Latest Sketchbook Drawings.

 Barry Island Woodhams Bros. Scrapyard c. 1980

In the 1960s British Railways decided to move to purely diesel and electric locomotives and units. Its locomotives and tank engines were sold to scrapyards across Britain. By the mid 70s the scrapyards had cut up their stock – apart from one scrapyard in South Wales. Woodhams Brothers Scrapyard in Barry Island, South Wales, made the decision to cut up a large consignment of coal wagons first. Word got round and by the mid 70s the scrapyard had become a mecca for steam engine enthusiasts, and in 1976 my family joined their number when we made an excursion from London.

On a practical level there were almost 300 locomotives and tank engines in Woodhams. 213 of them were sold to various preservation societies and restored to run on heritage railways. The last left the yard in the 90s, but in its heyday in the 70s the scrapyard attracted visitors from all over the world.

Kew Gardens Pagoda

Kew, in South West London, is home to the Royal Botanical Gardens. One of it great oddities is a chinese style pagoda, which rises majestically into the skyline. During the 18th century, what became the Gardens was the site of a royal palace. It was built in 1762 by the Royal architect William Chambers, who designed several other chinese style buildings for the park, a reflection of the fad for all things oriental that we call the chinoiserie style, which later found its most extravagant expression in the Prince Regent's Royal Pavilion at Brighton.

The Old Lighthouse - Smeaton's Pier in St. Ives

Lighthouses are structures that I've always liked.

London to Brighton Veteran Car Run

Come rain or shine, on the first weekend of November owners of veteran and vintage cars gather in London and take part in the annual car rally to Brighton. The iconic shot is always of the cars going across Westminster Bridge.

Street Beggar in Ostend, c. 1900

Victoria Station, London 

Queen Victoria might possibly the historical figure who has had the greatest number of cities, states, countries, towns and other places named after her. Victoria station opened in 1860, although the style of locomotives in the photograph I used for reference suggests that this is at least 20 years later. 

The original Metro

Yes, I've been keeping my hand in with pen and ink this week, and made a couple of sketches showing locomotives that once worked the Metropolitan Railway - the oldest London Underground railway and in fact the first underground/subway/ metro line in the world. 

Metropolitan Railway Electric Locomotive - Wembley Park

Metropolitan Railway Steam locomotive Baker Street.

Now, I would love to be able to say that I dashed both of these off in about half an hour. I'd love to be able to say that but it would be a lie. The electric locomotive took me about 3 weekday evenings after work, in roughly 2 hour sessions while watching the telly. The steam locomotive I did in one sitting yesterday, but it was a marathon sitting of five or six hours. 

The London Underground is a subject I love, so much so that I did once consider it as a Mastermind specialist subject. In the end I didn't take it, though. 

Why the Metropolitan? Well, not only was it the first, but it was also where the generic word Metro originates. When the Paris underground railway was built and opened in 1900 it was decided to call it the Metropolitain, after London's Metropolitan railway. Metropolitain became shortened to Metro and now many underground railways and subway systems across the world are called metros. 

The second picture took so long because of the extreme amount of shading. I mostly used a 0.1mm nib for both sketches. 

Ealing Sketchbook

 I think that I mentioned in yesterday's post that I've been making a series of sketches of my old home town, the London Borough of Ealing. When I get up in the morning, one of the first things I do is to fire up the computer and check on the Etsy shop. You can imagine my joy when I fired it up this morning, and found I'd sold my first Ealing print. In honour of that. I thought I'd share the sketches I've already made: -

This is the Odeon CInema in Northfields Avenue. It was built in the 1930s in a style that seems heavily influenced by Spanish Morish style, and I don't think there's another cinema quite like it. Sadly the cinema was closed in the 90s, and now is used by the good people of the Elim Pentecostal Church. I have sketched it before in its modern appearence. It's a real Ealing icon though, and brings back happy memories for several generations of Ealing people. 

This is the Wharncliffe Viaduct in Hanwell and it was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Well, I say buuilt - I doubt he laid all of the bricks himself, but you know what I mean. It carried the first stretch of the Great Western Railway out of London and was built in the 1840s. 

This is St. Mary's Church, the original parish church of Ealing, and although the centre of the area has now moved towards the North in Ealing Broadway, it was the centre from which the settlement originally grew. The byzantine style used by architect S.S.Teulon isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I rather like it. 

