Drawing trees in St James Park

St James Park - the Lake View, with trees

32" x 12", coloured pencils in double page spread of sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This is a sketch of a view of the Lake in St James Park from the Horse Guards Road end of the park - Duck island is on the left, Buckingham Palace is at the other end of this lake (beyond the Blue Bridge and obscured by the Swire Fountain and the slight bend in the lake) and The Mall runs parallel to the park off to the right of my view.

Which means this is what it looks like right in the middle of London! (You can download a pdf file of a map of the park from the Royal Parks website if you want the layout of the park in more detail and to see its location relative to other landmarks.)

On Saturday I attended a National Gallery workshop on the Anatomy of Trees workshop given by Sarah Simblet - which you can read about in Drawing Trees with Sarah Simblet on my other blog Making A Mark. We were briefed about strategies for drawing trees in the morning and then drew trees in St James Park in the afternoon - and my drawing at the top of this post was the product of my afternoon's drawing.

I thought it might be useful if I tried to remember my thought processes for the decision-making that went on before and during the course of making the drawing which you see at the top of this post - hence what follows which is..........

An anatomy of a drawing

One of things which I battle with at times (usually due to the time available) is drawing a mass of different types of trees - especially in summer when we're faced with huge masses and shapes of leaf laden trees.

As I'm particularly partial to drawing views and vistas I decided to have a go at a vista - incorporating a range of different masses and types of tree where there was recession without much in the way of colour change to see if I could capture this. Plus I also had colour changes which seemed to contradict recession!

The masses of trees which surround the lake on either side were the real subject of this drawing. Trees are one of my favourite subjects to look at and draw although I always tend to think every time I draw them that I still have some way to go in developing my tree drawing skills - hence the workshop!

What I ended up producing is probably the largest drawing (albeit over two pages) that I've ever done while working plein air. It measures 32 inches by 12 inches - across a double page spread of a new large landscape format sketchbook. (12" x 16" format).

Before I started I thought about:

• the scope of the drawing - and where to crop! I had to decided how much was I trying to do - and where the four lines around the edge of the drawing (see Composition - the four most important lines) were going to come. Double page panoramic drawings are quite interesting because of course you move your head during the drawing which of course then distorts perspective lines! Once I realised I might do a double page spread I had to work out where the right hand edge came and decided to crop into a rather nice lime green willow. I left the left edge rather more undecided when I started - figuring that this could be an academic question in any case - as I intended to start with the right hand half.
• Thinking in threes: I thought about thirds - both for the individual pages and the double page spread as a whole. (see Composition - thinking in threes)

The 'rule of thirds' is an approximation of the 'golden ratio'
A diagram comparison - using algebra and numbers of
"the golden mean" and "the rule of thirds"
plus identification of the 'sweet spot' area
and how this can be used for the focal point

• Focal Point: The fountain in the lake is a dominant feature as was the dip in the tree line behind as that was the point of maximum recession it so I needed to work out a position (see Composition and Design - finding and creating a focal point). It ended up being in the bottom left hand sweet spot of the eight hand side and bottom right hand side sweet spot for the double page spread. Neat - huh? ;) In this particular instance, my main area of interest lay on the right hand side - but not so much with the fountain as the trees. However placing the fountain/dip on a sweet spot avoided the distraction they would be if placed anywhere else.
• Foreground "fringe": I had a whole wodge of reed beds and other very attractive greenery in the foreground skirting the front edge of the lake and had to decide whether to include it or not. I decided to ignore it - too complicated for the time available plus 'fringe' bottoms always tend to look very odd unless carefully planned.
  

While drawing, I'm still making notes and making decisions:

• Directing the eye: This was a very wide format - and all the trees were vertical and I felt the need for some more lateral lines. In this drawing I suddenly noticed that the clouds were creating an interesting and arresting shape - which provided a strong lateral line echoing the fairly obscured horizon line - plus the patches of blue got the eye travelling to the left. I often work on the principle that when cloud shapes 'catch my eye' that's when you need to start making notes of them and use them later - as they aren't going to last very long!
  
