Return to Windsor
Its been shamefully long since I last checked in, so long a few kind people who I’ve never meet have even checked as to my health! Thank you. I am well and have been busier than ever. So here’s a bumper drawings royal-themed post for you.
Firstly, a short while ago I was given the chance to paint a giant Easter Egg as part of The Big Egg Hunt, a city-wide fundraiser featuring a number of prestigious artists to raise money for the Elephant Family and Action of Children charities. When the egg arrived at my door it was larger than I could have imagined, and I set to work on a design aimed at complementing another egg featuring Humpty Dumpty that was painted by the Prince’s Drawing School. In the spirit of the Diamond Jubilee I decided to adapt the children’s’ nursery rhyme to ‘All the Queen’s horses and all the Queen’s men’. I’ve always liked the variety of military uniform our country has managed to design over the centuries, so put a succession of guards on horse around each other, charging as if the Trooping of the Colour ceremony had got a little out of hand. I only had a few days to paint it, and to my surprise only a few days later the next time I saw it was outside the Fabergé shop in Mayfair. What a privilege to be picked out by the main sponsors, and so nice to see egg-hunters and tourists alike looking at it here, and in Covent Garden, where entire collection of 200+ eggs were brought together at the Easter weekend.
Continuing the royal theme, I’ve also been lucky enough to spend a lot of time at Windsor Castle over the last month or so. Readers may remember I had a very inspired day there last year drawing the rooms and drawings in the royal collection. This time round, as part of a Drawing School project, I took groups of students to the castle, where we were given privileged access to the state rooms and garden areas around the round tower. It was great to get out of the way of the tourists and get to chat with the lovely staff who work there and really know their stuff. When not boring my students with too much history I got the chance to do a fair bit of drawing. From the opulent state rooms to the atmospheric medieval towers (admittedly in the rare moments when it wasn’t raining) to a stunning collection of oil paintings, there was so much to draw. I was particularly taken with the Civil War era paintings by the likes of Peake and Van Dyck. It’s not an area of history I know much about at all. I was very taken with the tragic story of Prince Henry of Wales, as the state rooms also holds several of his teenage-sized suits of armour, and with George and Francis Villiers, who were taken into the Stuart household after the murder of their father. These paintings reminded me that underneath all the gilt, velvet and extraordinary splendour of the state rooms were a set of fascinating stories that, for all their titles and privilege, were about very vulnerable humans lived out in uncertain times.
View from the Royal Mile
St George’s Hall, in a monoprint-drawing method I’m experimenting with
An impressive state room
The King’s Audience Chamber
The Round Tower and garden
North Tower
Detail of sculpted knights from St George’s Hall
(below) a selection of seventeeth-century paintings that caught my eye
Knight in Armour and horse in the entrance hall
St George’s Chapel and Albert Memorial Chapel from the tower
Side aisle at St George’s Chapel
Drawathon completed!
I am gradually recovering from an epic drawing session. Thank you everyone who has sponsored me, both commissioning original drawings, and donating to this great cause on my Drawathon. I’m absolutely worn out, and my lungs filtering out two day’s worth of traffic fumes from sitting on street corners!
So here’s the two-day marathon picture-by-picture. London blessed me with sunshine and warm temperatures, as if summer had arrived early. I hadn’t quite prepared for just how gloriously bright and colourful it would be, and as a result I set out inspired and ambitious and attacked my sheet of paper with every hue in my watercolour box, and couldn’t quite stop.
Day One
8.00 am The Shell Building (for Andrew & Jo)
I’m drawing against the sun so glad I brought sunglasses! Though a very simple building, the Shell centre always looks incredibly elegant against the river, a giant monument.
9.30 am View from Waterloo Bridge towards the City (for Paul)
Another Bridge, another bright bright drawing. At this time of the day the city is thrown into extremes of light and shade, so the cityscape is somewhat blurred as I try to pick out shapes from shadows and sun reflecting on glass. There’s so much to take in and the wind is up, blowing my hair all over the place, so I sketch quickly.
