The Walkie-Talkie: new on London's skyline

London's drive for a distinctive skyline continues unabated. Following on from the Shard and the Gherkin, taking shape now are the Walkie-Talkie and the Cheesegrater. (The half-finished Helter Skelter is currently on hold, and the Scalpel is in the pipeline, as it were.)
The eyecatching feature of the Walkie-Talkie, at 20 Fenchurch Street, is that it curves outwards towards its top, so the highest floors are larger than those lower down, giving it the appearance of a giant telephone receiver popping up through the city's buildings. Designed by Rafael Viñoly, it is due to open in April 2014, and while most of us usually have to make do with the external appearances of towers in the financial district, this time there will be a "skygarden" open to the public. The plan is that it will be free, but require advanced booking. We'll see how that goes. Would it have received approval without the garden?
Finding it to draw presented the usual problem with tall buildings in a city: the closer you get, the harder it is to see. At Leadenhall Market, from where I drew this, the view opens up and the curve of the building's sides becomes apparent, as if any interest in accurate perspective has gone out of the window. Turning around, and the rising Cheesegrater was visible, looming over Leadenhall Market. (More here on this one soon.)
At 38 floors, the Walkie-Talkie is hardly the world's tallest (the Burj Khalifa has 164), or even London's (it barely makes it into its top 10), but it looks as if it will have an overpowering presence on the scrum of tall buildings north of London Bridge. The crowd is getting thicker. Old friends—and enemies—are getting lost in the midst of it.

St Paul's Cathedral

I stopped by St Paul's Cathedral on the way back from work yesterday to draw while preparations continued for the funeral of Margaret Thatcher later today. I drew this still astride the bike, helmet and cycling clips still on: this, I find, encourages a focus on the essentials.

From a train along the River Exe

The train west from London through Devon follows the west bank of the River Exe, and then along the coast for several miles, and then along the north bank of the River Teign. It's a kind of constant and yet continually changing view out of the windows on the left hand side of the train. To draw this is to try to portray an amalgam of a specific place. The boat in the middle of this (above) started as a buoy, and then morphed from dinghy to whatever it looks like now. Is it a yacht?
The drawing below, of the view towards Exmouth as the train neared Dawlish Warren, was more about the sky. I was interested in how Rolf Schröter drew clouds from a German train, as the sky is often the least changing element of the scene out of a train window. I like Rolf's work a lot.

Room with a view

It's a view I've seen a lot of lately; I turn my head left now, and that's what I see. I like this view.

Against the tide

A quiet journey home to London on the train from the south coast one evening last week, watching the congested platforms filled with commuters on their way home in the opposite direction, as darkness falls outside.

Sketchcrawl: underground at Tate Modern

It wasn't ideal weather for a sketchcrawl yesterday, but it was handy having Tate Modern at hand to warm up in, while the temperatures outside struggled to reach freezing point. The vast new underground, windowless Tanks were showing William Kentridge's I Am Not Me (which closes today). It was dark, I couldn't see what I was drawing, and fellow viewers got confused with the silhouettes of Kentridge's eight-channel video work. A great space though. I like it in there.

Tate Modern's Turbine Hall

London sketchcrawl at Bankside on 19 January

The next London Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl coincides with the 38th Worldwide Sketchcrawl on Saturday 19 January 2013, meeting at midday at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, and going on until 5pm. Meanwhile, all around the world, people are doing the same in their own cities, sketchbook in hand. What could be better than that?

You just come with your drawing kit, pay no money, draw, and chat with other people who are doing exactly the same. It's a relaxing thing. Inside or out, there's plenty to draw around Bankside.

Need more info? See the London Urban Sketchers website, or the London Sketchcrawl Facebook page.

A look down St Martin's Lane, London

I've been going through some older sketchbooks recently for something I'm working on, and came across quite a few drawings (unhelpfully not dated by me, but perhaps around 2000) that suddenly made me quite nostalgic about the good old 2B pencil.
I've gone on and on about my love for the humble, high fibre option pencil before, so I won't do it again, but... I just wish pencil drawings felt a bit more permanent when they are finished. Fixative or no fixative, they seem temporary in a way pen drawings don't.

Sketchcrawling with Urban Sketchers London

The third Urban Sketchers London sketchcrawl took place last week, a cheerful bunch of us meeting up by the diplodocus in the central hall of the Natural History Museum. It was a bit of a change for me, drawing things that are in glass display cases that I don't usually draw, which is a good thing surely, and probably part of what sketchcrawling is about. In the grip of a tight deadline, it was good to get out and draw and meet new people.
Then it was across the road to the Victoria and Albert Museum, all of a 15-second walk away, for lunch and, later, to compare drawings.
See more about it at the Urban Sketchers London website.

Laon cathedral, France

Last summer we drove down through France to Lake Annecy to camp by the water. We're not enthusiastic drivers, but each place where we stayed on our leisurely journey there and back was distinctive and memorable, even if the names of the places we stayed were not: Troyes and Lons-le-Saunier going south, Tournus and Laon on the way back, my sketchbook helpfully reminds me.

Laon cathedral is visible for miles, rising from the city on a ridge in the Picardy plain after our journey through the Champagne region. Driving up to our hotel in Laon's old centre is like going the wrong way up a helter skelter, the route becoming tighter and narrower as it nears the top. There's a cafe next to the cathedral in the square, of course, and the next morning we sit there drinking coffee and drawing while we prepare to head back to the Channel Tunnel.

This image for sale as a limited edition print: contact jameshobbs45@gmail.com

Urban Sketchers London sketchcrawl: Saturday 1 December at 11am

Poster drawing by Katherine Tyrrell

The next Urban Sketchers London sketchcrawl is coming soon. We will be meeting on Saturday 1 December at 11am in the free-to-enter Natural History Museum, near to one of the exhibits for which it is best known: the diplodocus skeleton in its central hall by the main entrance.

