Let's draw: 'People' Saturday sketch meeting 27 March 2021

"People are always missing from my drawings."

(Could this be you?)

Hosted by John Webb

St Paul's
All sketches by John Webb

As Urban Sketchers our default setting tends to be the built environment. But if it were not for people, there would be no need for places. People come first, then come places. So drawing people in places is a legitimate urban sketch. Indeed, places without people would be unnatural. So why are they missing from the greater proportion of our drawings? 

Richmond Park

Are we like some photographers who will wait hours to get a ‘good shot’ without people, believing that ‘people spoil the picture’? Not in my case. For me it's simply that drawing figures is a challenge. 

Kensington busker

I’m sure I’m not alone in having trouble with people (read that as you will!). But people are a big asset in a setting -- they give a sense of scale and direction, lend interest to a composition, and add life and a bit of fun. This isn’t portraiture or long-pose life drawing, but the human part of the urban scene...whether people are sitting, standing, cycling, contemplating, reading or running, or playing instruments or sports.

Some of us are old enough to remember dry-transfer figures available by the sheet to rub onto graphic illustrations, their frozen-rigid postures instantly recognisable. Or the stylised, hand drawn carrot-shaped figures loved by architects. 

There's an equally wide variety of styles and techniques dotted about on our social media pages. At the end of this day, there’s a lot for us to enjoy and take inspiration from. 

Lord's Cricket Ground

Plan for the day

This will be our second sketch meeting with an online element (our first virtual session, 'Naughty and Nice' on 13 February 2021, was a delight). Please draw whatever and wherever you can on the day, while observing current COVID restrictions, and post the results on social media in the usual way.

As always, we will be sketching from life -- but you are most welcome to join us to say hello and for an online introduction to the March challenge.

You can stay and sketch together -- sketch yourself, whoever is in your household, whoever walks past your window, or anyone you see if you venture out and about -- or join us later for show and tell. 

11am

We will host a Zoom meeting around the 'People' theme. First, John will introduce the session with a few words on his ideas about sketching people. You are then free to go and draw. The Zoom link will remain live throughout the day, so that anyone who wishes to do so can stay in the Zoom session and sketch together at home. We may throw in a few in-the-moment challenges!

2.45 - 3pm

We will gather again on Zoom for a show and tell. The Zoom link will remain open for a while, so anyone who wishes to can have a virtual drink together afterwards. 

Our first virtual sketch meeting, 13 February 2021

How to join in

If you are interested in joining the Zoom meeting, please let us know via our email address. Put 'March Sketch Meeting' in the subject line of your message, and we will send you the Zoom link and passcode.

Wait, there's more!

If you are sketching from London and drawing a specific place in your neighbourhoods, your sketches can be included in the Our London interactive sketch map. We can then see who is where and get a sense of place. It may help sketchers to know who is very local to them when, in future, we are able to meet again in small groups.

We are very interested to know what you think of these new ideas, which we hope will combine our desire to continue to sketch in situ with the social element we all miss.

And if you'd like to see what we have planned for the coming months, have a look at the USk London programme for 2021.

Happy sketching!

Metropole waiters

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Let's draw: 'People' Saturday sketch meeting 27 March 2021

Let's Draw St Paul's to the Thames - 25th April 2015

For our next London Urban Sketchers' Sketchcrawl we're got the scope to draw some big buildings and big views!

St Paul's Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• WHERE:  St Paul's to the Thames
• WHEN: Sunday 26th April 2015 CHANGED TO Saturday 25th April 2015 (due to the London Marathon)
• START: 11:00am at the top of the steps (right hand side) of the Main Entrance to St Paul's Cathedral.
• LUNCH: 1:30pm on the Roof Terrace of One New Change (if dry; wet weather venue to be notified)
• END: 3:30pm Paternoster Square - between St Paul's Cathedral Steps and St Paul's Tube Station (if dry; wet weather venue to be notified)
• MAP: A map has been created in Google Maps/Drive of the area and key places
• TUBE: Stations: St Paul's (Central Line); Blackfriars and Mansion House (District and Circle Lines)
• RAIL: Thameslink @ London Blackfriars and City Thameslink; Cannon Street

Last time we were at St Paul's - in August 2014 - we sketched the churches of Wren's London.

London Urban Sketchers on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral
at the end of Pete Scully's Wren's Churches Sketchcrawl August 2014

On Saturday 25th April 2015, London Urban Sketchers are going to be sketching the part of the City of London around St Paul's Cathedral - down to the north bank of the Thames.

