Here is 4 St Michael’s Alley, City of London, EC3, the premises of MacAngus & Wainwright, bespoke tailors. Their business uses all the floors. Above the ground floor showroom are the fitting room, workroom and cutting room.
The shop is just off Cornhill, near Bank in the City of London and right next to the Jamaica Wine House which I sketched previously. You can see a bit of the Jamaica Wine House on the right of my sketch. The prominent lamp is outside the “George and Vulture” pub, which is hidden on the left.
I made two pictures of this building, on different days and from slightly different angles. Here is the other one:
Here is work in progress on the drawings.
A succession of tour guides took their groups into the alley in the centre of my picture. This is Castle Court. These alleys apparently feature in Charles Dickens stories. Since J.K Rowling was inspired by the novels of Charles Dickens, there’s also a Harry Potter angle. I overheard this in fragments of tour guide talks. I don’t know if it’s true.
I started sketching in the late morning. This was the time for tour guides. Later, starting from about 1pm, the courtyard became populated by drinkers at the Jamaica Wine House. They were polite people, helpfully stepping aside and congregating on the other side of the alley, so they did not block my view.
The drawings are on Arches Aquarelle 12″ x 7″ 300gsm cold-pressed watercolour blocks, using Daniel Smith paints. The colours are:
Blues: Ultramarine Blue, Lavender, Cobalt Teal Blue
Yellows: Mars Yellow. The house on the right at the back is mostly Nickel Titanate Yellow. It was quite a hard colour to match.
Browns: The tailors building is a mix of Buff Titanium with Mars Yellow. The Jamaica Wine House and other buildings are Fired Gold Ochre, with a bit of transparent Pyrrol Orange.
All blacks and greys are a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber.
The pen drawing is De Atramentis Document Black ink in a Lamy Safari Fountain pen, fine nib.
Jane Sketching 