Admiralty Arch and Horse Guards

On the 16th August I organised the London Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl to St James Park, The Mall, Horseguards and Trafalgar Square.

Below are my sketches - and a little bit of history about the two important London buildings I sketched Admiralty Arch and Horse Guards. Both are Grade 1 Listed Buildings - meaning they are very important in terms of both architecture and heritage.

I've already written about the sketchcrawl for London Urban Sketchers and I'm not going to do it again. However you can READ more about the sketchcrawl:

• the results August 2015 Sketchcrawl - Notes, photos and sketches and
• the plan Let's Draw - Trafalgar Square, The Mall & St James Park - Sunday 16th August 2015
• plus view the map of the locations

Plus you can SEE more photos of both sketches and the sketchers that I took in the London Urban Sketchers - August 2015 (Mall) album on our Flickr account. You can also see the sketches done by other people that have been posted to Flickr in the Urban Sketchers London - Group Pool.

Admiralty Arch

Admiralty Arch - drawn while sat in the middle of The Mall (16th August 2015)pen and ink and coloured pencils

What you do on a Sunday morning after the VJ 70th anniversary commemorations the previous day!- sit in The Mall behind the traffic cones and draw something you could never normally draw from this perspective!

I focused on the drawing and added more colour when I got home- building up layers to get intensity of colour can sometimes take a bit of time

Admiralty Arch was commissioned by King Edward VII - to commemorate the reign of his mother, Queen Victoria - which is why her name is written in Latin at the top on The Mall side.

It used to be used as government offices and Ministers used to have flats at the top but it's now been vacated and let for use as a hotel (which as yet has not yet happened).

The central gate of Admiralty Arch is typically only ever opened to allow the Monarch to pass through. If you sit the other side of it is a great place to get a full view of The Mall when the traffic is normal - unlike when we were there and most of The Mall was coned off for pedestrians only.

Horse Guards

This is my sketch of Horse Guards and the Parade Ground - which is where they held the drumhead service for the VJ 70th Anniversary.  It's also where they hold the trooping the colour every year on the Queen's Birthday.  You can see a drawing of what it looked like in 1695 at the end of this post.

Did you know that Horse Guards houses the space used for the Tilt Yard used by the original Whitehall Palace?  (see a map of this in 1680 at the end of this post)

I had great plans to include the London Eye but needed a different perspective or a wider sketchbook! I think I'm going to go back and have another go. It's a view I walk past regularly and I've always wanted to have a go.

A view of Horse Guards and the Parade ground (16th August 2015)pen and ink in a Moleskine sketchbook

Plan of the Palace of Whitehall 1680 
- right click and open in a new tab to see a much LARGER version
The Tilt Yard is at the top. The map has the river at the bottom and the parkland at the top.

View of the Palace of Whitehall by Leonard Knijff, c. 1695-7
- right click and open in a new tab to see a much LARGER version
Thames is at the bottom of the picture and the space now occupied by St James Park is at the top
You can just see the entrance to Horse Guards in the middle

The VJ Day 70th Anniversary Drum Head Service on Horse Guards Parade Ground

PS. I've been very slow getting sketches on to this blog of late - and am now trying to catch up. It's not that I haven't been sketching - just that I haven't been scanning and photoshopping and blogging!