• Height, width, depth and recession of trees: I had to work out the height of trees (some were very tall) and whether or not I wanted the height contained within the four lines or not. In part this was decided by where I decided to place the horizon as I didn't want this in the middle - so I placed it on the lower third which meant that the tops of some trees would be cropped - which was OK as this would tend to emphasise their height. I lightly marked contours of individual tree shapes while mapping out the trees - but then had to decide whether these would be blurred or highlighted as the drawing progressed.
  
• Foliage and leaves: I thought about leaves - and then ignored them! What I did instead was looked for the main structural shapes of the tree masses and how these varied - on their contour edges and in terms of how they grew. For example I had three willows in different places where the habitat was lime green drooping branches in contrast to the London Plane trees which were massive and dense in terms of foliage and colour - apart from contour edges where the leaves thinned out and caught the backlighting. What was interesting about the willows was that they were all different depending on where they were situated and how the light caught them.
• The colour of reflections: I looked at the colours of the trees reflected in the water. There's a neat way of remembering colour of reflections in - typically darks on the land have lighter reflections in the water and vice versa the reflection of light value shapes on the land and in the sky are darker/duller in the water - so darks are lighter and lights are darker and values of colours in the water tend to crowd around the middle range. Funnily, I find darks in the water always remind of how much darker my darks on the land need to be! I know that the relative balance of darks and lights in this drawing are incomplete (and therefore wrong) - partly because I needed to finish within the time available.
  

So that's the story of this drawing. It took about 2 hours during which I had a walk and a stretch on a couple of occasions. I'm definitely going back to have another go at some point - but also because I discovered the allotment garden for the first time - and it has wonderful veggies for me to draw!

If anybody reading this would like to see more of my work you can see the following on my portfolio website

• Views and Vistas - landscape drawings
• Drawings of Trees and Leaves

Note: You can read about the workshop in today's post on Making A Mark - Drawing Trees with Sarah Simblet.

Links:

• National Gallery - Education
  
• Royal Parks - St James Park
• St James Park - map - download a pdf file
  
• St James Park - getting there
• St James Park - History - absolutely fascinating and well worth a read!
  

A hot summer's afternoon in a Kentish garden

The Garden Tower, Penhurst Place

8" x 11.5", coloured pencils in Daler Rowney Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Yesterday was a glorious English summer's day - hot (but not too hot) with clear blue skies - so I headed out of town to spend the afternoon in a traditional English garden in the High Weald of Kent - also known as the garden of England.

I visited Penshurst Place (next to the church in Penshurst west of Tonbridge) which I haven't been to in years - mainly because I have a tendency to extract maximum value from my National Trust membership and Penshurst Place is independently owned and managed. Entry to the gardens is £7. To find out whether it was worth the entrance price read on!

On the plus side - I saw the best ever display of hollyhocks at the entrance to the property. They were presented beautifully against black clapboarding.

The garden also had absolutely masses of lavendar contributing swathes of lavendar blue in various places around the gardens.

The 11 acre formal walled garden is made up of a number of garden rooms and is one of the oldest gardens in private ownership. In principle, the model for the gardens is the same as Sissinghurst - and it even includes a grey garden - but in practice it's nowhere near as impressive in terms of planting and maintenance.

Some of the vistas are great - and you can clearly see what it could be like. The sketch at the top was done sitting on the top of the steps up to the west terrace above the Italian Garden - looking out at the lavendar and pink rose below the Garden Tower, down the Blue and Yellow Border to the path leading to "Diana's Bath" a pool with a fountain. This photo is of the same view in reverse.

However, the gardens were initially restored in the nineteenth century and then again in the 1970s - and I think they've maybe taken on a sense of the period in which they were restored. There's an interesting New York Times article I found which is about Lanning Roper the American landscape designer who helped with the 70s restoration. It's worth reading to 'see' what the garden was like in its prime.

Unfortunately, the gardeners seemed to be missing or lacking - I wasn't sure which. While some parts of the garden were well looked after I noticed that Lanning Roper's double herbaceous border was rampant - but not in a good way; the tall yew hedges had been cut in a very odd way; the extremely long peony border was impressive - partly because I've never seen so many peonies in need of deadheading, the nut garden appeared to need some attention - and I noticed quite a few areas which needed a good weed. Interestingly the National Trust gets quite a few volunteers who help out with gardening at the NT properties. I guess it doesn't work in quite the same way at other places.

