the towers of westminster

July 16, 2024July 15, 2024Leave a comment

This is Westminster Cathedral. No not Westminster Abbey, this one is a little further up Victoria Street, free to go inside, and according to the priest I spoke to a few years ago they have the best bacon sandwiches in London down in their cafe. Well, I’m neither a catholic nor do I eat bacon, but this is one of my favourite buildings in London. It’s often overlooked, not as old or famous as its big Church of England brother down the road, but it’s a spectacular sight, especially on a sunshiny day like that day. Well a London cloudy sunshiny day, my favourite type of day. We had just taken my mum on an Afternoon Tea bus ride around London, one of those ones bedecked in flowers and pretty colours where you sit at little tables upstairs and enjoy tea, cakes and even some sparkling wine, while being driven around the streets of the capital. The staff were very friendly, though it wasn’t a guided tour, but they sure filled us up with tea and sandwiches, while playing the usual Abba style music over the speakers. I had an idea, there should be a bus where the theme is cockney singalongs. I would love to be the tour guide on that bus. When we got back to Victoria station, we took a walk around to Westminster Cathedral. I actually first heard of it when I was a kid and my mum went there with the local Catholic church (the Annunciation) to meet Cardinal Basil Hume. It was many years before I went inside myself, but it’s really grand inside, with some glittering mosaic tiled ceilings in the adjoining chapels. I sketched it five years ago, on a rainy day when I actually took the elevator up that tower to enjoy the view. This time I stood in a similar position on the street opposite, not rainy this time, and the colours really popped. Victoria is so much more modern and shiny than it used to be, so many new big buildings I would not recognize, but they reflect the cathedral well. It was designed by the architect John Francis Bentley in a neo-Byzantine style with no steel frame, and opened in 1903. It was Friday afternoon, I went off after this for a walk around London before meeting up with my friend to watch Scotland lose to Germany in the first game of the Euros. As I write, I’m not quite over England losing to Spain in the last game of the Euros. Football, I don’t want to talk about it.

On a completely different day, when I was still quite lagged of the jet, we took a long walk along the Thames, my favourite river. I mean, it’s not like I have a bunch of other rivers that I’m ranking, it’s only the Thames that means anything to me. The Sacramento river? Please, I have to go to Sacramento for it. The Liffey? Yeah it’s ok, for the amount of times I’ve been to Dublin in my adult life (twice!). The Sambre in Charleroi? I used to avoid it when I lived there in case monsters came out of it covered in grease. No, I only really know the Thames, and I love that river so much. On this day we walked from down beyond Tower Bridge all the way to Hungerford Bridge, and my jetlagged head was thinking it needed a nap by that point, but as we took a rest before getting on the tube, I did a quick sketch of Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament. (You have to say that in the voice that bellows “He-Man! And the Masters of the Universe…”). The South Bank is a must-do in London. Personally a big fan of it on very cold bright mornings, or misty evenings in November. Not a huge fan of that time I got stuck over there on a freezing cold snowy night in February in about 1996, when right after crossing over the river, the bridges and tube stations all got closed due to a terrorist bomb going off accidentally over in Fleet Street. Took me ages to get back over the river that night. I do remember one time coming down here when I was about 16 or 17 and drawing by the Thames, I drew pretty much this exact scene from this same place. This was long before the London Eye and all the river buses. There were a lot of homeless on the South Bank in those days, especially under Waterloo Bridge, and one guy who was from Liverpool started chatting to me while I was sketching, and we had a long conversation, he told me about how he’d ended up where he is, and that gave me a different perspective. I gave him the drawing I had done, and he was nearly in tears. I was poor as hell myself and couldn’t even afford to give 50p for a cup of tea, but he did appreciate that drawing, and the chat. I remember drawing another one (which I think I gave to my godmother) but this view does always remind me of that moment, decades ago.