11.00 am Middle Temple Gardens (for Jan, Marion and Len)
This areas a lovely place to draw as it’s always fairly quiet, safe for legal suits and wigs going back and forth and the odd tourist. Find a lovely spot on a bench overlooking Middle Temple and in good time to see this Magnolia tree in full bloom, I love how the pinks offset the deep red of the old brickwork. Sit and eat my picnic in the beautiful gardens before braving Fleet Street…
1.00 pm Hoare’s Bank (for Thomas)
A classic building, though made tricky by busy traffic and buses constantly stopping in front of me! The sun is starting to make me light-headed by now, so I endeavour to find some shade.
2.30 pm The Prudential Assurance Building, Holborn (for the Walkers)
A great Victorian building and I’ve never seen it so bright and red as today. I hide in the shade next to Blacks’ opposite and think how funny it is that my mum used to work here before I was born. I’m desperate to spend longer here, as the architecture and ornamentation is so over the top, but time pushes on so I do my best to sketch in every arch. The afternoon’s getting me tired so an indulgent large mocha Frappuccino is in order for a caffeine and sugar hit. Though I fear the whipped cream makes me even sleepier.
3.45 pm St Brides Church, Fleet Street (for Mick)
The wonderful Wren church is neatly slotted into the City fabric and tucked off the street, but that makes it tricky to find the best place to draw. So I ended up sitting cross-legged in the middle of Fleet Street outside the Express building and have city workers tripping up over me every now and then. Once again, the sun is so bright that the shadows are extreme, and London’s Portland stone becomes shades of purples and blue.
5.00 pm The Blackfriars Pub, Blackfriars (for Mick)
Getting very tired now and after another session on a street corner (literally next to road works for new Blackfriars station) my eyes are dry and my lungs tight. But thankfully this request just happens to be my favourite pub in London, so I push through and reward myself with a half of a guest ale.
6.00 pm View of St Paul’s from One New Change (for Mandy)
My lovely friend Mandy was so keen to sponsor me for a good cause that she completely forgot to tell me what to draw! Now she’s moved to Oz for work I figured I would pick her a classic London scene. I have many grumblings about this new shiny shopping centre. But the view from the top is exceptional. Up in the air, my lungs are cleared (as much as they can be in the square mile) and I’m invigorated by the sharpness of the sun, cutting through streets and creating a halo around the monumental cathedral.
7.30 pm Southwark Cathedral (for Simon and Karen)
Very very tired now, and hasten through the street and across London Bridge to get to another cathedral before the light is lost. The garden here has shut up by now and the market traders are all but packed up, but it matters not as this view from the east end is one of my favourites. I love being raised so that I can draw both up and down the cathedral. The sun set casts the end of the church into purple shadows, safe for where it be seen streaming through the south transept window. I have to work fast as the light fades minute by minute, which is very disorienting when you’re trying to draw. By 8.30 its dark and I can’t make any kind of judgement, I take my picture to a street light and in the yellow haze decide its complete.
I pack up and stagger back across the bridge and eastwards home. My lovely boyfriend meets me at GBK and feeds me burger and chips before carrying me home.
Day Two
I’ve less drawings to do today, but more mileage to cover, so I set out on my trusty bike. I take less food but more water, as its bright and even hotter.
8.00 am Swiss Re Building, the City (for Alex)
Another firs thing in the morning, another stunning sky. Alex had just requested the Gherkin, but since he’s been so generous and I love this view with St Andrew Undershaft I had to show new against old. The cleaners were out too, who are mesmerising to watch as, like spiders, they work their way up and down the glass on spindly wires.
9.30 am. I’m stalled somewhat as having hoped the draw police horses, I find that when I visit and pop back during the day, they’re all out! Apparently some are keeping an eye over a protest in town, whilst others are chilling out in Bushy Park. This throws the morning’s plans, so I will have to come back another day.
11.15 am The Barbican, City of London (for Simon and Angie)
I spend a while getting lost around the strange beast that is this 1960s development. I love it, and used to have to deal with it when I worked at the Twentieth Century Society, but it scares me rigid to draw. Its not a simple modernist building. But instead something giant and sculptural, a maze, a monument to post-war ambitions and hopes, and yet still manages to feel a humane, beautifully detailed environment. This one takes a while to set-up, as I fret over proportions, but then get absorbed by endless windows and distinctive kinky balconies. Thankfully the bright sun is helpful is discerning shapes.
