Posts Tagged: fraser

Indoor Month – January 2018

I do go outside, you just wouldn’t know it from the drawings. New Year’s Day with the family.

new years day 2018Drawing in the sketching friendly Design Museum. Looking at beautiful Ferraris. Enzo Ferrari was neither a great driver or a great designer but he created the world’s most desirable brand. ferrari 3

Beautiful old cars…

180124 -ferrari 2

…and the process by which they make them. And some racing cars, Ferrari’s only form of advertising.

180120-FraserFraser missing football, because it’s January and the pitch is frozen.

ainslie park cafe 2017

Isla waiting for gymnastics to start, and me waiting for Isla.

180118 - Hendon Town Hall

Listening to a planning committee.

passo - jan 2017I like the trend towards open kitchens and seats where you can watch someone make your dinner. They provide some entertainment for travelers eating alone. These friendly folk were in Paso.

by tube and planeTravelling, by tube and plane.

management meetingSome work.

2018 british librarySketching is quite popular these days and the nice guys from Meinhardt invited me along to their thriving sketch club at the British Library. It was great,, but I’m looking forward to drawing outdoors again.

That’s Entertainment – December 2017

Fiona and Paulina sleeping on the way to the HTA Design London party

hta sleepers - december 2017

Recovering the next day on the long trip home.

party morning after december 2017

Earlier in the month I’d gone to Islay with the guys I began studying architecture with 30 years ago who are still architects.

Port Charlotte 2-RecoveredWe got thrown out of the pub and the police were called.

Port Charlotte 1

This sort of thing didn’t happen 30 years ago. That’s middle age for you.

Flying to ISlaBy the time we flew home we knew just about everyone.

london office brick - december 2017

Recovering in London, trying to understand the detail of our new office. You don’t learn that much in 30 years.

fraser ar scots night - 30 nov 2017

It’s the time of year for shows: Fraser in his school Scots Night.

Queensferry Panto - December 2017

Brother in law and nephew excelling in panto.

171213-WSP-Spifox

A Christmas lunch or two, though this is the only one that made me cry. It raised money for charities So Precious and CHAS. Click on the links for more information on these excellent organisations.

Michael 3 december 2017It’s time for some time at home…

julie and matt december 2017

…chatting to friends…

isla 1 december 2017

…recovering…

42 eba stair december 2017…and thinking about some new design challenges.

Nice things to do: Part One

stewart brewingBrewing our own beer, HTAle, at Stewart Brewing.

hairy haggisRecovering after the Hairy Haggis relay, with HTA.

jupiter art landLooking at art: Michael Sailstorfer at Jupiter Art Land.

forth bridgeLearning about the third Forth bridge, with the Beavers.

DerbyTaking the time to sketch Derby’s old Co-op.

bloke on a train

Tom and Laura’s wedding (a bit I’d missed from before).

grand day outBeing at home.

 

gardenlawnmowerAnd using sketching as an excuse to avoid doing all the jobs in the garden.

The Hebridean Isles – April 2017

With HTA sketch club looking at one of Edinburgh’s successful incidental spaces.

Rodney Street 30 March 2017After that, island hopping in the Hebrides in the spring sun.

MV Hebridean Isles 04 April 2017The whole thing is great. The islands are beautiful, the weather is dramatic and the ferries that sail between them come in all shapes and sizes.

MV Catriona - 03 April 2017The smallest is on the five minute crossing to remote Jura.

eilean dhura 7 april 2017The biggest on the sail to Arran.
caledonian isles 02 April 2017julie 8 April 2017Most of our time was spent on Islay, which is a much softer variety of the Hebridean harshness I’m familiar with from time on North Uist, and mixed with an astounding world class whisky industry.

ardbeg 5 April 2017Bownore 04 April 2017goose 6 april 2017

It’s a short cycle between Ardbeg, Lagavulin and Laphroaig. Time to look out for the wildlife. Buzzards, stags, golden eagles. And geese.
Port Ellen 7 April 2017Islay came up with this and a few islands further north they invented Harris Tweed. A tiny number of people producing products that are renowned the world over. In beautiful surroundings.

loch ranza 3 April 2017It was a great place for Fraser to recover from his minor, but fairly dramatic, head injury.

fraser 01 April 2017fraser 02 april 2017For contrast, Kings Cross.

kings cross - 170326

New Year 2017

In Derby for work, but holiday habits are hard to kick so I popped in to have a look at Ayrton Senna’s ’93 McLaren at Donnington Park, scene of it’s finest hour.

mclaren - 15 jan 2017

Before that Christmas holidays and birthday parties.

Ellan's birthday 24 December 2016

For three year old Ellan…

dad - 3 jan 2017

… and my 89 year old dad. He’s forgotten a lot but we all sang songs together.

dad - 26 december 2017

mum - 25 dec 2016

Christmas Day: mum showing her grandchildren photos of the old days.

grumpy - 25 dec 2016Grumpy in traditional post lunch pose…

fraser and grumpy - 2 jan 2017

…and talking planes with Fraser.

janice - 25 dec 2016Janice and Alison

presentation - 10 jan 2017Back to work and ideas about the future of London.

turbo - 27 dec 2016Time to get on with winter training for my 1500km cycle down to Cannes in March. New year, new regime.