Finally, another tower, this time it’s the Coliseum Theatre on St. Martin’s Lane. I drew this on the same day as Westminster Cathedral, having arrived in the busy Leicester Square area with some time before meeting my friend James. Interestingly enough, the last time I drew Westminster Cathedral, I went over and drew St. Martin’s Lane right afterwards; coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences, detective. The evening before, we had spent a wonderful evening in the Coliseum Theatre watching the current production of Spirited Away, adapted from the animated Miyazaki masterpiece. It was not a cheap, but I could not miss out on seeing it, and my son and I are both big Studio Ghibli fans. It did not disappoint! The theatre itself is an incredible place, it’s worth seeing something there just to be in the space. The puppetry, the performance, the music, the staging especially, it was all done so well, and it was all in Japanese! It’s a theatre company from Tokyo bringing the original show to London, so the actors are all Japanese. I have only ever watched Spirited Away in English (I did try to get a head start by watching it in Japanese on the flight over) but since I used to do sessions on ‘performing in a language the audience does not understand’ back when I was a drama student acting in German or French, I was interested to see how their acting and physical performance would tell the story; I wasn’t disappointed (although to be fair, I know the story). Nevertheless there were subtitles, displayed out of the way above the action as glowing words through the green foliage around the stage. I loved all the costumes too, especially of the various spirits, but like the film it really did transport me somewhere else for a while. If you get a chance, I recommend seeing it. Good theatre is well worth it.

Friday night by the Thames

August 16, 2023August 15, 2023Leave a comment

We definitely had to sleep in after getting back in the wee hours from Scotland. Exhausted, not feeling too well, and probably having withdrawals from all the Irn Bru and Tunnocks Teacakes, I didn’t have a lot of energy. However I had planned to go down into central London to attend the London Urban Sketchers Friday evening sketching meetup at Bankside, and despite my headache, I’m glad I did. It was cooler by the Thames, with a nice river breeze. I got there a bit too late for the start, so I just got my sketchbook out and started. As you can probably tell, this is Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, with the tall tower of Tate Modern in the background. There were a lot of tourists about, enjoying the last day of June next to my favourite river. It was extremely relaxing for me to get down here and into my sketchbook. People lined up to see the latest show at the Globe; I really wish I’d had the forethought to book tickets to see something there, as I’ve never actually seen a play there, even though it opened while I was a drama student twenty-odd years ago. I remember our Places of Performance class did visit the Globe in about 1998 or 1999, when it was still a new addition to London, for a tour. During the early part of the pandemic, our family would watch full plays provided by the Globe online for small donations, filmed in the preceding years, since they were closed back in 2020 and we had no idea what would happen. So I love the Globe, but still have yet to go there properly. Some day.

I have also never been mudlarking by the Thames. The tides were low that evening, so there were quite a few people down there looking around in the silty mud and stones, looking for whatever the old Thames has dredged up. People find things that are centuries old. I sketched them in my little Fabriano, looking down from the Embankment, and then sat on the steps leading down to the River. A couple of hours later, the water was already way back up there (I presume everyone got back up before that?). The Thames is a tidal river, at London anyway, due to its proximity to the Thames Estuary which is where it meets the North Sea. So the river goes right up and down a couple of times each day.

The London Urban Sketchers met up again outside the Tate to look at each others sketchbooks. It wasn’t a huge crowd this evening, but I gather that the monthly “Let’s Draw London” sketchcrawl attendances have been so big that they have started holding them twice per month in the same location. These smaller evening events are bonus meet-ups for the summertime. I spoke to a few familiar faces, and looked through sketchbooks of some newer sketchers, and remembered how much I always enjoyed this part of urban sketching. I’d not organized or even attended a sketchcrawl in Davis or anywhere for quite a long time, so it was great to get to meet the sketchers again. I resolved to start organizing more in Davis again (and I just held one this past weekend, in fact, on a very hot mid-August morning). When we were done, I was not quite done yet. I stood beneath the Millennium Bridge (to all those tour guides who still insist that Londoners call it the ‘Wobbly Bridge’, no they don’t, do they. They did back in 2000 when it opened, and when it wobbled so much that all the high-end architects involved in its design were stumped and they closed it, but then they fixed the wobble and reopened it in early 2002. Nobody is still calling it the wobbly bridge except tour guides telling a story. And I used to be one of them, but that was in 2000 when it was actually still wobbling) . Anyway, I drew that ever-changing City of London skyline again. Every time I return, it looks different. The top of Tower 42 was decked in Pride colours. I forget the names of all these towers now, the walky-talky, the big spinach, the witch’s watering can, the flake, I honestly cant keep up with all the silly names. Call them what you want. Call the Millennium Bridge ‘the Wobbly Bridge’ if you like, it doesn’t really matter. That’s the great thing about London, names just spring up out of nothing, sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t. Even the Thames gets a name change when flowing through Oxford, where they call it the Isis, though maybe in more hushed tones than before.

