Tag: monochrome

look at the size of that thing

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When does a high-rise become a skyscraper? Perhaps it’s just a matter of perception. Highrises make you think of those glum 1960s housing estates, Le Corbusier nightmares in concrete, gangs of feral kids and graffiti, whereas skyscrapers make you think of shining cityscapes, New York, the pre-Depression thirties, old money.

cobalt charleroi

This is La Vigie, Charleroi’s skyscraper/high-rise (filled with UT students, not feral but music is sometimes played loud). I lived on floor 13 years ago. Apparently there is an official definition given by the Emporis Standards Committee that a high-rise must be over twelve storeys high (La Vigie checks in at fifteen). The same Wikipedia article that gave me that useless tidbit of information tells me that skyscrapers carry a connotation of pride, of achievement. Les Vigistes would often go on about being proud (oh, anyone can be proud, it’s easy), and I daresay they sometimes acheive things (making it through nine months without a hot shower is an amazing achievement). So what if it’s not a skyscraper? It’s still the tallest building in the city, and has stunning views over the old slag-heaps and factories, when the cokey fog clears. A skyscraper is just a big substitute phallus anyway.

Drew this in cobalt blue copic, with a grey wash. The blue looks bluer than it does on the page, and it makes the grey look silver. That’s the scanner for you.

the sweetest thing

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happy lukey!

Spent this afternoon drawing more sketches of Luke; the top one was the last I did, and my favourite so far. His hair is a little darker than it should be but it’s from a photo; it looked that way. The ones below are also looking a little more like him. The copic pen and wash one is a bit too dark though, while the pencil one I think captures his ‘I’m busy playing’ look.

luke greyscaleluke in pencil

la vie est belge

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eurostarA few days after Christmas, a friend and I went over to Belgium, where I used to live what feels like a lifetime (but was less than ten years) ago. I spent a year in Charleroi between 1999 and 2000, my time there culminating with the now infamous visit of the chair-throwing England fans. It was a year that has shaped a lot of my imagination, though I did little but eat frites drowned in sauce, drink and learn about beer at la cuve à bière, and play the guitar (writing songs about this, about that). That is, however, the life. We took the early Eurostar to Brussels, and walked around the busy post-noel streets, surprised to find that there was no rain whatsoever – I nearly didn’t recognise it in the sunshine. I like Brussels. I drew at the Grand Place, crowded, touristy, disgustingly ornate, but necessary for a budding urban sketcher to draw. I wasn’t going to seek out the urban grit – we were going to Charleroi later that evening, and there would be plenty of that.

it's a lovely place

le luxembourg, charleroiI stopped in a shop I loved when I was living there: Grasshopper, an amazing store that sells all sorts of toys and books. I wanted to buy some French board books for my baby son (decided not to go with teaching him Flemish just yet). However, while I was sketching, I must have put them down and forgotten about them (very unlike me*). I went back to the store and bought some more, and asked if anybody had returned them. Non, they told me, ils sont bye-byes. Yeah, cheers.  So, we took a very modern double-decker train south to the city of Charleroi, and while Roshan napped in the hotel, I ventured out into the freezing dark evening to do some night-time pre-pub sketching, and drew Le Luxembourg, a place which although very pretty, I have never actually entered. While drawing, I kept my eyes on the shadows for, er, shadowy people,  happy to be back in my old town.

*I do tend to lose things in Brussels, though. I lost my favourite top here once, in 1999. I wrote a song about that too. It was white with thin black hoops. If you find it, let me know; it might still fit.

is that concrete all around or is it in my head?

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About two and a half years ago I came back to the UK for the first time since moving to California. I walked up to Edgware, just up from Burnt Oak, where I used to go to school, and where I used to shop for records, books, guitar strings, and more books. I was stunned to find that none of the places where I used to get these things existed any more, and I lamented the downturn of this edge-of-town suburb. I wrote a blog entry about it, which even now people are leaving comments on, telling their own tales of Edgware past. Each time I’ve returned since it seems to have gotten worse, crowded with people who have little to do, with all the half-interesting shops disappearing before our very wallets, even the chains. HMV is now a pound shop, McDonald’s is now a cheap clothes store, and we all know about Woolworths.

st margarets church, edgware

While back this time, I went up on Christmas Eve to do some drawing, and squeeze through the purgatorio of The Mall (formerly the Broadwalk). I sat in the cold outside the boarded up Railway pub, a wonderful old hotel which has sat empty for a few years now, and drew the church opposite. I used to pass this way on the way home from school every day, years ago; even my old school has been knocked down and replaced with a brutal looking Academy. There’s an alley to my right that cuts through to the streets leading up to Deansbrook Road, and Burnt Oak, me and Tel walking down there telling stupid jokes every afternoon of our teenage years.

