Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions:7) Wembley Empire Stadium

My TARDIS of the imagination really seems to have a mind of its own. Not only does it  steadfastly refuse to leave London, but this time it’s taken me to a building that I did actually see for myself on many occasions, and even attended an FA Cup Final replay in it. This is Wembley Stadium.

Or rather, I should say, Wembley Empire Stadium. It was built in 1923 for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924. Well, if you read yesterday’s post about the Imperial Institute you’ll know my feelings about that. Still, the Stadium hosted its first footballing event before the exhibition, the 1923 FA Cup Final, and it will be remembered as the home of English football. Not least because it was the scene of England’s only World Cup win in 1966. Sadly I was only two years old at the time and have no memory of this.

The Stadium was also the main venue for the 1948 Olympic Games. In its time London has had 3 Olympic Stadia – the 1908 White City Stadium was demolished in the 1980s, the Empire Stadium was demolished in 2002, and only the London Stadium from the 2012 Olympics remains.

Sketchpedition Through Time and Relative Dimensions 6) Imperial Institute

My TARDIS of the imagination still stubbornly refuses to leave London and makes a short hop of a couple of miles and about fifty years back into the past to the next place I’d like to sketch.

This is the Imperial Institute in South Kensington. It was opened in 1893 by Queen Victoria. The institute was a direct product of Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, and was designed to showcase industrial and commercial products and developments of countries which were part of the British Empire.

I have to be honest, I tend to think that empires are not, by and large, a good thing for the majority of their peoples, and so I will be totally honest and say it’s the building that I’m interested in, and not the purpose or the contents. I know that some people do get quite upset about this but my personal feeling is that Brits (like me) need to be able to discuss our Imperial past honestly and not try to bury it all under the carpet with the argument that it all happened a long time ago. Yes, let’s be proud of what’s worth being proud of, but let’s be honest and critical where it’s deserved too.

From the start of the 20^th century this building was associated with the University of London, which took over approximately half of the building’s space. That interests me since I’m an alumnus of London University, although Goldsmith’s rather than Imperial College. The purposes of the Institute changed and developed, but with the Commonwealth Act of 1958 the Imperial Institute became the Commonwealth Institute and it was decided that a new permanent home would be built. The only part of the building saved from demolition was the Queen’s Tower – seen on the left hand side of my sketch, while everything else was demolished to make way for the expansion of Imperial College – at the time part of London University, but now independent. The preservation of the tower came about through pressure from the Royal Fine Arts Commission and the poet John Betjeman.

This particular part of London, South Kensington isn’t exactly badly off for striking public buildings, what with the nearby Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum buildings, and the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall are only a short walk away. Nonetheless, as an example of Heavy Late Victorian Gothic you’d have to have gone a long way to have beaten it.  

Out of interest the new Commonwealth Institute moved into a striking modern building between Kensington High Street and Holland Park. I visited it in the late 70s and found that the displays were interesting, but on the whole it did feel just like another museum. Public funding ended at the turn of the last century and the building closed in the early noughties.  The building now houses the Design Museum.

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions:5) The Festival of Britain Skylon and the Dome of Discovery

 My TARDIS of the imagination seems loath to leave London at the moment. Instead it moves me forward in time some 60 years, to 1951 to be precise, and the Festival of Britain on the South Bank of the Thames.

My previous sketch was of Waterloo Bridge. It’s ironic that a politician who was heavily involved in the decisions to demolish the bridge, the London County Council’s Herbert Morrison, was the prime mover behind the Festival of Britain. By the end of the second world war Morrison, having been Home Secretary during the wartime coalition, had become Lead of the House of Commons in the Labour Government that followed, often deputising for Clement Atlee. Morrison picked up on the 1943 proposal from the Arts Council to hold an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Great Exhibition.

This didn’t become a world’s fair or expo – of which the Great Exhibition is often said to be the first – because post war Britain couldn’t afford it. The festival, then, as the name suggests, had no international or Commonwealth aspect to it, but was envisaged as a symbol of a Britain starting to recover from the devastation of the second world war.

