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

London's Urban Sketchers at the BBC

Richard Coles: his desk is tidier than it looks

I was invited to BBC Broadcasting House in central London this weekend to take part in Radio 4's Saturday Live, to talk, along with Manchester-based artist Simone Ridyard, about urban sketching and the sketchcrawl phenomenon. Tracey Thorn of Everything But the Girl fame, environmental activist Laurens de Groot and I sat around the table with the presenters Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir for 90 minutes to be gently grilled.

Simone and I spoke with Aasmah about what urban sketching is all about and the joys of drawing together in sketchcrawls. After it had ended (about 15 minutes into the programme if you follow the link below), I stayed on to draw the scene in the studio. One of these drawings, of Tracey and Laurens (although you wouldn't recognise them), is shown on the programme's website as a time-lapse sequence: over in just a minute. It also includes a gallery of images by London's Urban Sketchers.

Behind the scenes

The time flashed by. It was an insight to see the presenters Richard and Aasmah put us guests at ease and keep the atmosphere light — there was lots of lively conversation around the table during prerecorded segments, to the extent you almost forgot when you were on air and when you weren't. At the end we each signed a visitors' book that will be auctioned off in aid of Children in Need, posed for a photograph together and headed back through the new building. A different BBC radio station plays in each lift. On the pavement outside, a group of autograph hunters waited for Tracey.

Listen to the programme here. We're interviewed about 15 minutes in.

London's Urban Sketchers at the BBC

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