But yesterday is catching up with me, and I’m already tired. Luckily I happen to be chanced upon by my friend Louise, a fellow Drawing School student, who is on her way to London Zoo to draw. A quick chat and the gift of a choccie biscuit perks me up, and I hop back on my bike.
1.30 pm Wesley Chapel, City Road (for Grandad)
I stop for lunch at Bunhill Fields, the beautiful dissenters’ graveyard opposite the chapel. I have to hide in the shade for a while as I stake out the best place to draw the chapel -back in the sun! I feel I have to include the man himself too, and I like his sculpture against the characterful pollarded trees. Afterwards I am met by my parents, in town to see my progress, who reward me with a large iced coffee, and more whipped cream. I feel dizzy by this point as I’ve had a bit too much time in the sun!
3.30 pm Beigel Bake, Brick Lane (for Simon)
Back onto local territory, a request that also happen to be one of my regular haunts. It’s a busy road so I have to steer clear of cars and trendies on their fixed-gear bikes. I choose a spot next to Tom, who’s spot is just outside the next door cafe, and has shaved off his beard for the summer. He tells me stories of the old market and his time as a (not very good, apparently) sailor. After a while though, I attract the attentions of another, less sober local who won’t leave me alone and, though complementary, leads to finish up and head for quieter pastures.
5. 15 pm Christ Church from Fournier Street, Spitalfields (for Karen)
Another regular feature of my drawings. I knew that Karen had a print of one of my drawings with a view from the church front, so I decided she should have a side view to match. This takes in more really, the side of the church and the way it appears to shelter the houses around it. The rows of brick houses in the quiet street, and the buzz in the Victorian market buildings, which although just a hop and skip across the road, seem another world in the bright sun.
7.00 pm Former Gladding Bookshop, Whitechapel Road (for Bob)
This was request from Bob, whose ancestor once ran a bookshop on this busy street. This handsome Victorian building is a lucky survivor in an area where son much was destroyed by bombs. I push on, driven by the knowledge that this is my last picture. I finish as the light starts to fade and, and the traffic gathers. across the road the call to prayer is sounded from the East London Mosque, and I pack up my bike and am called home.
Portraits
Following on from studies of portraits in the National Gallery, a few offerings by my own hand from the last few weeks, the paintings from a class. As I mentioned before, part of the interest is in the difficulty, so I cringe a little in sharing these. But I’m very enjoying portraiture and am quite hooked, always seeking out more interesting faces to sit for me.
The lovely Eleanor. Normally I don’t enjoy drawing pretty faces, as their symmetry and neat features are frustrating. There’s less to grasp and hang onto and, to be honest, its less interesting. Not so with Eleanor, who has a lot of character in her beautiful face. With large dewy eyes, gentle curling hair and cupid’s bow lips, she has a doll-like beauty. She never seems to be seeing blankly though, underneath a calm demeanor I think I can see a head that clicks and whirrs in thought, the occasional eyelids blinking quickly, lips that purse and soften and purse again as something in her thoughts tick over. In-between conversation, I enjoy watching someone who is generous enough to sit still for me and focus on being composed reveal their character with little quirks.
Keith watching the News at Ten
Keith is a fine draughtsman with a portfolio full of wonderful portraits studies. It was half nerve-wracking drawing a drawer, it’s also very nice to be comfortable with a fellow who understands the challenge. Keith is an animated, chatty character, so it was fun to make him sit still for a half hour. I think the drawing shows a still man but with lively eyes already thinking through what art conversation her wants to raise next.
Model in a painting class
I find colour very difficult, but with this model her beautiful brown skin tone and colourful clothes set each other off. Some eastern genes provided an entire different eye structure and contours that were challenging to navigate. Painted over half a day in changing natural light, I found myself tired as the light faded, and abandoned this study in favour of a wider view. This second picture took about an hour and a half but I think I prefer it more. I’ve tried to capture the slight fatigue of the model at the end of the day, and my own weary brush strokes were more gentle, less fussy, and in the end, perhaps more natural to the atmosphere.