I finished this sketch and walked across the road, past the still-empty Music Stop – and was shocked to find, a few doors down, a brand new guitar shop! I went inside; the young guy who worked there told me they’d only been open four days, and that the bloke who worked in the old Music Stop now worked there, having been working down at another fave old guitar shop of mine in Crouch End (in fact, this new shop is a branch of that one, Rock Around the Clock). After a chat about Ibanez guitars in America I walked off pretty happy: did this mean Edgware was on the mend? Who knows, and maybe it’s just the view from a distance, but either way, it’s a new shop that sells neither cheap luggage or cheap cardigans, nor is yet another pound shop, and that’s a start. If I still lived there, I might even shop there.

jingle all the way

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in the globe at moorgate

Twas two nights before Christmas, and all over the City, nobody about, not even a mouse…

Well there were a few post-work revellers lingering in the Globe pub in Moorgate where I met my friend Simon for a bit of late-night nocturnal urban sketching. I did this quickly in the pub before he got there (so that I was one sketch ahead, you see; we’re very competitive). We wandered off through the deserted streets,guildhall at night far from the madding crowd, and sketched in front of Guildhall, which remarkably I had never been to before. It was fun. It was dark, but the buildings were lit and there was a soft mist in the air. Do you know, it has’t rained once since I have been here? Considering my last rain-soaked trip in the summer, it is remarkable (while in California right now, rain rain and rain; “ha-ha” as nelson would say). We then wandered off in search of a pub that was actually open, and found one that was old and did Fuller’s beer, and we chatted and chatted away. I do miss chatting with my best mates.

(By the way, he ended up sketching more than I did)

But I have plenty more sketches I have been doing on this trip which I haven’t yet scanned…

because you’re mine, i walk the line

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just unnoticed

Part three of a series. Presumably this means I will have to make more. This is the outside of a very famous station. Well it’s not that famous but many thousands of people have heard of it, maybe millions. More people over the course of seventy years have heard of it than, say, Jordan and Peter Andre. And they’re pretty famous for not doing anything particularly noteworthy. I suppose you could say this station has spent it’s entire life on the line. The Northern Line. Anyway here it is in line and wash.

hanging on the telephone

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phonebox

No, this isn’t the magical forest where things from London just pop up between the trees, it’s the MU bus terminal at UC Davis, which has magpied a few British things to make them feel more like Londoners. Also at this terminal – it’s the only place in California where it rains, there are gangs of tabloid hoodies waiting to scowl at you from a distance, and there’s bloody Boris Johnson with his pointless competition for pointless new routemasters. Authentic. Actually no, you can keep those things, we’ll just take the phonebox, the lamp-post and the bus. Cheers.

Hanging on the Telephone… do you remember when Saddam was executed, and there were those guys filming it on their mobiles? I wonder if that song was running through their minds for a soundtrack?

On that note… Happy Thanksgiving!

get thee to a nunnery

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flaws, mostly

Part two in a series. This is the old convent up on Orange Hill Road, Burnt Oak, the one that provided the nuns for the adjacent St. James’ school. Opposite there was another school, Orange Hill. I went to neither. Both are now gone. My old school though, in Edgware, is also now gone, demolished, an old comprehensive replaced with a futuristic brutal looking academy. I’ll bet the bogs still fit heads down them though.

father wears his sunday best

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hunt boyer house

This is not Our House and it’s not in the middle of R Street, it’s the Hunt Boyer House and it’s on the corner of E Street, and 2nd, Davis. There used to be this absolutely whopping tree behind it, and I mean enormous, but they cut it down as it was leaning a bit too far to the right (never a popular thing in this town). Mind you, from the other side it looked like the tree was leaning too far to the left. Oh well, I suppose many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Perhaps instead of cutting it down we should have bailed it out.