There were Festival of Britain events staged in every country of the UK, but the focus was on the South Bank complex, and this is what my sketch represents. The two most visible symbols of the Festival in the sketch were the Skylon, a strange, needle-like construction that seemingly balanced in mid-air, and the Dome of Discovery.

In terms of sheer numbers the Festival was a great success, with 10 million tickets sold to events. In terms of architectural legacy though it’s a little more difficult to quantify. Very little of what was built for the Festival remained there for long after the Festival ended. The Royal Festival Hall is a grade I listed building, although to be honest it’s far from one of my favourite London buildings if I’m honest. However the Festival did promote contemporary British architecture and surely influenced some of the interesting buildings of the 50s and early 60s in the UK.

The Festival did little to help the Labour Government, mind you. The Government called a snap election in the hope of increasing their majority from the 1950 election. Despite winning more votes than any other party, the vagaries of the British electoral system meant that the Conservative Party won a working majority of seats, and Winston Churchill, who thought that the Festival of Britain had been a ridiculous idea became Prime Minister again.

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions 4: Waterloo Bridge

We stay in 1890’s London for our next sketch. In fact, if Sydenham wasn’t such a beggar to get to and from I would probably have ditched my time machine of the imagination just for today. However as it is I make a short hop of just a few miles, to the Strand. From here we can easily walk to our next objective, the original Waterloo Bridge. I freely admit that I have a thing about bridges, and after Old London Bridge and Tower Bridge, I think that this is possibly the most beautiful ever to span the Thames in central London.

The Bridge was designed by John Rennie, who would also design the 1831 London Bridge which now stands (sort of) across Lake Havasu in the USA. (I say sort of because the original stones of the bridge are actually a facing over a modern concrete base structure.)

Waterloo Bridge was built between 1807 and 1810. Since the battle of Waterloo didn’t actually take place until 5 years after it was opened, its original name was the Strand Bridge.

I was tempted to bring the time machine forward to 1900, in order to possibly catch the impressionist painter Claude Monet painting the bridge. He loved it and made forty one paintings of it. Mind you, by the time he painted it Waterloo Bridge it was showing signs of wear and tear. 80 years of being scoured by the fast flowing river caused damage to the piers which saw subsidence which needed some hasty repair work in the 1920s. In the early 1930s the London County Council decided that the bridge had to be replaced. It was closed in 1934, and demolished by 1936. It was replaced by the current nondescript concrete bridge designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, although this was not completed until after he end of World War 2.

I think that you have to see the demolition of Waterloo Bridge in context. I’ve seen it cited as an act which first began to bring the whole issue of London’s architectural heritage to public consciousness. The context was different to the context in which the Euston Arch was demolished, though. That was shown not to be necessary. The fact is that Waterloo Bridge, as beautiful as it was, was designed and built more than a century before motorised traffic became a factor in cross-river traffic. It simply wasn’t designed to cope, and even if it had been repaired this would not have made it any more suitable. Remember too that this was in the middle of the Great Depression as well.

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions: 3rd destination

For my next sketch I didn't need to move my time machine of the imagination far in space, only a few miles to the south east. As for time, I pushed the reset button to 1890.

In 1851 the Crystal Palace was erected in Hyde Park as the home for the Great Exhibition. It was designed by Joseph Paxton, the head gardener of the Duke of Devonshire's Chatsworth so that no tree would have to be cut down, and it could be built in a very short space of time. You can see that the design owes more than a little to great Victorian palm houses.

The Great Exhibition was a resounding success. The story goes that the building was christened the Crystal Palace by Douglas Jerrold of Punch magazine, and that the nickname stuck. I have to admit that the temptation was to take the time machine back to the opening day in Hyde Park, but no.

When the six months of the Exhibition were over, the cast iron and glass building was taken down. It was bought by a consortium of businessmen, including 2 directors of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, and re-erected in Sydenham, and this is where I'd love to have seen it. 

