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!
Since I live in a flat, “stay at home” means “stay indoors”.
I started drawing the scenes around the flat.
These are the drawings up to today, 1st May.
Here is a postcard from indoors:
It shows a corner of the flat. You see the sun outside, and birds, and the city. You see parks, rivers and the great outdoors. But mostly, you see the sun on the carpet.
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.
A view from the residents’ gardens.
The building in the background is the Heron Building, luxury flats above the Milton Court Concert Hall, Guildhall School of Music and Dance. This building opened in September 2013. It replaced a public building, which was in the brutalist design of the Barbican and designed by Chamberlain Powell and Bon, It housed a fire station, Coroner’s Court, mortuary, office of weights and measures and a civil defence school, and was connected to the Barbican by a bridge at Podium level. This building was demolished in 2008, in the face of opposition from the Twentieth Century Society amongst others, and was replaced by the steel and glass tower. This new building has no bridge to the Barbican, which is a pity, in my view.
At the extreme right is City Point.
Here is work in progress:
This drawing took ages. I couldn’t get the steps right. After 30 minutes of drawing and rubbing out I restarted at 12:10 and finished 1hour30mins later.
I hastened to draw the magnificent Bastion House, on London Wall. It is due for demolition.
In the foreground you see the balcony and privacy screen of the flat in Andrewes, whose leaseholder had kindly hosted me.
The line of red brick, and what looks like chimneys, in the foreground are the rooftops of a part of the Barbican, “The Postern”. Behind them is the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall on Monkwell Square, where I have been to give blood. The curved green building on the left is on the other side of London Wall. It is “One London Wall” near the Museum of London Rotunda: multi-use office space.
Bastion House is the huge monolith in the centre of the drawing. It reminds me of the monolith in the 1968 film “2001 – A Space Odyssey”, and indeed it dates from that period. It was proposed in 1955, and started in 1972, completed in 1976. The architect was Philip Powell of Powell and Moya. This practice also designed the Skylon for the 1951 South Bank Festival of Britain, and Churchill Gardens in Pimlico.
Here is drawing work in progress.
This drawing took me about 2 hours. This is my first drawing in a new sketchbook: the “Perfect Sketchbook” from Etchr. This will be Urban Sketching sketchbook number 6.
I have sketched Bastion House before:
Bastion House aka 140 London Wall is a huge modernist monolith, reminiscent of the monolith in “2001 – A Space Odyssey”. I couldn’t find a site to draw the monolith part today, so here is a view at Podium Level, looking West towards the Museum of London. You see the dark undercroft, walkways and a…
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,…
Here is a view from the Australian café, “Barbie Green” on London Wall. In this picture you see:
Barbie Green is a new cafe which has appeared as part of the new London Wall Place development. Its huge windows have great views out over St Alphege Church and the surrounding buildings. They have very friendly staff who don’t seem to mind atall that I used their table as a vantage point for sketching. I had great food and great coffee too. Thank you Barbie Green.
This drawing took about an hour and a half. It is almost all Prussian Blue and Perinone Orange, Daniel Smith Watercolours, over pen and ink. The ink is “De Atramentis Document Ink Black”, which is waterproof.
Here is work in progress. As you see, it was getting dark!
I have drawn in this location before:
Here’s another drawing on London Wall place. This is a view of the highwalk from underneath. I was standing by the new café, Barbie Green, sheltering from the rain.
The shelter was not very good, and there was a lot of wind, so raindrops arrived on the picture. I went to go in the café to finish the colouring, but no, there were “no tables”.
So I finished the drawing outdoors, sitting on a damp bench.
I very much enjoy this highwalk. It curves in all dimensions. The side walls undulate, the walkway becomes wider and narrower, and it tilts up and down. It’s made of some iron-like metal, so it has rusted and is now a deep brown. The shape of it respectfully frames the ruins of the old church.
I appreciated all this while observing, through the picture windows of the cafe, three empty tables, which remained empty for the whole time.
1hr10, drawn and coloured on location.
More drawing expeditions in this area:
St Alphege, Barbie Green and London Wall Place (12/17/2019)
St Alphege Gardens, flowering tree (3/16/2019)
St Alphege, London Wall (6/13/2018)On the way back from the Post Office, I paused to draw the view under the new Highwalk of London Wall Place. There is a new café called “Barbie Green”.
I drew this by the water pond and the plants. sheltered by the highwalk. Other people were there too, mostly smokers. Except that people don’t smoke anymore, but wander around leaving trails of mist with strange synthetic smells, nearly but not quite vanilla.
I have sketched in this area before. Here’s a similar view, drawn last year in the summer, just after the highwalk was constructed:
The drawing above is from this post:
St Alphege, London Wall
This is a drawing on one of those hot days last week.
I sat at one of the tables on the Barbican Lakeside Terrace and drew what I saw. The massive building is 125 London Wall, a multi-occupancy monolith. Behind, to the right is 88 Wood Street, designed by Richard Rogers (“Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners”). It’s a bit like the Lloyds Building, with transparent walls and lifts you can see going up and down. On the left is the new building at One London Wall Place.
In front of all that is the side of St Giles’ church, with its castellations. There was a celebration going on: Barbican@50.
The banner you can see fastened to the railings says “SOSBarbican.com”. It is placed by objectors to the proposed extension of the Girls School.
1 hour 20.
Jane Sketching 