Kit, the painting class
Kit was a wonderful model. He has a noble face and took the job very seriously, looking dapper in jacket and tie, he took great care to hold his face and composure through the day. As the class takes just one day, it can be fast, but also intense, and most of the artists have a tendency to find their eyes tired and ability to make decisive judgements tested by the afternoon, especially after lunch. I guessed pretty quickly that Kit was an actor when not modelling, such was his attitude to the task and the way he held himself. His appearance and air of dignity would cast him as a suitable cousin to the Fox brothers.
Another from natural daylight, which seems to work for me best as it brings out honest colours. Sometimes its not always flattering. Here, Oliver looks pasty. But there was a rich, milky quality to his paleness that brought out beautiful blue shadows under his eyes and cherry-red lips. He had a very distinctive face, even without the crown of disheveled curls. After some sketching and starting to paint and work out his face and watery eyes, I decided that he would suit being a writer. I continued with this characterisation in mind, imagining his pale complexion born out late nights working and studious and sincere thoughts. Afterwards, I asked. Turns out he is a writer, so I felt pleased that, with practice, I was able to try to discern things from the face of a complete stranger. One of my most pleasing paintings yet, because he had such a distinctive face and I feel I was close to capturing it.
Portraits at the National Gallery
I’ve enjoyed doodling people for a long time. Friends in front of the TV, people at work, which makes for an interesting contrast of zombie-like or focused and limbs flying. But recently I’ve been craving making proper studies, I guess it’s a genre that every artist has to take on at some point. It’s also a nice process, to want to record people I know, much like having an in-depth conversation with them. I’m also doing a course in portrait-painting on Fridays which is making slow progress. It’s very, very, hard to make a likeness that contains the character and animation of the person in front of you. Perhaps that’s why I find it so enjoyable. As I’m too shy to share my own portrait studies yet, here are some I’ve been making in the National Gallery that have been inspiring me. Drawing them is as difficult but as enjoyable as drawing a real person, but with the added buzz of feeling that you’re in the shoes of an artist hundreds of years ago.
Titian – a real pain to draw as I couldn’t get around his rather sinister look. I even used a rubber ( I never normally do) trying to get his profile again and again. And got fed up by the time I reached his arm! But an amazingly confident picture.
Ingres apparently the painter took years and years over this, But I’m sure the labouring was not so much the intricate pattern of the dress (which I couldn’t be bother with) but the odd composition of her twisted waist and shoulder (surely anatomically impossible) and contrived poise of her hand and fingers on her cheek.
Van Dyck’s Cornelis van der Geest, 1620. One of the most astonishing portraits in the gallery. Painted with soft strokes that sculpt the sitter and directed my hand in drawing. You can’t help but get really close, as if you were the painter, as the portrait absorbs you, until you almost see your reflection in his watery eyes. I love this because its feels a truly honest portrait. No flattery, just the feeling that over the course of sittings Van Dyck and Geest really came to know each other well.
Hans Holbein the Younger -Erasmus. Apparently Holbein was around 27 -my age- when he painted this. So I have a lot to catch up with. I really enjoyed drawing from Holbein in the past, he feels wonderfully true in capturing the unsymmetrical features in his sitters -but without making them look odd. There is a nice sense of pride and patience, and quiet contemplation, in the writer’s face and poise with his book.
The Ambassadors, by Hans Holbein the Younger. This intricate picture was commissioned by the young French Ambassador, Jean de Dinteveille, who is also shown with his friend, George de Selves, the bishop of Lavuar. Jean
is shown in the latest of Tudor fashions with fine silks, George is plainer, but still in expensive fur and woven fabric. Following tradition, it shows them as rich, well-travelled and educated young men. The objects on the upper shelf include a celestial globe, a portable sundial and various other instruments used for understanding the heavens and measuring time. Among the objects on the lower shelf is a lute, a case of flutes, a hymn book, a book of arithmetic and a terrestrial globe. Certain details could be interpreted as references to contemporary religious divisions. The broken
lute string, for example, may signify religious discord, while the Lutheran hymn book may be a plea for Christian harmony. I love filling my own pictures with objects and details at the best of time. It makes me want to make my own portraits of people surrounded by all their favourite things.