It has to be said that the Palace was not a great success when it opened in Sydenham in 1854. The Park was closed to visitors on a Sunday, yet this was the only day that working people would have time to visit. This was rectified in 1860, and over the next five decades the Palace hosted many shows and exhibitions. I was interested to read that at one stage it held a circus, where Ealing resident and famous tightrope walker Charles Blondin performed. After the first world war, the Palace also became the first home of the Imperial War Museum. 

Ironically, under the watchful eye of Sir Henry Buckland, the Palace was carefully renovated during the 1920s and started making profit again. I'm sure that my Nan said she visited it once. 

The building burned down in November 1936, and this being the Great Depression there was no chance of it being rebuilt. Crystal Palace Park is still well worth a visit. You can clearly see where the Palace stood, and its well worth a look since when you see the building's footprint you get an idea of just how massive it was, and how impressive it would have been. I first took a visit when I was under 10, when my parents took me and my two brothers to see the dinosaurs in the park. We used red bus rover tickets - remember them? Didn't think so. As I recall the journey lasted about 3 weeks. Well, here's the sketch. The water tower on the far left was not part of the original palace, and was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel - there was another on the other side too. 

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions: 2nd destination

 2) Old London Bridge

This one really wasn’t a near miss. Old London Bridge, the first London Bridge to be built out of stone, was begun in 1176, and finally finished in 1209. For long periods during this time England’s wealth was being directed to fund Richard the Lionheart’s crusade and his wars.

I don’t remember when I first learned anything bout the bridge with the houses on it. However I do remember that in 1982 I first walked over the high walkways on Tower Bridge, which at he time held an exhibition which said quite a bit about Old London Bridge, and filing it away in the corner of my brain earmarked for interesting stuff to find out about in the future.

I latched onto the fact that there were houses on the bridge, as far as we can tell right from the start. This really wasn’t so uncommon when the bridge was built. Many bridges had buildings on heir superstructure. In fact a great many medieval bridges had chapels on them. The building of London Bridge itself was directed by the parish priest of St. Mary Colechurch, one Peter de Colechurch. The chapel, not quite halfway across the bridge from the City side was dedicated to Thomas Becket, who had been canonized in 1173. Peter de Colechurch had been the Beckets’ parish priest.

Wary of earning the displeasure of King Henry VIII, the chapel would be rededicated to St. Thomas the Apostle. It didn’t change much – Henry had it completely rebuilt and it remained as residential and commercial premises until all the buildings were demolished in the mid 18^th century.

London Bridge certainly saw life in its more than 6 centuries of existence. In the reign of Richard II the revolting peasants of the Peasants Revolt threatened to burn it down unless they were allowed to pass over it. In the same reign the Bridge saw a joust between the champion knights of England and Scotland. And yes I’m afraid that it’s true that the heads of ‘traitors’ were often displayed on poles on the bridge. The first person to receive this honour, as far as we know, was William Wallace, the subject of the film ‘Braveheart’. A little way from the Southwark end of the bridge there used to be a drawbridge, which only worked for very brief periods in the early years of the bridge. This had its own fortified gateway where heads used to be displayed – if you look on the sketch you can just about see this in the bottom right hand corner.

The sketch shows the bridge as it would have been around about the middle of the 17^th century. The building in the middle with the distinctive onion domes if Nonesuch House, a prefabricated building whose constituent pieces were floated down the Thames before being erected on the bridge.

The city end of the bridge was gutted by fire more than once. The most serious wasn’t actually the Great Fire of London in 1666, which left the bridge relatively intact, but it was badly damaged in the fire of 1633.

And still there’s more to say about the bridge. It was decided to remove the houses from the superstructure of the bridge and this happened by 1761. Incidentally, the tradition of driving to the left in the UK supposedly began at this time on London Bridge. The two central arches were combined into one great arch, and in the last years of the Bridge’s existence HMS Beagle, minus masts, was floated through it to participate in William IV’s coronation celebrations. Then there’s the Frost Fairs. The narrow arches, 19 in total, made it possible for sections of the Thames above and below it to freeze over in severe cold weather. The last of these occurred in 1814, and the damage caused to the Bridge by blocks of fast moving ice when the thaw came hastened the bridge’s end. Although it took a long time for the design and details of the new bridge to be decided upon, work eventually began a little downstream on the replacement in 1824. The new bridge, nicknamed Rennie’s Bridge after the architect who designed it, John Rennis, opened in 1831, and Old London Bridge was immediately closed and demolition took place.