 

 

Vehicles & holidays – 12 October 2016

Waiting in China Town and sketching delivery bikes. You can’t finish them because they keep racing off at the standard speed for ‘L’ plate food deliveries: flat out.

delivery-bbike-6-october-2016

Faster: a turntable ladder at Crewe Toll fire station. This is the highlight of Fraser’s trip with the Beavers.

fire-station-2-11-october-2016

I’m here because he’s been a bit ill, so I’m checking he’s alright.

fire-station-1-11-october-2016They do an entertaining routine, the fireman. “Kids, the more yellow helmets at a fire, the more chance everyone gets out alive. The more white helmets, the more chance it all burns to the ground”. The bosses wear the white helmets.

tube-12-october-2016On the tube,  absentmindedly sketching the guy who happens to be opposite when I realise he’s wrapped his hands in a scarf so I can’t see his big tattoos. Didn’t mean to make it awkward, wish I knew what they said.

soft-play1-10-october-2016

Back in Edinburgh we are moving office. I find myself in kids soft play parties looking at how they’ve done the services install. Time for a break.

donald-campbell-17-october-2016On the Windermere ferry sketching a Mazda MX5 and a Renault. Imagining (well copying) Donald Campbell’s celebrated K7. We went and had a look at Coniston Water where Campbell was killed on 4th January ’67 in an attempt to break his own world water speed record.

borrowdale-16-october-2016The holiday had begun in Borrowdale Youth Hostel. I love youth hostels: we all get in one room, the foods good, the people are friendly and the prices and locations are great. Citizen Rambler.

islas-bike-19-october-2016Next stop, Center Parcs. It shows how you can make the world around you much nicer just by replacing cars with bikes. Everyone seems to go for it.

fi-15-october-2016The boys on the tablet, though most of the action was in the ‘subtropical swimming paradise’. hut-19-october-2016This is the ‘hut’. J & I got ill here. Being ill at Center Parcs is about as expensive as checking in to a BUPA hospital, so we didn’t make a big deal of it.

Restart – 20 April 2016

I’ve fallen out of the habit of keeping the sketch diary up to date, the online version anyway. I’ve kept the sketch books just the same but painting the six portraits I did recently used up all my spare time. Then I cycled across France.

Housing Forum Leeds - 23 March 2016I had an idea that I’d go back and colour up the old sketches and up load them all here: do a catch up blog. But of course I won’t. The thing about a diary is that the keeper is only interested in recording today, not writing up the past.

Drumsynie - 28 March 2016So here are the sketches from the current book.

Bute - 28 March 2016There’s another sketch book that’s almost entirely missing.

HTA 3rd Birthday - 6 April 2016So getting back up to date there’s lot’s about HTA, which is about right. This includes celebration dinners…

The Bitter Taste of Victory - 12 April 2016

… and fascinating presentations: this one by Lara Feigel on her book ‘The Bitter Taste of Victory’…

WIA @ HTA - 19 April 2016…and this one on Women in Architecture and women in HTA. In the non architectural areas of our business: planning, graphics, sustainability and landscape design the genders are balanced throughout the grades. In architecture they aren’t. Something to sort.

Training at HTA – 17 December 2015

Over the last year, we’ve had Mike Hopkins coming in to train our management team in a few useful techniques. We’re a business run by designers so it’s good to hear how the professionals do it. Contrary to popular perception (big egos/ sensitive souls) designers don’t really need to be treated all that carefully but they are good at questioning the conventional route. Mike has a straightforward style, telling our creative team what he thinks, and this is going down well. 

mike hopkins - 17 December 2015

Getting a great guided tour around the first bespoke build-to-rent building in the UK, for be:here.behere- 9 December 2015

Fraser and Isla have expertise too. Here they are showing two year old Ellan some advanced present unwrapping skills.

ellans party - 20 December 2015

A man in a stripy jersey watching his kid at swimming lessons.

stripy spectator - 13 December 2015

Julie watching the tennis and working out how we’ll get the boiler fixed. We moved into a house in the winter and the boiler burst. It now appears this happens to pretty much everyone.

julie at tennis - 6 December 2015

Maybe the 25% of the population who’d consider buying a new house have got it right?

A few things to learn – 29 November 2015

Fraser is learning to play tennis.  I drew Isla watching him, then she drew him, and titled it.isla and fraser 28 November 2015

 

At an office CPD, on lighting. Not a bad one. CPD 27 November 2015You learn more, obviously, from seeing the things skilled designers (and their visionary clients) have actually built than you do from watching Powerpoint.

Asa & Daniels 29 November 2015Edinburgh has an extensive stock of ageing bungalows with big back gardens and they’re gradually being bought up by young families. A roster of talented local architects can transform them by taking a bit of back garden and building the kind of bright and open living space people are after these days. Few are as lofty and light as friends Asa & Daniel’s one, by David Blaikie.

innes 28 November 2015

 

Innes (and me), learning to be gardeners.

 

Denis Mason-Jones – 19 November 2015

Thursday: an enjoyable evening looking at the sketches entered in the Denis Mason-Jones sketching competition, in Leeds.

Denis Mason Jones Competition  - 19 November 2015I met Denis’s son and picked the winner.

Tuesday: speaking at the Residential Investment Conference 2015. It was held underground, and the lecture theatre style benches glowed red. I tried not to be too distracted.

Resi Investment - 17 November 2015

Monday night: watching ideas for getting one million more homes into the outer London boroughs, Pecha Kucha style at the NLA.

Pecha Kucha - 16 November 2015

Saturday: more relaxed time spent in Edinburgh.

KMBT_C284-20151120114546KMBT_C284-20151120114614The kids playing sport.