from tottenham court road, down charing cross road

June 16, 2023June 16, 2023Leave a comment

I had another sketching day out down in central London, going down to Tottenham Court Road station on a Monday morning in mid-May. This area has changed so much. This was always my go-to stop when heading down into central, most of the things I wanted to do were near this station. The Virgin Megastore, the big record store on the corner of Oxford St and Tottenham Court Road, I spent a lot of time in there throughout my teens and early twenties, now of course a distant memory. The British Museum is just a short walk from here, I would go there a lot. The Hellfire Club, later ‘Metros’, and other night-time places we’d go like the Astoria, LA2, Plastic People, Borderline, Marquee, all those were right here, all gawn now. I worked at a chocolate shop (Thorntons) just a little way down Oxford Street, back in 1996. All the music instrument shops at Denmark Street and down Charing Cross Road, some of which are gone, some still remain, all right here. Charing Cross Road itself, I loved all the bookstores down there but I loved Foyles the most. There is still a Foyles and it’s still big, but it’s not in the same place, it’s a little further down, and very clean and well organized. The Foyles I remember was massive but everything was crammed in, literally, and the upstairs was a labyrinthine jumble, and I’d go there looking through all the books on language and travel, I loved it. Now I pop into the current Foyles to see if they have any of my books (they didn’t). And then there’s the tube station, which before was a claustrophobic little station with secret passages and loads of different exits, which was always fun when saying “meet me outside the entrance to Tottenham Court Road”, a rookie mistake. Now, with the Elizabeth Line which brought so much architectural change to this corner of London, the newer version of the station is much bigger, modern, with spacious exits including a large one outside Center Point, which is where I stood to draw the sketch above. I looked north-west to the rooftops that haven’t changed at all, with the interesting blue and cloudy London sky above it. At ground level, a pub called The Flying Horse, which was called The Tottenham when I was younger, often called the only pub on Oxford Street (which is true, other pubs are just off it). There’s a shop next door called BasicMart now, which wasn’t there before and is quite handy to grab a chocolate bar and a fizzy drink when peckish, and seems to be open all hours, as I discovered when coming home late one Saturday evening (on the ‘Night Tube’! You can now get a tube in the wee hours right back up to Burnt Oak from here, a zipping 30 minute trip rather than wait for the packed, slow and usually awful Night Bus). Along those rooftops, I always liked that little golden dome. All the bits in between, all the windows and details, I was going to draw but decided not to spend the time doing so, it looked better in that unfinished state, let the mind fill in the gaps, I drew the bit I wanted to. Time to get moving. I wasn’t going far, just spending the day walking about an area I love. It was a day off, I wasn’t planning to do any remote work that evening (the time difference with California means I did a bit of evening work on this trip, a few meetings and such). So I headed down to Denmark Street, and spent a lot of time playing guitars.

Around the corner from Denmark Street is New Oxford Street (it runs up to Oxford Street and drops the ‘New’ bit when it reaches that junction with Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross Road) (we have to say the whole names of streets in London, it’s not like San Francisco where you’d just say “Market” or “Columbus”, though we do have a lot of one-name streets in London such as “Piccadilly”, “Lothbury” or “Strand” (not “The” Strand, though we are allowed to add a “The”) (imagine saying “The Piccadilly” though! You’d be laughed all the way to the M25, which by the way is just called “M25” but we say “The M25” or “That bloody M25”). The thing I wanted to drawn on New Oxford Street is James Smith & Sons, a famed and historic umbrella shop, established in 1830. It’s one of those old London gems that will hopefully always be here. I mean, it’s never going to stop raining, is it? Maybe with global warming and dryer summers, but come on this is Britain. Sure, many Londoners will always be like, I don’t need an umbrella, and that’s how I was when I lived there. Umbrellas were more trouble than they were worth, once you got on the tube or bus and folded them up, they would just be dripping everywhere, so I rarely carried one, but I must admit umbrellas are useful. Plus it’s what we British people look like in films isn’t it, an umbrella and a bowler hat. I’ve always wanted to draw the interior, after seeing a great drawing by Karen Neale in her book, London in Landscape. I love those books she produced of London sketches in two-page spreads, especially as I’ve done quite a few myself over the years, it gave me some inspiration to keep that up. Anyway, I stood across the street and leaned on one of those electric boxes you get, perfect leaning height, and drew as much as I could. I had to stop though because my X-Ray vision didn’t extend through double-decker buses. So much traffic on this stretch, so many buses stopped in front of me, I could only draw about half of this, if that, before giving up and going somewhere else. So I drew in the rest later. The people were drawn pretty early on, and that woman passing by did have a red poncho, and that person at the lights was wearing a little red scarf, so I was like right, matching those into the big red ‘umbrellas’ sign. I should have drawn a red bus in the way too.