The view of where we're sketching from Tate Modern 7th floor
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Birds Eye View of the area around St Paul's Cathedral
right click and open in a new tab to see much larger version

Above is a top down view of the area - right click the image and open in a new tab to see what's there. The suggested boundaries of the area are:

• North: Paternoster Square, the London Stock Exchange and Christchurch Greyfriars Garden
• West: Ludgate Hill and the narrow allies between Ludgate Hill and Queen Victoria Street
• East: One New Change - this is a brand new shopping centre which is open on Sunday from 12:00. On the Roof Terrace (accessible via the lifts) there are great views right across London plus a really up close view of the top of St Paul's Cathedral
• South: The north bank of the River Thames and the Millennium Bridge - accessed via Peter's Hill - south of St Paul's - which has lots of views off either side of churches and alley ways.

Here's another view of the area - taken from the map near the City Information Centre across the road from the Main Entrance to St. Paul's

Map of the area around St Paul's Cathedral

What you can sketch

There's masses to choose from whatever type of sketching you like doing. Here are some suggestions

St Paul's Cathedral and Churchyard - lots of architecture from lots of different perspectives around and about. You can find great views of it from:

• Fleet Street and the bottom of Ludgate Hill looking up to the Cathedral

"Ludgate Hill - A block in the Street" by Gustave Doré- from London, A Pilgrimage, 1872
The view caught by Doré of the view up Ludgate Hill to St Paul's Cathdral.
It's a bit different now - but you could try sketching it!

• From Peter's Hill looking up from the Thames and the Millennium Bridge

The view of St Paul's from Peter's Hill walking up from the Millennium Bridge

• From the Churchyard - just looking up
• From the Roof Terrace of One New Change - where you can get a whole new perspective on the Dome.

I created "The Leaning Dome of St Paul's" the last time I sketched it
from the Roof Terrace!

You can also draw people just sitting the people sitting on the steps...

Take a walk down Peter's Hill to the Millennium Bridge

the view down Peter's Hill to the Millennium Bridge and Tate Modern

On the Millennium Bridge take a look at the view east up the Thames of The Shard and bridges over the Thames and, if you're lucky, the exposed shoreline complete with timber sticking up 

The view east from the Millennium Bridge
- of the tidal beach, the Shard and bridge along the Thames

Go below the Millennium Bridge and there's some great views to be had of Tate Modern. Trying to draw the Millennium Bridge is tricky from any angle!

The view of Tate Modern and the Millennium Bridge from the north bank of the River Thames
below City of London School
Katherine Tyrrell

PLUS (excitement!!) we're also going to be able to sketch Shaun the Sheep ;) who is taking up residence in various guises in the City of London between now and the end of May. You'll be able to see

• one called 'Out of this World' Shaun at the City Information Centre, (- just to the south of St Paul's Churchyard) designed by Josh and Aimee Williams
• two more - 'Fine & Gandy' by David Gandy and 'Wolly Wiggle' by Zandra Rhodes - at One New Change

AND.....

If people are up for it we may just try a "Draw the Dome in 15 minutes Challenge" over lunch at the Roof Terrace!  You can of course just watch!

After the Sketchcrawl

You can add sketches to the

• London Urban Sketchers Facebook Group - please add them to the St Pauls Sketchcrawl Album https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.353603474837411&type=1

OR

• London Urban Sketchers Flickr Group Pool https://www.flickr.com/groups/usklondon-grouppool/

Let's Draw St Paul's to the Thames - 25th April 2015

Drawing at the British Museum

Above: I should point out that the mummy Tamut was actually a priest's daughter, not a temple singer; I confused my mummies there.

Sometimes when you go around a museum, the visitors are just as interesting as the exhibits. As someone who always feels a bit self-concious drawing strangers up close and personal, being in a museum is the perfect alibi to do so undetected. You can stand by a display (preferably with your back to a wall, as people are always nosey and look over your shoulder) and sketch out the scene in front of you. Whenever someone interesting comes along to look at the artefact, I immediately start incorporating them. Normally they're too engrossed to notice, but if they do look up, I just go back to drawing the actual object, or details of the room. An added bonus is that people tend to stay still slightly longer than they would if just walking around in the street, so you have more time to capture their pose.

When I wasn't drawing, I was browsing around the museum, and I came across a rather different example of urban sketching - in the Napoleon exhibition there was displayed several watercolour sketches done by an anonymous (and, as the British Museum put it) "accomplished amateur artist" of the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo. The surrounding villages are shown, a typical scene almost, if not for the wounded troops making their way through, while in the background, naked corpses lie, stripped of valuables and abandoned. 

