Meet the correspondents: Barry Jackson (Professor Shorthair)

I love drawing, and making pictures. I've been drawing for more years than I can count, but it's only in the last few years that I feel like I'm making some slow progress. Towards what? I'm not sure. Perhaps my goal is just not to be too bad.

Much of the time my interest is focussed on urban themes, and I draw on location in an urban space. A few years ago I found the Urban Sketchers blog, and this provided an opportunity to share some of these works with an audience that has a similar set of interests. It's been a real stimulus for me, to see such a variety of urban drawing from all over the world.

Drawing at Alexandra Palace

Sometimes I draw when I'm traveling. Unlike many Urban Sketcher members though, I find that travel and drawing don't complement each other well. The kind of drawings I like to do work best when I can spend time on them, without wondering what I might be missing around the next corner.

Drawing places that mean something to me is what I most enjoy, and much of my work therefore is focussed on London, where I was born and brought up. Hence I was delighted to be invited to be a correspondent for the new London-based blog.

St Anne's Limehouse, charcoal,  50x60cm

I often sketch, in a sketchbook, wherever I happen to be - which means cafe and pub sketches fill a lot of pages in my books! But if I'm out specifically to draw then I'll have a particular location or theme in mind

I don't have any  favourite places in London that I repeatedly draw, although I do find myself returning beside the river or around the Regent's Canal  quite frequently.  I also don't have any favourite subjects or themes - these continue to change and evolve - sometimes it's spaces, or the movement of people, or solitary trees, or water, or as in this drawing, particular buildings. (This is St Anne's church in Limehouse)



 

St Paul's from Surrey side, graphite 29x84cm

If I'm going out to draw I'll be carrying a whole range of kit with me, because I like to play with media and techniques. The drawings will usually be bigger than sketchbook size, occasionally ending up very large. (The St Paul's drawing on the right is made up of 4 sketchbook pages)


Occasionally I have periods of trying to use colour, but on the whole I find it difficult to make satisfactory drawings when I'm using colour. At the moment I love using ink, particulary Quink, and carbon pencil, as in this drawing below of a spectacualr weeping ash tree in Rosemary Gardens, Islington

Weeping ash, ink + carbon pencil, 30x40cm

Meet the correspondents: Barry Jackson (Professor Shorthair)

Meet the correspondents: Adebanji Alade

My hands start shaking, I can't keep them still, my eyes have seen a face, an interesting face. One that I cannot afford to miss. I'm on the train, it's packed full of commuters, everyone is staring at me! But I must sketch! It's an addiction, it's a compulsive habit. Something I have developed by wild practice over the years. London Public transport has every face in this world to enliven a sketchbook and once I turn to a plain page in my sketchbook the possibilities are endless. I may catch a beautiful lady putting on make up, I may grab a city workaholic stealing a nap on the 30 minute journey on the Southeastern trains to Canon Street or the faces all around me just to keep my hands busy. This is everything about me when it comes to sketching. My artillery consists of a Bic ball point pen, an A6 Daler Rowney Sketchbook and a number 75 Tom Bow wash pen(light grey).



Me and my son sketching on the tube

Other things fascinate me while I walk on the street- the homeless people carry the greatest weight. They are the real Londoners, they've seen life! They know the city and can tell you everything you need to know. I can't resist recording these people in my sketchbooks, sometimes they are sitting and begging, some have a good job of selling the Big Issue Magazine, some are just asleep on the road side waiting for the wake up call of a Policeman who doesn't like their positioning.....all these wrap up my desire and Inspiration behind sketching!




My Public Transport Sketches

Then comes my love for architecture, I would have been an architect if not an artist. But my God directed me where He wanted me to be after asking Him for guidance way back in 1990 when I first met Christ. Yes, architecture, the play of light on architecture is amazing, I simply love it and I love to include trees and people into my architectural scenes just to have a good contrast of the organic and inorganic.




Architecture-Oil and Pencil

I love using pure graphite, coloured pencils and the wonderful oil base pencil for these and an A4 Moleskine sketchbook.

I also do oil sketches in location too.

This wraps it up for me! I'll be sharing my sketches of London and Londoners with you! I hope you'll enjoy and subscribe to USK London!




Homeless Scenarios


Lest I forget
My website
My main blog about my art and passion for sketching
My blog where I convert the sketches to paintings
also
I'm currently a provisional member of The Royal Institute of Oil Painters
and a member of The Chelsea Art Society

Meet the correspondents: Adebanji Alade

Meet the correspondents: James Hobbs

James Hobbs, Great Eastern Street, Hoxton, London

London is, of course, many different things to different people, as this blog will no doubt prove. Each of us has our own view and our own islands within the huge whole that we know particularly well. For me, this means Stoke Newington—where I live, which is an ancient inner north London village with a history of dissension that has become perhaps a little more gentrified than I would prefer—along with Hackney, Hoxton, Islington, the South Bank, the City and West End. I’m not so at home in most areas with postcodes with a “W” in them (apart from NW11) or, I must now confess, most places south of the river (apart from The Oval cricket ground). I still draw in these places when I get a chance.

To have a bicycle and a sketchbook is, for me, the way to be. My drawings are often A6-sized or perhaps A5, and made with permanent marker pens. I’m quite happy to work on the back of an envelope. Taking quiet, off-piste cycle routes can lead to unexpected pleasures, usually unfrequented by tourists and yet gloriously cosmopolitan and multicultural, which is how I like my London to be. London can be ugly and violent, but it’s usually not, and I love to live here and have my children grow up here. Drawing it is a kind of hymn of praise to the city, warts and all.

James Hobbs, New Oxford Street, London

I show at Skylark Galleries, an artist-run gallery in the Oxo Tower Wharf on the South Bank, and the Art Agency, Esher. I was for a while the editor of Artists & Illustrators magazine, and am now a freelance journalist. Five of my images of London scenes have just gone on sale as A5-sized art cards at IKEA stores worldwide.

You can see more of my work at www.james-hobbs.co.uk, visit my blog or follow me on Twitter.

Meet the correspondents: James Hobbs