A 607 ytolleybus plying the route along the Uxbridge Road, as it approaches Ealing Broadway. 

Ealing Town Hall, a fine example of high Victorian Gothic Revival Civic Architecture. Last I heard at least part of it is going to be made into a hotel. Sheesh!

This is the Hanwell Coronation Clock Tower, built to commemorate the Coronation of King George VI in 1937. It's a nice part of Hanwell, this, and when I was growing up I think that this place was nicknamed Taplin's corner, after an outfitters there. 

When the Ealing Broadway Centre was officially opened by the Queen in the 80s, she unveiled this statue called "Small Work Horse". I've always liked it very much. 

Now, I've no doubt that I don't need to remind the good people of Ealing that I do not give permission for any of these images to be downloaded and printed, but just in case people from other areas were thinking of doing so then please don't. If you'd like prints of any of these pictures they are all available, for ridiculously low prices, from my etsy shop - just click this link - 

My Etsy Shop

We're All Off Our Trollies

 It’s funny how your mind can get stuck in a rut, and run along the same tracks for days, even weeks at a time, even if you try to lead it down a detour.

I grew up in the London Borough of Ealing, and have been thinking about Ealing quite a bit since I discovered a blog which the author wrote about his childhood growing up in the 1950s in a house which was a very few streets away from the one I grew up in. Alright, I was born in the mid 60s, not the 50s, but even so it brought back a lot of memories. So over the weekend I made a number of sketches of Ealing. Well and good.

Now, you know from my last post that I’ve been collecting a mini fleet of Matchbox London bus models for my shelves. Look, they make me happy, okay? So, what was the latest of the sketches I made yesterday? Well – this one.

That’s the Uxbridge Road in Ealing, looking West towards West Ealing. And on the right, well, that’s a trolleybus. Trolleybuses were introduced to London’s streets from 1931. Although I would guess they were seen largely as a solution to the problems with trams – I’ll come to those – trams weren’t completely phased out in London until about 1951.

So why did London want rid of its trams in the first place? Well, Londoners as a rule didn’t want rid of them at all, however to the London Passenger Transport Board they were a problem, and not necessarily for the reason you might think. In 1870 an act of Parliament determined that when a company built a tramway, then they assumed responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of the whole roadway on which the rails were laid. In the short term this was a good deal for both sides, as it made tramways far more attractive to the individual boroughs that had the final yay or nay over whether the tramways were allowed to be built. The first fully operational electrified tram services in London ran from 1901. By the late 20s and early 30s, a large amount of London’s tram network was old, and would have needed huge investment to replace. Not only that but London was growing, and the cost of building new tram routes would have been hugely expensive compared with the cost of making a new bus route. Considering the expense of costly road maintenance, and also the view that trams were a major source of traffic congestion (which was later proven to be untrue) the LPTB began a process of decommissioning its trams and tramways – although this was prolonged due to World War II.

As I see it, trolleybuses had a major advantage over London’s trams, in as much as they didn’t rely on rails. Not being trams, this also meant that London Transport didn’t have to pay for the whole maintenance of an extensive road network. They had a huge capacity or around 70 passengers. When trolleybuses first took to the roads, the maximum capacity for a diesel or petrol engine bus was 56, and there were performance issues with both.

Recently bought Matchbox Model of a London Trolleybus

So, in the trolleybuses – and it is believed that London had the largest fleet of them in the world at one time – London had a public road transport system that was capable of carrying large numbers of passengers, that was more cost effective in the long run than trams, that people liked, and that was environmentally friendly. So of course, it had to go.

Although the decision to scrap London’s trolleybuses seems like madness now, in 1954 there did seem to be some sense behind it. Remember – being environmentally friendly wasn’t even really a concept in the 50s. In 1947, the Government nationalized electricity. This meant that London Transport could no longer generate its own cheap electricity. At one time trolleybus drivers were not paid as much as diesel or petrol bus drivers, but this ridiculous state of affairs ended and that raised costs, to the point where it was no longer cheaper in real terms to run trolleybuses than diesel buses.

