urban version of one of those rope bridges from Indiana Jones or something, with the deadly brown Thames rolling beneath the cracks. The most annoying thing was that it was on the wrong side of Hungerford Bridge, for those who want a nice view of Parliament and the City of Westminster. While the railway bridge is still there, a decade ago they finally built two modern and spectacular new pedestrian bridges on either side of it, thereby giving us access to the amazing view above. I am still in awe that this bridge exists (technically it is now a trilogy of bridges, the two pedestrian ones being more properly called the Golden Jubilee Bridges, nice shiny name but a bit of a mouthful). One day I may draw it, but the novelty of drawing from it has not gone away just yet. I had promised my son I would include the London Eye in one of my sketches – I do like the wheel, but really don’t like drawing it! The bridge is Westminster Bridge, and the clocktower, commonly called Big Ben after the large bell inside, is siply called the Clock Tower – for now. The powers that be decided recently that they would like to rename it Elizabeth Tower, in honour of the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee (the tower on the other side of parliament is called Victoria Tower, renamed from the previous King’s Tower for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The Thames will always be the Thames, however (unless Britain gets totally broke and sells the naming rights, the JP Morgan River or something; I am surprised they haven’t considered such things already).

After completing the first sketch, I then decided that I needed to do a full two-spread panorama from the eastern span, looking out towards the City of London. It was an incredibly windy, sunny day, and lots of people passed by as I sketched. It took me nearly two hours to draw the view below, the skyline of London, ever evolving. In the right hand side, the tall glass 1984-ish Shard building pokes into view. St.Paul’s of course is in the middle, the dome being the symbol of London, and on the right is Cleopatra’s Needle, which of course pre-dates Cleopatra by centuries. Spanning the Thames is Waterloo Bridge, designed by the same fellow that gave us the classic red phone box and the old Bankside power station (now Tate Modern). Click on the sketch below for a larger image.

an afternoon at the allotments

June 20, 2012June 20, 20122 Comments

One Monday afternoon while back in London I went to the East Finchley Allotments. My cousins have an impressive allotment there, and invited me along to do some sketching with them, and catch up after so many years. It’s been a while since I was in East Finchley – I used to pass through on my way to work every day, a million years ago it seems – but I found the place, a large and historic allotment site behind a primary school, surrounded by woods and residences. For those who don’t know, an allotment is kind of like a garden space that you rent and maintain for non-commercial use, a bit like the community gardens you get here in the US. My cousin Dawn (check out her lovely site London Clay Birds), who I had sketchcrawled with a couple of days earlier, met me and showed me around, and we did some more drawing. She built the shed above, in fact, and my other cousin Lester constructed the roof. It was a sketcher’s paradise, and very peaceful too. I drew one of several birdhouses (also Dawn’s creations), in that brown pen I go on about so much. My cousin Claire came along a little later, with their Mum Sue, and we had some lovely catching up. Claire brought her incredible sketchbooks too (check out her site The Quiet Revolution), and then we explored the site a bit more, doing some more drawing.

Some of the allotments really are rambling patches of loveliness, with a lot of hard work and devotion involved. I’m always impressed at the dedication people have to gardening; being essentially living things, gardens are not something you can just ignore. Dawn writes the newsletter for the East Finchley Allotments, and showed me the impressive map she is working on, hand-drawn of course. I like drawing old things like sheds, so we got some more sketching in. The one below drew me in largely because of the French signs in the window.

east finchley shed
It was a hot day, and after stopping to sketch the quick scene below (the sloping grounds of the allotments leading up to a primary school which looks a lot like the one I went to, but isn’t), we all sat in the shade of the allotment and caught up. Dawn gave me a bag of wonderful hand-made goodies, including some of the beautiful London Clay Birds (check them out on her Folksy and Etsy stores). It was a very nice afternoon, I hope to have more of them.

white hart lane

June 18, 2012June 18, 20121 Comment

White Hart Lane Stadium, on Tottenham High Road, home of the mighty Spurs. Well, we could be a bit mightier, but still we’re pretty mighty. We ‘might’ have come third, etc, we ‘might’ have gotten into the Champions League, Harry ‘might’ have committed to staying about four months ago rather than let uncertainty about England affect our previously epic season, etc. It’s all water under the Stamford Bridge now (by the way we did finish above Chelsea, though of course Arsenal pipped us in the end). Ah well! New season, new manager, new kit, new dawn at White Hart Lane. New stadium too, in a few years time, or so the plan goes. I hadn’t been up there in a good while, to the Lane, so on tis one day when a day trip to Brighton was aborted due to very bad traffic, my friend drove me over to Tottenham to look around the Spurs shop (I picked up a nice retro 1981 Cup Final top), and gave me a bit of time to sketch the stadium. There’s no truly great angle to draw it from the outside, so I chose a spot which I think sums up this block. Many of the older buildings which were there the last time I visited have been knocked down, in preparation for the possible new ground, to be built directly north of the current ground which Spurs have occupied since 1899. My older brother, an ever-present at the Lane for several years as a boy himself, took me to games when I was a kid, back in the days of Hoddle, Ossie, Falco, Clemence, the Allens. Whatever happens with this club, I will always have that. The thrill of approaching the stadium after a long walk up the High Road from Seven Sisters, and entering the ground which was smaller then but seemed massive with the packed terraced crowds, reading the matchday programme while bigger men around me sang, swore, shouted and clapped, as real-life football sticker heroes ran around the perfect turf; now that was football.

I didn’t have a great deal of time to sketch, so I drew the stadium and the outline work of the rest, and finished off the detailing and colour later on. I had to make sure there was a lamp-post – legend has it that the grammar school boys who founded the club as Hotspur FC in 1882 would meet beneath a lamp-post (and shortly after that they sacked their first manager, changed the lightbulb and ushered in a new dawn, the first of many).

the brass bands play and feet start to pound

June 17, 20124 Comments

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.

observing the olympic village

June 15, 2012June 15, 2012Leave a comment

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.

a tale of one city

June 9, 20127 Comments

And so here are the drawings I did on the London sketchcrawl. I started off by doing a quick sketch outside Temple station before everyone turned up; I must admit I was pretty nervous about the day!

After everybody had dispersed to sketch this and that, I sat by the Thames catching up with my cousins and drawing the view from the Embankment. The big pointy building in the distance is the Shard, Europe’s brand-new tallest building, ingeniously designed to burst any incoming alien balloon. That’ll show ’em.

Here are a couple of sketches I did after that, the one on the right being up a quiet street in the Temple, and the other being on the less quiet Fleet Street, the Prince Henry Room. The gateway around it is actually a feature of the building, around the gate which on weekdays is open and leads to Temple Church, but on this day was shut to the public. I really should have known. So I sketched the building itself in my beloved brown pen. The London 2012 stamp is one I picked up at Paperchase.

This one above, a smaller quicker sketch of the famous view down Fleet Street, was done at the end of the ‘crawl on the way down to the meeting point. My scanner broke before I could scan it however so I can only post the photo.

And this last one, this was of the Cheshire Cheese pub – no, not that one, a different one on Milford Lane near the Temple. When I heard about it I just had to draw it. Old pub drawing – check. It took a bit of a while, about an hour and a half, and I had to add the colour later on, but it was a fun one to draw.

That really was a great sketchcrawl. I still have plenty more London (and Paris) sketches to post…I just need to get a new scanner!

and far away, a city stands

June 5, 20121 Comment

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.