Sketching Jack's London

The Ten Bells pub in Spitalfields, East London. Apparently Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly, two of Jack the Rippers victims frequented this pub. According to Wikipedia 'Annie Chapman may have drunk at the pub shortly before she was murdered; and it has been suggested that the pavement outside of the pub was where Mary Kelly picked up clients as a prostitute'. Despite its history or because of it, it's a great pub with lots of character. The interior it is decorated with impressive original Victorian tile.

I did this sketch a few months ago at the 'Sketching Jacks London' sketchcrawl organised by Pete Scully.  It was a fun evening and great to meetup with some people from USk Barcelona....and perfect weather.  Pete gave everyone one of his mini sketchbooks and here's a few drawing in did in mine.....

Relaxing in Greenwich Park

Another drawing from a few months back..in the summer. Relaxing in Greenwick Park after the obligatory walk up the hill to the observatory.

Pavilion Cafe

I've been slack lately and have not uploaded any drawings for a while. Here's one from back in the summer. The Pavilion Cafe is in a beautiful location next to the pond in Victoria Park, East London. It's a fantastic spot to eat breakfast outdoors in the summer.

Piccadilly Circus

Hanging out with the tourists in Piccadilly Circus (a few months back). Several people took photos of me while I was doing this drawing and the cowboy street performer guy gave me the thumbs up.

Meet me by the lifts

A woman waiting for someone at the Barbican Centre

More from the Urban Sketching Symposium (in Barcelona back in July)....

Veronica Lawlor's 'Designing Barcelona' workshop

The workshop was held at L'Illa de la Discordia (Block of Discord), which is a section of Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district. It is famous because of the contrasting and crazy architectural styles of four buildings that were designed in the early 1900's by four of Barcelonas leading modernist architects - Lluis Domenechi Montaner, Antoni Gaudi, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Enric Sagnier.

Veronica encouraged us to experiment with different materials and using different techniques like using lines, marks, colour. We started doing small quick thumbnails...

and finished by doing one larger drawing of the block. The area was very busy, people everywhere, shopping, in cafes, tourists taking photos and cars racing by.

'Life Between Buildings: Capturing the Energy' workshop with James Richard

Capturing the energy in Placa de Catalunya. A large square where the old city meets the more modern 19th century Eixample district and also where two of Barcelona's main streets (La Rambla and Passeig de Gràcia) begin. This square is always busy, lot of people and pigeons.

This is a very simple run down of the process we followed...we started by drawing people of various sizes to create depth, with a main character in the foreground, added other details such as trees, cars, street lights, signs, etc then buildings. Adding darks/blacks to create contrast and finishing off with colour.