I cut down an alley and reappeared in Charing Cross Road, opposite Foyles. I walked down to where Macari’s Musical Instruments used to be, until it closed a few years ago. I loved that shop, it’s where I bought my current acoustic guitar, back in the tail end of 1996 while I was on my break at Thorntons. I had been wanting an acoustic for years, only having my old electric, and I saw this one, a Hohner, which was not very expensive but had a lovely dark matte wood colour and a lovely dark matte wood tone, and I knew this was the one. It still is the one, I brought it out to America a couple of years after moving here, back when it was a bit easier to just bring your big guitar into the main cabin of the plane. Well Macari’s is gone. I wanted to draw the green stripy building across the street, the one above the Harmony adult store. I might have sketched it before but I don’t remember, though another artist I follow, Liam Farrell, did an amazing oil painting of it a few years back, and then another one in watercolour. I have drawn the pub opposite, on the corner of Old Compton Street (a street by the way which it is perfectly acceptable to just call “Old Compton”, I guess, without people laughing you to the M25). Last time I drew it though it was still called Molly Moggs.

Further down Charing Cross Road, towards Leicester Square tube station, are the few remaining old bookstores. I first went into Fopp, a store that sells these old things called ‘CDs’ and ‘DVDs’ which people used to use before everything became instantaneously available to us at all times with no surprises. I was amazed to see it still there, it was a thing that rose up from the days when the Virgin Megastores all fell. I also popped into the Orc’s Nest, a little games shop that has been there for many years, and with the popularity of modern board games I was glad to see doing well. I remember buying a little metal minifigure here of ‘Death’, the character form the Terry Pratchett books, back when I was about 18. They didn’t have any this time. So I walked down to see if the old bookshops were still there, and there they are, the token bookshops, probably allowed to remain in existence so Charing Cross Road, historically London’s old bookshop street, could still pretend to be so. Most of the other shops here are basically the 21st century writ large, so these old shops stand out. I didn’t go into any as I didn’t need any old books for anything, but I did remember coming here with my friend Tel (mentioned in previous posts), we were about 17 maybe, and out exploring London, going to the National Gallery and Chinatown. I was into buying second hand books then, I would read a lot, but he decided that he wanted to buy a bunch of books cheap to put on his shelf “so that girls would think he read a lot”. (I never let him forget that! But hey, when we are teenagers that’s what it’s all about, see also me playing the guitar). So he bought about 20 or 30 books, can’t have spent more than about a tenner tops, and I had to help him carry them in flimsy carrier bags all around central London. None of the books were ones he would ever actually read, mostly cheap fantasy or sci-fi, but we lugged them all back up on the Northern Line to his old bedroom. It’s funny, eventually he became a buyer and seller of books, many of them rare and valuable that he would find in old stores or in auctions or online, and I think back to that afternoon carrying around all those cheap books, that’s probably where that started. Anyway back to 2023. I decided to draw this one shop, Any Amount Of Books, while traffic slowly ambled past blocking my view. At one point, a huge white van did stop in front of the shop for an extended period, at which point I just abandoned it and went off to Covent Garden, finishing the rest of the details, the brickwork and all that hatching, while eating some dinner. I still had a fair bit of sketching left to do that day which I’ll put in another post, but this was my walk down Memory Lane (actually it’s called Old Memory Road, you’d better get it right).

little shop on deansbrook road

June 15, 2023June 15, 2023Leave a comment

This is a little newsagents on Deansbrook Road, Edgware (at the edge of Burnt Oak), near the side exit to the hospital where I was born. It’s not on a row of shops and nowhere near the parade of shops on the other end of Deansbrook, it’s surprising that it is still there. I used to pop into this shop on the way home from school, walking home with my friend Terry we would pop in here for a Mars bar or a Panda Cola, which was a generic tasting fizzy drink in a small bottle with a panda on it, that would only be about 15p (there were other ‘Panda Pops’ drinks such as orangeade or limeade, we would get hose from the school canteen at lunchtime). It’s near the corner of Fairfield Avenue. You walk up there from Deansbrook to get to the alley that leads into Edgware. Well, actually we would cut down an alley further up Deansbrook into Fairfield Crescent, before cutting into the alley to Edgware, so missing this shop entirely, but on the way home we would go this way to get a Panda Cola from this little shop. Panda Cola was all I could afford. If you came out with a Coca Cola or a Pepsi, people would look at you going, ooh look at flash bollocks there, off to his mansion.

