Urban Sketchers London - new exhibition at Timberyard (Old Street)

Urban Sketchers London has a new exhibition - its third - at Timberyard (Old Street) which is one of those very trendy coffee shops with great food and even better coffee.

Thomas Corrie, Isabelle Laliberté, James Hobbs and Jhih-Ren Shih

The six members of Urban Sketchers London who made the trek to Clerkenwell this morning to hang their sketches are:

• James Hobbs - author of Sketch Your World
• Thomas Corrie
• Isabelle Laliberté
• Zhenia Vasiliev
• Jhih-Ren Shih
• and me!

Most of the sketches have been hung in the basement. They're a great range of styles - as you can see from the video (below) and include those of three people who will be featuring in my new book about drawing and sketching! I've included short profiles of them below - with some photos which are looking awful because I adjusted a setting - and forgot to change it back!



There's going to be a private view sometime very soon for those in London who follow my sketches and those of other urban sketchers - I'll let you know the date as soon as it's confirmed.

In the meantime here's my pics of some of the work

Thomas Corrie produces some stunning pen and ink drawings of architectural features which take his fancy.

I am an architect and I draw to help me see and understand buildings and cities. Every year I take part in 28 Drawings Later, a challenge to draw something for every day in February. To keep focused I decided to use entrances as a theme for my sketches and I travelled to every location on my bicycle, usually in the morning before starting work. I sought out places I had not previously visited as well as going to some familiar sights.

Thomas Corrie with his drawings produced using pigment ink liners in a 200mm sketchbook

Jhih-Ren Shih (a.k.a. Lion Ren on Flickr) is an MA student from Wimbledon College of Art who had a very nifty app on his iPhone for testing out whether he had got his frames level!

I started sketching around five years ago. I saw a book talk about the urban sketch that evokes me to depicting my daily life. As a foreigner from Taiwan, I’m very exciting when I came to London, the exotic atmosphere intrigue me to drawing more and more sketches here. I like to explore to city with my sketches, especially when I found some scenes interesting or special. It not only just record my daily life in UK, also help me to communicate with the places I been to. 

Works by Isabelle Laliberté

Isabelle is an architect.

I have always drawn and painted a little, but joining Urban Sketchers in 2008 really freed my practice.  Sketching allows me to have richer memories of my travels.  Unlike a photograph, which is done in an instant, a sketch allows me to absorb more 'meta-data': the weather, the sounds, the smells, the light and the people are all embedded into a sketch.  As an architect, I have a natural tendency to draw the built environment - not only do I love buildings, but they tend not to move around so much...

James Hobbs is the ex-Editor of Artists & Illustrators, the current Editor of Discover Art and the author or Sketch Your World - which has now been published in the UK, USA and Asia.

Drawing in a sketchbook can change your view of the world. I usually carry an A6 and A5 sketchbook around with me, along with a small selection of permanent marker pens. The urban landscape, particularly that of my adopted home of London, is for me an endlessly diverting and energising subject. I sometimes use these drawings to make colour digital prints, which I sell in limited editions. 

Zhenia Vasiliev and Naomi Hobbs were a fabulous support in hanging my work. (I fall over too easily these days!). Unfortunately my photograph of his work is too bad to show.

For me, as both a graphic designer and illustrator, artistic practice is about a process of thinking rather than producing a finished piece. I love to think about the visual appearance of things - and drawing helps me with this, so sketching is a big part of my profession

my sketches of Syon Vista and Syon Reach

Tea plus muffin and a video - at Lynn Painter Stainers

Tea and a Lemon and White Chocolate Muffin.....

at the Mall Galleries - viewing the Lynn Painter-Stainers Exhibition

Want to see more?

A new place to sketch at the RA

The Shenkman Bar in the Keepers House at the RA
pen and sepia ink in Moleskine Sketchbook © Katherine Tyrrell

I've been sketching in the Friends Room at the Royal Academy of Arts for years - but the experience of trying to get in and get a seat had become more and more tortuous as the pressure on space from the 90k Friends became more intense.

In recent times, I've more often walked in, gasped at the queue and then walked straight out again and gone straight across the road to various options at Fortnum & Mason so I could contemplate whether an Annual Friends Membership (£90) is really worth it without access to the black leather sofas.

The Friends Room now has a new name and its own website page - the Sir Hugh Casson Room and the Belle Shenkman lounge on the new Friends website.

They've now removed the much beloved black leather Chesterfields and made it into a cafe with tables and hard seating which is open to the public after 4pm. (Mental note: Make sure I go to exhibitions in the morning in future!)

I think the RA have completely forgotten that rather a lot of the Friends are middle aged and older and very appreciative of a comfy place to sit down and have a cup of tea - and a quiet snooze before tackling the train home. It's a triumph of form over function! Lots of hard seats keep the Friends moving through fast. I suspect that those of us who with more than a few aches and pains who always appreciated the comfy seats may well continue to head across the road to the comfort of F&M as the sofas are very definitely no more.

However the RA have recently introduced a restaurant and bar in the basement of the Former Keepers House. The latter was where I sat and sketched on the more comfortable banquettes on Thursday night as I waited for the start of the Bloggers' Evening Preview of "Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined" (for images and more about this see my blog post on Making A Mark later today).

The bar is comfortable and serves tea as well as cocktails!

I then had dinner with Ilaria Rosselli del Turco (Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco - News) - who'd I'd invited to come with me to the Bloggers Preview - in the very nice Restaurant, in the basement of the Keepers House. (see the menu) There I was introduced to Fregola with girolles in a broth with a soft poached egg. It's like a large couscous. Yum!

I'll definitely be returning to the restaurant - maybe for lunch next time.