I love that part of Hampstead Heath by the big ponds, especially those big multi-windowed brown brick houses clustered along the edge. That’ll be them above. Not sure I’d like the famous night-time entertainment though; all those politicians out looking for votes, as it were.
Did this drawing over a couple of evenings (interrupted by baby-feeding). Below is the work-in-progress.
Actually it’s just down Fleet Street. First Irish pub in London (c. 1700), first pub outside Ireland to serve Guinness. Possibly the inspiration behind the song, at least I used to tell people that on the tour-bus. Well, it is a long way from Piccadilly and Leicester Square, if you really need a Guinness. Personally I don’t really like the stuff. Too much iron; turns your poo black, and leaves you open for an attack by mutant villain Magneto.
This is the magnificent Maughan Library on chancery Lane, part of King’s College London. Here I studied every day while doing my MA in medieval English, and I loved this building. It used to be the public records office.
Now I think I’m tenacious in my sketching. I go out in all weather, just to get a drawing in the moleskine. Admittedly I live in Davis, so the weather is usually very changeable – one day it’s hot and sunny, next thing you know it’s hotter and sunnier, can’t keep up. Back in London it rained almost every day; on Monday I went back to the South Bank with 
Simon, where we sketched in sunshine a year previously. It was ok while we were under a tree, and the clouds merely threatened us like hoodies in a chicken-shop doorway – that’s when I did the pic to the left there, drawing someone with absolutely no resemblence to my sketching pal. But then we moved on, and I started to draw the banks of the Thames by Oxo Tower, but rain stopped play.
For me, anyway. Si sketched on, disregarding any silly rain, his sketchbook getting slowly drenched, now unable to erase any pencil marks. But he was on a roll, and did a fine pencil pic 
with lots of detail. I chickened out, and finished mine off later (the top image). It looks like it’s a monochrome, but I guess this is actually a colour picture, since that’s exactly how it looked that day. London was an exercise in greyscale waiting to happen (it sometimes is in the summer).
Prior to that, there was lunch in Shepherd’s Bush, at cafe rouge, and I did this sepia picture of the mirror while we ate. Not exactly the bar at the folies bergeres, more the cafe at the buisson des bergeres. Kinda.
The sketching day from the previous post actually began on the South Bank, the very crowded South Bank, full of half-termers, tourists and sidewalk entertainers (did I just say ‘sidewalk’? You know technically that makes me a tourist now, you know). Before the London Eye, nobody could care less about the South Bank, other than a place to come and have a quick snap of parliament, and its clocktower.
I used to come down on Saturdays when I was in my teens and draw this very view; most of the people down there in those days were homeless. I remember thinking, of Hungerford Bridge, why it was so stupid there was a shaky walkway on the east side (looking towards waterloo bridge) but not the west (looking towards parliament). Nowadays with those two spectacular modern bridges either side of the railway, you can get great views from wherever (plus the bridges now make that old one look like the rope bridge from Temple of Doom). I sketched the extravagant Whitehall Court from the west bridge, as rain clouds drew in.
The riverside entertainer below was drawn in a warm dark grey faber-castell pen, using a lighter grey brush pen to shade. I don’t normally shade like that so wanted to give it a go.
The funny feeling I got that day, looking out across the Thames, was that I was not really there, that I was looking though a window upon something very familiar, that it was a bit like a dream and soon I’d have to wake up and go to work. I used to cross Westminster Bridge six or more times a day, on the top of a tour bus, with microphone and rain jacket, my routine well-rehearsed, and now here I was, a tourist in my own back-yard. Well, a tourist with a sketchbook.
Sketched on a quiet corner of craven street, behind busy whitehall, the house where herman melville lived 150 years or so ago for like five minutes probably (had a whale of a time). It started raining while drawing this, so I ducked into a doorway, and then hightailed it to a nearby old pub, the ship and shovell, where I finished off the wash, washed down with some cold bavarian hofbrauhaus beer, served by a brazilian.
But this says London, doesn’t it. I think so.
(sketched may 29, micron pen)
I continued the ‘how to save the world’ sketchbook project in London, but did far fewer entries than I’d hoped. It was an emotional place. Below are parts 7 – 9, preceded by a short intermission, in which the fictional terry follows the steps (a click will bring you to the flickr page). You will see there is a real cup of tea and a real mars bar. the mars bar is normally dipped in the tea. Sometimes i eat the edges of the mars bar, then the top, then the rest. Sometimes.
Part eight shows the view I saw for many, many years, every single day.
Saving the world makes you hungry. Even Superman eats noodles (super noodles obviously). Batman must eat bat noodles, Darth Vader must eat dark noodles (he probably sucks them through his breathing mask), and Wonder Woman eats wonder noodles. I went to see that Iron Man film, pretty good, lots of big explosions and confusing scientific gadgetry. One thing I couldn’t get is that in the middle of huge fiery explosions, Iron Man chooses to be walking around in a huge tin can. Does it not get hot in there? I wonder if Iron Man does his own ironing, or gets Pepper Potts to do it.
So the world-saving-themed sketchbook has started, and the pictures are all from around the home, and the words from all around my head, basically the first thing that comes out. I am hatching like a battery chicken, not always getting what i want, but still life and saving the world is a learning process, for all involved. Am I making it all up as I go? you may as well ask if I’m making up life as I go, or if all of us are. So, part one, make tea. I love my tea. Part two, a bit more drastic, move to california. Hey I did it, the world was nearly saved, obviously a few more steps before it can be completely saved though. Part three, listen to music, that’s easy, you can do it anywhere these days. Just avoid will young.
Sorry the pictures are so small you can’t read the words. I did that on purpose, because I wanted them to fit as three rectangular windows in a line (and because learning the secrets to save the world should not be easy); but with the magic of clicking, you can see the full size, at the flickr site where my pictures are hosted (I paid for it, so I’m using it).
My illustration friday entry for this week, theme: SEED
and so, a load of pens, what’s that got to do with seed? Geoffrey of Monmouth and Baugh & cable; seed? I tell you it has, and you know the answer. It’s quite a lame connection, to be honest.
This was, incidentally (for pen fetishists) drawn in copic multiliner 0.05.
By the way, I like the difference between ‘A History’ and ‘The History’. I think you should always trust ‘A’ over ‘The’ (especially a Galfridian ‘The’).
(yes, Galfridian is one of my favourite words – actually, it is my favourite word – and I always look for an excuse to use it).
petescully 