Docklands Light Railway Continued

 Pushing on towards Beckton, but not there yet - here are the latest: -

Docklands Light Railway Stations

 At the end of 2019 I gave myself the project of skeching every London Underground station – a project which continued for the first ouple of months of 2020 as well. I did manage to do it, but I have to be honest, for as much as I enjoyed drawing the 270 stations, the drawings themselves are frankly not brilliant. They’re pretty sketchy as you can see from a few selected sketches below.

I'm sure that you can see what I mean. They're okay, but not much better than that. Too sketchy. Then in the first lockdown of 2020 I decided to extend the project to the London Overground. The Overground has a more modest 112 stations. I took a lot more time and trouble over these, and as a result I think that I produced better sketches – again, there are some examples below which you can compare with the ones above.

Again, I think you should be able to see what I mean about these being better drawings. So starting in July 2021 I decided to draw all of the Docklands Light Railway stations. There are a modest 45 stations, some of which I have already sketched as part of the Underground or Overground. I have to admit, I’v been a little bit laid back over this. Here we are 5 weeks after starting and I’m not yet halfway. Still, I do think the sketches aren’t bad. So here are the ones I’ve done so far.

Needless to say - but I'm going to say it anyway - these images are all copyright. If you would like to copy or use them for any reason, then email me and ask. I have used legal redress in the past. 

Stylised town views

 As well as my visit to Coventry earlier this week, I’ve produced 3 variations on the same theme. I make no claim that it’s an original theme. Basically, you take a town, take its most iconic buildings and combine them together into stylised 2D front on street scenes. The first I did was this one of Port Talbot.

Producing a drawing like this is time consuming, but quite a rewarding process, especially if, like me, you like puzzles. Making a drawing like this is a bit of a puzzle in two ways. Firstly you’re using photographic references which are not, for the most part, from the angle you want. Or if they are, then the photo has the optical illusion of making them look like the buildings are slanting inwards and upwards – again, stop me if I’m getting too technical.Secondly, you have to try to work out how you want to make the buildings relate too each other – how you want to play with their relative sizes.

Well, in the space of a day and a half, this picture had become my best selling print on Etsy, so it wasn’t just me who liked it. Which encouraged me to make this next picture.

This is my other home town, Ealing – I should probably say my first home town. I was born in nearby Chiswick, and grew up in Hanwell in the London Borough of Ealing. I’d say that I  really started leaving home when I went to University, then I moved to Port Talbot in 1986.

This is Swansea. It’s my nearest city now, and I was intrigued to apply the same process that I applied to the first two pictures. Both of the first two have just over a dozen buildings each, while this one has a whopping 18.

Coventry Cathedral Visit

During the first lockdown in 2020 one of the ways I amused myself and kept my hand in was by making a series of detailed ink sketches of beautiful Britain. Of necessity these were all based on photographs. I made 32 altogether, mostly just ink sketches, although I did apply watercolour to a few. Of the 32, only about 5 depicted places I’d never been to before. Of all of them, I reckoned that Coventry Cathedral was the most appropriate for a day trip. I’ve already stayed in Edinburgh and then London this school holiday, but a couple of days ago the time was right, and so I went.

Now, I can pretty much guarantee that if you’d asked me my opinion of Coventry Cathedral a few years ago, the phrase ‘beautiful Britain’ wouldn’t have featured in my answer. But when I started on my Britain sketches last year, every time I googled to find out what other people considered examples of Britain’s best buildings, Coventry cathedral featured on a surprisingly large number of lists. It made me take another look at least. Then I made last year’s sketch, and to me there are few things that make you appreciate a building as much as sitting down to look closely and seriously at it while you try to sketch it.

Which is not quite the only reason why I made the trip on Tuesday. Not long after we first connected to the internet 20 and some years ago, I did a lot of research into my family history. My mum’s father’s mother was a Rainbow from Coventry. The Rainbows were, I believe, originally Huguenot silk weavers who originally settled in Spitalfields, then moved to the Midlands, and in the later 18^th and the first half of the 19^th century they were movers and shakers in the silk industry in Coventry, living in Foleshill. Then, in June of this year, the BBC showed a very good documentary called “Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain”. After I’d watched this, a visit to the cathedral went from being a possibility to a certainty.