Those alleys I mentioned a minute ago, they are still the shortest route walking from Burnt Oak to Edgware, and have been since my Mum was a girl. Despite having walked them a million times, I’m always wary. It had a dodgy reputation in the old days, you never knew who was hanging out there, and with so many dodgy people around these days (as everyone always tells me), you have to keep your eyes open. For me though I always think of one thing, a little dog called Rocky. When we were schoolkids, me and Terry would walk down the little alley, and if we were lucky, it would be empty, and we would pass through on our journey. It’s like playing an adventure game, roll a dice to test your luck. If we were unlucky, a little dog who lived in the adjoining house and whose name was Rocky (we learned from the dog’s neighbours, who went to our school) would be there at the end of the alley, he would see us and immediately give chase, forcing us up the badly-kept steps and out onto the busy Deansbrook traffic. Rocky was unrelenting. Rocky would not simply “let you pass by”. Rocky is long dead by now, but I bet his ghost haunts that alley. Terry and I still talk about him (if “do you remember Rocky” “the dog or the film” “the dog” “yeah” counts as talking about him).

50p down the market

June 13, 2023June 12, 20232 Comments

Saturday morning, London, I didn’t have any concrete plans for the day but was meeting old friends in the evening. I had the whole day to explore and sketch, but wasn’t completely sure where I’d go yet. I had a list of places I wanted to sketch on this trip, places in London that I had not been to in a very long time. I decided to head for Notting Hill Gate, and walk down to Portobello Road Market. I honestly cannot remember the last time I went there, maybe once when my wife first moved to England 21 years ago? I know I went there with my mate Terry once in about 2001. In the mid-90s I used to come to Notting Hill a lot as I had a friend who lived here, though even then I didn’t really go to the Market very often, usually because it was always so busy, and I didn’t really like crowds. Also I worked on Saturdays, didn’t I, back then? Memory fades. Still it had been a really long time since I was even last in Notting Hill, so it was an interesting experience to be back, and there is lots to sketch. First of all, the Central Line was jam packed, and everyone was getting out at Notting Hill Gate tube. Portobello Market is a really popular tourist destination, and it seemed like most of the voices I heard were Italian or American. After a little wandering about I walked down to the Market, past all the little vintage clothes stores and antique stalls and colourful shopfronts. I ate an early lunch at a place that does eggs called ‘Eggslut’ and paid like thirteen quid for a salmon and egg sandwich. Thirteen quid. Prices in England are through the roof right now. When I was a kid, my friend Terry used to help out his Grandad at Portobello Market on Saturdays, his grandad Charlie Bonello (who was Maltese and a great laugh, he used to tell us silly jokes) had a market stall down here, and there was one phrase he would always say whenever Terry would buy something his grandad thought was overpriced, he’d say “50p down the market!” So that became out catchphrase (one of them) for years since. I thought of him when I was paying thirteen quid for a salmon and egg sandwich, I could hear him telling me “Thirteen quid?! 50p down the market!” Except this was that same market. Times have changed since the late 80s, I guess.

I found a spot next to a big fruit and veg stall, overlooking the crossroads with Colville Terrace and Elgin Crescent, next to this trendy looking tea shop, and stood for a long while drawing the scene as it snaked towards me. There were a lot of people around, so I drew passers-by in that usual way, not really drawing anyone in particular but mixing and matching bits of different people as they went by. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is entirely coincidental, although someone did pass by with that exact mohawk and beard combination, so he had to go in the book (he probably wasn’t wearing a massive white shirt but I was tired and lazy with my observations. First drawing of the day, and I was tired already? Well I’d been out late the night before, but I was standing here for quite a while and my legs were hurting. My legs hurt even looking at this drawing. I didn’t want to sit, you need a better view. I coloured most of it in later (except for a few parts I’d started), but there was a lot of ink drawing to do on site, and that Fabriano watercolour sketchbook really makes your pen work on that paper. I had ‘pre-prepared’ the paper a little bit this time, adding a thin wash of paint over the pages the day before, and that helped the pen move a little bit faster but still not as smooth as in the Moleskine. Still I love to sketch a market, and now I’ve finally sketched Portobello. If you want a print of this, well it will be more than 50p down the market, I need to offset the cost of that sandwich somehow…

