Posts Tagged: urban sketches

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.

V&A – 25 November 2014

Round the Constable exhibition at the V&A with the Our Enterprise team after hearing from Sandy Richardson about the new V&A in Dundee.

V&A - 25 November 2014

No sketching allowed, no explanation given.

Brunswick & Citizen M 25 November 2014Sketching at the Brunswick Centre. I was going slowly so later filled the page with scenes from the Citizen M lobby, still busy around midnight.

Citizen M 26 November 2014

Good foyer spaces, small but well designed bedrooms.

Giraffe - 25 November 2014

Watching people eating, at Kings Cross. Do you take the food to your mouth or your mouth to the food?

 

Citizen M 15 January 2014

Citizen M in Southwark: contemporary modular hotel. Nice lobby, nice people. Stay there next time.

140114 Citizen MThe friendly barman is also a clothes designer.

140114 Citizen M

HTA Sketch Club November 2013

Poetry Library 22 November 2013This is from the steps of Malcolm Fraser’s Poetry Library, from the lottery era. The steps are for listening to outdoor poetry readings I think, but there’s not much call for that in November. It makes for an interesting raised view point.

St Pancras 27 November 2013This is pretty much my favourite place in London: the platform level of St Pancras. The platform is raised up to let the railway pass over the adjacent canal and the columns on the ground floor were set out to suit beer barrel dimensions. It was built as a proud little but of the Midlands in central London. We went with HTA’s sketch club and Peter Ctori talked us through some of the history, from an engineer’s perspective. My colleagues sketches are on

http://www.hta.co.uk/

SKMBT_C28413102209120

Lastly some houses in Combe Down, near Bath.

Working & Drawing 27 August 2013

spitalfields 27 August 2013Sketching in Spitalfields with the HTA London. A good turn out, a lovely evening and someone saw Gilbert & George. This always seems to happen round here. London is turning into Monaco: a safe haven for world money. The banks that process the cash eat up a little bit of historic character every few years, so we headed further east to review each other’s drawings.

Hargreaves Foundry 28 August 2013The redevelopment of Kings Cross is much more successful. Less is lost. I’ve been watching this building going up for a year or so now. It’s by Chipperfield and has beautiful, textured, columns from Hargreaves Foundry.

John GrayJohn Gray, our Head of Production Information, came up from London to update our working drawings processes but before he got started we took him to the Whisky Society. A 19 year old Laphroaig was his preference.

 

The Invisible Man at the Festival – August 2013

Invisible Man 19 August 2013Each year, Edinburgh has about 13 festivals and about 4million people turn up to watch what’s going on. Just now it’s full.  As in most things, it’s the mediocre that predominates, whether it’s dull stand ups from dull BBC panel shows or formulaic street performers. There’s always good stuff too and the whole office went to Kazakoshi, Japanese drumming by these guys:

http://www.tokara.net/

This was pretty ecstatic.

Taiko Drumming 18 August 2013Whilst it’s hard to capture the transformation in the streets, it’s fun to try. From an attractive, temporary (“pop up”?!) cafe the street performers don’t seem so bad.

George Street 14 August 2013

 

Edinburgh Festival 16 August 2013

The State of BritainIn a house on York Place watching ‘Look at the State of Britain’ in a room about the size of a bedroom. It was in a house along here that Henry Raeburn painted his amazing portraits.

Blind Poet 16 August 2013We watched Ash (from the train the other) day with his reggae/ ska band at the Blind Poet after. Another intimate venue and more performers who can fill the space.

Maybe an unconventional tenth anniversary but fun none the less.

Cowes Week 7 August 2013

Cowes Week 7 August 2013Watching some determined and competitive sailors in the Solent, some fishing and some swimming: a pretty good way to spend a day.  I know next to nothing about nautical pursuits, but was made to feel very welcome by those that did. You don’t need much knowledge to appreciate the combination of technology and performance that results in beautifully elegant sailing boats, old and new. We had a great vantage point courtesy of Harry Downes at Fizzy.

Swanick Marina 7 August 2013This is the marina at Swanick which I arrived at a bit early, as Southampton is pretty handy for Edinburgh. It takes 15 minutes to sail past all the moorings between here and the Solent, an impressive spectacle in itself and a pleasant start and finish to the day.