Getting older is certainly to my mind preferable to the alternative, Still, one of the things that you have to guard against as you get older is becoming more inflexible and less ready to take on board different ideas and opinions from those you’ve held for a long time. 25 years ago I had no time for anything built after the First World War, which come to think of it was a ridiculous attitude anyway. Particularly as I started looking more closely at London Underground stations I came to appreciate futurism, modernism and art deco in architecture. Now, I’m starting to take a more open minded look at post war architecture. Okay, I somehow doubt that I’m ever likely to become a believer in the virtues of brutalism, but what the hell. Although Coventry Cathedral wasn’t consecrated until 1962, it really is a child of the 50s, born in the same time as the Festival of Britain. In fact Basil Spence, who won the competition to design the new cathedral which was launched in 1950, also designed a pavilion for the Festival of Britain.

It's quite possible that Coventry Cathedral might have ended up very different from today’s cathedral. The decision to rebuild the cathedral was taken very quickly, and the eminent Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was commissioned. His design, produced in c.1945, was very radical in terms of the interior, and probably not radical enough in terms of the exterior. The designs exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition certainly made it look a heavy and gloomy , sort of cleaned down and slightly streamlined gothic. Allegedly the bishop wasn’t happy, wanting a more modern looking building which would have a better chance of appealing to younger people. I have to be honest, looking at what we have now I can’t say that I think he was wrong.

Entering the cathedral I was struck by a number of things. Firstly, it’ a huge empty space, but on the other hand everywhere you look around the walls there are impressive works of art. I personally really like the massive glass screen with John Hutton’s engraved figures of saints and angels on each glass panel. I think that the figures are incredibly evocative, with their elongated necks and limbs, and their clothing resembling death shrouds, their strange, tormented, almost alien features. They’re not comfortable to look at, but my goodness, they’re effective. They’re also a hell of a contrast with Graham Sutherland’s gigantic Christ In Majesty tapestry, and also the panels of stained glass windows on either side. I’m not religious – not boasting, not apologising, just stating a fact – but if I lived close to the cathedral I could see myself often nipping in to spend a little time in quiet reflection – it really is that kind of space.

I like the clever way that the walls are built out in zigzagging ribs – stop me if I’m getting too technical here, and that they are broken up further by the stained glass panels. However, for me the real star turn on the exterior is the statue of St. Michael’s Victory over the Devil. It was one of the very last works created by Sir Jacob Epstein.I’ll be honest, I don’t unconditionally love every sculpture or statue that Sir Jacob produced. . . but I think that this one is fantastic. Hence the sketch. I did read that the devil’s head was allegedly partly based on Epstein himself, who had practiced expressions in a mirror. The head of the Devil is supposed to be modelled on his daughter’s two husbands – her first husband the artist Lucien Freud, and her second husband the economist Wynne Godley. It looks more like Godley than Freud but has resemblance to both of them in my opinion.

I liked Coventry Cathedral. In my opinion it’s one of those buildings where all of the hype you’ve heard or seen about it seems justified. Where cathedrals are concerned it’s probably true that you won’t get a true idea of how beloved, great or important they are for until they’ve been there for at least 100 years. It’s not impossible that I’ll be around in 2062, but not particularly likely. But I like it, and for the time being, that’s enough.

More Underground Stations

 I've been pushing on with my London Underground Stations Project. In the last two days I've added another 4 pictures - which isn't bad going for the week when you consider that I spent 3 days of it in London. Here's the pictures:-

Top - Rayners Lane
Bottom - Hounslow West c. 1955

Top - Hounslow East
Bottom - Southgate c. 1940

I like each of these stations - 3 of them were designed by the great Charles Holden. No prizes for guessing that Hounslow East wasn't - that's a child of the 21st century designed by Acanthus Lawrence and Wrightson Architects. My current favourite among these three is the Hounslow West picture - I think that the two buses really make the picture. 

Rayners Lane -I am very sorry, but I still can never see the name Rayners Lane written down without feeling a little bit of residual irritation. Rayners Lane – Grrr. It sounds right. It goes back to the days of waiting footsore on Piccadilly line platforms, watching the next train boards flash up train after train to Rayners Lane of Uxbridge, with narry a one for Hounslow for ages. Despite my residual ill feeling towards it, this is a striking building. It’s a typically Holden arrangement, with the rectangular booking hall dominating the wide, low entrance. The distinctive things here are the semi-circular ends of the street level entrance. A little judicious googling shows that Holden collaborated with New Zealand born architect Reginald Uren, who could boast the John Lewis store in Oxford Street on his design CV. Uren also collaborated with Holden on an unbuilt design for Finchley Central.

Hounslow West, the end of this arm of the Piccadilly Line until 1975. To look at it you’d immediately say it was the work of Charles Holden, who is one of my architectural heroes.

