In Hoxton Square

While daughter 2 was doing her thing at the nearby National Centre for Circus Arts, I had some time sitting on the grass in Hoxton Square. I worked near here in the 1990s, before the hipster grip took over, before White Cube had moved in, let alone moved out, before you looked in estate agents' windows and rubbed your eyes. The van in the square isn't usual: work is underway to create TreexOffice, a transparent "tree office" to be built around one of these London planes as part of the Rethinking Parks project. You can book a work space in it up until December. There's more about it here.

Dream, Draw, Design My Garden is coming soon

I'm happy to say that my new book Dream Draw Design My Garden is published by Rockport in the US on 1 June and in the UK on 2 July.

Dream Draw Design My Garden is a hands-on book to draw and experiment in, with each page featuring a drawing by me that offers an inspirational jumping-off point to help you towards realising your ideal garden, back yard or roof terrace. It's an inspirational guide rather than a technical handbook, a place to let loose your imagination, with pages to help you draw your thoughts to reality.  

Visit my Facebook page for more details of Dream Draw Design My Garden – and Sketch Your World, which is now available in six languages.

You can preorder online at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound, Indigo, Waterstones, WHSmith – and your friendly local bookshop.

And yes, that is my back garden on the cover.

Silvertown's dereliction

London's Urban Sketchers were recently invited to draw Silvertown, a major £3.5 billion regeneration project in east London that will turn the derelict post-industrial wasteland into what aims to be the city's "new creative capital", with 3,000 new homes and 21,000 new jobs. Named after its 19th-century founder Samuel Winkworth Silver, it handled much of the old Empire's exports and imports until the 1960s when containerisation and new docks downstream took over. What remains - monumental, crumbling, windswept, beautiful – is Millennium Mills, once home to Rank Hovis MacDougall and Spillers, and a surviving grain silo. Set by the Thames in a wealth of concrete, graffiti, aircraft noise and wildlife-rich greenery, the site is one of the most exciting places I have ever drawn.

Because work is underway at the 62-acre site – our high visability jackets bore the logo of a asbestos removal company – numbers were limited to eight. Security is tight, and there are dogs on the site. We will be returning as it develops over the years so more regular urban sketchers in London may get a chance to visit it to draw.

Silvertown has been a popular backdrop for films (such as Derek Jarman's The Last of England), music videos (The Smiths, Arctic Monkeys) and TV (Ashes to Ashes). Yet quite why something grim in so many ways is so moving I'm struggling to understand. What is so alluring about urban desolation? London's sights are visible in the distance: Gherkin, Cheesegrater, Dome, Canary Wharf and the cable car. But Silvertown is still the twinkle in the developer's eye. Whatever it becomes, it can never be more lovely than it is now.

Sue Pownall, Evelyn Rowland, Lis Watkins, James Hobbs, Julie Bolus,
Isabelle Laliberté, Olha Pryymak and Nathan Brenville

Our thanks to the Silvertown Partnership for inviting us. 

Across London's rooftops

Towards the Barbican

Here are two drawings from the recent London Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl around St Paul's Cathedral. They are both from the roof terrace of the hideous One New Change shopping centre, right across the road from the cathedral. The complex's redeeming feature, as the developers must have known when they were trying to get permission to build it, is the spacious terrace on the top floor, which has great views across the city. When it costs more than £100 to get a family of four to the top of the Shard, this is an excellent, free but much much lower alternative. The dome of St Paul's seems so close you could touch it.

Towards Tate Modern

From Blackfriars Bridge

My cycling commute homeward takes me north over Blackfriars Bridge, close to Tate Modern. Looking east, Blackfriars railway station has recently been extended to stretch from bank to bank; its solar roof provides half of the station's energy. What I have always enjoyed about this view, from the safely of the cycle lane or during windswept interludes halfway across, is the way just a handful of London's most recognisable buildings poke up from behind the station. From the left come the Barbican towers, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower 42 (the old NatWest tower), the Cheesegrater with the Gherkin almost hidden behind…

…then the curvy lines of the new Walkie Talkie, before a gap for the river Thames beneath us (and the spine of the book), and then the pointy Shard, the brick tower of Tate Modern and finally its ziggurat-esque extension, due to open next year.

Look west, and this bridge is one of the best places to view sunsets in London (weather permitting, terms and conditions apply) – but somehow I like these views to the east just as much.

Millbank: the campaign commences

So the general election campaign is underway, something that was very apparent as I cycled through Westminster yesterday, with helicopters overhead, the prime minister heading off to the palace, and TV crews putting up temporary studios on the green across the road from the Houses of Parliament, one for the BBC, and the other for Sky. Allegra Stratton from BBC2's Newsnight was being filmed at a desk behind me as I drew this. My enthusiasm to keep out of shot meant Big Ben remains barely visible on the right hand side of the drawing.

