Author: Jane

Urban sketcher, coastal artist, swimmer.

Sketching in Norwich

Norwich is two hours from London on the train.

I tried sketching the landscape as it went by:

These were tiny drawings, each about 2 inches by 3inches.

Here is the inside of Norwich Cathedral.

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The picture shows the Norman nave of the cathedral. This building was started in 1096 and took about 50 years to build. The stone comes from Caen, in France, and was shaped there. It is a cladding. The structure is mortar and flint. One of the pillars in the picture has a spiral pattern on it, and is matched by another spiral one on the other side. But on the other side the spiral cladding doesn’t go up to the top, as though they ran out of the special stones. I wondered if these spiral stones are used elsewhere, or if they are still waiting at Caen. Or did someone make a mistake in their arithmetic?

I learned from the guide, Mark Hill, that a bishop is in charge of a diocese, not the cathedral. The Dean is in charge of the cathedral. The bishop has a special seat called a cathedra, which is to the right of the choir, and separate from it. And the Bishop’s seat has a hugely ornate covering.

At the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, there was an exhibition of sculpture by Elizabeth Frink.

I sketched her warrior figures which are called “Riace”:

They had slightly strange proportions, rather short legs and wide shoulders. All are greater than life size. There were about 5 or 6 of them, and they seemed to be moving.

Elizabeth Frink (1930-1993) was a British sculptor and printmaker. Whenever I walk through Paternoster Square I say hello to her sculpture there: The Paternoster. It shows a shepherd and his sheep. When I first moved here, this sculpture was temporarily in the Barbican, next to the Museum of London. It was at ground level, so children used to climb on the sheep and hold onto their ears. The ears were bright and shiny. When the Paternoster Square renovation was complete (2003), the statue was moved back. But it is on a high plinth, so inaccessible. I think that’s a pity. I don’t think the Paternoster minded children riding his sheep.

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The shepherd and his sheep, Paternoster Square, 2012.

 

 

Great Arthur House from the Barbican Podium

Here is Great Arthur House from the podium ramp near Blake Tower. You can see Blake Tower on the left. At the bottom of the picture is the ramp that goes down into the Car Park at Bunyan Court.

Several stories below me, at ground level, there was an assortment of discarded furniture and paint tins, and a huge skip full of Christmas Trees being collected for recycling.

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It was really cold out there. I saw a black cat sliding in between the debris.

This picture done on Fabriano Artistico loose sheet,  8inches by 10 inches. About an hour, on location.

New Year 2019

Happy New Year!

I made a woodcut.

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This is a greetings card, about 7″x5″.

It is from two woodblocks, one orange and one blue. Here is work in progress at East London Printmakers:

Orange block printed
Blue block printed on top

In the background you see the Albion press I used for printing. It is a wonderful cast-iron machine.

Albion press for relief printing
Albion press nameplate

As well as the greetings cards I tried an experiment with chine collé on Japanese paper.

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And this was an out-take that I liked:

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The inks made marvellous patterns on the glass when I was cleaning up:

Yellow and red ink, and cleaning fluid
Black and red ink, and water

Perhaps I could entitle that last one “Window into the unknown”?

Happy New Year 2019!

 

In the footsteps of Nelson

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Captain Horatio Nelson, painted by John Francis Rigaud in 1781, with Fort San Juan in the background.

For our Boxing Day walk, John researched places in London associated with Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson (29 September 1758 – 21 October 1805).

First we saw some houses of the period, and then went to the various places that Nelson lived or visited in London. My mission was to draw very quick pictures. We had a lot of places to visit, and I didn’t want to hold up the expedition. Here are my sketches, in the order of our visits.


We saw and named architectural details.  On 11 Cavendish Square we noted the “blocked vermiculated columns”
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“Vermiculated” means wormlike. It’s a really useful adjective. “I found it impossible to follow his vermiculated arguments.” ” After navigating the vermiculated back alleys, we emerged at last onto the main square.”

We saw ionic columns on Stratford House. These are the ones with scrolls at the top. Above the columns is the “metope” or frieze. On this there were “bucrania” which are bulls skulls.
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An “aedicule” is a house shape with columns each side. At 37 Dover Street we saw a window in an aedicule.