At the entrance of Portobello Road itself, where it curves into Pembridge Road, there’s this big yellow pub called the Sun in Splendour. I’ve never been in there actually, and didn’t on this day either, but I wanted to draw this colourful corner so I stood over by the e-bike stand on the other side of the road. The first thing I drew was the pile of orange rubbish bags on the pavement. They were soon taken by the garbage trucks. Why keep those in you ask? Well I have my reasons. Look at all the people making their way to or from Portobello Market, I didn’t colour those in as I went along, and you can see there are four people in red, almost entirely evenly spaced out, which is weird. Anyway one thing I wanted to do was try out my gold gel pen for the pub name. I did this a few times in sketches on this trip, and sometimes it didn’t really stand out as much, but in this case it did. I had to remember not to spell ‘Splendour’ in the American way. It did remind me of the sugar substitute they use in the US.

Around here, I saw a lot of references to the 1999 film Notting Hill, the one with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts which should be considered very cheesy and a bit naff, but in fact I love that film, I’m a fan of lots of the people in it, and sure it’s definitely cheese, but who cares. I remember one night at university when I was doing drama, I wasn’t feeling that well and had worked late on drama projects, I forget exactly what we were working on, but it went on really late and I was pretty exhausted. In those days I had a very long tube journey home back from Mile End to Burnt Oak, and was not massively looking forward to it. Sometimes I would stop halfway and get out at Camden Town, and go and see a film at the Odeon on Parkway before heading back to bed. On this one night I didn’t even get to Camden, I popped into a cinema in Stepney Green (which is probably long gone) and watched Notting Hill, and I have to say it totally cheered me up. Sure that silly Elvis Costello rendition of “She” was crooning all over the place, but the soundtrack was pretty great, and I dunno, it just put me in a good mood, and I was ready and up for things again the next day. Doing a drama degree was pretty exhausting, London was pretty exhausting. In fact I went back to Mile End on this trip, visited my old university, did some sketching; more on that in a later post.

Further up Pembridge Road, the little shops lining the street up towards Notting Hill Gate are colourful and worth sketching. That fish and chip shop across the street was busy, next to a vintage clothes shop. There have always been those little shops around here. I’m not really into old clothes or fashion, with the obvious exception of football shirts, of which I’m a football fashion afficionado. I did notice that many of the people in the street were wearing light puffer jackets, it wasn’t cold but it wasn’t that warm either. I stood against an iron railing and drew them, while people sat on steps next to me eating their lunch and smoking. There seem to be a lot more smokers about, and loads more of those bloody vapers, with their little plastic vapes and huge clouds of sticky sickly vapor. At least with smokers you can see the puff of smoke coming when walking behind them, with vapers it just appears as you’re walking by and fogs up the narrow sidewalk, gross. Definitely worse than it was a few years ago. Anyway I moved down a little bit towards cleaner air and sat on some steps to add some paint. As I did, someone came up and said “this is going to be an odd question but can I film you while you draw? Just for a few seconds.” I was like, sure why not. At least you asked, which is nice, I wouldn’t really have cared. Then about five minutes later, I swear, a girl came up and said, “Do you mind if I ask you something?” I said, to her surprise, “You want to film me sketching?” “Yes!” she said, “Is that ok?” She did have her phone in her hand as if ready to shoot so it was a good guess, but I said “Sure no problem, it’s just funny ‘cos you’re the second person in five minutes to ask me!” I suppose people like to see people sketching the world. I love being a tourist.