And finally, Morph. This year in London there are loads of statues of Morph, painted in a million different ways, and this one outside the Globe was as you’d expect painted to look like William Shakespeare. For those who for some reason have no idea who Morph is, Morph was a little plasticine stop-motion animated character created by Peter Lord, and appeared on the TV shows of the late Tony Hart, every kids favourite fatherly TV art figure (quickly checks online, we still think he’s ok right, no scandals there yeah? Phew, he’s fine. You never know when it comes to our 70s and 80s kids TV heroes in Britain). Tony Hart was also the only person we knew of who was named after three body parts. Morph was a national treasure though, even though he could only speak in little sounds, and he had a friend called Chas and this little brush that would follow them round like a dog. Oh, and he had a super power where he would turn himself into a kind of cylindrical tube of plasticine and ‘morph’ his way through the solid wood of a table. Having sketched Morph, the sun was finally down over the Thames, so I got a very crowded tube back home.

Monumental

July 13, 2023July 13, 20233 Comments

I went up The Monument. “The Monument? Which Monument? I hear you ask. Aha, The Monument. That’s all Londoners call it, and it has its own tube station called simply ‘Monument’ so that’s that (it joins up with the station called ‘Bank’ which is named after The Bank of England which we never call “The Bank”). I could write a whole book on tube station names, but it’s probably been done, I would only be using it as an excuse to draw pictures. Anyway, the full name of The Monument is actually The Monument To the Great Fire of London, and yes, it is exactly that. And I went up it, for the first time since I was in my teens. I’ve not had much of a reason to go back up there in all these years, and I do muddle up my old your guide stories about it occasionally (no it is not 365 feet high and no it does not grow a foot in leap years, that is St.Paul’s as everyone knows). It was created by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke as a huge column topped with a shiny golden ball of flames and an observation deck, so people can climb up the narrow spiral stair case (all 311 steps) and look out over the rebuilt city that Wren had created. Well I wanted to go up there and draw. The City keeps on changing, and since the last time I saw that view from that angle was in the early 1990s, it was bound to have changed a bit. The first time I went up I was about 15 or 16, and I remember getting to the top, and finding myself still looking up at buildings, while also being at the top of a very narrow stone column with just some bars stopping me from plummeting. They do say that if The Monument ever fell on its side (presumably at the exactly correct angle) it would hit the spot where the Great Fire began, in Pudding Lane. Since it had never happened, there was no chance of it toppling over, but as I reached the very tight confines of the top, my knees went all “Ossie Ardiles 1981”, and I nearly bottled it. I forced myself to the top platform, and hugged the wall with my back, edging slowly around. There was a German couple up there taking loads of photos oblivious to the height, and I thought, well Pete you better get to work on this sketch. So I whipped out my Fabriano sketchbook and my HB pencil and drew the view as well as I could. The idea was that I’d add in the pen up there, and maybe colour it in later.

Another man joined us on the platform and he like me was just edging around the column slowly in a state of terror. “Me too, mate” I said reassuringly. Despite the very sturdy looking barriers, I was convinced that I would drop my pen, and it would plummet down to the streets below, probably taking out someone’s eye and impaling them in the neck, and I would have to get a different pen. So as far as I got with the penwork was drawing Tower Bridge and a couple of other details. It started getting windy, and hello, that was it for me mate. I said Auf Wiedersehen to my brave German friends still taking photos (actually they had left long before so I was basically saying goodbye in German to a pair of American tourists) and went back down that long spiral staircase, hoping that nobody passed me coming back up.