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A window in 37 Dover Street, opposite Nelson’s House

Here is our route:

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It took us 5 hours and was 14km.

After the Georgian London visits in the West End, we walked to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson’s Column, and then along the Strand, where we saw the site of a silversmith he visited. Nelson went along the Strand in his carriage to receive his “Freedom of the City of London”. At Temple, the cheering crowds unhitched his horses and hauled his carriage themselves.

We arrived at St Paul’s Cathedral, where Nelson is interred.

I used Organics Studio arsenic gray ink, and a Lamy Safari pen with fine nib, from The Writing Desk. The book is a sketchbook from Seawhite of Brighton.

Ink: it’s not waterproof. It does not contain arsenic.
Lamy Safari pen.
Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook
Sketchbook: hardbook.

St Bartholomew the Less – etchings (1)

This morning I made an etching based on a sketch of St Bartholomew the Less.

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Here’s the original sketch, which was made from the top of Maggie’s Centre in St Bartholomew’s hospital, by kind permission of the staff of the Centre.

The sketch was to explore the proportions, before making the more detailed watercolour drawings on this post:

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I thought the sketch was rather lively and might make a good etching. Here’s the copper plate I made:
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And here are some of today’s prints: (click to enlarge)

The plate needs a bit more work I think. The background could be darker and perhaps some shading on the tower itself. My idea is that I will print it with perhaps chine-collé. So I want to keep the design simple.

I just had the morning at the print studio today.

The paper is Chinese paper from Great Art. Numbers 11369 (soft), and 11565 (white, with a slight grid). The ink is Intaglio Printmaker Shop Mix Bone Black. The plate is 10cmx15cm copper plate from Great Art, which I prepared with hard ground 28 June 2018. I used the Rochard press at East London Printmakers.

Update:

14 March 2019 – Chine Collé

 

Strange landscapes from wood (1)

On a recent walk in Hoxton, I picked up a piece of wood. Perhaps it was part of a crate. It had interesting grain.

John cut it into smaller pieces with a saw.

Wood pieces

I was going to use them as relief blocks. Then I got talking to a fellow printer at East London Printmakers. She suggested I press them into soft ground and make an etching plate. Then I thought I’d use the Albion press to get sufficient pressure.

The technician, Dan, asked if I had aquatint on there, and I hadn’t. Can you put aquatint on top of soft ground? We went off to consult the studio co-ordinator. She said yes, aquatint was good idea.

So here’s the process:

  1. Prepare plate with soft ground
  2. Press wood into soft ground using the Albion Press. This makes an impression with darker places where the wood was.
  3. Put aquatint (dust) onto the plate, and fuse it with the gas burner. The soft ground burns and goes brown. The aquatint fuses onto the plate in the darker places. 
  4. Etch in acid, Edinburgh etch, for two minutes. 
  5. Clean off the plate and print.The aquatinted areas are dark.

Here’s the result.

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Wood block into soft ground. Printed from copper plate. “Strange landscapes”, on drying rack. Prussian blue ink on Vintage Paper Co paper.

Here’s the other block, with chine collé stripes added. I’m not sure which way up it should be. IMG_0696 Since this whole session was experimental, I also used some experimental paper from the Vintage Paper Company. They say on the package: “This was made some time between 1969 and 1973 as waterleaf (unsized) printing paper by J Green and Sons (brilliant but now extinct British papermakers). I had it gelatine sized in December 2017 by Two Rivers Paper (brilliant and very much alive and kicking British papermakers” and they ask for feedback. I think it worked really well, and I’m now off to write them an email.

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March 2019: I used this plate to make some chine collé prints. See this link:/strange-landscapes-from-wood-2/

Towers East and Towers West – multiple prints

My idea was to produce multiple copies of “Towers East” and “Towers West”. These are aquatint plates I prepared a few months ago.  This post describes the process to produce the plates: Towers East and Towers West

The Towers are St Mary’s Tower and Peabody Tower, just to the North of the Barbican.