The last thing I drew that day was an old pub I have been in before, the Prince Albert, but not since about 1997 or 1998 I think. It’s changed a lot since then, but it’s still there round the corner from Notting Hill Gate tube station. It’s pretty swanky inside with its fancy food; I popped in to use the toilet after sketching outside for a while, my legs getting very tired by this point, and ended up staying in for a pint and to add some of the colour. That red car outside, it was stopped in traffic for a little bit and I drew it very quickly, probably not very accurately but it seemed appropriate for the area. Yeah I got a pint, it was £7.10, and not that nice (I didn’t even finish it). “£7.10” I said, “50p down the Market”. Turns out £7.10 is a pretty average price for a pint in London these days, it’s gone up a lot since even last year. Everything has, food, transport, energy. It’s a good job the Buck is still strong against the Quid. There was a big screen on in the pub playing one of the play-off games, I think it was one with Notts County playing Chesterfield at Wembley for a chance to return to the Football League (wait, neither Notts County nor Chesterfield were in the Football League? I didn’t realize). I didn’t stay for the whole thing but there was a group of Aussies (in a London pub, you are never very far from a group of Aussies) watching the game and discussing their careers in the music industry, from what I could gather, I wasn’t really listening, could have been Jason Donovan for all I know. It was nice to get off my feet for a bit though. I love wandering and sketching, but you need to stop and rest. After this, I wandered Notting Hill for a bit more, walking down to the Churchill arms on Kensington Church Street, which was a pub I used to really enjoy evenings out in years ago, and is on my bucket list to draw, but I didn’t have time to sketch on this occasion. I took a quick snap (for a from-photo pub-drawing to be done later) and headed to Leicester Square where I’d be meeting up with some very old friends for an evening of dinner and drinks and laughs. It was fun to wander around this old haunt for a bit though.

norwich walk again

June 11, 2023Leave a comment

Back in the Walk. I flew back to London for a little bit, one of my oldest friends is getting married in Ireland this month (he lives in Dublin), and so he had a stag party (that’s a bachelor party to my American audience) in London a month before, which is just about enough recovery time for us forty-somethings, and so I flew out to London to take part in that. My Mum was going to Spain during the same time though, so I went a little bit earlier to spend some time with her, which meant I got a week or so in London to (a) work from home in the evenings and (b) see friends and family and (c) do lots of London sketching. So I did lots of London sketching, and as always I start at home, looking out of my old bedroom window in Norwich Walk, Burnt Oak, which is up the northern end of the Northern Line at the edge of the north part of London. Zone 4, so not that far out. Takes about 30 minutes to get to Tottenham Court Road on the tube. I always wake up early on those first few days, though after a long journey I did arrive in Burnt Oak quite late in the evening. On this particular day I did an early morning sketch as the daylight was rising in the east above Watling Park. I showed it the old fellow who lives across the street in that house. I’ve drawn this view across the street since I was a kid.

Here are a couple of drawings I did for my art homework looking across the street in the evening in (checks dates) November 1988. That was a very long time ago.

I’m not going to show all my drawings of this street but here’s another one from more recently, 2014. You will notice that in between 1988 and 2023 there was at one point one of those pointy trees growing in front of the house across the street, and another which looks like a bush standing on a pole, which have both gone now.

the lamb and flag and the brown bear

January 13, 2023January 11, 2023Leave a comment

Here are a couple more drawings I did last summer, not on location but from photos I took while in London. I always want to draw as many old London pubs as I can, so I drew these two on big pieces of paper, and in fact the top one sold at the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction in September. It’s the Lamb and Flag, a popular old pub near Covent Garden off Garrick Street. I’ve been there a few times myself, though more often I pass it by when slipping through that alleyway on the right (Lazenby Court) to get up to Long Acre (via Floral St and another alley) when I’m on my way to Stanford’s map shop (which has now moved around the corner). There’s been a pub on this site since at least the 1770s, and it took the name Lamb and Flag in 1833, although the brickwork is from the 1950s, replacing an older building from 1638. This is what their website says, although the sign outside says ‘Circa 1628’ so who knows. Actually to confuse things further the sign actually says ‘Circa 1623’ but my eyesight is circa 1976 and therefore prone to get things wrong from time to time. The 3 looks like an 8. See also, whatever the hell is going on with those window panes. Whichever date is correct, doesn’t really matter, it’s a nice pub to stop into for a quick pint while out walking about London. The one below, the Brown Bear in the East End of the City, on Leman Street. It is one I’ve never actually been to, but I passed by it while walking from Aldwych to St. Katharine’s Dock back in the summertime, and I thought, I’d like to draw this, but I’m on my way somewhere else right now, and it looks like it might rain. So I filed it under ‘draw larger when I get home’. I definitely prefer drawing on site though, for some reason my eyesight works better outside in normal (preferably overcast) light than it does sat at my desk with the artificial desk-lamp light. This east-end drinker dates back to Victorian times and even from across the street it kind of looks like what my dad would call a ‘villain’s pub’. It’s probably nothing of the sort, but it does have a bit of local villainy in its history, allegedly being where George Cornell had a punch-up with Ronnie Kray. This is also Jack the Ripper land, and those murders were investigated by the cops at the nearby police station on Leman St. There was another pub a little further down the street I would like to draw sometime, the Sir Sydney Smith. London has been losing so many of its great historic pubs in recent years, especially lately, for one reason or other, mostly because property is so expensive in London that many old places can’t afford to stay in existence, and with beer being so expensive these days and the cost of living being so high, people can’t afford the pubs like they used to. I always try to make sure I spend some good time in old pubs whenever I’m back home; use them or lose them. Many are historically so important to the local area. I heard recently that The Tipperary on Fleet Street was closed for good; that was the first place in London to sell Guinness (first place outside Ireland I think) and the pub dates from 1700. History rapidly vanishing, being replaced with vapid gourmet burger joints and chain coffee shops and expensive apartments.

