Category: Urban sketch

Two City Sketches

From an office window
Above Great St Helens

The view from an office window, Tower 42 on the left. This was sketched from indoors, nice and warm. The challenge was to avoid getting watercolour spots on their pristine office furniture.

The view “above Great St Helen’s”, shows what you see if you look up towards the North from the Aviva building in Undershaft, near the Gherkin. The cupola is above St Helen’s Place, 62-69 Bishopsgate. This sketch done standing up, in the cold. Coloured later.

The Charterhouse EC1 – Over the boundary

Two sketches, both from Preacher’s Court, The Charterhouse. One shows the view looking South West, past the new accommodation block. The other looks North East towards the John Vane Science Centre of Queen Mary, University of London campus.

View South West, beyond the Admiral Ashmore building

The new accommodation block in Charterhouse was built in 2000, designed by Michael Hopkins and partners, architects also of Portcullis House. It is called “The Admiral Ashmore Building”.

View North-East, with the John Vane Science block in the background

The John Vane Science Centre houses, amongst other things, the London Genome Centre.

In the Charterhouse, the leaves show Autumn colours, untroubled by wind, in the enclosed courtyard. It was still very cold. I sketched there from 09:30 to 12:30.

Saint Bartholomew the Great

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From the main gate of St Bartholomew the Great, off West Smithfield.

 

The Admiral Ashmore building

Here is a sketch from Preacher’s Court, Charterhouse.

I did it just after “The Well House” sketch.

3 Nov 2016 (2)

I liked the three ages of buildings: the 16th and 17th Century Hall on the left, the Admiral Ashmore Building (2000) and the 1970s office blocks and flats behind, with scrappy enhancements, probably 21st Century.

I got very cold.

A brother came by and told me he was the oldest, at 88. He was going to lead Grace at lunch. Everyone would have to stand up. It was like being at school. “I have the mind of a 15-year-old boy,” he informed me, “You had better watch out!”

The Well House,  Charterhouse 

Here is one of my favourite views in The Charterhouse. That curling support for the guttering (top left) is characteristic: details that delight the eye.

I drew this standing in the roadway. The suppliers and drivers coming and going were very gracious.

Barbican towers are just visible over the autumn trees.

Here’s what it looked like before the colour:

3 Nov 2016 (1 - outline only)

St Edwards Passage Cambridge

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A quick sketch on a cold day. 45 minutes, standing outside the “Indigo Coffee House”. Nearby, bicycles were parked on the fence surrounding the church of St Edward, King and Martyr.

I wanted to catch the bright sunlight in Kings Parade, seen from the relative darkness of St Edwards Passage.

Old Observatory, Oxford

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A sketch done in the Science Park.

The Royal Oak, Oxford

Here’s a sketch showing the Nuclear Physics building.

Finsbury Health Centre

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Built 1935-38 designed by Lubetkin and the Tecton Architectural Practice.

Partly restored mid 1990s, but still looks dilapidated, especially round the back.

Evidently still in use as a medical centre. While I drew the picture, ambulances arrived and departed, carrying elderly and disabled patients. A mother and child looked at my drawing. The mother encouraged the child to see how slowly I was drawing.

Posting this in 2019, after I went to the Wellcome Collection “Living Buildings” exhibition, and learned how carefully this health centre had been thought about. There was a mural inside, which was destroyed in the Second World War.

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Postcard from wellcomecollection.org, “Exhibition display panels explaining features of the design of the Finsbury Health Centre, Pine Street, Finsbury London. Cheerful atmosphere. Lubetkin and tectonic. 1938. RIBA collection.”

The Charterhouse, Chapel roof

This is my first sketch at The Charterhouse, as a guest of the Preacher, Reverend Robin Isherwood.

The building on the right is the Great Hall, Tudor, around 1600. Beyond it is a Barbican tower, 1970s.
The small dome is the roof of the Chapel of The Charterhouse, 17th Century, by Francis Carter. According to Pevsner*, Francis Carter had “previously worked at Trinity College Cambridge, and from 1614 was chief clerk of the King’s Works under Inigo Jones.”

*The Buildings of England, LONDON 4: NORTH, Bridget Cherry and Nicolas Pevsner, page 619