I made 14 reasonable prints, and 2 out-takes. I glued the out-takes into my notebook. I make one page per print session, and record what I did, what paper and ink I used, what worked and what didn’t. This is in an attempt to learn and improve my printing technique.

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Here are the 14 reasonable prints, numbered 1 to 14. Numbers 1-13 are on card 20cm by 30cm. This card size is intended as a greeting card. When folded it fits neatly into an A5 envelope. Number 14 is on larger paper. All are for sale,  £5 each plus postage. Please contact me by email via the contacts page, or leave a comment on this page. The red writing is on the online image here, not on the print.

Click on an image to enlarge it. It may take a little while to load.

The technique is “chine-collé” which is described here: The chine collé process

Here’s number 13 so you can see the format:

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Here is number 14 on the larger paper:

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These are all part of my “Towers Project” leading to an exhibition in the Barbican Library February 2019.

I work in the print studio at East London Printmakers. Prints are on Fabriano Unica Paper, using Intaglio Printmaker Bone Black ink. They are printed by hand on the Henderson press. Each print takes about half an hour to print.

St Bartholomew the Less

St Bartholomew the Less is a Chapel of Ease in St Bartholomew’s Hospital in the City. It’s just to the right of the main entrance from Smithfield.  You might not notice the door in the wall. Sometimes they put a board outside. I’ve been in a number of times. It’s a very peaceful, welcoming, place. Somehow, one feels the need to visit a place of prayer before, or after, a hospital visit.

I was invited to draw pictures of the church. The City Music Foundation, a charity, wants to use my pictures in its publicity. They are going to be based in St Bartholomew the Less. So the Managing Director of the Foundation, Clare Taylor, contacted me. She’d seen the pictures I’d done of The Charterhouse.

Here are the first two pictures of St Bartholomew the Less:

It was founded in 1123, by Rahere, a “courtier of Henry I“, according to the leaflet. The tower dates from the 15th century. “The three bells in the tower include one dating from 1380 and another from 1420” says the leaflet. I was interested in Rahere, because there is a Rahere St and a Rahere House which I have drawn.

Since the Foundation is a music foundation, I thought it would be a fun idea to draw the bells. By kind permission of the Parochial Church Council (PCC), whose representative efficiently produced a key, I was able to go up into the belfry. Bells, I found, are not so easy to draw as you might think. Like the human form, they have curves. And unless you get the curves exactly right, they look like a different character. Also, the belfry contained not only very ancient bells, but also 600 years of dust. It was indescribably dirty. But amazing. And very quiet inside, with all the noise going on outside. I wedged myself into the wooden frame, braced my back against a metal rod, and got started.

The platform into which I was wedged was not very big. I manoeuvred very slowly because I didn’t want to knock anything, such as a paintbrush, down into the depths. The best medium seemed to be black ink. Ink is a bit dodgy to manage at the best of times. But keeping it upright on an ancient wooden raft, in the semi-darkness, verged on the farcical. No-one was there to sympathise, except the bells, and they’d seen it all before.

 

 

Galway House

Galway House is one of the two Towers on the Pleydall Estate just North of Old Street. The other tower is Grayson.

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I drew this from behind Grayson House. There was a ferocious cold wind. I seemed to have picked the place where all the winds met. Here are maps showing the direction I was looking.

 


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Here are the blocks in the picture. It almost looks as though the Atlas Building continues the march of these majestic 1960s blocks. But it doesn’t, not really.

In the drawing you can see the scaffolding on the Atlas Building, and the external lift that was going up and down as I was drawing.

I was interested to see that the inhabitants of Galway Tower made use of their flower beds.

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Raised flower beds in Galway House, South side.

I’ve seen the same arrangement of raised flower beds next to the flats in Rahere House, where the beds were more exposed, and not used.

This whole area underwent huge changes in the twentieth century, although the street layout is unchanged.

From 1751, on Old Street, there was a huge hospital for the mentally ill: St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics.

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St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics on Old Street. The obelisk in St Luke’s Gardens is in the background. Image credit: Wikipedia

This hospital was closed in 1916 and the residents moved out. The building was acquired by the Bank of England and used for printing bank notes.