Thames Time

January 11, 2023January 10, 2023Leave a comment

Now this is an atmospheric river. Back in July, the day before we left for France, the family and I took a walk down the Thames. A few days before we had been dealing with unbelievable record temperatures in London, making it nigh on impossible to do much other than hide inside listening to the news of how this was the Hottest Day Of All Time. My wife flew into London on that Hottest Day Ever (having stayed behind in California a few more days to look after our sick cat), transport was down all over the place as the English train tracks could not handle the heat. They famously can’t handle any slight change in weather, for those of us who remember leaves on the line, etc. Now the average temperature back in Davis is much higher at this time of year as a matter of course, but it feels a lot worse in London where the humidity is much higher, nobody has air conditioning, and well we just love a moan about the weather. A few days later, it had cooled off considerably, and was now a nice, humid, overcast London summers day. There was even a touch of rain to freshen us up. Still slightly sensitive from the previous night out in Camden, I braved the nice weather and took the tube down to the river, and we walked down past Tower Bridge towards Bermondsey along Shad Thames. I’d never actually walked very far down that way before, it was pretty interesting. A week before my son and I had taken a boat trip down the river all the way to Greenwich and listened to the stories of the riverman, that was a fun little history trip. Although our guide insisted telling us that the word ‘wharf’ is an acronym for ‘warehouse at river front’, which sounds nice but isn’t true. It comes from the Old English hwearf, which stands for ‘house where even alligators read French’. Shad London is an interesting street flanked by old warehouses at the river front and criss-crossed several storeys above by old metal walkways from the Victorian era, definitely a street I would go back and sketch another time. Instead, we turned back towards Tower Bridge and walked down the South Bank. I did stop to draw the panorama above, the view from the Tower of London on the right westwards toward the City with its expanding bouquet of steel and glass towers, all different shapes and funny names. This is where London has changed the most for me since I left, seventeen years ago. Seventeen years! Back in those days the small group of towers in the Square Mile were dominated by the Nat West Tower (I mean, ‘Tower 42’) and the Gherkin (I mean the Swiss Re) (sorry no it’s called 30 St Mary Axe) (look it’s the bloody Erotic Gherkin, that’s what we called it when it was being built in the 2000s). Neither of those can even be made out in the cluster above now. I don’t even know all the names of the funny looking skyscrapers now. There’s the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie, the Heron, maybe the Dark Crystal, the Skeksis Finger, the Great Conjunction and the Gelfling’s Flute. Those cranes tell me that they are not done building just yet. I drew them again from a different angle when we had sat down to eat. The shapes are fascinating to draw.