Hailed as a masterpiece in 1831, Rennie’s Bridge was overwhelmed by the amount of traffic it had to cope with in just a few decades and was showing signs of subsidence by he early 1900s. Even the construction of nearby Tower Bridge in the 1890s didn’t solve the problems. Eventually the decision was taken to replace the bridge with the current London Bridge, and Rennie’s Bridge was sold to Robert P. McCullough, and eventually shipped to Lake Havasu, USA where it remains to this day. Well, bits of the original bridge do.

When I was about five or six my Mum and Dad took me and my two brothers on a sightseeing bus trip, and we went over London Bridge. Now, I was 8 when the current bridge opened in 1972, so I can confidently state that I crossed London Bridge while the previous one was being demolished and the current one being built. So I did experience Rennie’s Bridge.

I have to finish on a personal note. Remember that I said I had filed away old London Bridge as something I would learn more about in the future? Well I did in the early noughties when I read Patricia Pierce’s wonderful book “Old London Bridge”. Being an obsessive quizzer, I filed it away in my mind as a potential Mastermind subject. I 2007 I reached the final of the series, and my specialist subject was Old London Bridge. Yes, I won, and that’s why this is an incredibly special place to me, and would be the place I’d visit if I did invent a Time Machine but it was only good for one return trip.

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions

So that was Christmas. Very nice too. Now, the problem with this time of year is that it’s terrible for sketching. With a little time on my hands this morning I decided to go on a sketching trip, without leaving my sofa at home. Making the sketch of the West Pier as it used to be the other day led me to thinking about places I’d love to go and sketch if I had a time machine, places which are no longer there in real life. Then I realised that I do have a time machine, a time machine of the imagination. If you’re reading this, then so do you. It’s the internet. So I invite you to come with me, and we’ll sketch some of the buildings which will be on the itinerary when I finally get round to inventing a real life TARDIS.

1)   The Doric Arch – Euston – c. 1890

Yes, we’re going to start in my home town, good Old London Town. If you’re only familiar with the depressing 1960s building which stands on the site now, you might be surprised at my choice of first port of call. I grant you, the current station building does resist all attempts to tart it up an make it look more inoffensive. However Euston has only been like this for about 60 years.

The original Euston was the first terminus to be built north of the River Thames and construction began in 1837. Putting this into perspective, this was the same year that Queen Victoria came to the throne. London Bridge station, south of the River, had opened the year before. 1837 was a mere 8 years after the opening of the world’s first inter-city railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

By the time that the reference photograph I used to help with this sketch was taken Euston was already over half a century old. It’s tempting to imagine the awe that visitors exiting the station in those first decades must have felt .

The first threat to the arch came in the late 1930s when a radical plan to rebuild the station was drawn up, which would have involved moving the arch at the very least. The second world war put paid to this, however it only turned out to be a stay of execution. Despite the fact that both station and arch were grade II listed, the plan for the current station wee put forward in about 1960, and nobody in officialdom showed any appetite whatsoever for moving the arch to a new home. The London County Council balked at the cost, and Transport Minister Ernie Marples said all options for not demolishing the arch had been carefully examined and rejected. This was the same Ernie Marples whose company built motorways – not that he was at all biased, you understand. Pleas from great men such as Sir John Betjeman to be given time to raise the money to meet the cost of removing the arch and storing it until such time as a new home could be found for it were ignored.

