Posts Tagged: isla
Sketchbook 60
January to early March 2020
These are my sketches from the period before the COVID 19 lockdown.
Sketchbook No 59
November/ December 2019
November is charity art auction time with Article 25. I sold one in the auction and bought one too.
Sketchbook 58 September ’19
Sketchbook 57 – July 2019
In Leiria with Eva and her family.
Making paper by hand in a mill refurbished by Alvaro Siza.
Grandad’s house….
Jose, from the Leiria urban sketchers.
In Lisbon, and on the beach in Estoril. The water is three degrees cooler than off the Hebrides.
Our flat, and a lady on a train. she came and sat next to me so I hid the drawing.
Isla on the train.
Fraser on the train.
Lunching
Dunfallandy House in Pitlochry, with the family.
Andreas on the piano stool.
Steven building a rocket, Gran doing the crossword.
Pitlochry dam. It’s the fifth time we use get power from the same water and the least effective, but it’s impressive to look at.
In London, in Caroline’s garden.
In Edinburgh, in Matt & Mina’s garden.
On the train
Ronni & Lewis at the Edinburgh Festival
Sketching St Philip’s Church, recovering from the office summer social
Sketch Book 55 – April 2019
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.
Innes losing his first tooth.
Sketch One from the excellent Highland Folk Museum in Kingussie.
Sketch Two
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 think 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.
DLR sketch two.
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.
Sketch Book 54 Side One – January & February 2019
Drawing people:
an Aberdeen fan on the DLR.
Work colleagues James Lord,
John Nsiah,
& Rory Bergin.
Innes,
Fraser (& the bit of my family tree that plans to cycle up the Hebrides in 2019).
Douglas
My Mum.
Innes, Isla & Fraser
Neil
Murray
Footbaallers
Commuters
On a train
Listening
Gairlochy
Life model PaulAnd in paint. I mean, these parallel lines are all very well but it’s nice to get the brushes out.
September to November 2018
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.
My niece Anna.
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.
Ludgate Hill in London.
At Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, a really beautiful place.
Morar – April 2018
Some sketches, in chronological order (unusually).
Dragging the boys round the shops in the car, making last minute preparations for a holiday on the beautiful west coast of Scotland.
On the beach at Camusdarach making the first of many sand castles.
The local port is Mallaig.
Over the sea to Skye. Skye is home to a disproportionate number of beautiful, subtle, architect designed homes.
These two are by the inspiring Dualchas.
An uplifting community centre with a nice cafe, a cracking view and great hall. By Will Tunell. I love what a community development trust can achieve: remove the profit motive and make something great.
The train journey from Mallaig to Fort William is amongst the most scenic in the world. And very popular with Harry Potter enthusiasts. We took the (cheaper) local service.
The highlight of the trip is the Glenfinan viaduct. It looks out towards the memorial to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Arrived 22nd June 1745. Made it to Derby. Routed 16th April 1746. Back to Europe 20th September 1746.
Eigg, Rhum and Isla in the same picture.
Sailing back from Eigg.
There’s some cracking domestic architecture on the mainland too.
I do work too (though sometimes this all looks like holiday). Back home and waiting my turn to talk at a Scottish Government seminar on Build to Rent.
My sister’s brilliant fundraising book sale in aid of Alzheimer’s Research UK. With excellent help she raised £1,700.
Back to the cold. Fraser and Isla sheltering from the elements at our local community football academy, Spartans.
Indoor Month – January 2018
I do go outside, you just wouldn’t know it from the drawings. New Year’s Day with the family.
Drawing 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. 
Beautiful old cars…
…and the process by which they make them. And some racing cars, Ferrari’s only form of advertising.
Fraser missing football, because it’s January and the pitch is frozen.
Isla waiting for gymnastics to start, and me waiting for Isla.
Listening to a planning committee.
I 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.
Travelling, by tube and plane.
Some work.
Sketching 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.
Nice things to do: Part One
Brewing our own beer, HTAle, at Stewart Brewing.
Recovering after the Hairy Haggis relay, with HTA.
Looking at art: Michael Sailstorfer at Jupiter Art Land.
Learning about the third Forth bridge, with the Beavers.
Taking the time to sketch Derby’s old Co-op.
Tom and Laura’s wedding (a bit I’d missed from before).
Being at home.
And using sketching as an excuse to avoid doing all the jobs in the garden.
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