I'm not sketching much lately, but... (1)

I haven't been out on location drawing much in London recently, so ! haven't had much to post here on the blog. What I have been doing is a lot of printmaking, and some of these prints have been based on drawings I've done on location in London.
I thought it might be an idea to post some of the prints and their original drawings, for your interest.

Here's the first: a  drawing I made in 2010, joining  4 sheets of A4 paper to allow me to draw from my feet up to the clouds











Later I got round to making a woodcut of the image, cutting on two large pieces of  maple plywood and printing them together on a single sheet of Japanese paper 90cm long. Can you see the join?

I'm pleased to say that this print has just been accepted for the Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition in March 2014

I'm not sketching much lately, but... (1)

Bank Tube station, London

Bank Tube station, London, a photo by Lion Ren on Flickr.

A wonderful sketch of the area near bank Tube Station by Shih Jhih-Ren (Lion Ren) - a member of the London Urban Sketchers Flickr Group

See more of his work in the Flickr Group Pool for London Urban Sketchers

Anybody can join the Flickr Group for London Urban Sketchers - which you can apply to join and post your sketches if you've been on a sketchcrawl.

Make sure you post your sketches to your Flickr account first!

Plus Post sketches of London ONLY - and read the rules first which you can find if you click this link

the Group Pool for London Urban Sketchers - which you can apply to join and post your sketches if you've been on a sketchcrawl. Make sure you post your sketches to your Flickr account first! - See more at: http://urbansketchers-london.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.jpFvRng5.dpuf

the Group Pool for London Urban Sketchers - which you can apply to join and post your sketches if you've been on a sketchcrawl. Make sure you post your sketches to your Flickr account first! - See more at: http://urbansketchers-london.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.jpFvRng5.dpuf

the Group Pool for London Urban Sketchers - which you can apply to join and post your sketches if you've been on a sketchcrawl. Make sure you post your sketches to your Flickr account first! - See more at: http://urbansketchers-london.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.jpFvRng5.dpuf

Bank Tube station, London

Urban Sketchers Exhibition Private View

On Wednesday evening we had a little gathering downstairs at Timberyard Seven Dials to celebrate the opening of our exhibition there. Around 70 people came along to see the work of Adebanji Alade, Lis Watkins, Evelyn Rowland, Olha Pryymak and Nathan Brenville, and to chat to some of London's Urban Sketchers themselves. As well as the five featured artists and their work, we screened 2 short films- one a profile of Adebanji, and the other an animation I made last year about my inspirations for sketching London. We also had a slideshow of sketches by regular Flickr group contributors Francesca Albini, Shih Jhih-Ren, Owen Mathers, and Dawn Painter, and all of the contributors to this blog: Katherine, Barry, Pete, Zhenia, James. Lis also brought in a collection of her sketchbooks to view.

Thanks to everyone who came, and again to Darren for the help in organising it!
There's a nice review of the show here by Inspiring City.

Urban Sketchers Exhibition Private View

The magic of Bank

           Through the Looking Glass. Pencil 149 x 210 mm

On the way to a Life class in Bethnal Green, I thought I'd kill time on Bank westbound platform (as you do) because it was less crowded than the other one. Bank has it's charm as it has a totally curved platform but there isn't a long enough sweep to get a cool drawing. However, if you stand just inside the connecting tunnel, a whole new wobbly world opens up.

The magic of Bank

White lion street

With this sketch, I experimented a bit more and has taken it to print room. In order to preserve sketch quality, I used a mix of dry point and monoprint - but didn't post the results here, as it obviously wasn't done on location! Here's the link.

White lion street