Contrary to how it might seem from what I’ve just written, I do appreciate that you cannot keep things just because they have been there a long time. Otherwise we’d all be living in Bronze Age roundhouses.  But I do think that there was a very strong case for keeping the Euston Arch and I point my finger at those who made the decision and rushed to demolition, and am happy to say that you have let down the people you were working for and sold all our birthright for a mess of concrete.

Of all the places we’ll be visiting in our time machine, this one is really a ‘near miss’. The arch and the original station were demolished in 1962, just 2 years before I was born.

Brighton Piers

It might not be the most popular seaside location in the UK – well, there’s no maybe about it, Blackpool deservedly owns that title – but there’s something about Brighton. I first visited on a day trip in the mid 1970s and I’ve always enjoyed it ever since. After all, where else in the UK can boast a building quite as wonderful – and mad - as George IV’s Royal Pavilion?

Last weekend I went to Worthing. My mother and step-dad live there, having moved from Tottenham 11 years ago. They live a few doors down from my older brothers. I go most years to take the Christmas presents down and pick up those for my lot. While I was there last Saturday my brother popped in and asked if I wanted to go for a coffee in Brighton. Coffee – good, Brighton – good. While I was there I took a couple of photographs of the rather sad partial skeleton of the West Pier.

I always liked the west Pier, even though I never got to walk along it. The first time I visited would have been a year or two after it closed. It’s a shame. I always thought it had a real beauty to it. Far more so than the nearby Palace Pier. The Palace Pier, which is now called Brighton Pier, is still going strong, and I’ve sketched it and painted it several years ago (two coats of whitewash, guvnor) – see below.

So here’s the sketch of the pier as it is now. The other sketch is based on a photograph taken, I would imagine, in the late 70s or the 80s, and shows the West Pier as I remember it.

Inktober 3rd installment

 Okay, now. So Inktober doesn't actually end until tomorrow. However I will confess that I have completed all of the Inktober 2022 sketches already because I knew that I was going to be away for this weekend, and so completed them all prior to leaving in Friday afternoon, to make sure that I did in fact complete it this time, since the previous time, 2028, I missed the last 2 or 3 days because I was going to Amsterdam. So, here's a reminder of the prompts:-

23) Booger

I mean, in all honesty, how do you deal with a propt like that? I really didn't want to draw a careful study of a booger in all its glory. Found the photograph of the young ape that his one is based on and it seemed to hit the spot, and was complex enough to keep me interested in drawing it.

24) Fairy

I typed 'fairy illustration' or something similar into google, and this was one of many imaged that appeared. I liked this one so chose to copy it. 

25) Tempting

This really was the first thing that occurred to me - a snake/serpent and apple combination. If you search images on the net as well there are many, many variations on this theme from which to choose, so you really aren't short on reference photographs.

26) Ego

As a Marvel film fan, the moment I saw the prompt Ego I thought of this one. I have to say I'm pretty damned pleased with the result - the eye on the left looks quite like Kurt Russell, but the one of the right looks extremely like Kurt Russell. Though I say it myself this is a nice little ink portrait.

27) Snack

It was more a case of any port in a storm with this prompt. I resolved myself to the fact that I wasn't going to find anything that fitted the prompt that really lit my candle, so I just set out to make the most faithful sketch that I can.

28) Camping

This is a copy to one of the original illustrations to Robert Baden-Powell's unfortunately titled "Scouting for boys". I do really like this kind of illustration from the first half of the 20th century. It's unfussy, and it's honest. 

29) Uh oh

I've since been informed that what I copied for this prompt is an illustration to M.R. James' "The Scrapbook of Canon Alberic" Fine by me. I just immediately liked the illustration the moment I found it, and knew that I would enjoy copying it. I did too.

 30)  Gear

My thoughts on this were to take the cogwheel meaning of the word, and to make some kind of clockwork animal. I found a photograph of this box, complete with 'clockwork' dragon, and it just seemed to fit.

31) Farm

Here we are, then. Number 31, and another copied illustration. The original was black pen, I think, but I fancied using sepia and it's not worked out too badly.

Yay - that's the first time I've completed Inktober, and looking back over the illustrations I don't think they're too bac either.