Its website also lacks views of the garden and explanations of what it contains and how it is planted. Or why there are curious heraldic columns in one of the gardens!

In trying to view the photos which do exist on the website managed to crash my browser - so I wasn't at all impressed. Websites need to be set up so anybody can view them without a download - it's not difficult!

For me, what this garden is missing is a sense of it being planted with plants associated with the period - or even just planted in such a way that horticulturalists would want to visit. One tends to get the impression that the place now gears itself up more for coach tours, history events for people who like dressing up and school groups.

I have a very simple test of whether those who look after a garden are thinking about the visitors. Are there seats situated in the right place to look at the best views - or are they all lined up where it's easy to put seats? Penshurst Place has seats but placement of some of them is a bit haphazard - which sort of summed up the garden for me. Interesting to visit now and again but lacking that extra bit of thought, care and attention which makes it feel special in the way that places like Sissinghurst are special and justifiably attract masses of visitors as a result.

However if you like history, this is indeed an interesting place and a house and garden combined ticket costs only slightly more at £8.50 and offers much better value. The original house was 13th century and its history is explained on the website. It has been much added to and extended over time. Henry VIII owned Penhurst Place at one point - after its owner was tried for treason and beheaded. Penhurst Place has also been used to film Philippa Gregory's novel The Other Boleyn Girl - film website and wikipedia entry. It's also been used for filming Anne of a Thousand Days and the BBC series Elizabeth 1. (Hever Castle nearby is the childhood home on the Anne Boleyn)

But who wants to be indoors on a hot summer's day?

I did a couple more sketches - of an extremely ancient beech tree in the grounds with an absolutely huge bunch of mistletoe hanging from it and, later on, a view over the High Weald near Chiddingstone.

The Mistletoe Tree
11.5"x16", coloured pencils, double page spread in Daler Rowney sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Summer evenings are always a nice time to sketch - the colours are warm and gentle. This last one of a view of the High Weald was done from behind the wheel of my car - having driven slightly off the road and up to a gate!

Near Chiddingstone
8" x 11.5", coloured pencils in Daler Rowney sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Links:

• Travels with a sketchbook in......Kent - links to all the posts on this blog which are about Kent
  
• Penshurst Place
• Penshurst Place, Penshurst, near Tonbridge, Kent TN11 8DG - see Google Map
  
• Reviews of the garden:
• New York Times - How a Kentish Garden grows (note the date - July 27, 1986 - this review is over 20 years old)
  
• Gardenvisit.com - review
• Great British Gardens - Penshurst Place
• Rough Guide - review of the house only
• High Weald
• BBC Kent - a gallery of pictures of the garden of England
• The Other Bolelyn Girl - wikipedia novel, wikipedia film and Sony Films
  

Sketching at The RA - The Friends Room #3

The Friends' Room
11" x 16", pen and ink and coloured pencil
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Another sketch from inside the Friends Room at the Royal Academy of Arts. This one is slightly larger than the others as we had our mandatory pot of tea after working our way through two exhibitions in October 2007!

This is the view from very near the counter looking down the full length of the room - sofas either side and at the end under the window - with tables and chairs down the middle and near the counter.

How to sketch people in a room like this

There were lots of people coming and going all the time.

I find in places such as Friends Rooms, tea room and cafes that the flow of people through seems to fairly constant. If you like something you see, you need to draw it immediately - because there's no guarantee it'll still be there when you get to that part of the sketch!

That means there is an imperative to think about the composition as a whole all the time - even though you don't have a clue what it's actually going to look like at the end at the point at which you start! I find it's just a process of continual adjustment - if you're flexible so much the better! Practice makes a lot of difference to confidence when working like this.

As usual I sketched whoever was around when I got to that bit of the sketch - or waited until they moved if I didn't like the 'shape' they were making in relation to the composition or other shapes within it.

If you want to know more about how to sketch people, try reading a post on my other blog which provides some guidance - 10 Tips for How to Sketch People.

When sketching with "he who must not be bored while I sketch" I tend to draw first - and then work out how much time I have left for adding colour. This depends on how interesting his book is or what else he wants to do.