The drawings are dated 2 days after the battle, but the sketchbook itself ended up in an attic in Ireland and was not found again until the 20th century.

I find it oddly gratifying to see evidence of so-called "amateurs" in action throughout the ages; people inspired by events around them to get out their sketchbooks and record it as best they can. Sometimes, as in this case, they end up being valuable historical documents, but I don't believe that was the goal, nor should it be. Simply that by observing, we are able to make sense of things a little better. And that for me seems like a good enough reason for being a little less self-concious and to start sketching more!

Drawing at the British Museum

The Shenkman Bar at the RA

I was invited to a Bloggers' Evening Preview of "Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined" at the Royal Academy of Arts on Thursday.

After visiting the Kurt Jackson exhibition (closes 1 February) at The Redfern Gallery and Messums, I made my way past the gallery desert which now fills the eastern side of Cork Street (see this week's Guardian article - Galleries are forced out of their historic London home) and through the Burlington Arcade to the RA.

I filled the gap between the gallery closing and the bloggers preview starting with a cup of tea in the new Shenkman Bar in the basement of the former Keepers House.

At last - a comfy seat to sit down on and have a cup of tea - and a sketch - have returned to the RA!

I much preferred the black leather sofas in the former Friends Room but the banquettes are infinitely preferable to the hard seats in the current Friends Room. Lots of opportunities too for people sketching.

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

It's worth taking a sketchbook to the "Sensing Spaces" exhibition.  It's quite unlike anything else I've ever seen at the RA. Ostensibly about architecture it nonetheless seems to be about very large sculptural installations.  See images on my blog post on Making A Mark which follows later today.

The Shenkman Bar at the RA

South Kensington Sketchcrawl on December 1st

Yesterday was the third Urban Sketchers London sketchcrawl, which took place inside both the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, it being a little cold for a full day's worth of sketching outdoors. We had another good turnout, so thank you to everyone who came, and there were some great drawings that came out of it at the end of the day, as you can see below.

I think it might've been helpful to have a bit more structure to the day, as it was very busy, especially at the NHM, and so it wasn't always easy to meet everyone as they went their separate ways, it would've been fun to spend time in specific rooms as a group or groups, so perhaps a missed opportunity on my part there, but hopefully people still got to mingle and see all the art going on during the day! We had a wonderful array of styles and subjects being displayed in all the different sketchbooks.

Museums are great for people-watching, and so I decided to focus mainly on the visitors, but couldn't help getting sucked in to drawing a few impressive exhibits too:

I also braved the cold just long enough to draw the ice skaters outside the Natural History Museum, London's most popular Christmas ice skating venue. I didn't bother sketching it out with a pencil first, (too cold to faff around with that as I would normally do), I just launched straight into it with a pen, which was quite satisfying.

Thanks again to everyone for coming, I hope to see you all again soon. Watch out for further announcements about sketchcrawls in the coming months!

South Kensington Sketchcrawl on December 1st

Launch of the Art of Urban Sketching in London

London Urban Sketchers showed their sketchbooks and talked about their favourite materials and methods at Cass Art, Islington on Saturday 19 May. They were busy all afternoon, and the book got an excellent response from shoppers!

Zhenia Vasiliev talks about urban sketching

Adebanji Alade demonstrates his approach to drawing faces

KatherineTyrrell demonstrates coloured pencil technique

James Hobbs talks about  sketching

Launch of the Art of Urban Sketching in London

Sketching people - on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral

One of the things I like to do is to find places in London where it's easy to practice life drawing ie sketching people - without having to pay the life models!  It's also a great way of getting people doing things naturally rather than those funny poses that life models like to strike at times!

The best way that I've found of finding people to draw is to sit somewhere that people tend to congregate and wait a while.  There's quite a few of those in London.

Sketching people on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral
11" x 8", pen and sepia ink in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell - all rights reserved

One of the best places to find people sitting and taking a "time out" is on the steps in front of St Paul's Cathedral.  Here's my sketch of people sat on the steps and done while I was sat at the top of the steps waiting for fellow Urban Sketcher Liz Steel (Liz and Borromini - from Sydney Australia).

Did I tell you how Urban Sketchers is also a great way to meet other sketchers from all over the world?

[Sketch first published in Sketching people on steps of St Pauls Cathedral in Travels with my Sketchbook] 

Sketching people - on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral