underneath the arches

August 24, 20112 Comments

One from London I forgot to post: Admiralty Arch, at the entrance to the Mall. It had been a sunny morning, I had drawn Buckingham Palace and had a nice look at an exhibition of amazing airplane paintings and drawings at the Mall Galleries, speaking to a nice artist who encouraged me to join the British Aviation Artists Guild (I forget the correct name), only problem being I don’t live in Britain any more, and I haven’t drawn that many planes (except my son’s toy planes, of course). Still I really want to draw some, I was inspired by what I saw. I grew up near RAF Musuem at Hendon so I will for sure sketch there on my next trip back (I did attempt to last December, but got caught in that huge blizzard).

I went and sketched Admiralty Arch, standing underneath a huge heavy tree canopy, and a good job too, for it started to bucket down. I kept on drawing all those windows, but was sad that the sunny day had turned so rainy again. Now I remember British summers, I said to myself. I spent the rest of the day getting wet, and bustled about in crowds, and through shops looking for things to bring back home. Next day, I went to Lisbon, and everything was sunny again…

a very fine cat indeed

August 16, 2011August 16, 20111 Comment

Look what I got in the mail last week! A couple of years ago, on a cold gloomy December afternoon, I did a drawing in London’s Gough Square off Fleet Street, one of my favourite spots in the city, of the statue of Hodge, Dr. Samuel Johnson’s beloved cat. Johnson’s house, now a musuem, is in the background. For those of you who don’t know, Samuel Johnson wrote the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, he made lots of quotes that he knew would make popular pub quiz questions two hundred years later, and his life was chronicled by his friend James Boswell. The kind folk at Johnson’s House (who also let me do some sketching there last winter) have turned my drawing into a card which you can buy at the Johnson’s House Musuem in London (all proceeds benefit the musuem). This is a great place and offers an interesting and relaxing look at Johnson’s life in mid-eighteenth century London.

So if you are in London and would like to buy one of these cards, please visit Dr. Johnson’s House at 17 Gough Square, and why not have a look around?

Dr. Johnson’s House official site

Previous sketches at Johnson’s House (“For there is in London all that life can afford”)

they’re changing the guard at buckingham palace

August 2, 2011August 2, 2011Leave a comment

Perhaps it was the hangover of royal wedding fever that got me wanting to go to and sketch at Buckingham Palace. Maybe it was just that I decided, on this sketching day in London, to get out at Green Park, where I’d not been in such a long time, and walk over to the Mall rather than head down to the River or the City. Either way, I had forgotten about the Changing of the Guard, and arrived at the Palace about half an hour before it started, just as the crowds were gathering. The Queen was home, as the sovereign’s flag was flying, and amazingly the sun was shining. It had rained every day, heavily, since I’d been in London and so perhaps this was to be my lucky day! (Fat chance, it bucketed down later on.) ‘The Mall’ by the way is pronounced as in ‘pal’ not as in ‘small’, a note to American tourists. There are no Sears stores or Gaps or food courts (though I’m sure Victoria has a few secrets). The Queen’s guards know their audience though. Sticking to tradition, as they performed their historic ceremony at the gates of the royal residence, the Scots guards in their bright red jackets and tall bearskin hats belted out the theme tune to ‘Superman’. Or perhaps it was ‘Superma’am’?

I made hay while the sun shone. That’s St.James’s Park above, one of the smaller but more decorated Royal Parks, looking off towards Big Ben and the London Eye. Below, a statue of the Queen Mum, and behind her a statue of Colin Firth.

i scream for 11p lemonade sparkles

August 2, 2011August 2, 20113 Comments

The irony about ice cream vans when we were kids is that they really kept us healthy. Sure they offered us Rocket ice lollies and Funny Foots and 99s with a Flake, but we got our exercise in running after them. We would hear the jingling of the bells (thinking about it now I can still taste vanilla on a humid July afternoon), and there would be a dash about the house, what do you want? Quick! Quick! followed by the mad scramble outside along with the other kids on the block, only to see the ice cream van which leave the bushy corner of Kirton Walk and head down towards Colchester Road. You knew it had a stop about halfway up there, so you ran and ran and ran, until you got a stitch and could barely breathe let alone order an 11p lemonade Sparkle. More often than not, we’d make it, and come away happy (and well exercised). It was an achievement, something Kids Today surely don’t understand, they probably download their ice lollies from the internet or something.

This one wasn’t going anywhere. It was parked outside the British Museum. It has a very happy face, doesn’t it? I think they should still make people run a couple of blocks before they allow them to buy anything though. It’s all part of the experience. We did also do a little sketching in the British Museum Great Court, which I hadn’t visited in years. I’d like to spend some more time in there sketching, really do a big one of the roof and go through all the great exhibits, but alas I live so far away these days. It’s such a great place to visit, and completely free to enter.

aye aye, captain

August 2, 2011August 2, 2011Leave a comment

The Captain Kidd pub in Wapping. My friend and fellow sketcher Simon has been telling me about it for a long time, but we’d never been because it’s, you know, in Wapping. Still, with Wapping and it’s less salubrious denizens Murdoch and pals being very much in the news that week it seemed like a good idea to pop down there. We took the London Overground (the old orange East London line, now revamped and extended with swanky new trains and a new name) and went down by the river. The old pub literally backs onto the thames, and we grabbed a pint each and sat on a bench looking across the water. The rain would eventually force us inside, but not after a quick sketch of the scenery, and another attempt at sketching my friend (who really should be very easy to capture, but I always get him just wrong, it’s almost become a running theme; next time, I promise, I’ll practise more!). After some catching up and quite a bit of laughing, we sketched inside and I drew the scene above, before I had to head back home. Such a brief trip to London this time, not long enough with my good friends!

if the sun don’t come you get a tan from standing in the english rain

July 31, 20111 Comment

The smart thing to do would be to check the weather forecast and then decide what to do, but of course as anyone who is familiar with London summers (or winters, autumns and springs) knows, the weather forecast cannot be relied upon anyway. We’d planned to do a walking tour around Westminster (one of the London Walks; I illustrated their book a couple of years ago, including the chapter on Secret Westminster) and wasn’t going to be put off by a few drops of rain. Indeed it looked like it would be just another breezy, grey Saturday, maybe the odd drop here and there but nothing to worry us. We met the group outside a tourist-packed Westminster station, giving me enough time to grab a ten minute sketch of Big Ben (above) before learning about Westminster’s secrets. As we stood behind Westminster Abbey looking at Oliver Cromwell across the road, the rain suddenly turned into a torrent, and pretty much stayed that way for the next few hours.

It was an interesting tour, to be sure, despite the massive downpour. We went down backstreets of Westminster I never even knew about, and took a stroll through the old Westminster school. Of course I attempted to sketch as we went along, which was a challenge I’ll admit. Once it was all over (a little earlier than planned, I suspect), we went to a pub in Whitehall, the Old Shades, to dry off and have something to eat.

Not that the rain deterred us too much. We still spent a day around central London, popping into the National Gallery, squeezing through the crowds at Hamley’s, looking through the football shirt shops (hey, it’s me).

And then in the evening, a night out in Camden Town with friends (one of whom, Ralph, I hadn’t seen in over twenty years). Before meeting up, I grabbed another very quick sketch standing on Camden High street. So despite all the rain, that was a fun day, and it was a fun night as well.

sitting in an english garden waiting for the sun

July 30, 2011July 30, 2011Leave a comment

I always get up early on my first morning back in Burnt Oak. Often I will go and sketch in the kitchen, listen to the news, have a cup of tea. It was pretty gloomy out, so I looked out the window and sketched the back garden. Later on, it would rain, and rain hard, and we would be out in central London getting drenched, but at this point it was just overcast, a typical changeable English summer.

I drew these the next day, in the rain. This gnome has slept in that garden since I was a kid, and though his paint has peeled away, he hasn’t woken up yet. These were drawn onto a postcard which I sent to my son. I sent him postcards nearly every day, each with a drawing on them. I must say, this is very much the English palette. While Lisbon has a lot of yellow and blue, London has its greeny grey and brown.

all around the clocktower

June 17, 2011June 17, 20113 Comments

A bigger, more complicated drawing for the previously mentioned amazing pen. This is Crouch End, an area of London we lived in for three years. This is the clocktower at the junction of Crouch End Broadway. This took a while. The Old Crown pub one I drew before took just under an hour, while this took several hours, spread over a couple of evenings and a lunchtime, but it’s bigger and more ridiculously detailed. I haven’t drawn a mega-tiny-detailed street scene in a while, and of course I’m playing with (and draining all the ink from) this incredible pen. It’s like the elder wand of pens, it just feels so nice to draw with that i want to keep drawing.

Drawn with uniball signo UM-151 on Canson classic cream drawing paper (first time i’ve used it since getting it at last year’s portland symposium), size is a bit shy of 8″x8″. I think I’ll do some more of these.

easy sits the crown

June 16, 20118 Comments

I found an AMAZING pen. The Uni-ball Signo UM-151, seemed harmelss enough, but when I picked it up for the first time and wrote my name it was like that scene in the wandshop in Harry Potter, “the pen chooses the artist”. I have to try this out in a drawing, I said to myself. It flowed amazingly, it stayed wonderfully black, and it was just so easy to use. Sure, it could not take a wash – that’s ok. I have a lot of pens that can. But would it work on that waxy smooth regular Moleskine paper found in their non-watercolour sketchbooks? That yellowy paper upon which I have tried and failed to find a pen I enjoyed using on it? (For my Davis Moleskine I settled on the Pitt pens, as the micron just wouldn’t work with it. The one I sketched this in is one I began back in 2006…) Oh yes, it worked alright. I spent a lunchtime drawing the Old Crown pub on Highgate Hill (above) from a photo, and just fell in love with the pen. I’ve already started planning out whole drawing projects around it, like a surprise midfield playmaker. I may even take it to London with me, to meet the family. I only hope the ink doesn’t run out before Lisbon, as these pens aren’t easy to find (I see stocking up online somewhere in my future).

Incidentally, I only ever went to that pub once, but I lived a short walk from here on Hornsey Lane for three years. I used to catch the 143 bus from just across the road every day (that mad dash in the morning, oh London commuting I miss you…), and one day I did sketch it in my old long-ago ‘blue’ sketchbook, but never drew it again. I took a photo on a trip a few years ago and am only now drawing it. It’s a cool building, in an area of cool buildings.

The pens have a new king.

goodbye piccadilly, farewell leicester square

May 3, 2011May 3, 20112 Comments

You’ve got to love the old London pub. Sure, most pubs these days aren’t that old-fashioned, appealing to a younger crowd who need somewhere to spend the weekday hours from 5:30 to 11:00, while high beer prices are making the tradiitonal fans stay at home and watch pubs on the telly. There are still those that look the part, however, and here are a couple that I like. The Tipperary, above, is not somewhere I ever went particualrly often, but I appreciate its history – over three centuries ago it was London’s first Irish pub, and the first place outside Ireland to serve Guinness. It’s on Fleet Street, not far from the Cheshire Cheese. Below, The Ship, a proper Soho pub, one I used to go to many many times. It’s on Wardour Street, near the now-closed (and now reopened as a burger joint, I hear) Intrepid Fox, another beloved former haunt.

And you know what folks, these two drawings are available for you to buy on my Etsy store…and these pubs would look very nice side by side on your wall!