In addition to this, improvements in technology meant that the trolleybuses lost their performance advantage over diesel buses, whose capacity to carry larger numbers of passengers increased. It’s interesting that the decision was pretty much concurrent with AEC unveiling their prototype Routemaster bus. One school of thought says that LT had put so much money into the development of this iconic bus, that they had to scrap something for the Routemaster to replace. The current fleet of RT buses weren’t 10 years old yet so it wasn’t going to be them. It is true that diesel buses gave you the opportunity to change a route much more easily than trolleybuses. Trolleybuses also needed a turning circle at the end of their routes – you can see one such outside Uxbridge Underground station.

That’s trolleybuses, then. Will they be back? There was a wee bit of media fuss in 2012 when a new Routemaster was decked out as a trolleybus to consider the feasibility, but I don’t know that much ever came of it. There are currently no trolleybuses operating in the UK apart from within museums. There are over half a dozen 2^nd generation urban tramways in the UK. I’ve been to quite a few European cities with second generation tramways, but only one with a trolleybus system – Kaunas. Who knows, though? In 1980, who’d have believed that we’d ever see trams in the UK outside the tourist trams in Blackpool?

Beautiful Britain - Blackpool Tower

Off Prompt: Today's British landmark is the Blackpool Tower. For non UK readers, Blackpool is the premier coastal resort in the whole of England. (Sorry Brighton - I love you as well, but for me, Blackpool is number 1) It's a great place to visit, and its most iconic landmark is this. it was inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and was built in 1894. I last went up the Tower about 5 years ago, and absolutely loved it. Inside that complex is the most famous ballroom in England, and an interactive exhibition. Love it.

Drawing Buildings

 Last Sunday I posted about how I draw figures as part of a crowd scene, following my Beautiful Britain drawing of Piccadilly Circus. That was in response to a query forum a fellow member of my favourite Facebook drawing group. I made the point that any advice that I give should be taken with caution, bearing in mind that I haven’t had any Art lessons since I was 13 (and the lessons I had in school up to that point weren’t all that great if truth be told.) Well, that still holds good, obviously. So I’m not posting this saying – this is how you SHOULD do it – only this is how I do it, and if you find that helpful, then I’m delighted. 

How do I go about sketching buildings, then? Well, let’s make the distinction between urban sketching buildings on the spot, and working from photographs. Working from photographs is a lot easier. This isn’t just because you can take your time and probably work in more detail. When you make a sketch from life, your eye, brain and hand have to do some quite complex things. You’re turning a 3D image into a 2D representation, which has finite edges. When you sketch from a photograph, the camera has already done all of that hard work for you. 

I always start by having a really good look at the building (or photograph of the building) that I’m going to draw before I start to draw it. That’s something I think you should do before you draw anything. I’m sure I’m not different from a huge number of artists who draw as much with their eyes as with their hands. I try to work out what it is that makes this building stand out, and makes me want to draw it. Let’s look at a sketch I made during the last week – Manchester Town Hall. 

One of the interesting things about this building is that it’s rather like an inverted T, with the tower and spire. This is a building which exudes power, confidence and authority – hardly surprising since it was built at a time when Manchester really had become an economic powerhouse. So both of these observations helped inform the choices I made while sketching it. 

Exaggeration is a useful tool, especially if you’re trying to make a building look impressive. I slightly exaggerated the size of the left hand end of the building, making the upright lines a little taller than they are, and making the perspective lines more acute. I’m always conscious that I’m not trying to produce a perfect photographic record. If you take this thought to its logical conclusion, then you don’t even need to make your straight lines all that straight, or if straight, you don’t need them perpendicular or parallel to the page edges. I’ll try to show what I mean – here’s a couple of watercolour and ink sketches I made a while ago:-

 

I found that playing with the forms like this did get across the feeling of massiveness I was looking for.

 

This picture of the Grand pavilion in Porthcawl shows this even more. This and a couple of my other sketches of the time are heavily influenced by one of my favourite artists, Ianf Fennelly. Except that he does this really well. If you go to his website – click here – then you’ll see what I mean.

 Ian Fennelly Gallery

Another piece of advice I would like to give you is that if you’re going to make a habit of sketching buildings, it can be very useful just to learn a little bit about various architectural styles. For the sake of argument, let’s say that you were attempting to draw a medieval gothic cathedral. You don’t need to be an expert at all, but you might well find it useful to know what a gothic medieval building is actually like – and why it looks the way that it does.

