Charing Cross Road Bookshops

 When I am in London I like to peruse the bookshops on Charing Cross Road which is renowned for its specialist antiquarian and secondhand bookshops.

I love the low lit, dusty, damp, and mysterious isles of cramped books full of hidden stories and history beckoning to be looked at. The thought of finding something serendipitous amongst the shelves fill me with excitement.

There is a best selling book named after the street called “84 Charing Cross Road”, a 1970 book by Helene Hanff , about a twenty year correspondence between Frank Doel chief Buyer of Marks & Co and her.

 I thought I would spend time sketching some of the bookshops that are still surviving. Bookshops especially second hand ones seem to be in decline and driven out of business by the Internet and Ebooks. 

I am building quite a collection of shop front illustrations. I am inspired by the Typefaces and signage on buildings. I have used A Lamy Safari fountain pen to do the pen work on situ and then digitally coloured the sketches using Photoshop.

Charing Cross Road Bookshops

Let's Draw Hampstead - 13th June 2015

Hampstead Heath, by Nathan B

WHERE:  Hampstead village and heath

WHEN:    Saturday 13th June 2015

START:    11:00am at the alleyway in Flask Walk, near Hampstead Tube

LUNCH:   1:30pm at The Buttery Café, Hampstead Museum - we can grab some food, share our sketches, and snap a group photo

END:        3:30pm - back at the flat traffic island between Flask Walk and Well Walk, opposite Hampstead Museum - to have a look at more sketches and take any more photos, with the option of retiring to the nearby Flask pub, or a cup of tea at the Buttery café!

TRAVEL: Hampstead Tube Station (Northern Line, Edgware branch)

MAP: 

• Hampstead and surrounding area on Google Maps (with above locations marked)
• City of London Map of Hampstead Heath

Organiser: Nathan Brenville (please leave any queries as comments on this post or on the Facebook Event Page)

John Constable's House, Well Walk, by Katherine Tyrrell

Click on  map above to see a specially created map with the timings and locations of the sketchcrawl as well as other interesting locations - use the menu to click on each point to find out more information. Thanks to Katherine for doing the map.

For those of you interested in sketching on the heath itself, there's also a detailed map here of points of interest.

If you do want to draw on the heath, it's worth noting that it's pretty big to say the least (!) so you may not want to trek all the way back to meet at lunchtime at the museum - this is perfectly fine, we can always catch up at the end at 3.30 instead.

Additionally, if you don't want to do a lot of walking, it may be best to choose either Hampsead village OR Hampstead Heath rather than attempting both, but it's up to you!

Hopefully June means that it's a fairly safe bet that the weather will be fine, but in England who knows! Hampstead Heath is fairly lacking in shelter, other than trees!

As always, it's free to join, you just need to bring your own sketching materials... and perhaps an umbrella and/or suncream.

Hope to see you all soon!

Boating Pond, Hampstead Heath, by Katherine Tyrrell

Let's Draw Hampstead - 13th June 2015