When I reached the bottom, to my surprise they gave me a certificate that certified that I had climbed all 311 steps of The Monument. That was nice. I then went to buy some new pants. Only joking. It did remind me though of that first time I climbed up here (no certificate in those days, at least not for me) and I said something about Wren being “a nutter” to the attendant, who grumbled a possible agreement, and I had this idea about doing a project where I drew and wrote about all of Wren’s buildings in the city, and it was not until the 2010s that I did something along those lines, when I organized two big Wren-themed sketchcrawls, the first one in 2014 starting at The Monument and ending at St.Paul’s, and the second one in 2016 doing the reverse, culminating in a big group photo outside The Monument after we as a group had drawn every single Wren building in the City, all in one day, an achievement so big I’ve never got around to organizing another London sketchcrawl. Read about that sketchcrawl here. I’m still into Wren though, and I’m glad I went up The Monument. I decided to finish the inking of that drawing over the top of the pencil sketch, using what photos I dared to take as reference, and that’s the complicated panorama sketch at the top of the post. I’m very pleased with that one, click on it for a closer view.

as long as I gaze on, i am in paradise

July 11, 2023July 10, 2023Leave a comment

Before heading over to Mile End, I got out at Embankment station and onto Hungerford Bridge. Sorry, I mean the Golden Jubilee Bridge (Hungerford Bridge is just the rail bridge in the middle now, but I still remember the shaky old walkway on the side from years ago, it’s much nicer now). I wanted to start my day with a little bit of my favourite river, and draw this view towards Waterloo Bridge once again. I had intended to add in the blue and white sky, the brownish tinged Thames, but I got too hot standing on the bridge. I went and sat on a bench on the embankment beneath a tree to add it all in, but by that time the moment had passed, and my perspective changed all the colours, (that can happen with reflective objects like a river), and so I went to Mile End instead. But I’m glad I got this sketch done, as it’s been a while. Below are two other panoramic sketches from a similar location (not exactly precise, but same half of the bridge). The colour one is from 2016, the other is from 2012. Well, you can see the difference in the skyline. Obviosuly the bottom one includes the Shard but I didn’t go that far in the other two, but in the City itself, the buildings are all change. When I left London, it was just Tower 42 (the old Nat West Tower) and the Gherkin (Swiss Re as it was called, but it was always the Erotic Gherkin), just to the right of St. Paul’s. Now those are all but invisible from this view. There will probably be more coming, unless the economic downturn means fewer novelty skyscraping, but next time I draw this in about four or five years, we will see. I’ll need better glasses then, my eyes ain’t getting any younger.

Click on any of these sketches for a slightly bigger view, that will save you just moving your face closer to the screen.

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…

chasing clouds on the banks of the thames

August 16, 2022August 15, 2022Leave a comment

On the first day of June, which is always a good day in the calendar, I took the tube down to Battersea to meet up with friend Simon, who was flying over from Dublin that morning for a few days. I say I took the tube down, well this being classic London, I left in good time only to find the Northern Line was down, so I had to get a bus to Queensbury to jump on the Jubilee Line. Can’t escape the Jubilee. Incidentally that Jubilee Line was named for the Queen’s 25th (Silver) Jubilee, which is why it is coloured in grey. This year it was the 70th (Platinum) Jubilee, and they named the new Crossrail after her, the Elizabeth Line (that was actually her mum’s name, Elizabeth Lines-Bowen) (I think they missed a trick by not renaming Crossrail as “we-are-not-amused-rail”, ok maybe not). Anyway silly jokes aside, I was hoping to see the new London underground station on the Northern Line, Battersea Power Station Station. That is actually its name. It is the tube station for Battersea Power Station, so therefore it is Battersea Power Station Station. However, once me and Simon met up, at Vauxhall Bridge, we never found it, as we were catching up on three years of silly jokes. It was a fun day out we had along the river, and then up into Chelsea, and the clouds were incredible. He’s a pro photographer and got some great shots – follow him on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/naderissimo/ – and I started some sketches, very much in the ‘finish these later’ category. I had not drawn Battersea Power Station before, I do want to draw it from the other side of the river sometime, but it has all been redeveloped in recent years and is all a bit fancy now. I notice that the Urban Sketchers London had a sketching event down there recently, part of the ten year anniversary, as many Battersea Power Station sketches kept popping up on my feed, making me want to go back down that way. I haven’t really explored there before, so it was an eye opener.

