Monopoly 9) The Electric Company

I was tempted to use a picture I sketched of Battersea Power Station a few years ago for the Electric Company. But Bankside is closer to the centre of London, and has a more remarkable story. Before the 21st century, London's Bankside Power Station was the kind of building that Londoners either tried to ignore, or to pretend that it wasn't there. Directly across the Rover Thames from St. Paul's Cathedral, and just a stone's throw from where Shakespeare's Globe Theatre once stood, the Bankside Power Station provided electricity for London from 1891 until 1981, although the current (should you pardon the pun) building only dates back to 1947. Decommissioned in 1981 the future of the building looked very much in doubt until, in 1994 London's Tate Gallery announced that the building would become the permanent home of the Tate Modern Art Gallery. The Tate Modern opened in 2000, and is now one of the most visited buildings in the whole of the UK.

The Tate Modern is one of the largest and most important collections of Modern and Contemporary Art in the world. I have visited it once, but I'm afraid that my visit only served to confirm what I have always suspected - that when you get right down  to it I'm a bit of a philistine. Particularly when it comes to abstract art, while I can appreciate skill, and occasionally respond emotionally, when you get right down to it I don't really get it. I'm willing to accept that this is down to my own aesthetic deficiencies. It still doesn't change the fact that I don't get a lot of it though.

I thought I'd use a variety of different coloured fineliners and see what sort of effect I could get with them.