You’ll notice that there is a red Urban Sketchers stamp on that last sketch. While we were walking down the Thames, we started seeing other sketchers dotted around the riverbank. Then I remembered that Urban Sketchers London were having a three-day celebration to mark ten years of USk London, and that there would be some sketching going on down the Thames. Due to our trip to France I wasn’t able to take part in this so I never signed up for the workshops and talks, and had forgotten that there would be loads of fellow sketchers around. Just as my wife said “maybe you’ll bump into someone you know!” I spotted someone I definitely knew – Gabi Campanario! Urban Sketchers founder and my sketching friend since about 2007/8. I think he was as surprised to see me as I was him. My wife had never met him though she knew who he was from all those years back. I first met Gabi in person back at the first symposium in Portland, and several others since, and his daughter was there in London with him. On top of this nice surprise, I bumped into another of the original London urban sketchers, James Hobbs, who I’ve known since USk London started in 2012. I have a nice photo of the three of us from Amsterdam in 2019, and now a nice one of us in London 2022. As one of the leaders of USk London James was very busy and showed me the new book that came out to mark the tenth anniversary of USk London, “London By Urban Sketchers” (an excellent book by the way and I recommend you get it, if you love London, follow that link to buy it). I have two drawings in there, plus a shout-out in the intro to that first sketchcrawl in 2012 that kicked off USk London, called it “Let’s Draw London“. Urban Sketchers London is a really strong chapter of USk and have some great sketchcrawls all over the city each month. So, excited by all the sketch chat and activity all around, I had to do some more drawing. My wife and son took a rest on a bench while I went and drew the view of the city which includes St. Paul’s, as well as a mudlarker down on the sands. I bumped into another old sketching friend Joe Bean, who I’ve met at a few of the symposia since Manchester, as well as some in London, and who has been doing some great sketching up in Leeds. The sky was grey and that’s the way I liked it.

I always want to be down by the Thames. Even looking at these sketches I just want to jump on a plane and get back there, explore and draw, see it as it keeps on changing. Some day I’ll put together a post of all my Thames-side sketches. Actually a lot of them are here: https://petescully.com/tag/thames/

Here’s one for you. An old one, from around fifteen years before the one above, from almost the same spot. 2007…

at the black heart

January 10, 2023January 9, 2023Leave a comment

One evening in London, after a busy day helping my brother move my dad into a new place, I met up with a couple of my old London mates down in our old haunt of Camden Town. We met at the excellent rock pub The Black Heart; I got there a little early so I could attempt a sketch, though I didn’t get very far, but I enjoyed adding the paint in like that. I do miss these types of pubs, good music and good vibes, and great company. We went for dinner at the Italian place on Parkway, and on to spend the rest of the night at the Dublin Castle, where else. That place has not changed since I first started going there in the 90s. Camden has changed, quite a lot, but in some ways not at all. The streets are still in the same place, which helps, even if some of the places aren’t. Beer costs more nowadays though (didn’t let that stop us though).

I did draw a quick and shaky sketch on the tube down to Camden from Burnt Oak, the Northern Line (I didn’t sketch on the way home, I was too busy eating my greasy bag of chips I always get from the chip shop next to Camden tube, on the last train back). I do miss London…

the other side of Denmark Street

January 9, 20232 Comments

Back to London last July. After a day’s touristing with the family – we went to the Churchill War Rooms, then wandered about central London until my feet hurt – I stopped off at one of my favourite old streets, the centre of guitar shops and music people, Denmark Street. Just off Charing Cross Road, round the back of the recently redeveloped Tottenham Court Road station, this was the center of the British music industry for a long time. Tin Pan Alley. As London has been pricing anything good out of existence for a long while now, but of it have been falling away and I was worried to finally come back and find it all gone down the pan. There’s a few old places no longer there, but I was pleased to still find a lot of places to mooch about looking at instruments, the character still exists. So I drew the street looking southwards, across from Wunjo and Regent sounds, and stood drawing until my feet hurt. This was intended as a sister piece to a panorama I drew of Denmark Street back in 2014 (see below) looking northwards, before major redevelopment started in the area. The 12 Bar club was still there, and Macari’s; I was saddened to see Macari’s on Charing Cross Road had closed recently, that’s where I got my beloved acoustic guitar that I still have. After drawing that picture years ago I learned about “Save Tin Pan Alley” – http://savetpa.tk/– which is devoted to preserving this historic and culturally significant London lane. As a guitar-obsessed teen I was often too shy to go into these stores, fearing that I would suddenly be found out and laughed at. They soon became my favourite places, though I still won’t get down an electric guitar and plug it in unless I know nobody is there to listen. They have different guitars than you see in a lot of guitar shops in the States as well. This past year I have finally rekindled my love of the guitar, having abandoned it for well over a decade, and got myself a new guitar, the Lake Placid Blue Squier Telecaster, as well as a Fender electro-acoustic for my son who is learning. Just last month I finally got myself a bass, for the first time in my life, and I of course got the Hofner violin. I should have been playing bass all these years, I love it, and the Hofner is nice and light, especially with the Flatwound strings. I need to fix the fret buzz though. Apparently I should adjust the truss rod, but I’m a bit nervous about that. I also need to fix up my old electric guitar in London and bring it back out here, the one my brother got me when I was 14, the Westone Concord II. I re-strung it and cleaned it up, but the third fret is pretty worn down where the B string hits it, making it hard to play an open D. Teenage Pete played that chord so much it filed away the fret. Maybe on my next visit I’ll take it down to Denmark Street and see if someone there can fix it. I’m still pretty basic with my guitar playing, and I don’t mind that, but it is nice to be back messing about with guitars again.