Manet’s Woman with a Cat. This is the artist’s wife relaxing with the family pet. It’s an incredible picture because it seems to have been painted in one sitting, probably the speediest painting in the entire National Gallery. The zig zag brush strokes cut across the figures, shadows, cat, to create a lively but harmonious surface. It’s also great to draw, you can’t help but sketch at speed and with flourish of hand as you follow the marks.
Sandro Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1480. This portrait’s frontal poise, direct gaze, and asymmetrical composition make it feel way ahead of its time, even modern. But that’s only half my interest. My main attraction is the man himself. He is incredibly handsome, I blushed just drawing under his five-century-gone gaze. He looks like an actor, possibly reminiscent of James Franco.
Philip IV of Spain, by Velázquez. The later of two portraits of the king in the gallery, this is lovely for his sad, sad gaze. Philip commissioned the artist many times over his lifetime, and I imagine they got on well for him to be confident in honestly showing the King’s ‘Hapsburg chin’ (a form of prognathism caused by the royals’ inbred genetic line) and tired expression. Perhaps by the time this portrait was made the king was weary of a lifetime of politics and wars, and conscious himself of his aging. A tricky one to draw as Velázquez is incredibly subtle in his marks and tones, at times like a soft focus. And yet completely honest.
And with that, it’s time I found myself some sitters…
A sketchbook
Towards the end of last year I was given a gift voucher for Cornelissen & Son by friends with the instructions ‘treat yourself’. It’s not a shop that I go to often, not for lack of want, but for fear of wanting too much. I can remember passing it in my teens on my way to the British Museum, and peering into the historic-looking glass shop frontage at the colourful collection of glass jars of pigments, ink pots and quills and luxurious sable brushes. A few weeks ago, under a cloud of January blues, I decided to splurge my voucher. Inside the shop I gathered handfuls of pencils and inks from the rows and rows of wooden shelves -packed much like a sweet shop. But at the counter, my eyes were distracted by the stack of beautiful hand-made leather sketchbooks and cases. Needless to say, they are not cheap items. But a few moments later I found myself leaving with a very ‘Jo’ pea-green sketchbook and cover under my arm. My best friend recently invested in a designer handbag with the justification that it was a classic design with great ‘cost-per-use’ value, and I decided that since I wasn’t one for splashing out on handbags myself, I could apply this philosophy to a beautiful hand-made book.
Why make such a fuss over a book? Its very superficial but the magpie in me likes nice things. Recently I’ve been upgrading my art student kit to that of a professionals. Good oil paints, the particular brand and type of pencil that always feels right, heavyweight hot-pressed paper that lets my hand flow when I draw. Quality definitely makes a difference, physically and mentally, in taking my subject and myself seriously. I love my new book cover. It’s already covered in scuffs and scrapes from keys in my bag, and stains from inks and tea, but the leather will age well and last me forever. And it makes me want to carry it with me everywhere, use it for everything, recording all I enjoy in a visual diary. Here’s some glimpses of the new year so far:
Sketch under Tower Bridge at night in the cold
Olympic gymnasts on the bar, qualifying at the O2 Arena
Sketch of Chichester Cathedral done from the upper floor of Costa Coffee with a gingerbread latte
Inside the Choir at Chichester Cathedral
Old medieval and Roman wall near Tower Hill
The lovely twelfth century black marble font in Winchester Cathedral, showing the a story from the life of St Nicholas
Housemates hibernating on the sofa
In Print… and Drawathon update
As a budding artist/illustrator (who’s still a part-time student!) it’s very exciting to see yourself (well, yourself as embedded in your drawings) in print. The crisp pages, the smell of ink, the marks and shapes that seem familiar and yet are a cousin of your original -as they’re applied to someone else’s page and re-printed in such a fashion as to give them an entirely new character. I’ve been very fortunate recently to have some lovely commissions.