With this sketch I decided to limit the colour palette. Partly from a practical perspective (this is a large sketch) and partly because local colours are always affected by backlighting and are usually more subdued and muted.

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If you'd like to read about the exhibition we saw, see the original post on Making a Mark where this sketch was posted BritArt in History - RA exhibits admirable collections of British drawings - or click one of these links below.

Yesterday we visited two exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts - An American's passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy and Making History - Antiquaries in Britain 1701-2007. Both had excellent and unusual examples of drawings made by British artists, often of British places or British historical figures. It was BritArt of a completely different kind.
Making A Mark - BritArt in History - RA exhibits admirable collections of British drawings

Links:

• Making A Mark - 10 Tips for How to Sketch People
• Royal Academy of Arts
• An American's passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (finishes 27 January 2008)
• Making History - Antiquaries in Britain 1701-2007 (finishes 2nd December 2007)

Sketching at The RA - The Friends Room #2

This is the second of my sketches of people in the Friends Room at the RA. This one was done late afternoon in August 2007, after I saw the exhibition "Impressionists by the Sea".

Tea in the Friends' Room, Royal Academy of Arts
8" x 10", pen and sepia ink in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I particularly like the composition of this one and the value pattern, with a bit of tweaking, looks like it might quite well in terms of 'reading the picture' if I work this one up into a 'proper drawing'.

I like revisiting sketches. They never need to be worked up straight away and it's often interesting to see which ones 'stick' in my head over time - I think they're often the best ones.

If you'd like to read a review of the exhibition I saw just click this link - "Impressionists by the Sea" at the Royal Academy. The links to details about the exhibition on the RA website are still live.

The Impressionists by the Sea exhibition in the Sackler Galleries of the Royal Academy opened a month ago on 7th July and will finish on 30th September. It includes works by Courbet, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Caillebotte, Whistler, Gauguin, Cassett and many other less well known artists.

I prefer to visit exhibitions when they've got over the initial rush - so that I can actually see the paintings. Except I forgot it was August - which is major tourist month in London - and there were lots of people visiting yesterday afternoon! I hate to think what it's like at the weekend!
Making A Mark - "Impressionists by the Sea" at the Royal Academy.

Links:

• The Royal Academy Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J ObD. General enquiries 020 7300 8000
• Impressionists by the Sea

Sketching at The RA - The Friends Room #1

This week I'm going to post a series of sketches done in Burlington House, home of the Royal Academy of Arts (the RA) in Piccadilly.

Drinking tea and drawing people

8" x 10" pencil in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I'm one of the 85,000 Friends of the RA. I'm a Friend primarily because it means I don't have to pay for exhibitions, don't have to queue for tickets, get to go to exhibition previews and can visit an exhibition as many times as I want plus take an adult friend in for free.

But one of the other perks is use of the Friends Room to have a cup of tea and hopefully sit down on a sofa before starting out again. I don't even have to visit an exhibition!

If I have time, whenever I go to the Friends Room at the RA I also try to sketch. It's one of a few places where I can usually create a composition which includes people at a distance and close-up in the same sketch.

This particular sketch is from the week before Christmas 2005 and accompanied the third post Drinking Tea and Drawing People on my brand new blog Making A Mark - when I was still in beta mode and wasn't publishing to the world at large! The text which accompanied it is below.

______________________

Yesterday I went to the New English Art Club Exhibition at the Mall Galleries just before it closed. Many excellent works of art on view. This was followed by lunch with a very old friend and, inevitably, some Christmas shopping and - as it was nearby - a much needed cup of tea and a seat in the Friends Room at the RA which was packed, probably with people with very much the same idea! I was surrounded by lots of people having animated conversations so out came the Moleskine sketchbook for more sketching with some interesting lighting effects.

I enjoy doing drawings where you can't design who is in the picture or how they are going to sit and all you can do is decide what/who to do and where to crop to create the picture frame. Drawing people and working from life are both excellent ways of making you make such choices.