 Charles Holden was a distinguished architect, who  designed cemeteries for the war dead of the First World War. He first came to know Frank Pick, general manager of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, through the Design and Industries Association. Although he’d never been involved with railway architecture prior to this, in 1923 Pick commissioned Holden to produce a new entrance for Westminster Station, and thus began an association which would last, on and off, for more than 20 years. As well as a large number of stations for the Northern and Piccadilly Line extensions, Pick engaged Holden to design the headquarters of the UERL at 55 Broadway, above St. James’ Park Station. This building resembles nothing quite so much as a modern ziggurat, a huge stepped pyramid.

 Holden did assist in the design of Hounslow West. In its glazed panels, and liberal use of Portland stone rather than brick it clearly shows the influences of Holden’s slightly earlier designs for what became the southern end of the Northern Line. However, the main architect was Stanley Heaps. Heaps had been assistant to Leslie Green in the 1900s, and his earliest designs very much followed the corporate style developed by Green, in stations like Kilburn Park. We’ll come to Green’s stations in the fullness of time. By the 1930s, though, Frank Pick wanted a more modernist approach, and brought in Holden, relegating Heap to less important stations, and less important buildings, although he worked with Holden on a number of occasions, Hounslow West being one. It’s a striking concrete structure, clearly of the same era as the slightly earlier Empire Stadium at Wembley. The heptagonal ticket hall forms a memorable structure and is reminiscent of the similar structure at Ealing Common station, for example. Holden’s stations are as often described as ‘modernist’ or art deco, and this can be briefly defined as a rejection of ornamentation for ornamentation’s sake, and an adoption of clean, geometrical shapes, of which the heptagonal ticket hall is a pretty good example.

Hounslow East is the cheese to the previous station’s chalk. Opened in the noughties, this is a striking demonstration of what can really be done with steel, chrome and glass. It’s far removed from the design of Hounslow West. When I was growing up in the late 60s and the 70s, artists impressions of cities of the future were full of buildings which looked like this. During my research for this first section of the challenge, I tried to find photographs of what Hounslow East looked like prior to the rebuilding. I can see the back of the old building from the platform on which I alight, and it looks perfectly inoffensive. This is all the more surprising when I google the building on my phone and find a very interesting Hansard debate from 1961, in which the station was described as – and I apologise for the language used here – “an abortion of a station”. As I mentioned earlier, I am not a great fan of modern architecture. This is gorgeous, though.

When it comes to Southgate station, I would imagine that my first reaction to the station when I walked out of it was pretty similar to most people’s, that is that it looks as if a flying saucer from a 1950s B movie has landed in suburban North London. I absolutely love this station. I can only imagine what the reaction of people was when it first opened in 1933. It must have been like walking onto the set of Metropolis, or the Flash Gordon movie serials. I make the connection to movies of the time deliberately, since I’m convinced that movies in part influenced Holden in his design. The story goes that the structure on the roof was inspired by the tesla coils which help bring the monster to life in the 1931 movie “Frankenstein”. This station is about as far as you can get from Holden’s own appraisal of his stations as ‘brick boxes with concrete lids’. 

 

London Underground Paintings

It's easy for me to say that I love the London Underground, because I don't actually live in London any more, and because I don't have to use it on a regular basis. Well, that is true, but it doesn't obscure the fact that I do have very fond feelings towards the Underground. For me, my earliest memories of the tube are walking to Northfields or Boston Manor Station with my mum and my two brothers. The tube was a wonderous thing that took us to interesting places. Then, when I grew older, the tube was what took me uptown to sample the delights of the big city. It was also a way of getting home from Uni for a weekend. When I met my wife, the tube was where we'd say goodnight as she went off to the family she was working for at the end of the central line. So yes, my view of the Underground is hopelessly romanticised, and that's just the way that it is, and probably always will be.

At the end of 2019 and into 2020 I set myself the target of sketching all 270 London Underground stations. I finished them just before the first national lockdown in Wales. Some of them aren't too bad, but compared to my other sketches a lot of them are very 'sketchy' for want of a better word. In the summer of 2020 I also sketched all of the London Overground Stations, and then a few weeks ago I embarked on a project of sketching every DLR station as well. 

AS part of this year's 30x30 Direct Watercolour challenge in June I painted Northfields station, a pleasant experience which led to a commission to paint two others. I also painted a few other stations. I enjoyed that so much, and these seemed to go down so well that I've embarked on a series of watercolours of stations I like. Here's the ones I've painted this week: - 

Kilburn Park Station

Earls Court Station

Hammersmith (Hammersmith and City Line) Station SOLD

Perivale Station SOLD

I've used photographs of these. The photographs do make them look a bit dark, but they show off the colour better than the scans. For some reason my scanner doesn't make a great reproduction of watercolour.