Category: Watercolour

watercolour, pen and wash

From Mitre Square

From today, Wednesday, in England we are allowed to take exercise for “unlimited time” and allowed to sit on benches in a public space. So that means I can go out and sketch. I quickly did so today, in case these permissions are revoked in the coming days.

Walking round the City was a joy: the air is clear, and the streets are empty. Mostly, the people about are working on construction sites, of which there are quite a few in the City. Construction workers are visible as they are wearing their special hi-vis outfits. I walked about enjoying the architecture, and the air, and the birdsong. I came to a small empty parklet: Mitre Square. A notice said that here was the site of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, founded 1108. There’s not a sign of it now. The nave of the abbey is now Mitre Street, said the notice.

I sat on one of the benches and drew the view.

From Mitre Square: Sir John Cass School, and the spire of St Botolphs.

I enjoyed the sequence of TV aerials – Spire – Cupola.

A woman in a face mask with a child in a face mask appeared. They both removed their face masks. She carefully placed a plastic bag on the bench, and then she sat down. The child wandered about. Then they both ate apples, and the child continued to wander about while the woman interacted with her mobile phone. A man came out of one of the nearby offices and stood on the grass, did some stretching for a few minutes, stared into the distance, and then went indoors again. While all this was going on, a large van backed onto the square, and a man unloaded a lawn mower. He then proceeded to cut the little patches of grass on the square. At the same time, two street sweepers arrived. They swept part of the square, then went to have their break. This was logical, as the person mowing was spreading grass cuttings everywhere. After he had finished, which only took about 10 minutes – it is not a large square,and there is not much grass – the street sweepers came back and swept up after him. Then they went away, and the woman and child went away, silence descended and I had the square to myself again.

In the square was a strange statue called “Climb” by Juliana Cerqueira Lake. It was white and, according to the notice, it was a cast of the tunnel she made by burrowing through a cylinder of clay. You can see it on the left of this photo:

In Mitre Square: “Climb” by Juliana Cerqueira Lake is on the left.

Today’s announcement:


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52530518 downloaded 13th May 19:17

Map of where I was:

Arrow shows the sightline of the drawing.

Indoor scenes (1 May to 11 May)

I have continued to draw indoor scenes. Here are the latest pictures:

Earlier Indoor Scenes are in this post: Indoor scenes (11 Apr – 1 May)

They are all in a Gamma Series Stillman and Bern sketchbook.

Here are three videos showing the sketchbook to date – with voiceover!

Indoor Scenes (1)
Indoor scenes (2)
Indoor scenes (3)

Iris: watercolours

Here are more pictures of the Benton Dierdre iris. These are watercolours, done wet-in-wet, a technique I understand is called “tarashi-komi” in Japan.

Cedric Morris iris, watercolours.

Indoor scenes (11 Apr – 1 May)

Since I live in a flat, “stay at home” means “stay indoors”.

I started drawing the scenes around the flat.

I can look outdoors. We have a balcony which is just big enough for the drying rack. I have mended my rucksack. Then I washed it. After all, I won’t be needing a rucksack for a while.
My principle is to draw things as I find them. I don’t move or adjust them. These are vernacular still lives: the way things are.
In a corner the delivery boxes accumulate. There are a lot of delivery boxes.
Here is the ironing board.
Here are the things which accumulate at the end of the sofa.
A scene by the kitchen sink.
An apple from the vegetable delivery.
Evening scenes
The important HDMI connector. I learned to make the TV work from my laptop. This was for the online life-drawing sessions.
Miscellaneous objects get thrown together. Here, some knitting items meet the mobile phone technology.
My desk. How can I work in such chaos? I am making a design for a swimming hat. A sample swimming hat is the red thing on the right.
The huge onion.
Laundry on the balcony, exercise towel, coat hanger. Before I finishd this picture, the rain came down, and I had to go out and get the washing in.
Items form social groups: the weighing machine, the kitchen roll, a food container, the enamel plate, two shopping lists, the hand cream, a beer glass with the parsely in.

These are the drawings up to today, 1st May.

Stillman+Bern, Gamma series sketchbook. Still a lot of pages left to fill.

Looking South to St Giles’

I drew St Giles’ Cripplegate, as seen from the window of the flat.

St Giles Cripplegate, from the North

The church is surrounded by the buildings of the Barbican estate. To the right of the church is the City of London School for Girls. Behind it in the picture you see a representation of the Barbican block called “Wallside”, and then behind that, are the office blocks of the City. In the foreground is Frobisher Crescent.

St Giles’ was damaged by enemy action in the 1939-45 conflict. Artists showed the damage. I was particularly struck by the work of Sam Carter, and William Coldstream, shown by the East London Group in their excellent and informative Twitter stream (@EastLondonGroup) – their tweets are embedded below, if you scroll down. Here’s the picture by William Coldstream, 1946:

St Giles Cripplegate (1946) by William Coldstream, in the Arts Council Collection. Thanks to @EastLondonGroup twitter stream for showing this work.

As you see in the picture above by William Coldstream, in 1946 the church itself was damaged, and it was surrounded by rubble. This picture must have been painted from the current location of the Museum of London. The damage was done in a bombing raid in about 1940. The plants have had 6 years to grow.

The Barbican was built on the area destroyed by bombing. St Giles was rebuilt.

Here is my view and my drawing in progress.

