Author: Jane

Urban sketcher, coastal artist, swimmer.

Shepherdess Walk at City Road

This is at the junction of Shepherdess Walk and the City Road.

Shepherdess Café, with Eagle Point and The Atlas Building in the background.

Just off the picture to the left is the Eagle pub. Both the Eagle pub and the narrow building I’ve drawn are remarkably dilapidated, given their location in a trendy part of town, right near Old Street Roundabout. I feel their existences are somewhat precarious. See the huge shiny towers, only a few hundred metres away.

But that building above the café has its dignity, for all that it is cracked, and its walls are leaning several degrees off the vertical. Its windows are surrounded by scrollwork and stucco. It is much used, and much modified. There is a spectacular network of pipes and conduits at the back of the building, and an impressive array of TV aerials and satellite dishes on the front.

The alley on the left of my drawing is Shepherdess Place.

Notices on Shepherdess Place.

The white stone in the brickwork tells us that this small street marks a parish boundary. It says “The Boundary of the Parish of St Luke Middlesex, Ths B Johnson, Rd Phillips, Church Wardens, 1864“, with an additional figure “1” whose meaning is obscure to me. Can we assume “Ths” is “Thomas” and “Rd” is Rudyard? The black notice confirms this boundary “St L-S 1893“, 29 years later.

See how lovely the brickwork is! All those pinks and browns!

Here is work in progress on the drawing and some maps.

  • Preliminary sketch
  • Tools
  • Pen
  • Pen
  • Pencil
  • Pencil
  • Sketch map of the location and sight line
  • Map (C) OpenStreetMap contributors showing nearby Old St Roundabout, bottom right

Five different buses pass the spot where I was drawing. They all head North up Shepherdess Walk:

  • 21 to Newington Green
  • 271 to Highgate Village
  • 394 to Homerton Hospital
  • 141 to Palmers Green
  • 76 to Tottenham Hale

There is a police station next to the Eagle pub, offices and housing all around. Moorfields Eye Hospital is just across the City Road. It’s a busy corner. The Shepherdess Café was closed because of lockdown.

There are many colours in this picture, all Daniel Smith colours: Lunar Earth, Buff Titanium, Burnt Umber and Prussian Blue for the brickwork, Perylene Maroon is in there too, for the grey and black, and Mars Yellow and Transparent Pyrrol Orange for the street signs. This is in Sketchbook 9 on Arches Aquarelle 300g NOT paper. The picture is 10″ x 7″ and took 1hr30min approx.

Jerusalem Tavern, Britton St

Here is a sketch of The Jerusalem Tavern, Britton St, Clerkenwell, made as the light faded.

Jerusalem Tavern, 55 Britton St, 16 Nov 2020

I find this a particularly lovely building. The curves over the windows are semicircles and there is a pleasing symmetry to the upper floors. The semicircle over St John’s Passage exactly matches the door to its left, on another lovely house which has amazing tall windows on the first floor.

Britton Street was surprisingly lively on that Monday afternoon. There are offices along the street and people rushed in and out of doors, or came and stood on the pavement smoking. Delivery drivers were the main traffic, both vans and bicycles. They all seemed to know each other. A package was delivered to the office next to me. A woman came out to receive it. It was evidently expected. The driver returned to his van, and sorted more packages inside.

Here are some work in progress pictures and a map. I have just finished reading “Troubled Blood” by Robert Galbraith. If you’ve read the book you’ll know that much of the action takes place in these streets in Clerkenwell. As far as I can work out, all the streets mentioned in the book exist, and the routes described are realistic.

This drawing took about an hour. The colours are: for the walls – Fired Gold Ochre (DS), Mars Yellow (DS) and Phthalo Turquoise (W&N) , for the light in the windows Hansa Yellow Mid (DS). The drawing is 7″ x 10″, done in a sketchbook on 300gsm Arches Aquarelle Paper.

While I was drawing, I detected a movement in my peripheral vision. A spider of alarming size was climbing the wall against which I was leaning. It was making little spurts across each brick, then secreting itself into the mortar, trying to become invisible, before making its next jump. As I watched, it turned around meaningfully, and started heading down towards my rucksack, which was upright on the pavement, open, leaning against the brickwork like a spider-catching bucket. I moved the rucksack, and closed its flap. I was more-than-usually disconcerted, because we had been watching “Dr No” the previous night. I could recall rather too vividly that scene of the poisonous spider which crawls on James Bond while he is sleeping. I stood away from the wall, and monitored the spider’s progress. I did not have long to wait. It reached pavement level, no doubt disappointed that the bright yellow rucksack had somehow disappeared. Then it went into a pavement-level crack to decide what to do next. I decided to stop worrying about it.

