Let's draw Westminster: Houses of Parliament and River Thames

Date: Saturday 14 May 2016
Led by Jo Dungey

This is an extremely famous area and consequently very crowded. We propose two locations which are most practical for drawing:

• Victoria Tower Gardens, Millbank, the green area along the river, south of the Houses of Parliament

• the riverside walk on the opposite side of the river from the Houses of Parliament

For the afternoon session, and to finish the day, note there are two options given below, which we may choose, depending on the weather.

Nearest tube: Westminster

Outline timetable:
Start: 11am — Meet at Victoria Tower Gardens, near the Burghers of Calais statue by Auguste Rodin (above) at the southern end of the Houses of Parliament. View the location on this map. There is a sliver of shelter at the entrance to the nearby Parliamentary Education Centre.

You can choose to draw here, or cross Westminster Bridge to draw from the riverside walk opposite the Houses of Parliament. This has seats and good views of the Houses of Parliament (above), and of Westminster and Lambeth Bridges.

Lunch: 1pm — Photos and meet-up, again near the Burghers of Calais statue in Victoria Tower Gardens.

In the afternoon, you could move to a different side of the river, or towards Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey.

End: 3.30pm — Meet for photos and review of work. There are two possible venues, depending upon the weather.
If dry: at the southern end of Victoria Tower Gardens near the refreshment kiosk and children’s playground. We will then decide where to move for refreshments.
If wet: at Tate Britain inside the Manton entrance on Atterbury Street, and then in the Djanogly Café downstairs in Tate Britain.

What to draw:
The Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey need no introduction. On the other side of the river is Lambeth Palace, originating in the thirteenth century. There are also smaller buildings, such as the Jewel Tower, monuments, statues, views of the river’s boats and bridges, and lots of opportunities to sketch people. Don’t feel you have to tackle a whole building; a single arch, window or doorway can often capture the essence of a historic building.

Facilities:
Victoria Tower Gardens has public toilets and a refreshment kiosk at the southern end. There are also toilets near Westminster Pier, in the underground station, in the Methodist Central Hall near Parliament Square, and other cafes. Food can be bought near the tube station, there are cafes on Millbank and Horseferry Road, and pubs on Whitehall.

Weather:
There are no real indoor drawing locations in this area other than cafes, and a few crowded doorways and archways. So check the weather forecast, dress suitably and if necessary bring a brolly. If the weather is bad we will end at Tate Britain, further down Millbank at 3.30pm, and also visit their café. If it is cold or wet, you may choose to move on there earlier. The nearest tube station for Tate Britain is Pimlico.

Let's draw Westminster: Houses of Parliament and River Thames

Sketches from around Westminster

A lunch break crowd at St. Johns Gardens

Abington Gardens

Dean Bradley Street, view from St. John's

Sketches from around Westminster

on either side of Hungerford Bridge

Hungerford Bridge is so much nicer now than it used to be. Remember when the footbridge was that creaking old rusty attachment to the eastern side of the railway bridge? Crossing it made me feel like Indiana Jones on an old rope bridge. What's more, it was on the side without the nice view of Big Ben. When they tore it down and built two brand new shiny bridges on either side of the railway bridge, I couldn't have been more thrilled, and I still am. Officially they are the Golden Jubilee bridges, though nobody I know calls them that. One day I will even draw them, but in the meantime here are my sketches of the amazing views they offer. Above, after a morning of shopping culminating in a very confused Pete struggling to survive at Piccadilly Circus (it's like Piccadilly Circus down there) I ended up at the calm of the river. The Thames has always been my place of escape, ever since I was a kid I would come to the South Bank, do some drawing. It looked quite different then. There were a lot more homeless people, living under the bridges. The whole south bank of the river has been transformed in my lifetime, and keeps on changing. Even Big Ben will probably be renamed; well, Big Ben's just the bell, but the tower people often call Big Ben is really called the Clock Tower, and they said recently they may change it to Elizabeth Tower to mark the Queen's diamond jubilee; people will still call if Big Ben. That's ok. Just over a decade ago it wasn't possible to sketch this view from this spot, and now it is. I sat out there, a bright but windy May afternoon, and took advantage.

The London skyline continues to change as well. After completing my sketch of Westminster (and Lambeth), I popped around to the eastern footbridge and did a double page spread in the other direction. It was pretty windy, and I stood for most of the sketch (sitting down you get a barrier blocking the view). I started in the middle, at St.Paul's, the constant. Waterloo Bridge in the middle, that was built by Giles Gilbert Scott (who gave us the red phone box - the arched roof is the same curve as the arches on the bridge), and Cleopatra's Needle, on the Victoria embankment to the right, centuries older than Cleopatra herself. In the City you can see the NatWest Tower - sorry, it's called Tower 42 now (but still looks like the NatWest Bank symbol from above) - and of course the Gherkin (or '30 St.Mary Axe' as it's really called). Buildings keep going up. Coming soon will be the Pinnacle, a building in the City that twists and turns and blocks the view. The biggest and brightest and sharpest of them all is the Shard, that large 1984-ish triangle in the right hand of the panorama.
This whole panorama, a two-page Moleskine spread, took me a couple of hours, what with squinting to observe, waiting for people to pass by, and fighting the winds. I wonder what it will look like the next time I come to sketch this skyline?

by Pete Scully

on either side of Hungerford Bridge

Still standing: Big Ben

James Hobbs, Clock Tower, Westminster

Big Ben is leaning, it has been announced by surveyors, although at 0.26 degrees (about 8.5 inches at the height of the clock) it will take, they somehow estimate, about 10,000 years to reach the same angle as the tower at Pisa, which is standing at around four degrees.

Despite the tower’s minor tilt, it is apparent to the naked eye. From across Westminster Bridge it leans slightly to the right. For the sake of political balance, from Parliament Square it leans slightly to the left. (There’s no comfortable Liberal Democrat viewpoint, but it seems few want to view anything from that angle anyway.)

The tower’s gradually shift, hardly helped by having the Jubilee tube line running beneath it, isn’t being treated as an emergency. Renovation work isn’t expected to start before 2020. If you’re coming to London for the Olympics, it should still be standing.

More at www.james-hobbs.blogspot.com.

Still standing: Big Ben