Sorry, where was I?

 Well, catching up on the last few months, I've been busy. Art wise I kept up the Sketching Everyday challenges through October and November, but through December I had less and less time, what with resurrecting my quiz career on a strictly part time basis, and running the Etsy store. I wouldn't say it was exactly a roaring trade, but in the lead up to Christmas the prints were certainly shifting.

Just after Christmas I finished my challenge to sketch all of the London Underground, London Overground and Docklands Light Railway stations, which I've been doing off and on for the last couple of years. Finishing meant that I had to face an uncomfortable fact. The Overground sketches and the DLR sketches were just much, much better than the Underground ones. Don't take my word for it, compare them for yourself:-

This is a sketch of a station on the London Overground

This is Canary Wharf station on the DLR

Original sketch of Ruislip Manor

I'm sure that you can see what I mean. The Ruislip Manor sketch is not a bad sketch as such, but it's not as good as what came after with the Overground and the DLR. A close look shows why. The later sketches are as complete as I can make them, the Ruislip Manor one isn't. The building lacks detail and shading, and there's little in the foreground or background to give the building context. Now, I could have said - so what? - and left the underground sketches as they were. No I couldn't. So I made up my mind to make another 30 Underground sketches, and replace selected stations with them to improve the quality of the whole. So for Ruislip Manor, I made this one: - 

It's of comparable quality to the Overground and DLR sketches. While I was working on the new sketches, it occurred to me that in a lot of cases, I could actually improve the originals, and get them towards the standard I wanted. At first I tried to do this directly onto the digital images uses the basic Paint programme on my lap top. I did about 20 this way, like this one: -

That's not bad for the detailing of the brickwork and roof tiling. However it is too fiddly when it comes to adding foreground and background details. So then I decided to root out the original sketches, and draw the improvements directly onto them. For the majority the results were pretty good. Compare this original sketch: - 

with the improved version here - 

When you look at the two - which are the same sketch - it's remarkable the difference detailing, and putting the building in context with foreground and background, can make. I improved the majority of sketches this way. 

I had a problem with some of the sketches when I couldn't find the originals. In these cases I had to print off the digital versions, and then improve them by hand. Here's an example:-

It was a decent sketch to begin with, but I think it's better for the work I did on the printed version. Of course, there were sketches that I couldn't improve. For example, this sketch of King's Cross just wasn't good enough. I didn't even have the original, and I just didn't feel I could get it up to standard.

So I cut my losses, and made this brand new sketch

Likewise there were a few others where I'd done silly things like filling in windows and doorways completely black. The largest number I had to do came from either end of the Central Line, where I'd used terrible paper, which scans grey, for example:-

It didn't matter how much I improved the building and how much context I gave it, that horrible grey would still be there. So I made new sketches of each of them like this: -

In the end I made over 40 new sketches. For the sake of variety, I did make a couple of them line and wash pictures. For example, this is Covent Garden: - 

Snot too bad, neither. It doesn't fit with the sketches though. Or at least, it doesn't till you scan it greyscale:-

I love the greyscale version, I have to say.

So there we are, the Underground, Overground and DLR all complete.

Which begs the question, what do I do with them now, and what next?