To see the spider, scroll down – if you dare. Trigger warning: SPIDER.

Spider. It is about half the height of a house brick. Those are bricks on the wall, against which I was leaning.

Golden Lane Leisure Centre – South

On Golden Lane Estate there is a Leisure Centre in the Modernist style. Its roof floats on slender columns, and there are huge windows so you can see the activity inside.

Here’s a view of the south end. The tree is in the garden in front of Basterfield House.

Golden Lane Leisure Centre (left), Basterfield House (with orange balconies), Atlas Building (in distance) and Great Arthur House (on the right)

I drew this picture sitting on the paving stones outside Cullum Welch House. This was the location I’d chosen, because from that precise spot I could see the Atlas Building in the gap between Basterfield House and Great Arthur House. It’s a huge empty space. A woman walked past me, intrigued by my equipment spread around. She looked critically at the plastic carrier bag I was using to insulate myself from the concrete. “I’m glad to see you are sitting on something,” she told me. “My mother used to say you should not sit on cold concrete or you would get…now what was it you would get?” Since this woman was herself somewhat elderly, I was guessing that the advice from her mother dated way back into the previous century. We smiled at each other, thinking of mothers. She walked away, puzzling over what it was that her mother had been concerned about. I continued my drawing, thinking about advice from mothers, and how it endured.

  • Work in progress
    Work in progress
  • Art materials on the concrete.
    Art materials on the concrete.
  • The low view.
    The low view.

A day or so later, I made a sketch in the evening, looking the other way.

Great Arthur House on the left, Golden Lane Leisure Centre, in the background Blake House and Crescent House.

It was evening, and very cold. This time I was standing up, looking West, as the sky dimmed.

Here is a collection of my sketches in the Golden Lane Estate.

Wapping Old Stairs – Thames Beach

I went for a walk out East. Here is the view from the peaceful beach at Wapping Old Stairs E.

Wapping Old Stairs E

This was rather a quick sketch, because the tide was coming in. The geese came to have a look.

Earlier this year I sketched from the top of those steps, looking inland.

Wapping Old Stairs E

On a radiantly bright day I walked East from the City in search of horizons. Wapping, east of Tower Bridge, is where the buildings at last are of human size, and you can see the sky. Next to the pub called “Town of Ramsgate” on Wapping High Street, there is a small passage, a slot…

The passage is to the right, in front of the pub

Wapping Old Stairs is quite hard to find. It is next to the “Town of Ramsgate” pub.

This sketch took about 45 minutes. The colours are Fired Gold Ochre (DS), Phthalo Turquoise (W&N), Perylene Maroon (DS), Mars Yellow (DS). I used the Fired Gold Ochre because it granulates so usefully to make the sand. The algae and green plants on the steps were slightly iridescent, glowing rather strangely even though in shadow.

Swim hat: St Ives Cornwall

My friends at Sea Swim Cornwall invited me to design a swim hat.

Here it is:

I made two designs of St Ives Harbour, to show the East and the West of the Harbour.

  • This is the one that is on the hat.
    This is the one that is on the hat.
Swimming hat designs for Sea Swim Cornwall

The black and white is for the flag of Cornwall, which you see on the flag on one of the designs.

You can buy the hat, and many other great swimming-related items, from Sea Swim Cornwall: https://www.seaswimcornwall.co.uk/

Thank you to Tom Foreman of Sea Swim Cornwall for providing reference photos, ideas, inspiration, encouragement and practical help.

Here is me modelling the hat in Brighton last week.

I sketched the design on paper, then photographed it and laboriously traced it using “Graphic” which is a diagramming app.

  • Tracing the drawing using the mouse. It took ages. But this was in lockdown 1. So I had ages.
    Tracing the drawing using the mouse. It took ages. But this was in lockdown 1. So I had ages.

Bayer House, Golden Lane Estate

I drew Bayer House from a quiet spot above the Leisure Centre. Bayer House is the brick building on the right. The white building in the centre is Peabody Tower, on the Peabody Estate, the other side of Golden Lane.

In the background, you see the “HYLO” tower on Bunhill Row, under construction.

Bayer House (right), Golden Lane Estate.

Bayer House is three rows of 2 storey maisonettes: like three terraced streets, stacked. The brick walls are pink brinks with pink mortar: very pink. The architects are Chamberlain, Powell and Bon.