Links:

• Royal Academy of Arts
• Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD
• Planning a visit
• Become a Friend of the RA
• Google Maps - location of Burlington House
• Pastels and Pencils - Interiors - this gallery on my website features sketches of interiors
  

Tea at Fortnum and Masons after the Summer Exhibition

Cream tea at Fortnum and Masons after the Summer Exhibition
(in the old Patio Restaurant)
5.5" x 8", pencil in Daler Rowney Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

On the 6th June 2004 I went to see the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly and then went across the road for a cream tea in the Patio Restaurant at Fortnum and Masons (now sadly no more due to a refurbishment). I know this as I've just found the small sketchbook which I'd lost which contains this sketch and the bill for the pot of Darjeeling and the cream tea!

This sketch was done using a mechanical pencil in an A6 size Black hardback black sketch book by Daler Rowney. I used a double paged spread and the sketch is about 5.5" x 8". As alway when sketching in a tea room or a restuarant, you never know when people are coming or going and I do remember that the people sketched in this one were never all in the room at the same time.

The Patio Restaurant (on the Mezzanine) has now been replaced by the Gallery Restaurant - which only serves a seasonal taster menu. Proper afternoon tea is now taken in armchairs or on larger more confortable tables in the St James Restaurant (on the 5th floor). This is a lot more airy and has much more space - meaning you always seem to be guaranteed to get a seat. Something which was not always possible in the old and much smaller Patio Restaurant.

The Summer Exhibition was first held in a warehouse on Pall Mall in 1769. The number of visitors to the annual show from 1769-2007 is over 33 million. This year the 240th Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts is on until 17th August. The theme of the exhibition this year is "Man Made". £25,000 has been awarded to Jeff Koons for ‘Cracked Egg (Blue)’ by a panel of judges appointed by the President and Council for the most distinguished work in the exhibition.

According to the Guardian, in an interview many years ago he described his idea of pleasure - which was dining with a group of friends........

I think taking afternoon tea with friends is very nearly as good and it's certainly still a very popular activity at Fortnum and Masons!

Note: This post was based on one which first appeared on Making A Mark on 19th May 2006 - but it has been updated for changes and new material has also been included.

Lunch at Fortnum and Masons

Following on from yesterday's post, two years ago - on the 9th June 2006 - I saw three exhibitions and about 2,500 images in terms of paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture. In the middle of the day I sketched at the St James Restaurant on the 4th floor of Fortnum and Masons and these three sketches are the result.

The First Course at Fortnum and Masons
8" x 10" pencil and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Lunch at the St James Restaurant, Fortnum and Masons
11" x 15", pen and sepia ink
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Afternoon Tea in the St James Restaurant, Fortnum and Masons
11" x 15", pencil and coloured pencils in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Details as follows:

• The first is a double page spread in my Moleskine in pencil with colour added with coloured pencils when I got home
• the second is A3 size (approx. 15" x 11") and was executed in pen and sepia ink (no erasing!) in my Daler Rowney sketchbook
  
• the third is a double page spread in my Daler Rowney sketchbook - A3 size (approx. 15" x 11"). It was drawn in pencil with touches of colour reinforced with coloured pencils when I got home

Note - Most of this post was first posted on Making A Mark as Lunch at Fortnum and Masons on 10th June 2006.

A day out in Piccadilly

Robyn of Have Dogs, Will Travel is in town and on Monday we spent a day seeing exhibitions, eating and buying books - but most of all talking. Those of you who have met up with other 'cyber buddies' face to face after a long time talking online will know all about what that's like.

My Fortnum and Masons cheeseboard
11" x 8", pencil and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

We started with the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, at Burlington House in Piccadilly. We then crossed the road and had lunch at Fortnum and Masons directly opposite. The St James Restaurant supplied the 'still life' for my sketching! Followed by a short walk to Ryder Street and a visit to the Summer Show at the Chris Beetles Gallery and then a quick trip to the shelves and shelves of art books at Waterstones in Piccadilly - Europe's largest bookshop!

We parted just about 6pm and I walked over to the National Portrait Gallery for the Awards Reception for the BP Portrait Award (see Craig Wylie wins BP Portrait Award 2008).

The Royal Academy

My day got off to a bad start. George Bush had arrived in town the previous day and my tube journey was difficult (a big understatement!). So by the time I got to the Royal Academy 25 minutes late, Robyn had already done her first sketch in the vast courtyard outside the entrance to Burlington House! I was in need of a cup of tea so we went to the Friends Room - and now Robyn knows what it looks like from seeing it for real besides seeing it in my sketches (see Interior landscapes with food - a Sketchbook. for links)

The Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy

I like to get value from my annual Friends of the RA subscription and it's always really nice to take a cyber chum to an exhibition at the RA - as they get in for free!