100 postcards in a box

Gabriel Campanario's hugely successful book The Art of Urban Sketching was published in 2012, and I was lucky enough to have my drawings included in it. Now comes a boxed set of 100 postcards of different images from the book – again including something by me – on sale in the UK from 2 April 2015 (Quarry, £12.99), and already out in the US. It's a great collection of scenes from every continent and 30 countries drawn on location by many of my favourite urban sketchers.
It's a tricky one: are they too good to post to people, or so good that they shouldn't be kept in a box but shared through the post? 

The 1967 Ford Mustang comes fifth

When did I start drawing cars? The 1967 Ford Mustang, above, has just come fifth in a poll of Britain's favourite classic cars – my drawing of it is featured on the website of the survey's findings, which was commissioned by The Car Buying Service. Number one, not surprisingly, went to the Jaguar E-Type (below). My great aunt Nelly lived on Brown's Lane, Coventry, where E-Types were made and test driven, and my brothers and I would sit on her gate and watch them go by when we went to visit her.
Did I vow then to have one when I grew up? No I didn't. Bikes and buses are much more up my street.

Around the Victoria and Albert Museum

London's Urban Sketchers met up to draw in and around the Victoria and Albert Museum on Saturday. It was a great turn-out, helped by springlike weather. I stayed outside to draw for most of it, around South Kensington tube station (above), and across the road from the museum in Thurloe Square (below). The museum's first director, Henry Cole, lived in the house on its corner. It would have been an easy commute for him in the 19th century – easier than now, when crossing four lanes of speeding, outsized 4x4s and tour buses is required.

Coming soon: a new book

I have a new book out in a few months' time about drawing your way to your dream garden. (Yes, that's my back garden on the cover.)

Click on the cover to get a glimpse of what's inside.

I'll be blogging about it more in time, as well as tweeting and posting on Instagram. Follow me there.

Signing Sketch Your World at the Mall Galleries

I'm happy to say I'll be signing copies of Sketch Your World on Thursday 5 March at the Mall Galleries, London, from 3pm. I'll be there with Katherine Tyrrell, who will be signing copies of her new book, Sketching 365. (There is even a reduced price deal for anyone buying both books before 4pm on that date.)

Katherine and I will be bringing some of our sketchbooks, and will be very happy to talk about all things drawing. The signings will coincide with a Pastel Society event from 6pm to 9pm – details of entry are here – with music by David Buckingham on guitar.

And I'll be able to tell you more about my forthcoming book, Dream, Draw, Design My Garden, which is published soon. Here's a glimpse. I'll be posting more details here shortly.

For more details and directions, visit the Mall Galleries website. I hope to see you there.

What I drew at the British Museum

Gold cape, 1900-1600BC, found Mold, Wales, 1833

I had a day drawing at the British Museum last Saturday with London's Urban Sketchers, and found myself drawing the kind of things I don't usually do. Of course, the scale of what is on display is immense – around eight million objects are viewed by more than six million visitors a year. The museum may have been crowded, but it is still possible to get an object to draw quietly for a while without feeling you are getting in the way.

Even the Mold Cape has a space by a pillar where I could slip in to draw. The cape is not like anything I've seen before. Dug up in Wales in 1883, and more than 3,000 years old, its fragments went to different people when it was discovered, and only slowly, over more than 100 years, was it reassembled as bits of the paper-thin gold made their way to the British Museum to create what it is now. Neil MacGregor, the director of the museum, featured the cape in his Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects in 2010.

Egyptian rooms

Time was limited on Saturday, and there were people to meet and talk to, so it is easy to find yourself sweeping past miraculously saved objects that have similarly intriguing stories. In the Egyptian rooms, the Gayer Anderson cat, with nose and ear piercings, a horus falcon with extraordinary eyes, and the sculpture of the seated man whose name I wrote so quickly I can't read it now caught my eye. Downstairs in Africa, as it were, contemporary work, such as El Anatsui's sculpture that echoes the form of the Mold Cape, made me stop and draw.

Thanks go to Isabel Carmona and Sue Pownall for arranging the day, and to Simone Ridyard – who is included in Sketch Your World and has her own book out soon – who travelled down from Manchester. There are more drawings from the day on the London Urban Sketchers Facebook page. Monthly gatherings are planned through the rest of the year.

Entrance to the British Museum is free, even in our age of austerity.

Sketchbooks at the Museum

London's Urban Sketchers are meeting up at the British Museum on this Saturday, 7 February 2015 from 11.30am to 3.30pm. (This drawing is of the museum's courtyard with the lovely Centre Point rearing up in the distance.) Everybody's welcome. Just bring things to draw on and with, and come and say hello. There are lots of places to warm up, and it's all very relaxed.

There's more information on the London Urban Sketchers website, if you want it. And join the London Urban Sketchers new Facebook page.