I drew this picture from the podium level, one storey up. In the sunken playground area, children played. I could hear their voices below me, and caught an occasional glimpse as they dashed into my field of view. Then I heard another noise, a rhythmic beat or clunk. I thought the children must have some kind of percussive instrument that they were playing with, like two large rocks. May be they were slapping two boxing gloves together. Then their voices opened into greetings. Just at that moment, two enormous police horses came into view, walking at my level. The police officers had paused their mounts, and were waving to the children below. I called out a hello, and then the police officers saw me too. “Hey look, there’s someone drawing!” They moved their horses on, hoofs clip-clopping on the concrete, very loud, and now, of course, utterly distinctive.

Many of the blocks on the Golden Lane Estate are named for councillors or other officials of the City of London who were in post at the time the Estate was under construction. But I could not find a “Bayer”. “Hatfield”, of “Hatfield House” which I drew previously, was also not to be found in the lists. After a long search, the marvellous London Metropolitan Archives turned up the answer. Hatfield St, and parts of Basterfield St, were subject of a compulsory purchase order in 1954. Bayer St, Great and Little Arthur Street, and the intriguing “Hot Water Court” were compulsorily purchased in 1951. So these houses are named after streets. More searching revealed the maps, see below. You see the former Bayer St in approximately the position of Bayer House, and Great Arthur St where Great Arthur House is now. Hatfield House and Basterfield House are also in the position of their corresponding streets. There is still a vestige of Basterfield St north of Basterfield House. Click to enlarge the maps below.

  • My sketch map of the former street layout, from the maps.
    My sketch map of the former street layout, from the maps.
  • Historical A-Z Map of London about 1935
    Historical A-Z Map of London about 1935
  • "Maps-of-London.com" Finsbury, about 1940
    “Maps-of-London.com” Finsbury, about 1940
  • Golden Lane Estate, blue arrow shows sightline of my drawing.
    Golden Lane Estate, blue arrow shows sightline of my drawing.
Historical maps showing the street layout before the Golden Lane Estate was built.

The colours in this picture are Fired Gold Ochre (DS), Phthalo Turquoise (W&N), Mars Yellow(DS), Buff Titanium (DS), and Perylene Maroon (DS). There a bit of Transparent Pyrrol Orange (DS) in the tree and the balconies of Bayer House. It was very cold and the colours did not dry which is why they are a bit blurry.

The collection of my Golden Lane Estate drawings is here:

Cosser St, SE1 – North West

Here is the third sketch of Cosser St.

Cosser St SE1 – North West side. 12 inches by 9 inches [SOLD]

It was a blustery day, as you see. In the background are the buildings on the other side of the Kennington Road.

There are many parked cars in this street. They are constantly on the move, coming and going. You can see some ghostly images of them in the distance. The main point of the picture was the building. I didn’t draw all the cars. A Civil Enforcement Officer wove her way amongst them, checking number plates.

A man came by carrying a large musical instrument in a black case on his back. I think it was a ‘cello. Then he came back the other way. Then he went back a third time. I noticed him all three times, and he saw me noticing him. On the third time, he came over and politely asked to see the picture. He obviously felt some explanation was needed for his criss-crossing the street multiple times. He said, “I’ve left my mobile phone at my friend’s house. And you don’t realise….” He trailed off, because it seemed redundant to repeat the modern problem: I can’t even phone him because, obviously, my phone is at his house and…”. “I’ll get it”, he went on, “So long as he’s up.” He grinned and shrugged, and carried on across the road. I was not entirely convinced by this story. Why, then, was he carrying his heavy musical instrument back and forth?

This is the final sketch in a series of three made for a commission. Here are the three. All are 12″ by 9″ on Arches 300gsm watercolour paper.

The colours in this picture are: Buff Titanium (DS), Perylene Maroon (DS), Mars Yellow (DS), Fired Gold Ochre (DS) and Phthalo Turquoise (W&N). I did a preliminary sketch, which you see in these work-in-progress pictures.

  • Preliminary sketch
    Preliminary sketch
  • Pencil underdrawing
    Pencil underdrawing
  • Pen
    Pen
  • Safari Lamy pen
    Safari Lamy pen
  • See the parked cars
    See the parked cars

More detail about the other two pictures is here:

Cosser Street, SE1 – South West

Here is a building in Cosser St, near Lambeth North tube station. This is the first of three drawings in the area, for a commission. Someone who had enjoyed living here was going to be moving to the country, and asked me make some pictures for them, to remember the locality. Ambulances park in this…

Cosser St, SE1 – North East

Here is the second sketch of Cosser St. From this angle you can see “The Steam Engine” pub, which is the red-roofed building in the picture, fronting onto Cosser St. The day when I drew this was a surprisingly hot October day. The blue sky is accurate. I was drawing standing up, with a dull…

Hatfield House, Golden Lane Estate

This is Hatfield House, at the North side of the Golden Lane Estate, EC1.