The first was a contribution to Random Spectacular, a lovely indulgent cheeseboard of illustrational talent brough together by the lovely Lewins at St Jude’s. I’ve eyed up their gallery for a long while, for everything that comes out is nothing less that beautifully made and of good taste, so I was chuffed to be asked to do some drawings to accompany a fine article by William Brown on Victorian ‘gin palace pubs’, as part of a new journal to raise money for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres. I meant to publicise this before Christmas, but before I had the chance the limited edition of 750 copies had sold out in less than two days! So, belatedly, here are some pictures…
lovely cover by Mark Hearld
mine and Will’s page (as featured in Creative Review!)
second spread of pages -printed at a glorious full 240 x 350 mm size -what a treat for an illustrator
Drawn from one of the booths at the Princess Louise
The drawings were done in situ, with a pint of ale at hand, at the Princess Louise in Holborn, and Red Lion in Piccadilly, two of London’s best preserved Victorian pubs. If only every client asked me to go and draw in a pub. And an honour to be amongst such a worthy collection of artists.
With the new year came a freshly-printed copyof Five Farthings, with a front cover you may recognise. I was so pleased to hear from Margin Notes books, a small publisher with a lot of passion set on re-issuing unusual books, who spotted my Christmas card and thought it would make a suitable image for this story. Set in 1939, before the outbreak of WWII, it tells the story of a family who relocate from the quiet country to a flat that overlooks St Paul’s cathedral. I re-printed the linocut for a crisper finish, and with some wizardry by the designer, the result is a very smart and shiny deep blue cover. The first book cover is a big moment for any illustrator, and it means a lot that my first is a piece of London’s architecture -my first love.
Meanwhile, great news on the Drawathon front. In ten days I’ve not only doubled my target, but met it and gone further, the total raised (including Gift Aid) is just under £1,500. Thank you so much to everyone who’s donated. I am staggered, and I can’t wait to get drawing in March! It’s actually been so successful that I have booked up all my drawing commission slots on the Marathon and have no less than 16 drawings to do! I wish I could take more, but its very important that I make the very best drawings I can for those donors who got there first. I’ve also overshot my budget by miles (I’m self-funding the travel/materials/printing/postage overhead costs -my fault for underestimating how quickly this would take off!) so I regret that I cannot accept any more donations via Just Giving. But you can still donate and get yourself a limited edition signed print from the day, and all the profit after overheads will go towards the Alzheimer’s Society! Please contact me directly via email to donate. With love and thanks, Jo x
Drawathon
UPDATE! UPDATE! I am now fully booked for commissioned drawings, but you can still donate and get yourself a signed, limited-edition print. Please contact me via email for details!
Just over six months ago my Grandmother, Christine Brock, a.k.a. ‘Granny Town’ (indeed we were fortunate grandchildren to have had a ‘Granny Seaside’ too), passed away.
Her death was also her release from Alzheimer’s, which had frustrated her last years, and haunted our family as we watched an energetic, cheerful and loving individual slip away from us and recess into a shell of a woman.
As is often the case, after her death I found out more about her, and wished I’d been able to ask her more questions about her life, her experiences, her enthusiasms. I’d known that she’d trained at the Regent Street Polytechnic before becoming a seamstress near Regent Street, for her nimble fingers kept my sister and I in hand-made dresses as children. I hadn’t known that (after having children) she had re-trained as social worker for the blind, and would take long buses up from south London to Mile End and Stepney to work with the visually-impaired. I often think of her work as I wander around my own necks of the East End. She often sketched, used watercolours, embroidered and knitted in her spare time and I now long to ask her about how precious her talents were to her after the experience of helping people with limited or no visibility.
Before she became ill, she was always asking to see my sketchbook. I’m only sorry that by the time I had the courage to commit to art and produce drawings on a regular basis she was already bed-bound in a home and unable to recognise her family, let alone give me a critique which, with her creative eyes, would have been so rewarding. On a good day when the ‘fog’ wasn’t so heavy, a frail and contorted figure in a bed was still just able to turn the pages of my sketchbook, and point and gesture at my drawings. Her words were incomprehensible, but she appeared to recognise the pictures for what they were, and as her skinny fingers traced my lines her murmurs would dip and rise in tone, her eyes would scan the paper, and for a tantalising moment, I would recognise my grandmother.
So many people have carefully and more eloquently written about this degenerative disease that I don’t feel I can add more. I can only say that from my own perspective that Alzheimer’s seems to be one of the cruellest diseases for both the sufferer and, as it irreversibly develops, the loved ones who find themselves with a living ghost.