Mole Man's house, Dalston

I stopped to draw the Mole Man's house in Mortimer Road, Dalston, as I cycled home the other day. It's been like a building site for years, but now there is activity above ground as it is developed for the artists Sue Webster and Tim Noble, who were reported to have bought it at auction before Christmas. It was previously the home of William Lyttle, aka Mole Man, who tunnelled beneath it in all directions over more than 40 years, until complaints led to his eviction. (He was rehoused in a flat and, with nowhere to dig, was dead within a few years.)
Papers report that the architect David Adjaye, who designed the forthcoming National Museum of African American History and Culture in the National Mall, Washington, DC, among other buildings, is overseeing the development, although it doesn't look anything special yet, apart from being a shrine to scaffolding and corrugated iron.

Euro-Coaster, Winter Wonderland, Hyde Park

The big winter fair in Hyde Park over Christmas, called Winter Wonderland, had this roller coaster among the labyrinthine commercial sprawl. Euro-Coaster? Get on that, Nigel Farage.

I drew these on a recent numbingly cold sketchcrawl with London's Urban Sketchers: why not drop in on the group's new Facebook group page.

Christmas on James Street

The 73 bus at the end of our road runs to Oxford Street and there are still some presents to be bought, so we head on down. What possesses anyone to shopping there at Christmas? We take a break at a quiet cafe down James Street as darkness falls.
Season's greetings! I'll be posting images on Instagram and Twitter over the break, do drop in and follow me if that's your thing.
Have you just been given a copy of Sketch Your World? Visit its Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/sketchyourworld

From Piccadilly to Docklands

At Waterstones Piccadilly

It was a busy weekend this week, first at Waterstones Piccadilly's first art book fair, where it was great to meet publishers, writers, artists and book lovers in Europe's biggest bookshop, and sign copies of Sketch Your World. I sat with Owen Gildersleeve, the author of Paper Cut – he cut paper rather more meticulously than I drew the scene through the crowds to the Tate Publishing desk opposite.

The O2 arena across the Thames from Trinity Buoy Wharf, London

The following day London's Urban Sketchers joined the Dining Room Drawing Club at Trinity Buoy Wharf at Draw Britain Now organised by the Campaign for Drawing. The wharf is post industrial, right across the river from the O2 arena, the home of London's only lighthouse, and hosting work by 23 artists shortlisted for the 2014 John Ruskin Prize (the exhibition continues until 30 November). The rain came, and it started getting dark in mid afternoon, but there was still a lot of drawing going on when we met to compare work at the end of the day. (The Fatboy Diner got a lot of sheltering custom that afternoon.) The wharf is a great place to visit – I'm going back.

Book signing at Waterstones Piccadilly

The view from a Piccadilly cafe

Waterstones Piccadilly is hosting the first Piccadilly Art Book Fair on Saturday 15 November at its five-storey bookshop in the centre of London – Europe's largest bookshop — and I'll be there signing copies of Sketch Your World. (The store is about a two-minute walk along Piccadilly from where I drew the cover image for the book.)

The fair runs from 1pm to 5pm, is free, and a great chance to meet artists and authors, get involved in drawing workshops and see what great art books are out now. Come along and say hello. I'm taking some sketchbooks. Bring some of your own to show me!

There's more information at the Waterstones website.

The following day, Sunday 16 November, there is a London Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl at Trinity Buoy Wharf, in the East End. There's more information about that at the London USk website. I hope to see you there, also.

Out now: Sketch Your World in Chinese

I'm not sure I saw this coming when it was first published ten months ago, but with the recent release of a Chinese edition, Sketch Your World is now available in six languages.

Along with English editions in the UK, US and Asia, it has also been published in French, German, Korean and Taiwanese.

The US edition has recently been reprinted, and the UK edition has been reprinted three times.

There is more on this Facebook page about Sketch Your World, or follow me on Twitter and Instagram. I'll be posting shortly about some forthcoming events.

Gabriel Campanario's new book

Gabi's new book

I am happy to say that I have a drawing in Gabriel Campanario's new book The Urban Sketching Handbook: Architecture and Cityscapes published in November (US) and December (UK) by Quarry. Gabi is the founder of Urban Sketchers, a staff artist at the Seattle Times, and the author of The Art of Urban Sketching (2012, Quarry).

This new book, the first in a series on urban sketching, comes in a format that matches Moleskine's A5-sized sketchbook, complete with elasticated band. It's easy to imagine it being dropped into a bag with drawing equipment by people on their way out.

Melanie Reim's drawing on the left, mine on the right

A few other old mates also have their work in the book:

• Inma Serrano, who I met in London this summer

• Simone Ridyard, who I kind of met over different microphones when we were on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live earlier this year, and

• Melanie Reim, who I met in New York a couple of years ago.

Many of these, and Gabi, have drawings in Sketch Your World.