This was my second visit to this year's Summer Exhibition and Robyn's first ever visit. I gather that while there are lots of opportunities to look at great art from the past in Tuscany, there aren't a lot of opportunities to view contemporary art.

I'd forgotten what it's like for somebody new to the Summer Exhibition and just the sheer size and quantity of the number and size of the rooms and the number of exhibits. Now in its 240th year, the exhibition includes around 1,200 works and the majority of works are for sale. Robyn was completely bowled over by the number of small paintings and how they were hung in the Small Weston Room - always a real jaw-dropper! ;)

It was also really nice going round with somebody who is experimenting and trying to find their way with media and style in drawing and painting. I've found, from experience, that people are always unconsciously drawn to the styles of artists whose work they wished they could emulate. Sometimes it's just about an aspect of the work. In the past, after I noticed this happening in other people, I gave myself a 'mental work-out' and sat myself down to think about the sort of work and the sort of artists that I was really drawn to. From that I could work out what they had in common and was then able to identify all the things I really wanted to be able to do - which in turn created the plan for addressing this!

An exhibition which has a lot of different pieces and styles presents a really great opportunity to see if my theory works. Personally I think it's very easy to spot what sorts of characteristics turn up the visual volume for a viewer just by watching which pieces somebody picks out or stops at. With Robyn by the time we left the exhibition I was very clear about what she really, really liked. :)

Lunch in the St James Restaurant in Fortnum and Masons

OK - this is for 'the Gardener' back home in Tuscany and also for Robyn and me as a record of our delightful and delicious long lunch! Readers can decide what they would have chosen from the June menu for the St James Restaurant(pdf).

Robyn decided to focus on fish and had Tian of Cromer Crab with Pink Grapefruit Dressing, followed by Brioche Crumbed Plaice Fillets with Homemade Tartare Sauce (see right) and Coconut & Lime Chiffon Pie

Robyn's Fish Dish
8" x 10"pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Of course, the penalty of eating with me is I can sometimes make you wait two minutes before eating! I did a very quick pen and ink sketch of her plaice dish before Robyn was allowed to dig in - and then added some colour which I reinforced when I got home.

I had the Salt & Pepper Squid, Pickled Cucumber and Sweet Chilli Syrup, followed by Sirloin of Highgrove Beef, Chantenay Carrots, Watercress Purée and Horseradish Cream and finished with St James’s Cheese Plate with Chefs’ Oat Cookies & Pear Chutney (see above right). We both did a sketch of my cheeseboard as it looked so nice. Pretty nice to eat too!

Beside munching, other activities included much discussion and, of course, we also had a look at each other's sketchbooks so we could see for real the sketches we only ever see on screen.

The Chris Beetles Gallery - and a second summer exhibition

The Chris Beetles Gallery is situated in Ryder Street opposite the rear entrance to Christies. It mainly specialises in watercolours, but also has a great stock of work by Illustrators and Cartoonists and is a world leading gallery in this respect. (You can see the 2nd Annual Cartoon Show online)

We were there to see the Chris Beetles Summer Show (you can see a selection of the pictures online by clicking the link). I think we were both rather taken with the lovely loose washy watercolours by Hercules Brabazon Brabazon (1821-1906). As always, it's amazing how little detail has been painted and how much such pictures are about simple shapes, simple colours and accurate values.

I also admired the oil paintings and one watercolour by Geraldine Girvan - a great favourite of mine - and I bought a catalogue for one of her recent exhibitions. I'm very happy looking at the paintings of people whose work I like. Her work is so colourful and rather more rich and vibrant than the online images suggest.

Waterstones

It was 5.30pm before we left Chris Beetles and walked up Jermyn Street and cut through to Piccadilly and Waterstones. Then up to the top floor to show Robyn just how many art books they can actually get into one shop. (The floor and shelf space devopted to art books is the size of a typical book shop in its entirety!) The plan was that Robyn would come back and browse at her leisure but somehow a couple of books managed to find their way to the till before we got out the door! It's that sort of place. I have to ration my visiting!

