Posts Tagged: innes

Sketchbook 66

August to October 2021

A sketch of Broughton Street in Edinburgh, drawn with HTA Sketchclub. We started sketchclub about ten years ago as a response to people in the office wanting to improve their drawing skills. I realised how much I enjoyed drawing and that I hadn’t done much observational drawing since school. I’d done plenty of drawing with work, but it was generally drawing to explain an idea or to show what a place that didn’t exist might be like. Observational drawing is different. You need to understand what you are looking at for one thing. What is the spacing of those windows? How many are there? How does that chimney meet the roof apex? That sort of thing. And the action of looking and thinking makes you wonder what a space like this is for and how it might be better used. Covid restrictions have reclaimed some of the space for people but how could this be developed to make a better space here?
Sketchclub in London
Two sketches from HTA Sketchclub in London. This is our new street on the edge of a park for Pocket Living. If you draw what other people made you don’t have the complete picture of the process that led to it. Here we can look at what we made and discuss it with the team who spent years making it happen.
Looking at the world with work. This time a tour led by Lisa Williams exploring the black history behind some of Edinburgh’s familiar landmarks.
Basil Spence’s Sunderland Civic Centre. It’s an interesting building, with a rigorous geometric logic driven through the design from the organisational diagram to the floor tiles beneath your feet. Sunderland City Centre is moving North, taking up the space left by the industries that once lined the River Wear. The council are a key part of this change, and they have left here and moved to a new Civic Centre near the river.
How the basic clay tile makes a pattern that reflects the building plan. The slight difference in tone of each tile is beautiful in combination.
Top left is the building plan. I tried to draw the tiered steps/ ramp accurately, to try to understand it better. Next to the central column a man is making a plein air oil painting of the building.
I’m here for a consultation event on what might happen once the building is demolished. There’s some debate about that but not really any about the demolition principle which has been agreed locally for years, so people want to know what’s happening next.
The Edinburgh office went to see Laura Mvula at the Festival (there’ a limited Festival).
Home stuff: Scout Camp at Fordell Firs.
Scout camp fire.
Innes’s football tournament at Wardie.
Holiday in London. In Kev & Pam’s cool back garden.
We swapped houses with Rory.
It was a good arrangement for a Covid summer: make your own plans and keep it simple.
One of Rory’s lovely old cameras. I do drawings like this to try to capture the precision but my lines aren’t crisp enough to do the objects justice.
In London we walked a lot.
Off to Stamford Bridge, for a tour.
Waiting for a football match to finish in Queensferry.
A very little little bit of Stirling Castle. We are working with the MOD just now so I’m paying close attention.
Ruari back from Germany. It’s lovely to see him after Lockdown separation.
Tube passengers.
Isla waiting for a consultation.

Sketchbook 65

Second Lockdown and thereafter

We had another lockdown. I drew less than at any point in the previous nine years. I’ve included a few of them further down, for completeness, but I lost the habit really. I just worked. I got back into it when we were allowed out. This is a key worker on the tube.
A temporary Covid Test Centre, a feature of many community car parks.
And of course, vaccine roll out. This is my first. Alongside our lockdown dog.
Meeting people in gardens. This is father in law Michael.
And again.
My mum.
When we were locked down, I tried to draw the local place, the highlight was this church on our High Street.
Local bins, marginally less interesting than…
…than a local bridge. (It is quite interesting actually, clearly two bridges which you’d never realise from above.)
On the positive side, here’s Craig’s first day back at work cooking lunch. 28th April 2021.
The first work trip to see a site in York. Handy for meeting the London team, who we haven’t seen for months.
The May board meeting, the first of the year to be held in person.
Hotel view.
Running into interesting looking people as we travel again.
Me.
I’ve learned some things from Lockdown. One is how much I enjoy a cycle into work and the other is you can attend presentations anywhere. I now pass these cottages everyday so I stopped to draw them, while listening to one of our Friday morning masterclasses.
Otherwise, life is similar to how it was. Saturday and Sunday mornings involve football. This is Lochend’s scenic pitch.
Jac’s H Type Citreon in Victoria Park. Supplier of coffee to many locals and the parents watching Spartans across the road.
More classic French design, and my attempt to render some shadows.
After football: Fraser on the couch playing XBox.
Julie on the couch texting. This is one of the lonely lockdown sketches. It’s from February. I think I only drew two drawings that month, when normally there might be ten.
Isla feeling ill on the sofa, in January.
The only other January drawing.
The dug. He’s on the sofa already, and he’s only just got here.

