Luca, 88 St John Street, EC1M

I was commissioned to make a picture of Luca, the Michelin-starred restaurant on St John Street near Smithfield, London. My client kindly gave me permission to show the picture here.

As you can see from the sharp shadows, this was a bright spring morning. The challenge of this commission was to find a place to stand where I could see the front of the restaurant, without being in anyone’s way. That blossoming tree obscured the entire frontage from some angles. But I found a good place to stand in a door way and it didn’t rain.

I generally do a preliminary sketch for a complicated scene such as this, to work out the proportions, the perspective and the light and dark.

Here there were two perspectives: the perspective up the street, which I marked in yellow, and the perspective perpendicular to the street, which I marked in red. As I worked this out, it gradually became obvious that the building next to Luca, number 86 on the right of my drawing, was not in line with the Luca frontage, but at a slight angle. Also the windows on Luca are not all the same. The ones on the left are wider and have more window bars. It is details such as these which conjure the character of a place, I think, and so I try to get them into the drawing.

People were going to and fro the entire time. It’s an active place. And the chimneys are marvellous.

Here’s what the picture looked like before the colour went on, and a snapshot of work in progress.

Here, I am drawing on an Arches Aquarelle “block” of paper, which is a rigid surface. The paper is glued almost all the way round, so it doesn’t buckle. The yellow tape round the edge is masking tape. I use it to provide a neat edge to the picture, and also it’s handy to write on.

Here’s the finished picture ready to go on its journey into the world.

Th building is listed Grade II. The listing reference is 1208756 and the entry is on this link.

The listing gives the date as 1821:

“1821 (metal plaque at first floor level, reads ‘P [Parish of] SS [St Sepulchre] Mdx [Middlesex] 1821’). Yellow brick set in Flemish bond, stucco, roof of Welsh slate. Four storeys over basement, three windows each. Ground floor has elliptical-arched entrance to right to Hat and Mitre Court, the rest a shop front probably of mid-C19 origin”

Historic England listing page