I had a lovely day out in Piccadilly with Robyn. Lots of lovely things to do and see, exceptionally good company and a whole treasure trove of topics of mutual interest to talk about. I enjoyed myself immensely - and look forward to doing it again - maybe in Italy!

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You can see more of my sketches done in restaurants, cafes and bars in Interior landscapes with food - a Sketchbook.

This week I'm going to transfer two more sketches involving Fortnum and Masons which were first posted on my other blog - and by the end of the week I'll have a brand new section for the Interior Landscapes post!

More sketching at Bankside

River Thames series:Bankside Shore #2
pencil and coloured pencils in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Every time I go to the Bankside Gallery I look to see if the tide is out - and if it is, out comes the sketchbook. I've got a fixation about the view towards Blackfriars Bridge and the 'beach' at Bankside just in front of the Bankside Gallery. You can see another recent sketch in The shoreline at Bankside.

Above is a very rough sketch - done entirely while sat the other side of the railings and at the top of the steps down to the 'beach'. I'm wondering whether to have a go at doing a values based impressionistic drawing - hence the emphasis on values and lack of detail.

I seem to do so many of the Thames that I've decided - like Whistler - to have a Thames series!
(see Whistler Month: Thames Views and Whistler Month: The Thames Set, Etching Papers and watermarks)

I bought a book at the Bankside Gallery while I was there. It's all about the house at 49 Bankside which has the reconstructed Globe Theatre as its neighbour on its left (as you face it) and the Tate Modern as its very near neighbour on its right. The book is called The House by the Thames by Gillian Tindall. Here's a synopsis of what it's about

Just across the River Thames from St Paul's Cathedral stands an old house. It is the last genuine survivor of what was once a long ribbon of elegant houses overlooking the water. Built in the days of Queen Anne, it stands in the footprint of a far older habitation. Once, on this spot, was the Cardinal's Cap, a timbered Tudor inn; its vaulted cellars are still there, beneath the bricks and plaster and panelling of later centuries.Over the course of almost 450 years the dwelling on this site has seen changes on the river and in the city on the opposite bank. From its windows, people have watched the ferrymen ferry Londoners to Shakespeare's Globe; they have gazed on the Great Fire, and seen goods from all corners of the world transported from the Pool below London Bridge. They have watched new bridges rise, and the ships change from sail to steam. They have also seen the countrified lanes of London's marshy south bank give way to a network of wharves, workshops and tenements - and then seen these, too, become dust and empty air. Rich with anecdote and colour, empathetic, scholarly and textured, The House by the Thames is social history at its most enjoyable. Gillian Tindall excels at description and at picking out the most fascinating details. Some of the people who have lived in the house have been skilled; some were prosperous traders in the coal and iron on which Britain's industrial revolution ran. Some were rich and flamboyant; one was an early film star. Others have been among London's numberless poor.
Random House / Chatto and Windus

Links:

• Wikipedia - Bankside
• British History online - Bankside (including reference to 49 Bankside)
• Approximate walking times to Bankside:
• From the London Eye – 30 minutes
• From the Royal Festival Hall – 21 mins
• From Waterloo station – 18 minutes
• From Tower Bridge – 21 minutes
• From St Paul’s Cathedral – 13 minutes
• From Mansion House station – 15 mins
• From Southwark Station – 10 minutes
• From London Bridge – 3 minutes
  

Lunch at the Portrait Cafe

Lunch at the Portrait Cafe
11" x 8", pencil and coloured pencils in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

After attending a preview of the BP Portrait Award yesterday, I had lunch in the Portrait Cafe which is in the basement of the National Portrait Gallery. Most of the ceiling is some sort of glass or perspex which gives splendid light down into the basement. The wall on the left then has some sort of matt metal finish and the light and wall combined have lots of slightly unexpected and subtle colours appearing.

I had a bit of fun with the composition - I like drawing lots of people all in a line and love the hand appearing from nowhere and holding the coffee cup!

The other big advantage of the cafe is that when you've finished lunch you can step right into the book shop......................

Links

• National Portrait Gallery
• Portrait Cafe