 One other thing to think about before you put pen/pencil to paper is how much background, if any, you plan to include. While I’ve done full background, no background and all stations between in different sketches, I think some background at least is usually better than none. If you compare this grey sketch of the Royal Liver Building

 

With this sketch of Tower Bridge –

 I think you can see what I mean. The bridge is still clearly the star, but the background gives it context, and in fat does who just how much it dominates the scene, which is part of what I was trying to say about the building in the first place.

 People often comment on the level of detail I put into a building. Actually, on all of my sketches, a lot of the smaller details are actually sketchy, since that’s how they appear to me on the building I’m looking at, or the photograph. As a rough rule of thumb, if the bit of the building you’re looking at looks blurry or indistinct to your naked eye, well, that’s how it should look on the drawing.

 Like a lot of other people, I can be very critical of my own work, but I’ve learned not to give up, and not to throw finished drawings in the bin. So one last piece of advice I’d give, is that if you think a drawing you’ve made of a building doesn’t work, try to learn something from it. Put it to one side until you can look at it objectively. Then look at it again, and try to focus on exactly what it is that you’re not happy about. Or, if you think that there’s a lot of different things you’re not happy about, then try to pick out the one you’re least happy about – the most glaring problem. Then either try sketching the same building again – perhaps from a different viewpoint or angle. Or failing that, a similar building, and make your focus to try to avoid that the issue that you picked out with the first sketch. I’d also look – without trying to copy – at drawings that other artists have produced of the same buildings, and see if there’s something you can take away from looking at the materials, style and approach that they have chosen.

Beautiful Britain : York Minster

 

Yesterday I used my grey fineliner which I bought on Friday to make a drawing of the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool. If you read yesterday's post, then you'll remember how disappointed I was with the results. Today, I resolved to have another go, but this time to use the grey where I'd normally use hatching or cross hatching to achieve shading and shadow effects. No production photos this time, I'm afraid. 

York is just a beautiful city, and a great place to visit. I first visited to see the National Railway Museum, and I remember distinctly that it was the day that Red Rum won his third Grand National. I enjoyed the museum very much, but I was even more blown over by the Minster, and the Shambles, which was a bit like walking back in time. When I was at uni I visited the Jorvik museum twice as well. 

I haver actually sketched this very scene before. About 18 months ago I made this ink ad wash sketch: -

It's interesting to compare the two, since today's sketch was always meant to be monochrome, and so I think you can clearly see it's a lot more detailed. I like the painted version too, mind you.

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I had no intention of adding paint to today's sketch since it's one of my Beautiful Britain drawings. We're not doing too badly with this series, either. I've already sold two of them - Chester and Edinburgh, and had interest expressed in a few of the others as well. 

Beautiful Britain - London Eye and Palace of Westminster

 

Sorry if you're hoping for some production photos taken as the sketch progressed, I just didn't get round to taking any. 

COmpared with the other sketches I've done recently, this was a much quicker and much simpler undertaking. For one thing it's a far less complex scene - the most complex part of it being the wheel itself. 

Beautiful Britain - Durham Cathedral A4 fineliner

If you’re talking or thinking about Beautiful Britain, then sooner or later you’re going to need to get to Durham. I visited Durham for the first time by train, and arrived on a Sunday evening in February. The sight of the Cathedral, all lit up on the top of the hill was absolutely magical. 

Here’s a few photos I took while I was drawing this picture this morning. 

As with the St. Paul’s drawing earlier this week, this was carried out on an A4 pad with a 0.03mm fineliner pen. I didn’t actually start the sketch quite at the extreme left hand edge. You can see two towers, and the left hand one was where I started. Again, no grid, although if you don’t have confidence in your own dead-eye reckoning then I can certainly see why you’d want to use one. Once I’ve got my marker in – in this case that tower – then I can go about building outwards. One thing I did say to myself was that I was going to try to be a little more disciplined and not flit from feature to feature. So I worked on the cathedral building up to the point where the main tower starts to rise from it, then all of the foliage to the building’s left, and then all of the foliage beneath what I’d already sketched.

Carrying on this principle of completing one part before moving onto another, between the first photo and this one I sketched in the main tower. And not much else. I did put in the part immediately below the tower, at least, so you can see that I am at this point trying to stick to my resolution. I’ve also put in the outlines of the next part of the cathedral I’m going to work on.