Hatfield House, Golden Lane Estate, 12″x9″ watercolour [SOLD]

The arches in the middle of the picture are above the Golden Lane Leisure Centre, which is closed at the moment. You can just see the blue vending display, which has goggles and other items for use in the swimming pool.

While I was drawing the picture, I caught movement in the side of my vision. A man appeared below me, indoors, by the side of the swimming pool. I looked at him through the window. He was fully dressed, with covers over his shoes, stirring a bucket with a long pole. After a long period of patient stirring, he poured the contents of the bucket into the swimming pool. Then he refilled the bucket, set it on the edge of the pool, and started stirring again. At that point I stopped watching and resumed my drawing. When I looked back again, he had gone.

This picture was drawn for a commission. I made a preliminary drawing, and various sketches. Here is work in progress. The big challenge was to get the perspective lines right, to show the depth and distance.

  • Quick sketch, working on perspective
    Quick sketch, working on perspective
  • Preliminary sketch in sketchbook
    Preliminary sketch in sketchbook
  • Sketchbook on the window of the swimming pool
    Sketchbook on the window of the swimming pool
  • Pen.
    Pen.
  • Specification for the commission
    Specification for the commission

This drawing was done on 29th September 2020.

Here are more sketches in the Golden Lane Estate:

Crescent House, Golden Lane Estate

A resident of Crescent House commissioned me to draw his block.

Crescent House – 12″x9″ original watercolour (SOLD)

This is a view from the podium level, above the Golden Lane Leisure centre. The block on the left is Cullum Welch House. The yellow colour in the centre is a reflection of Great Arthur House in the windows of Crescent House.

Map showing the view of Crescent House in the drawing (North is on the right)

The pavement by the wall was being re-laid. Just off the picture, to the right, people who were laying the paving stones sang merry tunes, and insulted each other. “Dean, I don’t believe how long that’s taken you. It’s a five minute job!”

Dean was moving the metal fencing around, making a sound like a drum roll. They needed to reconfigure their enclosure as they finished one section of paving and moved onto the next. I didn’t catch Dean’s repost, but the answer was, “No…no.. it’s just because you are lazy….”

Here is work in progress on this final drawing. It is made on a block of Saunders Waterford Hot Press 300gsm paper.

  • Finished drawing, 12" by 9" (SOLD)
    Finished drawing, 12″ by 9″ (SOLD)
  • Work in progress
    Work in progress
  • The tapes round the edge are to give me something to hold, also they make a nice border to the picture.
    The tapes round the edge are to give me something to hold, also they make a nice border to the picture.
  • Pen and ink
    Pen and ink
  • On the concrete
    On the concrete
  • Work in progress with pen and ink
    Work in progress with pen and ink
  • Work in progress. You can see the enclosure of the pavers in the background.
    Work in progress. You can see the enclosure of the pavers in the background.
  • Pencil under-drawing
    Pencil under-drawing
Work in progress on the final sketch, 9th October 2020

I made some preliminary drawings a few days previously, to get my head around the composition and the perspective challenges.

  • Sketchbook and perspective study
    Sketchbook and perspective study
  • Sketchbook and palette
  • Pen
    Pen
  • Pen sketch in progress
    Pen sketch in progress
  • Pen
    Pen
  • Working on perspective
    Working on perspective
  • Sketch in sketchbook - 5th October 2020
    Sketch in sketchbook – 5th October 2020
Sketch in sketchbook, 5th October 2020, and work in progress.

At the bottom left of the sketch is that strange sloping block. It is pointed. I didn’t get the whole of it in the sketch as it is so fascinating that it would have distracted from the main object of the drawing which is Crescent House. But it is worthy of examination. It looks like a tank trap. But what is it doing there? There are two of them.

As you see they are wonderful sculptural objects, worthy of a drawing in their own right.

Probably they are to stop people from sitting on that convenient ledge.

#Inktober2020

Here are my Inktober drawings for 2020:

Inktober 2020 prompt list

What is inktober? It’s a drawing challenge. There are prompts each day in October. The challenge I set myself is to do a drawing for each prompt, in ink, square. You can see the prompts here and on Inktober.com
Why do I do it? It’s different from my “normal” work. My urban sketches and other art generally take several hours, and are from life (non-fiction).
I do the inktober drawings quickly, in less than half an hour normally, and from imagination (fiction). Inktober jolts me into other worlds. It’s also a challenge, and enjoyable. I also like to see what other people draw, from the same prompt. The drawings are posted on instagram with the tag #inktober2020.

I did it last year for the first time. It surprises me that I can do it.