On March 28th (when Christine would have turned 85) I will be staging a Drawathon, or Drawing Marathon, to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Society. The Society gave my family invaluable support during such a difficult time, and as well as caring for families and sufferers of the disease they are the leading researchers into dementia. Drawing is what I do and the skill I can offer, so it seems more appropriate than climbing a mountain or cycling a bike through Europe. It also feels right given the pleasure Granny Town took in drawing, and that the act of drawing is a mentally stimulating activity, the kind of exercise for the brain advocated by scientists to stave of the disease.
A drawing by Granny of her cat
Studies of Grandad doing the crossword, as drawn by Granny
Grandad doing the crossword, as drawn by me, October 2011
I will set out early, with sketchbook, stool and thermos, and draw all over the City, fending off tourists, gangs of schoolchildren and people stumbling out of the pubs in the evening. Allowing for breaks (and a decent night’s sleep in-between!), I will complete 24 hours of intense drawing over the course of two long days. I would be grateful for every pound that I can raise, and I’d like to give something back. Sponsors who pledge £10 and over will receive a small limited-edition reproduction print of the best drawing of the day. I’m also seeking generous souls to recommended a site within or close to the City of London, and stump up £50. In return, they will receive the original drawing/painting done on the location of their choice*. All the money raised will be donated to the Alzheimer’s Society. How do I sponsor this great artistic endeavour by getting an original artwork at a bargain price whilst also playing a small part in the fight against dementia, I hear you ask? It’s simple…
1) Visit my page at Just Giving and donate: http://www.justgiving.com/Joanna-Moore-draws
2) If you fancy a commissioned drawing, recommend a location with your message: a building, view, scene, theme, idea, even a person!
*The small print: 1. In order for me to meet my target of drawing as much as I can I need to spend minimal time travelling, and preferably dash between locations on foot. I will try and plan a route from one end of the city to another, so help me by commissioning central locations within a three mile radius of St Paul’s Cathedral 2. Drawings will be done from public places where I feel safe: so please don’t ask for dark alleys or awkward positions. 3. Drawing will be around a5-a4 in size and vary in medium/style. I can’t predict how my eyes, head and hands will be functioning after hours, so you’ll have to trust me to follow my instincts and do the very best I can! 4. I retain copyright of drawings.
I would love to raise over £1000 for the Alzheimer’s Society. Please get involved by sponsoring me or commissioning a picture for yourself or a friend, or forward this on to anyone who may be interested.
Thank you everyone who has already donated almost £500 in the first two days already, especially people I have never met but knows my work and out their faith in this crazy idea, fingers crossed we can beat that by the end of March!
UPDATE! UPDATE! I am now fully booked for commissioned drawings, but you can still donate and get yourself a signed, limited-edition print. Please contact me via email for details!
Beuckelaer’s fish
Regular followers will know of my fondness for drawing from paintings. To de-construct an artist’s composition and narrative, priorities and hierarchy of characters, is an incredible process and one that makes me want to make ambitious pictures myself. To plan, pose, and picture elements into a whole that will take me from a draughtsman into an artist. Recently I was set with the task of drawing a painting in the National Gallery for a total of five days. I am used to drawing fast, so I was unsure as to how exactly I could spend so long on one image. I set out to find a complicated picture, with an array of elements to give me occupied, but also a challenging arrangement and different levels of perspective. Just over a year ago I had a lot of fun recording Joachim Beuckelaer’s ‘Fire’ and decided to return to the Flemish master. Another in the series, set in the magical but busy octagonal thoroughfare of Room 11, was ‘Water’, it grabbed me.
It’s an exciting portrait of fish sellers, their stall and their wares: the wonders of the natural world. Behind the pointed arch is the scene of Christ appearing to the disciples for the third time after his Resurrection, performing the miracle of filling Simon’s nets after the fishermen’s own unsuccessful night. The combination of the scenes is touching in relating contemporary fishermen with Christ’s strong links with the water (walking on water, loaves and fishes for the 5,000, and at least four of the disciples were fishermen…) , as well as celebrating the harvest of the often perilous sea, the choice of fish no doubt boosted by extensive travel and trade in Europe in the Sixteenth Century.