 

This shows how I finished the cathedral then sketched in the buildings and foliage below it. In all honesty, it really isn’t difficult to draw a gothic cathedral. It’s almost all straight lines, for one thing. If you can draw a reasonably straight vertical line, you’re halfway there already. If you can also draw reasonably straight horizontal lines and diagonal lines, then you’re all of the way there. Like anything else, it’s a matter of looking really careful, to see how the different lines relate to each other. 

At this stage it looks like we’re slightly over halfway there, but as with the St. Paul’s sketch, appearances can be deceptive. The most fiddly part of what’s left at this stage are the buildings on the right, but these are only small when compared with the cathedral, so it’s possible to suggest what’s there rather than try to depict them in detail. 

Most of the buildings done by now, with only the foliage and the distant hills to do, neither of which is especially irksome. The difficult thing abot foliage in a sketch like this is making sure that you get the different textures and levels of shading. A mixture of more scribbly marks, and hatching lines of different directions, and also different spacing between them is what I used here to try to finish off the sketch. 

Here it is finished. The distant hill I decided would stand out better if I forewent any shading at all apart from the tree line at the top. The drawing gives an idea of the sheer size of the cathedral. If you look at the rose window, for example, there’s no other object or feature outside of the cathedral itself which even approached it in size.

Beautiful Britain - Looking Across the Thames at St. Paul's - A4 fineliner

 

This is my latest Beautiful Britain Sketch. Unlike the previous sketches, this one is only A4 sized. I don't possess an A3 scanner, you see. 

If you'd like a copy of this sketch, it's available in my Etsy shop. For a ridiculously low price you'll receive a digital, printable copy of your very own, to print off and enjoy.

(We're all friends here, so I'm sure you won't mind me reminding you that all the images on this blog are copyright, nd any unauthorised reproduction or use is forbidden. )

There's a link to my Etsy Shop on the right, but in case you're that desperate to get there this instant, here's the link as well: - 

DaveClarkPortTalbot Etsy shop

As with other recent pictures, I did take a few photographs while I was sketching it. This was A4 rather than A3. I don’t possess a large enough scanner to accommodate A3, but my scanner will accommodate A4. Scanning gives me the option of selling my art digitally on Etsy.

This sketch is all about two things – the dome of St. Paul’s gives a vertical focus, and the bridge across the Thames gives a horizontal focus. I eye-judged where I wanted the dome to be, and then sketched it in to start. The rest of the background above the bridge is all about how it relates to the dome, and so once the dome was sketched in, then I reckoned that it should be relatively simple to sketch the rest of the background in. 

I could quote you chapter and verse about the history of St. Paul’s, but you’ll probably be glad that I won’t. But as a Londoner myself, and a proud one at that, the sight of St. Paul’s is one of those things which just makes me feel good – Tower Bridge, the Palace of Westminster and the BT Tower all have the same effect as well. 

Once the Dome was in I put in some of the first lines of the bridge, extending it to over halfway across the page. Then I drew the background buildings between the left hand edge and the dome. 

If you read my previous post about the Newcastle sketch, you might recall that I mentioned that there is usually a point in a sketch where you start to think that the sketch is looking as if it will turn out to be a LOOR (load of old rubbish). This was that point. I wasn’t happy with any part of this sketch, but I’m experienced enough with my own work to know that if you just push on and keep working steadily through, the end results usually turn out alright.

 As I got more involved in making the sketch, I forgot to take any more photographs, so this is the last one. The sketch here looks better than the previous one, because the little over half that has been completed gives a good idea of what the whole will be like. Actually, although the sketch at this point only extends a little over halfway across the page, well over half of the hard work has been done. If you look at the finished sketch at the top of this post, you’ll see that most of what’s left is the bridge, so while it had taken maybe 2 and a half hours to get this far, what was left required a little less than an hour. 

Beautiful Britain - Newcastle Upon Tyne - Tyne Bridge

 

People who see my drawings often make comments like – I don’t know how you can do this – or – I wish I knew how to make something like this. So I thought it might be interesting to try to take you through the process. This isn’t a tutorial – I don’t feel qualified to teach anyone how to draw. Apart from anything else, I don’t want to encourage anyone else to pick up any of my bad habits.

So, this latest sketch is of Newcastle Upon Tyne, and the Tyne Bridge, one of my favourite bridges. Since this is a detailed sketch which I wanted to spend time over, I used photographic references. When using photographic references, I know that a lot of artists would use a grid . This is especially effective if you are looking at your photograph online, as it's very easy to superimpose a grid upon it. I’m afraid that the big kid in me just wants to get started committing ink to paper, and so I try to do the work of the grid with my eye. I try to judge the proportions with my eye. 