  • Work in progress
  • Drawing from the window
  • The edge of the Barbican Lake

I have drawn St Giles before:

A quick sketch of St Giles Church

Here is St Giles Church from the Lakeside Terrace of the Barbican. While I drew this, three men were shovelling mud from the bottom of the lake. The mud is black and viscous and the men were remarkably cheerful in their task. They would have made good subjects for a drawing too. But for now,…

St Giles and Bastion House

Today Urban Sketchers London held a “sketch crawl” in the Barbican. So I joined them. An astonishing number and diversity of people assembled inside the entrance of the Barbican Centre at the appointed time of 11am. I counted about 35 and then another dozen or so joined. All shapes and sizes of people, tall, short,…

St Giles’ and Cromwell Tower

Here is today’s sketch showing: London Wall – 2nd century AD Barber-Surgeons Hall – current building 1969, first hall, on this site 1441 St Giles Church – current building 1966, first church on this site by 1090 Barbican, Cromwell Tower,  Wallside and Arts Centre – 1965-82 Braithwaite House – completed around 1963 White Collar Factory…

St Giles’ Church and Shakespeare Tower

Here is a sketch from a staircase from the Barbican Podium, just outside the Dentists but just inside the old London Wall. Parts of the Roman London Wall are in the foreground, 2nd century AD. St Giles’ has Roman foundations and is much rebuilt. The church we see now is the 1966 restoration following designs…

Here are the tweets from the East London Group:

Ben Jonson House

Sketching from the window, here is Ben Jonson, part of the Barbican estate.

The people who live on the top floor of Ben Jonson have sunlit roof gardens. You can see one person enjoying his garden. He sits just at the bottom of the blue fire escape ladder.

There is also an interesting void space shown in the lower right of the picture. It was empty when I was drawing, but sometimes someone’s legs are visible, using the space for sunbathing. Sometimes they set up a table and chairs there.

Here is work in progress. I used colours: Mars Yellow, Burnt Umber, Prussian Blue and a bit of Perinine Orange.

Sun on the Podium

The view looking west:

This is looking down on the Barbican Podium.

The tower in the foreground is part of Frobisher Crescent. Frobisher Crescent itself is on the left. Ben Jonson House is on the right. On the horizon you can see Centrepoint, and the Post Office Tower.

This took 2 hours. The sun moved, of course.

Colours: Mars Yellow, Perylene Maroon, Prussian Blue, all Daniel Smith watercolours.

Industrial scene: exercise in perspective

This started off as a series of rectangles.

I gave it smoke:

The idea was to experiment with layers of watercolour, laid on top of each other.

Industrial buildings in a desert landscape. Why are the people queuing? What is the industry? What disaster has occurred?

I don’t know the answers. It just came out like that.

Experiments with Daniel Smith watercolour paint on Saunders Watercolour paper, St Cuthbert’s Mill.

Home scenes

Here is the view from the sofa.

On the left is the fire door, and on the right you see the carpet sweep up in a glorious curve to the underside of the window. This is a Barbican Feature, which is a challenge to carpet fitters.

At the bottom of the far wall, to the right, is the important box fastened into a power socket. This is the power line device which extends the WiFi internet through the re-inforced concrete walls of the brutalist building.

The chairs are “utility furniture” made in the 1940s and 50s, to standard designs making the most of scarce timber. New furniture was rationed at that time. I bought them in about 1998 from a shop in Brighton, and they’ve travelled with me.

Here is another view from the sofa, looking the other way.

Here you see my knitting, together with associated paraphernalia: instruction books, a bag, scissors and bits on the table.

That little table came from my parents’ house. The knitting wool came from Shetland.

The sofa came from the shop on the Tottenham Court Road that used to be called Habitat, and perhaps still is. It is long enough to lie on, full length. That was my criterion.

Indoor drawing and gardening

Just before Christmas 2018, our neighbour arrived at our door with an orchid. He was going away, and didn’t want to discard the plant. He told us he didn’t need to have it back, and we shouldn’t worry if it died. It came from M&S. We took it in.

We are not great gardeners. We just left it and it grew. Our neighbour returned from his holiday and said no, he did not want it back. And it kept on growing. Now it is a flourishing plant with several stems and multiple leaves. It lives in a tiny flower pot, with hardly any soil.

It threw out various extra stems and strange root-like protuberances, which seemed to be seeking new lands. I’ve been meaning to see if it would propagate. So last week I carefully embedded these extra stems in soil, as you see.

  • Rooting one of the stems
  • Rooting one of the root-like protuberances.
Indoor orchid propagation attempts.

When I say “embedded in soil”, I am not strictly accurate. We live in a flat in a tower block, and there is no soil up here. So the orchid is rooted in coffee grounds.

If anyone knows anything about orchids, and can provide advice, I would be glad to hear it. This seems to be a particularly robust specimen, and produces flowers all the time. It is a delight.

Here is work in progress on the drawing.

Sketching the orchid.

I’m drawing in a large Saunders Waterford sketchbook. I originally bought it for urban sketching, but it was too heavy to carry about. I also found the huge pages, 11″ by 10″, meant I did huge pictures, which took a long time, standing outdoors in the cold. The paper is also more absorbent than I am used to, which means that my washes don’t go very far and I have to keep refilling the brush. So now, being at home, I am using it to make sketches in the flat, where I can sit down and be warm.

This sketch took about 2 hours, including hanging up the laundry while paint dried (another advantage of working indoors).

Colours: Prussian Blue (DS), Perylene Maroon (DS), Mars Yellow (DS), Burnt Umber (Jacksons).