We walked down through Battersea Park, where I have not been for many years, until we took a rest by the Albert Bridge (above). I drew this bridge as an illustration for a book years ago, the “London Walks, London Stories” book in about 2008 or 2009, so I was keep to draw it in person. Not super easy, so I drew the main bits, the main outlines, and drew in the rest of the details later. We were busy chatting. Albert Bridge is named after Queen Victoria’s dead husband Prince Albert (I mean they are all dead now aren’t they, the Victorians), and is one of the best and most charming bridges in London. Lots of things are named after Prince Albert, you’ve got the Albert Embankment, the Albert Hall, the Albert Bridge, the Albert Memorial, Albert Square, and of course the Prince Albert, which I won’t elaborate on further. We crossed Albert Bridge and wandered about Chelsea, looking for one specific pub that Simon knew about, and I can definitely say I got my ten thousand steps in that day a couple of times over. Still at least we got to look at some cool shops and see loads more colourful Jubilee displays, including this union-jack-themed mini. Simon used to have a very beloved mini, so I just had to draw this, though now he lives in Dublin he probably wouldn’t drive this particular one about. There were so many interesting floral displays along the Kings Road, we spent a lot of time taking photos (and being silly of course) before resting with a pint in the old pub he was looking for, and then heading over to Harrods (I got some delicious cannoli). One thing about this trip, I did explore a fair bit of London I either hadn’t been to before, or not been to in years. It’s like a book you can keep coming back to and learning something new, but because it’s the city where I’m from there’s always a connection.

The South Bank Show

March 7, 2019March 6, 20195 Comments

Every time I go back to London, my family members have grown older, a little bit. With the adults it’s slower, less noticeable, while with the children it’s a much more visible change. I am now the classic “look how tall you are!” uncle. My uncle jokes are also the best uncle jokes in the world. I too have grown; not taller, rather I have encroached into traditional green belt lands. See, uncle jokes. London on the other hand changes faster than I can think. When I left in 2005, the Gherkin (aka ‘the Erotic Gherkin’) was still the new shocking addition to the City’s skyline, pointing like a stubby fishnet bullet at the sky. The older NatWest building still dominated the Square Mile, sufficiently far from the unchanging dome of St. Paul’s (though that too has changed since I left, having been scrubbed of its layer of grey pollution-particles, so much it now gleams as Wren intended). One by one newer buildings started to be approved, all with their pre-approved nicknames: the Heron, the Walkie-Talkie, the Cheesegrater, the Shard, the Dodger’s Kerchief, the Ocelot Spleen, the Snood, and of course the Wizard’s Winkle. I might have made some of those up but you would be hard pressed to figure out which. London’s skyline is starting to resemble less a city and more a manual of Yoga positions. I don’t even know what some of the new ones being built are called (if only there was some way of finding out, some kind of instant source of all global information right at my fingertips!), but change is a good thing, I suppose. I never wanted London to stand still and miss me after I moved away, I wanted London to enjoy its life, meet other buildings, move on.

It was a lovely day when I went out sketching on the banks of the Thames. I miss the Thames more than I miss any part of London. I don’t have a Thames here in Davis. I used to come down to the Thames to have a look at it, and contemplate, and be pensive. Sounds stupid now I say it like that. You know like in films and TV shows when the main character has a lot on their mind and they go and look at the Hudson River or stand on the pier at Coney Island (all films and TV shows are set in New York), that was me, coming to the Thames, standing on the South Bank near Waterloo, looking at the Thames. I think I just like watching water move from left to right. Maybe it reminds me of the old Thames Television screen, which would come on just before Rainbow, and I always liked Rainbow. Geoffrey out of rainbow died recently. I met him when I was a kid, at Brentford’s football ground, he drew me a picture of Zippy. It wasn’t a super detailed picture of Zippy but I could tell it was meant to be Zippy. Unless it was meant to be a picture of himself and I misinterpreted it, or a picture of me. Either way, I always wondered what Zippy would be like as a modern-day politician. Yes, it is extremely easy to imagine that isn’t it (it’s even easier to imagine Bungle). When Boris Johnson became Mayor of London years ago I drew a picture of Zippy with Boris Johnson’s hair. A few years later, Johnson and his friend Joanna ‘George’ Lumley, had this crazy idea of building a new bridge across the Thames, right at the spot where I drew the sketch above. It was to be a ‘Garden Bridge’, covered in trees and plants and closed at night and on special corporate events such as when Rod Jane and Freddy would need to perform their Greatest Hits. If I recall, the plan was to build it “up above the streets and houses, everyone can see it smiling over the sky”. Being pedestrian only, it would not alleviate traffic, It would require cutting down scores of trees on the South Bank as well as blocking the view of the city with all its Yoga-position skyscrapers from much of the South Bank and Waterloo Bridge. Change is a good thing I suppose, but this was a change that really didn’t need to happen, at least not right here. When the pedestrian Millennium Bridge was built, it was visually unobtrusive and also in a place that had needed a crossing connecting St Paul’s with the new Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe (I well remember the circuitous routes before). Also, it wobbled, meaning those crafty Cockneys could re-christen it the ‘Wobbly Bridge’, calling it that for many years even after the Wobble had been fixed and the joke had really lost its steam. The Garden Bridge was an expensive vanity project that probably wouldn’t even wobble. In the end, after millions being spent and many Bungles, the Garden Bridge was finally scrapped. I’m glad, and I think Geoffrey would have been glad too.