Here’s the first photo I took during the sketch.You can see that the bridge towers on the left have been more fully sketched in than any other feature at this point. This is because I made the conscious choice to start with the closest tower. I took some time to judge just how far from either side of the photograph the tower was, and how far from the top and bottom it extended. The next step was to draw in the roadway on the bridge, and the opposite tower.

You might notice the large roofs at the bottom left hand corner. I didn’t want to sketch them in completely at this stage, until I had more details around the bridge sketched in to help me judge angles and distances.

If this had been an A5 sketch, or even an A4 sketch I probably wouldn’t have sketched in the outline of the arch of the bridge this early. However, I thought it would e a good idea to do it now, because the arch of the bridge would give me a good marker against which to place various background and foreground features. This required nerve and confidence, though, because at this stage, the arch is always going to look awful.

By the time I took this second photo, having the bridge roadway and the arch sketched in gave me the markers I needed to begin to sketch out the roof line at the bottom of the page a little further. Then I wanted to take on the next big feature, the undulating, almost hump backed silver building behind the arch of the bridge. Once I had the outline of this building it enabled me to sketch in the background to its left. Once I’d added detail to this building, then this encouraged me to draw in some of the cross beams of the arch. Now, I have to be honest, I was never happy with the arch of the bridge, and I did try minor surgery while I was filling these parts in, but at the end of the day once you’ve committed you really have to make the best job of it that you can. I also put in some of the stays, tying the roadway to the arch. It made sense to put these in, to make sure they look like they are in front of the background buildings.

Another big feature that I wanted to place onto the paper was the ship. I believe that this is the famous Tuxedo Princess nightclub. I’m not in the habit of making complete outlines of specific features of a drawing before I start to add in the detail, but I did in this case. I just thought that it was such a complex scene that I really needed to see how a big feature like this fitted into the scene, and the best way to do this was by putting in a basic outline.

By this third photo you can probably see how I’ve added detail working from left to right. What does surprise me looking at the photograph is at this point I still hadn’t put in all of the stays holding the roadway to the arch. In all honesty it would have made a lot more sense to have sketched all of them in now. I’m afraid that this highlights one of those bad habits I mentioned earlier. I’m a real butterfly. I lose a bit on interest in the bit I’m working on, so flit away to work on something else for a little while. What can I say – I don’t even realise I’m doing it while I’m doing it. I’ve added more detail and definition to Tuxedo Princess by this photograph.

I’ve also by this stage started the construction of the far end of the bridge. I haven’t started sketching in the towers yet, but the part where the arch finishes beneath the roadway is there, and this is vital for my eye measuring of the towers, which would follow. At this stage, though, I didn’t want to start filling in detail this far right in the picture until I’d added more detail working from the left towards the centre. That would all have to wait though, since this was the photo I took before putting away the sketch for the rest of the evening.

I took this photograph after maybe half an hour’s work this morning. You can see how I’d sketched in more of the details behind the bridge, and, at last, all of the supports holding the roadway. There’s a lot of serious hatching and cross hatching been put into the roofs at the bottom of the page as well.

I’d extended some of the detail of the girders and the lattice work further around the arch of the bridge. I find that whenever I am constructing a piece of art, there’s a point where you have to really hold your nerve, and tell yourself that however bad it may look now, it will come good in the end. That’s as true for my acrylic paintings as for my sketches – with the difference being that my sketches usually come good (to an extent) whereas my acrylic paintings – not so much. Well, with this sketch it was that arch, but by this stage I was feeling happier. It’s not that it’s technically any better than it was by this stage, but that the arch is blending in more with the background.

So, once I’d added more detail to the background behind the bridge, then I worked on the detail of the back ground between the bridge roadway and the ship. You might not haver noticed straightaway, but I did at this point also sketch in a suggestion of the reflection of the ship upon the waters of the Tyne.

As I said, I worked to complete the rooftop complex at the bottom of the page, and also sketched in a rather lovely curving parade of buildings. I was in two minds at this point whether to complete all of the lattice work on the bridge, but I felt that I would be better off sketching in the towers at this point. They would give me helpful markers for areas of the background which would be visible from the lattice work.