Inktober Part Two

 Right, so you remember in my last post I showed you my first 16 Inktober 2022 sketches? Here’s the next 7. First, here’s the prompt list again:-

Here we go: - 

17) Salty

This is based on the picture on an old cigarette packet. Players navy cut cigarettes. Now look – I don’t want to do anything that could ever be taken as promoting smoking. Which come to think of it is why I didn’t put the writing on it.  I just liked the picture and felt it fit the prompt.

18) Scrape

Just a cute picture of a kid who scraped his knee. I remember being forced to wear shorts in my early years. I don’t know if little kids in the UK were always forced to wear shorts in cold weather to toughen us up when I was growing up. Bordered on child cruelty in my opinion.

19) Ponytail. When I make the choice of what I’m going to sketch to fulfil the brief, what I tend to do is set my mind off on word association. With ponytail, the first thing which came to me was the great Italian footballer from the 1990s, Roberto Baggio, who was nicknamed the Divine Ponytail.

20) Bluff. Bluff made me think of poker, and the picture of dogs playing poker, featuring on a pub wall near you. I only copied some of the detail of it.

21) Bad dog. This is another one based on a model figure that I found on the net when I googled the words Bad Dog. I sketched this one while watching a Marvel film on the telly last Saturday night.

22) Heist. Okay – so Heist made me think of the word outlaw. This in turn made me think of the Clint Eastwood film “The Outlaw Josey Wales”. This is based on a still from the film.

Inktober 2022

It’s been a while, hasn’t it. I suppose that’s inevitable since I was on holiday from school when I last posted, and when you return to work, well, it can be difficult to find the time.

Yes, excuses, I know. Still, I have been taking part in #inktober 2022. If you haven’t encountered inktober before, it’s a challenge to produce (at least) one ink sketch a day throughout the month of October. There’s an official prompt list issued. This year’s is this one:-

So, as it’s the 16^th, and therefore half a day over half way, I thought I’d post the pictures I’ve sketched so far.

1)   I) Gargoyle

This is actually copied from a photograph of a figurine. There’s only one problem with it. I’m so pleased with it as a sketch that I couldn’t help thinking it would be difficult to maintain this standard of drawing for the rest of the month. Well, that was soon proven to be correct.

2)   2) Scurry

This is copied from a photograph. Yes, okay, the squirrel is leaping, not scurrying, but what the hell?

3)   3) Bat

Like the Gargoyle sketch, this was based on a photograph of a figurine. It’s a figurine of the DC supervillain Manbat, sometime adversary of Batman. Geddit?

4)   4) Scallop

This is not a subject I would have chosen to draw off my own volition. However it is what I would like to think of as a good exercise subject. Drawing is as much about the eye as the hand, and this is a really good test of observation, since you really need to look very carefully if you’re going to get anything like a accurate representation.

5)   5) Flame

I don’t know exactly what it says about me that my first thought for flame was the flaming helmet worn by Arthur Brown – of The Crazy World Of – fame – when performing his song “Fire”. But that’s what happened. After posting this one a client and friend asked to buy it. I wouldn’t charge him since it was drawn on scrap paper and is very small.

6)   6) Bouquet

Back to Alice in Wonderland and John Tenniel. The original of this, with the shrunken Alice in the garden of the talking flowers is not one of my favourite Tenniel illustrations but it seemed to fit. Using the sepia pen on this one was maybe a mistake as well, it just doesn’t work so well as the black ink does, in my opinion.

7)   7) Trip

Cheat alert. Pushed for time I dd not make an original sketch, and instead used this one I made earlier in the year. It depicts some of my favourite places in the City of Edinburgh and is currently available in my Etsy shop. 

8) 8) Match

Inspired by the retirement of the great Roger Federer. I liked it when I first sketched it, since then though I’ve gone off it a bit. Verdict – could do a bit better.

9)   9) Nest

These are ospreys, whose numbers in the UK are slowly increasing. I tried to keep the nest as simple as possible, and I tend to think that it’s one of my more effective Inktober 2022 sketches.

