COVID 19, Sketchbook 62
The sketch above is on Leith Walk, a couple of days before lockdown one was announced. I’d just been on the phone to my partners discussing what might happen and looking at the sketch brings back all the feelings of uncertainty.
24th March. The remaining food rescued from the HTA fridge and the first day in fifty years that HTA hadn’t made lunch for everyone who was in the office.
In the house, it was like this:
January to early March 2020
These are my sketches from the period before the COVID 19 lockdown.
November/ December 2019
November is charity art auction time with Article 25. I sold one in the auction and bought one too.
In my tent, ready to get up and tackle day three of this camp.
Day three is the last day, and it begins round the flag pole.
I’ve been helping some Cubs and Scouts get their art badge.
It’s a team effort, well organised by Dylan with the support of many D’Mains volunteers.
At Glasgow School of Art, looking at what Hilmi and Mo have been up to.
The project work is great. I like looking closely at the buildings around us too. This is just round the corner from the Edinburgh office.
It’s a warehouse: a well designed bay is repeated and some parts are elaborated, some played down.
Beautiful and unconventional urban design in Edinburgh at Shaw Street.
With some of out HTA Design team winning the “Clients’ Choice” Award at the AJ100 Awards.
Eating with Rettie at the Scottish Homes Awards, and talking about the prospects for Build to Rent in Scotland.
Working on Build to Rent with the Edinburgh Park Design team.
The project is for Parabola. Here it is being reviewed by Architecture & Design Scotland.
Travelling, and dinner with the helpful Specifi team in Edinburgh.
An LSE talk on peoples’ attitudes to living at high density.
At home: Fraser & Innes playing on my phone between football and swimming lessons.
The theme is maybe years, or numbers. Seven kids in the rain in a hot tub at Tom Bent’s birthday bash.
At the Macallan distillery. Twelve year old for me.
We cycled round Loch an Eilean with the three kids and stopped to hear the echo from the island castle.
Sketch One from the excellent Highland Folk Museum in Kingussie.
Isla racing up the Landmark climbing rock.
Peabody talking about numbers, huge financial ones, and how you reconcile them with a social purpose.
Three Crabs in Henry’s Cellar Bar.
Helping at the 30th Craigalmond Scout Coffee Morning.
On the DLR. I thinkĀ it’s far harder to sketch on the DLR than it was six months ago. We have thousands of new passengers from Londons new housing developments, and there’s no longer any space.
Two memorials commemorating the 36,000 who died in the First and Second World Wars with no grave but the sea.
Four blocks nicely composed into a West Edinburgh housing development.
Julie sorting our summer holiday.
Three judges and one of our team at the AJ100 Awards judging.
In York Station waiting for the last train home.
At Silverknowes with about eighty Scouts, Cubs and Beavers.
Soderberg in Soho. The first outside Edinburgh I think. Very nice too.
That’s a sketchbook, minus a bunch of drawings of what we might do the house, and I’m not putting them up here.
Drawing people:
Fraser (& the bit of my family tree that plans to cycle up the Hebrides in 2019).Douglas
Life model PaulAnd in paint. I mean, these parallel lines are all very well but it’s nice to get the brushes out.
Drawings of people I know and people I don’t.
The London Underground is a pretty unpleasant place: too busy and too hot from from April to October. I avoid it when I can but you can’t use a Boris bike for every trip so to pass the time I’ve plucked up the courage to draw people i don’t know who’re sitting four feet away.
They get off, of course, so I’m quite often left with incomplete faces, but I quite like that anyway.
No negative reaction from any of the subjects so far.
Drawing people I know is more straightforward.
Innes waiting for Fraser to finish swimming.
Fraser & Innes watching football on Tv & Ipad.
Julie in Heathrow. Easier to draw people at events.
Watching the Proclaimers in London.
My mum, and others, celebrating 40 years since she became minister in Townhill Parish Church.
The traditional church hall cup of tea afterwards.
Peter Murray & Richard Rogers introducing the NLA’s exhibition on offsite manufacture in construction, which features a number of our projects.
The Cubs doing a craft project at their camp.
Kenneth Williamson guiding us through an illuminating talk on Edinburgh’s suburban railways. I live right on top of one, so i’m very interested.
At the RIBA Stirling Prize in the Roundhouse in Camden.
Fraser, Isla and Innes at the Armistice Memorial.
The kids watching the fireworks next door.
Listening to a moving talk from Hannah Graf, the UK’s highest ranking transgender army officer.
At Coram, for the launch of Cycle to Mipim 2019.
And finally, a small number of drawings focused on buildings, rather than people. This is Market Street with HTA Sketch Club.
At Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, a really beautiful place.
The last drawing of the year, at Hugh & Murray’s house
The party is over there. I’m watching from the far side of the table.
The Kerrs watching Elizabeth II (trad).
Watching the panto-esque Arabian Nights at the Lyceum.
Fraser watching the TV football chat before going to watch the Pars beat Falkirk 2-0.
Watching Innes work through two days of Lego building.
In London, by the office, I choose to sit in the not so nice cafe in order to watch the diners in the nice one on the far side of the street.
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