Locking down: March to August 2020

COVID 19, Sketchbook 62

This sketchbook was all about lockdown one and the easing we had after it. I stopped updating sandysdrawingroom during that time: there was a lot on I think, and the website stopped working. I’ve fixed that, and for the sake of continuity I’ll add them all here. I’m writing this in October 21, now on sketchbook 67, so there’s a lot to catch up on.

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.

The next day: people are working from home and the pubs are shut.

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.

Time to get used to working from home: straightforward enough as it turned out. The sketch shows our first go at producing face shields for the NHS, the government having found itself short of suitable PPE. Eventually this grew into quite a collaborative effort and my colleague Richard Foxley won the British Empire Medal for his work.
Time to be at home. There was a lot less time than I’d imagined, but the weather was fantastic and I broke the days up sketching the following from my surroundings.
Paying attention to the garden, in this case one of the rocks that sits to the north of the house.
The sketch below is annotated to show where the above plants are located in my garden.
It was a period of being outdoors when ever possible.
Fixing the bike.
Eventually we were allowed some visitors again, outside.

In the house, it was like this:

My workspace.
The hall.
The garage.
Hanging out with the family. We were aware that we were lucky to have company.
Fraser
Isla
Julie
Julie
The boys doing Scouts and Cubs on line.
Isla, in a mask our neighbours were nice enough to make for us.
The new way to visit the shops.
Lots of time working at home, and drinking coffee.
Keeping up with colleagues online.
The end of the day. After a while we were allowed out again. I’ll cover that in the next one.

Sketchbook 60

January to early March 2020

These are my sketches from the period before the COVID 19 lockdown.

Not a sketch, but a portrait of Architect Richard Murphy. Richard kindly helped me raise sponsorship for children’s charity Coram, who I’ve cycled from London to Cannes in aid of every March for the last five years. I finished it in early March. I didn’t do the cycle, of course.
Things looked pretty normal at the start of the year: here’s Innes watching TV on 02/01/20.
Time for all the usual stuff: a trip to Melrose.
The ususal sketches of commuters…
…family members…
….work colleagues….
… and an epidemiologist. I was about to hear a lot more from them.
Sketches from a trip to Dublin.
A talk about saving the planet, rather than simply ourselves.
Haircuts for the kids.
Kids parties and presents.
A crowd. 4th February, crowds were perfectly normal then.
This sketch, from 16th March, is when I (finally) realised it was all going to change. I was trying to be colourful about it.
An ominous sketch of the house, where I was about to spend the next few months. That’s in the next book, which for some reason I haven’t got round to scanning despite all the extra time people imagined lockdown would bring.

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.

Flying to London for the auction.
The painting I sold. It’s of a building on Blackwall Basin that we are designing for The Canary Wharf Group.
The auction.
Sticking with the art, we ran a life drawing class in the London office.
We us the board room for the life drawing. It’s normally in use for meetings, and, if you’re careful, you can spend some time drawing fellow partners.
Some design team members, elsewhere.
Innes getting ready for training at Spartans, one of a number of excellent local community football set ups.
His sister at home.
I drew the people either side, Isla filled in the middle.
Commuters
Mostly the commuters are in London.
All the people on the train….
I think I’ve drawn some of them before.
A trip to Dublin
Edinburgh travelers on their way to the London Christmas Party.
The London Christmas Party
The fire station being refurbished on Macdonald Road.
The Clockhouse in the former Greenwich Dockyard. Henry VIII built his ship here but you’d never know.
Twelve Triangles cafe, off Leith Walk.
A tuesday Talk on Gender Equality in Public Space.
Another on Mikhail Riches outstanding Stirling Prize winning homes in Norwich.
Grumpy on Christmas Day.

May 2019 – Sketchbook 56

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.

Travelling.

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

Travelling, and dinner with the helpful Specifi team in Edinburgh.

Travelling.

An LSE talk on peoples’ attitudes to living at high density.

At home: Fraser & Innes playing on my phone between football and swimming lessons.

 

 

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 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.

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 & FraserNeil

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.

 

 

You Stand Watching – December 2017

The last drawing of the year, at Hugh & Murray’s house

new year 17-18The party is over there. I’m watching from the far side of the table.

christmas 2017The Kerrs watching Elizabeth II (trad).

LyceumWatching the panto-esque Arabian Nights at the Lyceum.

january 2108Fraser watching the TV football chat before going to watch the Pars beat Falkirk 2-0.

innes and legoWatching Innes work through two days of Lego building.

the dinerIn 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.

ruari standingRuari, watching the events of a family Christmas.