If you look at this fifth photograph it really doesn’t look as if I’ve added hardly anything to the sketch. Yet what I had done was important. I’d continued work on the background underneath the arch of the bridge, and everything has been outlined, it’s just some shading of foliage which needs doing.

In addition, I’ve sketched in the main parts of the lattice work for the whole of the arch. There’s still shading and detail to add, but the more details you add to a specific part of the picture, the easier it is to add further necessary details to it. I’ve also started some of the necessary detailed work on the underside of the arch.

Looking forward to working on the background above the bridge roadway on the right hand side of the picture, I also sketched in the outline of the largest building in this part of the scene. This would provide a valuable marker. In all honesty I wasn’t really worried about this part of the picture, to much as with what was going on by the waterline, which was far less clear in my reference photograph, and it was the time give it some serious though about how I was going to make sense of it, and convey this in the picture.

 

This is the last photograph I took before completing the sketch. You can see that I’ve sketched and shaded the detail into the block on the left, and also extended the bridge roadway to help me divide up the areas of background left to do here.

As for the waterline, well the solution I came up with was a combination of darkness, shaded walls the deck just above the waterline, and areas of foliage of differing amounts of shading.

I’ve also sketched in the last large feature of the scene, the jetty at the bottom to the right. You may have noticed by now that we’re not looking like we’re going to get as far as the right hand edge of the page. Quite right. Accident or design? Well, it was just the way that it was working out, if that’s what accident means. Oh, that is what it means, fair enough. Which is another good example of why I said at the start that I don’t want you picking up any of my bad habits.

What remained to do after this was to finish suggesting the buildings and features of the background to the far right. Darkness, shading and foliage largely took care of what was underneath the bridge roadway as far as the waterline. Some graduated shading  underneath the jetty and the hint of a bridge linking it to the bank, and we were done.

 

Beautiful Britain Drawings

 Right then, there’s urban sketches, and then there are other sketches. Putting it in basic terms, if you don’t make the sketch there and then on the spot, then it’s really not an urban sketch. I love urban sketching. However, with the best will in the world, who has 10 hours to sit in situ making a detailed sketch of a particular scene? So there is a marked difference in quality between my urban sketches, and other more detailed sketches. I’ll try to give you an example.

This is what you might get from me in terms of an urban sketch, There’s nothing wrong with that either. It’s clearly recognisable as Iron Bridge, but being a sketch, it is of necessity sketchy. Compare it with this.

Now, let’s acknowledge that the first sketch was made on A5 paper, while the second drawing was made on A3. The sketch on A5 wouldn’t have taken an hour, while the drawing on A3 took somewhere between 6 and 8 hours. Yet I enjoyed it so much that I decided to make it the first of a series of scenes of the UK which I particularly like, each carried out on A3 with the same attention to detail. So here’s the rest of them so far

London – Looking from the South bank across the Thames at Tower Bridge and the City of London

Chester – Eastgate, including the 1897 Diamond Jubilee Clock Tower

Edinburgh – Looking across the city from Calton Hill

Oxfam Project

If you've been reading the blog for over a year, then you'll  possibly remember how I made a series of sketches for Oxfam last year. If not, well, don't worry, I'm quite happy to recap.

My oldest daughter is the manager of the Oxfam shop in Port Talbot. One day in the Autumn, she received a donation of a sketch of the steelworks in Port Talbot, and she was surprised that it sold immediately. What she said to me were words to the effect of - "Your pictures aren't any worse than that!" Thanks a lot for that. 

The upshot was, then, that I made a number of sketches of Port Talbot places, past and present, and using frames from the shop mostly, we framed them up and stuck them in the window. In fact, we sold one even before it got as far as the shop - so I did another version of it fairly sharpish. Here's a selection of the pictures: - 

I'm very proud of the fact that these and a couple of others raised several hundred pounds for the shop. 

Well, only a few weeks ago now the shop opened again after lockdown. "How about some more pictures, Dad?" asked my daughter.  So we put three on sale - with each one, while it's a subject I've already used , it's from a different viewpoint: - 

Each sketch sold within 2 days of being placed within the window. The Plaza Cinema building still stands although it hasn't shown an y films for over 20 years, and is currently being redeveloped behind the original facade. The Ore cranes are iconic features of the Port Talbot landscape, and the steelworks dominates the town.