I sat on a bench by the Thames and drew in the sunshine. It’s one of my favourite spots in the whole world, even with the growing metropolis sprouting up across the river. A man stopped to have a look at my sketch, enthusiastically asking me what I do with them. “I colour them in,” I said, and he laughed. People often ask what my sketches are for, which is a fair question, since they could be for sale or to make into postcards or maybe I am out looking for views to dismantle with expensive vanity projects, but the answer is always the same – it’s because I love to draw. I just love drawing, so I have to just keep drawing. This city is worth drawing and drawing and drawing, and then drawing more. This city changes so quickly. After this sketch, I went to the Tate Modern and up to the tenth floor of that new building next door, to sketch the City from above. That is one of my favourite new viewing spots in London, although the crowded elevator means you need to book some additional vacation time if you want to go up there. I decided to colour in only the sky and the river, leaving the city itself uncoloured like in the opening credits of a certain TV show I used to watch as a kid, the large tower of Tate Modern in the foreground. Tate Modern used to be Bankside Power Station, designed by the same guy who made the phone box (I’ve talked about him before). I love listening to tourists talking to each other when visiting London, hearing their enthusiasm for the city. As I looked out over the skycrapers I though about the previous times I had sketched it, and as I sketched I thought that this would be a very good point to include some of those older sketches in this part of the blog post. I hope you have enjoyed this little trip to the South Bank with me. Next time I go back, it will look different again.

london’s ancient highway

August 4, 2016August 4, 20165 Comments

For the first sketch back in London I wanted to draw this stretch of the River Thames again, looking out towards Waterloo Bridge. Last time I sat on Hungerford Bridge (a little bit further toward the middle, drawn to include the then-brand-new Shard) the skyline looked different. New skyscrapers keep popping up, all in fun zany shapes like some ten-year-old invented a futuristic robotopolis. They all have funny names too, the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater, the Walkie-Talkie, the Spaghetti Western, the Cordless Kettle, the Balrog, the Gelfling’s Prophecy, all very silly names. Ok some of those may not exist yet. The oldest structure in this sketch is actually Cleopatra’s Needle, on the left there, at about 3500 years old (placed here in the 19th century). Its twin is in New York, you can apparently use it to teleport between the two cities but they don’t like to tell anyone (see previous posts for feelings about Translatlantic travel). Ancient Egyptians used to smirk at the silly nickname too, also making fun of Thoth’s Sewing Machine, Rameses’s Hat-Stand and Mark Antony’s Hypodermic Syringe, and so on. Anyway, I sat on my uncomfortable little stool (now retired) and sketched for two hours straight, as London in the Summertime started up around me, tourists, day-outers, amblers all looked around and marveled at the view. Now if the proposed mess of a project the Garden Bridge gets built this view will be spoiled. I believe the Bridge would go just beyond Waterloo bridge, but with trees poking out of the top of it the views down river would be compromised somewhat. Not a fan. Might be useful elsewhere, but not there. It’s a folly of Boris and Lumley. We’ll see if it actually gets built. If it does, expect more cranes, more changing views, and more sketches along the ever-changing, ever-constant river. I do love this river.

Here’s the sketch I did on the same bridge in 2012:

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.