As I drew, I found myself slowing, becoming engaged with each fish in turn as much as each human, so distinct were their characters. Normally I might do my best to get the people’s faces ‘correct’, but quickly I realised that the excitement of this pictures, like the rest of the series, was its arrangement, its confidence in distorting multiples sets of perspective to display so much, and create careful channels in the spaces in-between things -the objects, people, and intermediate are carefully made to hang of each other, and the result is a dense tapestry.
I can’t say that drawing in one of the busiest rooms of the gallery is the most enjoyable experience. It was difficult, sitting for so long balancing a huge board on my legs untill they became numb with pins and needles. The light constantly changing from skylights and -. I had to sit close enough to see details, but craned my neck and worried the perspective would be distorted from below. As much as attention is flattering, the more the drawing progressed the more visitors huddled around me, and with them came inevitable interruptions. In such circumstances I tend to keep my eyes to the wall and turn my mp3 player up to shut out distraction. But it had been a worthwhile journey, for every irritating tap on the shoulder and gaggle of school children standing in front of me, there were also some lovely conversations with visitors, discussing why I’d picked that picture, and why I felt it might help my own work. So here’s the pretty-much-finished drawing, at just under A1 size. It’s now on my bedroom wall gazing down on me, and congratulating me on approximately 30 thirty hours of work, I think the longest I’ve ever spent on one thing…
The Whitechapel Nobody Knows (Part One)
Since I seem to have my own set of readers I have reproduced my recent contribution for the wonderful Spitalfields Life blog… a very enjoyable opportunity to explore my east end surroundings and hidden wonders with the ever-curious Gentle Author.
I am delighted to resume my series of The East End Nobody Knows in collaboration with Spitalfields Life Contributing Artist Joanna Moore, by visiting Trinity Green Almshouses off the Mile End Rd. You only have to step through the emerald green gates to discover that this place has kept its age-old repose. Designed Sir William Ogbourne in 1695, as almshouses for retired and invalid mariners upon ground given Captain Henry Mudd of Ratcliffe, the conception was of fourteen cottages around a central chapel. Yet even though a bomb destroyed the rear half of this courtyard in 1943, the ship-shape sense of order is miraculously still intact. Look out for Basil, the old ginger tom who takes the role of master & commander now all the seafaring folk have departed.
Sculptor Roy Emmins lives in a tiny flat built upon the roof of a nineteen forties residential block at the rear of the Royal London Hospital, where he has created a wonderful sculpture garden to exhibit his works among plants and flowers. With a natural sensitivity to the anatomy of animals, Roy’s work is in a magical realist vein, evoking an entire of menagerie of creatures in stone, bronze, wood, paper mache and even tin foil. Six days a week, Roy walks from his flat in Whitechapel to his studio at the far end of Cable St where he has been working alone secretly for the past ten years, creating a vast body of superlative works, and up here in his sculpture garden among the chimney pots of Whitechapel, Roy’s sculpture exists in its own enchanted universe, known only to the lucky few.
These modest terraces in Walden St and Turner St – dating from 1809-15 – were derelict for fifteen years and would have been demolished if it had not been for the intiative of Tim Whittaker, Director of the Spitalfields Trust. He recognised the dignity of these self-effacing structures, built for the lower middle classes, their early residents included a surgeon, a sea captain, a plumber, a shopkeeper and a Chelsea pensioner. Completed two years ago, this award-winning restoration employs weatherboarded extensions in an historically appropriate vernacular aesthetic to win extra space and uses salvaged materials to subtle effect in preserving the shabby poetry of these old houses. As Tim put it to me, “I wanted to give Whitechapel back a bit of the romance it had lost.”
From Roy Emmins’ roof you can look down upon St Augustine with St Philip’s Church in Newark St, a soaring example of mid-nineteenth century red brick gothic that today houses the Royal London Hospital’s Library and Museum. If you walk into the ground floor you will encounter the sepulcral hush of medical students cramming for exams, while down in the crypt is the medical museum – open to the general public – where you can discover attractions as various as the Elephant Man’s hat, collections of gallstones preserved in specimen cases as if they were gulls’ eggs, Victorian autopsy sets and George Washington’s dentures.
Illustration copyright © Joanna Moore
You may also like to take a look at