As well as the diverse and extraordinary exhibits in this museum, and the other ones nearby, there is plenty to draw outside if the weather is up to it, such as the skating rink that arrives close to the museum each winter. There's more information at the Urban Sketchers London website. Follow the tweets @urbsketchlondon.

It's a relaxed and pressure-free event. Come for as long as you can and meet other artists who get up to the same kinds of this as you do. Just bring whatever you usually draw with. You know it makes sense.

The Natural History Museum is at Cromwell Road, London SW7 5DB. www.nhm.ac.uk

At the Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, 25-28 October 2012

James Hobbs, Shoreditch High Street, digital print

I'm showing some new work on the Skylark Galleries stand (C3) at the Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Park, London, this week from Thursday 25 October to Sunday 28 October 2012. It's a great place to see new work, buy it and have it on the wall of your homely abode by the evening. And all without breaking the bank.

I'll be on the stand on Thursday until 3pm, on Saturday from 2pm to 6.30pm, and on Sunday until 3pm. Drop by if you can, whoever you are, and say hello. I'll show you my sketchbooks, if you're interested. (On Friday I'll even be in Skylark 2 gallery in the Oxo Tower Wharf from 11am to 6pm if you can't make the fair.)

For more information about the Affordable Art Fair follow this. Into the tweeting thing? Follow me at @jameshobbsart.

Regent Street meets Tenerife

I've always been interested in how a piece of work leaves home to make a life for itself once you have sold it. It's not often I get to see where they end up. And then last week, two lovely buyers Natalie Ward and Vanessa Skinner sent me this photograph of one of my prints they'd purchased from Skylark Galleries in its new home in Tenerife.

How can Regent Street's (rather simplified) architectural charms and a double-decker bus look so at home off the coast of Africa looking out at the North Atlantic? But what wouldn't? My thanks to them for sending this.

On the Greenwich sketchcrawl

I joined the London Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl around Greenwich last weekend, along with about 50 other artists. Greenwich is still recovering from the Olympic Games; the equestrian stadium is still standing, so parts of the park are closed, and local traders are reported in the local press as saying their takings were down by as much as 50% over the Olympic period, although things seemed busy last weekend.

It was a great day for a sketchcrawl, and there are more planned for the coming months. Dates will be announced on the London Urban Sketchers website.



Top: Royal Observatory, and above, Astronomy Centre, Greenwich, London

Still at an IKEA store near you...

My A5-sized Kort art card range of London scenes is still available at IKEA stores. You can find out if they're in the store near you by looking here.

Update: they are no longer at an IKEA near you, although we still find the odd one in a frame around the store in Edmonton, north London.

Showing now on the South Bank...

I have a few more drawings and prints than usual on show at Skylark 2 as part of its featured artist rota, to coincide with the Thames Festival this weekend (8-9 September). Framed and unframed, big or small, there's possibly a work for you. The gallery is on the first floor with a great view of the river.

The show is on for a few weeks - it closes on 16 September. Follow me @jameshobbsart.

Ackland Museum of Art fundraiser show

I am one of the 38 international artists who have a drawing on show — and on sale — at the Ackland Museum of Art store, Chapel Hill, South Carolina, as part of an Urban Sketchers education programme fundraiser. More information here.

Seeing the World, One Drawing at a Time continues from Thursday 16 August until Saturday 6 October.

London's Olympic Stadium

The Olympic stadium in Stratford is a few miles away from where we live in north London, close enough, like most of London probably, for us to see its lights beaming into the night air on the evening of the opening ceremony's rehearsal. Tonight is the real thing.

Are Londoners cynical and moaning about the Olympics? Many are, but many of these moaning cynics were among the millions that went to see the Olympic torch as it passed around the country. I know: I was among them...

The finished Shard: Europe's tallest (for now)

James Hobbs, The Shard from Southwark Street

Having posted drawings of London's newest tallest building as a promising stump in 2010 and as an unfinished, unfurling skyscraper in 2011, I thought I'd mark its recent opening with another of the finished thing.

The 310-metre building launched with a light display at the beginning of July 2012. We live a few miles to the north and went up on to the roof of the house to watch the lasers beaming around the city. Perhaps our expectations were, like the Shard, too high: it wasn't so exciting.

Is the building any better? The angles of its sides means it invariably reflects the colour of the sky, which I like, even though this particular summer that colour has, until now, been that of rainclouds.

The Shard is distinctive, certainly, but dwarfing and isolated. And how do the £50 million penthouses, luxury hotel and £24.95 adult ticket prices to the as-yet-unopened viewing tower relate to what's happening in the streets it has risen from? How many people from Southwark are working in its offices? I have the feeling it is probably better to be on the inside looking out, than on the outside looking in.

Urban Sketchers London show opens at Foyles bookshop

James Hobbs, Foyles bookshop

The exhibition The Art of Urban Sketching, which is linked to the book of the same name by USk founder Gabriel Campanario, has now opened at Foyles bookshop, London. It features five monochrome drawings by me straight from the sketchbook, including one that was reproduced in the book. (So not the one on the right here, which I drew on Charing Cross Road last week.)

There are five other London-based artists showing in the exhibition: Nathan Brenville, Barry Jackson, Olha Pryymak, Katherine Tyrrell and Zhenia Vasiliev. You can follow the evolving introductions to each artist at the Urban Sketchers London blog, which is being updated each day of the show.

Foyles, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0EB
Monday 16 July to Sunday 22 July 2012
More about the show here.