1 10) Crabby

What can I tell you? There’s nothing much more crabby than a crab, by definition, is there? I just google-imaged crab and used what came up to make this sketch. And this is definitely one of my favourite of this year’s sketches, because the approach I took to shading here works very nicely, I think.

11  11) Eagle

Cheat zone 2. I used the copy of the Tenniel griffin sketch I made earlier in the year. I love the original, I think I made a good copy of it – I dunno what else to tell you.

    12) Forget

Now, I had to play a little bit of word association here. My original though was to go with forget-me-not, which I might have done. Then it went – Forget – Forgetfulness – Lethe, River of Forgetfulness. I found a Gustave Dore engraving of Beatrice (probably) dunking Dante in the river in the Divine Comedy (I love the work, but there are precious few laughs in it for a comedy). I copied just the detail you see here.

1  13) Kind

I really just wanted a statement about kindness in an unexpected space. This is why I went pretty simple with this one. I didn’t overburden it with visual detail, so that the message comes through the more strongly.

1 14) Empty

The least successful sketch so far in my opinion. I came up with the idea of a smashed and empty piggy bank, google-imaged and found a photo. I copied it as well as I could, but let’s be honest, it hasn’t come off very well, has it.

1     15) Armadillo

One of the prompts that probably needs the last amount of interpretation. Again, google-imaged a photo and sketched it to the best of my ability. It hasn’t quite come off as well as I would have liked – the shading on the top of the shell should have been done better, if my skills were up to it.

1    16) Fowl

I decided to go for game fowl, in particular, a pheasant. Did you know that pheasants can run faster than any other bird in the UK? Apparently, their top speed is not much slower than Usain Bolt’s. I remember one of the buggers running into the side of my car a few years ago.

There it is - the first 16. I did try Inktober about four years ago and fell short by a couple of days. Here's hoping that I can go all the way this time. 

Ealing Watercolours *11) The former Himalaya Palace CInema

 This is one of Ealing's Grade II* listed buildings - the former Himalaya Palace Cinema. It's stunning. The original cinema on this site, the Paragon Palace, was built in 1912, but when it was acquired by the United Picture Theatres Ltd. Company they pulled it down in about 1928, ad erected this building, which opened in November 1929. It closed in 1982, and became an indoor market, then reopened as a cinema in 2001. Sadly it closed in 2010 and became a market again. It was grade II listed in 1980 and upgraded to Grade II* in 1998. Quite right too, since it is the only cinema ever built in this particular oriental style ever in the UK.

I will admit that while I have looked at the building many times - often from the top deck of a 207 bus, I never actually watched a film there. The Odeon in Northfields Avenue was much closer - and that too is an equally stylish building, albeit in a completely different style. My father was in the habit of being given money by my mum to take us to the cinema. He'd present us with a choice - I can take you to the cinema now, but that's it, or I can take you to Rossi's now, buy you an ice cream and then I'll take you to see the film in Southall next week when it's there.- The point being that if he did this he'd save enough money to buy himself a bottle of cider. Of course, he wouldn't keep up his end of the bargain to take us to the film the next week. Choosing to take the cinema today rather than the ice cream didn't work. His reaction to a refusal was often ' Right, you're being greedy, so I'm not taking you at all now.' While it would be nice to say this was just one little foible and that he was good most of the time, it would be an utter lie. He was a bit pants as a dad. In fact if I'm honest, he was a lot pants. In fact without wanting to overstress the matter, he was the whole underwear drawer. Enough about him. So - I tried to produce something on a par with my last painting of the Hanwell Clock Tower. 

I did make an ink sketch of the Himalaya Palace last year : - 

I hope you can see what I like about the building just from the ink sketch. Here's the sketch I made today: -

I didn't use the same reference photo. Today's reference photo was taken sometime between the reopening in 2001 ad the reclosing in 2010. I'll be honest, I did not take process photos other than this. My feeling was that it was going to be a more complicated painting than he clock tower. It bloomin' was too. The irony of doing a much larger building like this one means that you're painting every thing in a smaller scale. Now, until recently I'd have made a sketch like this completely freehand. I will come clean. For several of my Ealing pictures I've used a ruler when I've been making the original sketch. It takes a bit longer - making just this sketch took me 2 hours this morning. 