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Bank of England Printing Works on Old Street, 1925, image credit: Bank of England Museum.

Here is the area in 1940: map from http://www.maps-of-london.com, click to enlarge.

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The Pleydell Estate area, Finsbury, in 1940. Picture credit: http://www.maps-of-london.com

You see Galway Street on the crease of the map, in the centre about a quarter of the way down. Below it, to the right is the “Bank Printing Works”.

In 1959 the London County Council sought to purchase the Printing Works site and use it as an annexe to Covent Garden. This was opposed by Michael Cliffe, MP for Finsbury and Shoreditch, on the grounds that it would create unacceptable traffic congestion, especially at the Old Street Roundabout.

Mr Cliffe is quoted in Hansard:

“…London County Council (General Powers) Bill, …. The Council, through the Bill, sought powers to acquire and redevelop St. Luke’s Printing Works as an annexe of Covent Garden Market….. I would ask the Minister what is the point of spending millions of pounds in trying to solve the problem of congestion in Central London if we are to convert the St. Luke’s Printing Works as an annexe to Covent Garden in an area where we know it must inevitably cause the kind of congestion that we are trying to avoid and which we are discussing every day. As the number of vehicles increases, further problems will have to be solved. Surely we do not want to create further difficulties after our experience gained in the past?” [Hansard: HC Deb 17 December 1959 vol 615 cc1738-47]

Mr Cliffe must have prevailed. I feel an affinity with him because earlier this week I drew Michael Cliffe House.

The Printing Works building was demolished in 1963. At around that time Finsbury Council was building council houses, including the 4 tower blocks in the area: Gambier House, Grayson House, Godfrey House and Galway House. So somehow the Council must have acquired the Print Works site. I can’t find the history online so I’m going to visit the London Metropolitan Archives and the Islington Museum.

The Towers also were allocated to different Estates: Galway is in the “St Luke’s Estate” which includes the Printing works Site, Gambier is in the City Road Estate and Grayson and Galway are in the Pleydell Estate.

From “Streets with a story, The book of Islington” (1986) by Eric A Willats FLA I learn that: “Messrs. Emberton, Franck & Tardrew were the architects of Galway House (Pleydell Estate)”.

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From a map sent to Mr I Agar in 2010 in response to a Freedom of Information request [FOI 340742.pdf]

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The Pleydell Estate, Galway House in the Background.

Michael Cliffe House

Here is Michael Cliffe House, in the Finsbury Estate, from Tysoe Street.

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The lower level block in the low centre of the picture is Joseph Trotter Close, also part of the Finsbury Estate.

While I was drawing the picture a man came and told me that he had seen the original architect’s drawing of this low level block. In the architect’s vision it was “sleek and wonderful”. But the man said the reality was very different. The concrete had worn badly and the building had not succeeded, in his opinion.

Earlier a woman came when I was at the pen-and-ink stage. She said that her 11 year old grandson had started painting, which pleased her very much. She bought paints for him. I asked if she painted too. She said no, but she was inspired by her grandson and might now have a go herself. “After all,” she said, ” he just paints anything, and I could do that too!”. I agreed.

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The drawing took two hours. After I finished I went to have a look at Joseph Trotter Close. I saw a low-level set of bungalows, all very much inhabited, with children’s play things and outdoor chairs on the lawn. It may not be sleek, but it looked as though people enjoyed living there.

The entrance to Michael Cliffe House was cramped and congested, with cars manoeuvring awkwardly and a dark, obscured, entrance. Lovely typeface though.

 

The real surprise was inside the entrance. There, uncelebrated in the underpass, were some amazing mosaics of dancers.

 

Michael Cliffe (1903-1964) was a Labour councillor for Finsbury, Mayor of Finsbury (1956-7), and an active Labour MP (1958-64).

The Finsbury Estate was built by Finsbury Borough Council in 1965. The architects were Emberton, Franck & Tardrew. Finsbury Borough council was absorbed by Islington.

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Later note (7th Feb 2019): There is detailed information on the Finsbury Estate on “British History online” – try this link, which starts with a history of Spa Green, and goes on to describe the Finsbury Estate.