more of the convent

November 18, 2022Leave a comment

Still in Burnt Oak, this is up Orange Hill Road, around the corner from my mum’s house. It’s part of the old St. Roses’s Convent (I drew the main building of that a few years ago, see “the-convent-at-the-top-of-orange-hill/“), which was next to the long-since-moved St. James’s Catholic School, and also next to the Watling Community Center, which is where my mum and dad had their wedding party back in 1991. I used to walk past here most days as a kid. Well, some days. If I was walking to Edgware I would usually cut down Boston and up Littlefields to get into that side of Deansbrook. I used to walk past this way if I was heading up Deans Lane to the newsagents Eric and Mavis up by the Green Man, because they had a better selection of magazines and comics there, or to the Golden Fry chip shop. It was Golden Fry wasn’t it? No wait, Golden Fry was halfway up the Watling. I have forgotten the name of the chip shop; it’s called King Neptune now I think, but it used to be something else when I was a kid, I’m sure of it. There used to be a small police station across the street from that chippy, the Cop Shop. Anyway all that is on a different road. I would also pass this when I would go on my run, which would be all uphill, up Orange Hill, Deans Lane, past the Green Man (the junction with Hale Lane where there used to be a pub of that name, long since turned into a Harvester), up Selvage Lane to Apex Corner, where I would stop for a rest, before running back downhill again. That’s what I did in the early mornings while I was back in London (until my foot started hurting), and I thought to myself right, I should draw the rest of the convent. So I went out there in the morning and drew about half of this, adding in the rest of the details when I was sat down (resting that dodgy foot). It’s worth colouring in, but I couldn’t be bothered this time. Maybe I should make a Burnt Oak Colouring-In Book. There’s an idea.

If you want to see the previous one I drew, on another early morning walk, here it is. It’s funny, my memories of this particular building are usually after dark, this looming many-chimneyed building against a rainy purple-grey sky, an occasional light from a window, but here it is on a nice bright summer morning.

an early start

November 3, 20222 Comments

Back again. The view from my old bedroom in Norwich Walk, in our little Burnt Oak corner of London, drawn after waking up very early on a hot July day. On these days when I’m jetlagged and the middle-of-summer sun comes up way way earlier in London than in California (where the sun has a nice lie-in but definitely works a lot harder during the day), I like to try and start the day with a sketch, especially if I’m probably not going to be sketching as much due to doing family things. I miss seeing my London family, it’s always nice to be back, even at times when things are a bit stressful, it makes me feel nice to be Home, you know. I was lucky as a kid that we never moved house during my childhood, because it means I have definite sense of where ‘Home’ is in my mind. There are times even here in Davis in my forties that I wake up and I’m not immediately sure if I’m in my old bedroom or in California, with the window behind me, the shelf to my left, cars starting outside, a cat pawing at the door. Burnt Oak is quite different to Davis though. This is looking westwards, towards Orange Hill Road. Lot of stories up this street. I remember that house on the corner which has the little green food truck parked on the drive now, that was Mrs. Philpin’s house for a very long time (she passed away many years back), my mum was friends with her daughter since they were little girls, I went to school with her grandkids. I don’t know many other people in the street now, so many have moved on, passed away, although my old neighbour Matthew still lives across the road and I always stop and have a chat in the street when I’m back, usually about Spurs. This was an awkward looking sketch; the way the bed and side table gets in the way makes it harder to lean out the window than it used to be, although my mum now has much nicer windows installed. The morning sunlight kept changing the colours of everything subtly, but it’s pretty much how it felt; this was soon going to be the hottest summer of all time in London, and this day was going in that direction. My son had been up since about 3 or 4 as well, so we got a very early start and after breakfast with my mum we headed into central London for some sightseeing, taking our jetlagged selves onto a two-hour boat trip down the Thames, before getting the tube back up to Burnt Oak. We were still shattered from the two-day journey from California, but happy to be in London again.

We each managed one sketch while down in central London, a quick drawing of Horseguards (below).