So - you remember the two lessons I tried to apply when I made the previous painting? 1) Be creative with the sky. Again I've gone for yellow, but added a light blue streak at both top and bottom. Since the yellow was wet they kind of coalesced so that while it's more yellow further down, it's almost greeny further up. 2) Try hard not to overwork it. If anything I was even more likely to overwork this one than the previous one since it has so much going on in it, and there's so much detail. I hope that I haven't. 

So here it is:-

I like it and I'm pleased with it. Not as much as with the Hanwell Clock, but then that one turned out pretty much exactly the way that I wanted it to. This one, well, I don't really know how I wanted it to turn out. 

Learning two simple lessons: Hanwell Clock Tower watercolour

I haven’t taken as many process photos for this latest painting. Bteween painting the Woolworths painting at the end of last week, and painting his one, I’ve been looking at watercolours of similar subjects by artists I really like, and trying to figure out why I think their’s are SO much better than mine, and I picked up just a couple of ideas that I tried to apply while I was making this painting.

The subject is the Clock tower in Hanwell, which is the part of Ealing where I grew up. It was erected in 1937 to commemorate the Coronation of King George VI. There was a campaign to have it removed during the 1970s. Thankfully this didn’t come to anything.

I've sketched the clock tower in ink from a different angle: -

I’ve developed the habit of filling the page with my original outline sketch, which does mean that I have to rub out the pencil lines which have been covered over by the tapes.

Right, the two things I picked up from looking at watercolours by artists I like showing similar views were these:- 1) You don’t have to go for a traditional blue sky every time. Some of the pictures I looked at achieve great things using colours like yellow, crimson or even purple for the sky. So I went for a mostly yellow sky with just a hint of blue bleeding into it from the very top. – 2) Do not overwork the painting.As you can see, I had finished the clock itself at a very early stage of the painting. I would always be tempted to do more work on it, to darken the shadows more, and try to add more texture. Here I forced myself to say – it’s good now, be satisfied.

I’d started the painting on the Sunday afternoon, but my daughter and my youngest grandson called round, so I didn’t return to it until the evening. Taking this photo was the last thing I did before packing up for the night. The natural light had gone and the artificial light was not really helping me much.

 

I woke too early this morning, but was eager to crack on with the painting. I made up my mind to be disciplined and work from left to right. So the first job was to complete the red brick building. I’d already painted he cream base yesterday. Today I applied the individual brush strokes to replicate the pattern of the bricks. Once these had dried I watered down the brown, and applied a very thin layer over the op of the brickwork, just to push the pattern back a little.

I shouldn’t say it, but I was getting quite excited by this time at just how it might turn out. I was deliberately using colours that were somewhat more muted than I would normally, and it was giving the painting the quality I wanted.

The next thing was to work on the shopfronts. I had to have a serious think about how I was going to execute what I wanted and in the end decided to paint in the more brightly coloured chairs on the pavement in front of the café before finishing the shopfront and windows.

By this time I was so far into the picture that I really only had one main concern which was – don’t cock it up now by making a pig’s ear of the last few bits on the far right. I was happy with the front of the café and the chairs. Although I still need to add the shadows on the pavement in front of it.

Before I took this penultimate picture It struck me that the blue on the timbered building and on the building on the far right was a little weak. The buildings in real life are actually white but the blue contrasts strongly with the colours of the clock tower, and fools the eye into thinking that the white buildings are in shadow. So the Ladbrokes shopfront and the windows above it were finished, and this was the stage just before the signing, and the ceremonial removal of the tape. I still had to add the kerb, and one shadow running up the steps of the clock.

And this is the finished painting. No doubt it’s not a masterpiece. However, it does show some of the qualities I think make watercolour special. I like this one a lot.