Some quick sketches done on location in East London – three at Museum Gardens, Bethnal Green, and the final one at Victoria Park.
Sketching in East London
Author: Jo Dungey
Out and about in London
As a consequence of the pandemic lockdown, I did not visit central London between mid March and early August. More recently, I have taken some sketching trips with friends, sometimes visiting places like the Tower of London, which are unusually quiet now. Here are some recent location sketches of Butlers Wharf, the City skyline, the gates of Lincoln’s Inn, and the Temple Church.
Return to Kew Gardens
I have been sketching again at Kew Gardens, in the Temperate House and the Princess of Wales Conservatory, as it was a day of heavy rain. I experimented with water soluble coloured pencils, on backgrounds of random watercolour.
At Kew Gardens
Yesterday, I was painting at Kew Gardens, in London, with friends. We also visited on a very hot day last week, shown above. Kew has a famous gallery of botanical art, superbly skilled work in the very precise style, originally developed as a method of scientific recording. I was trying to paint watercolour sketches in a freer, more painterly style, more about atmosphere than precision. Well, that is the idea, here are some sketches from yesterday, painted on location.
And here is a scan of the painting which is in the photograph at the top of this post.
A sunny morning
Today I have been at the Horniman Museum gardens in South London. I had a small pack of cards and envelopes made of Khadi paper, a handmade watercolour paper from India. I found a quiet place to sit overlooking the formal gardens, seen above. Without much plan of what I would do, I started with a very conventional view of the flowers. I then decided to simplify and enlarge the images, and to start with backgrounds based on the formality of the rows and angles of the flower beds, adding flowers to these backgrounds, working quite quickly.
Outdoor sketching again
As a consequence of the pandemic and the lockdown, I went several months without sketching on location in London or elsewhere. However, cautiously, I and my friend Lis Watkins have returned to sketching outdoors near our homes in south London. We are fortunate to have some beautiful parks and gardens which provide safe and reasonably quiet places to draw and paint. Some of Lis’s beautiful work can be seen on her website which has links to her Instagram page and twitter account where her sketches are posted. The locations of my sketches here are, from top to bottom:
- Horniman Gardens (above)
- Walled garden, Horniman Gardens
- Belair House, Dulwich
- Olive tree, Belair House
- Dry Garden, Dulwich Park
- Bell House, Dulwich
This week’s challenge
The project for my watercolour class this week was to paint a landscape influenced by the work of Ivon Hitchens (1893-1979). Hitchens’ most well known works are semi-abstract landscapes painted in oils, and quite large in scale. To take a more bold approach I worked in gouache with quite large, flat brushes. First I painted three smaller studies:
My larger painting is here. An interesting experiment, although not much like the paintings of Hitchens, in either palette or brushstrokes.
Still life in watercolour
This week’s watercolour challenge was to paint a still life influenced by the French painter, Raoul Dufy. His paintings often use a decorative, lyrical line, drawing the subject with a brush, and with bright, light colours – my attempt is above.
A view of Kew Gardens
Above, a watercolour I have done today, a corner of Kew Gardens in London, of the small garden behind Kew Palace. This is based on the last sketch I did out of doors in London, in mid-February this year. A picture of the sketch taken at the location is below:
Yesterday and today I have painted two new versions at home, altering the scene to imagine the changing season, leaving out the archway on the left of the small building. I have been working in watercolour, with a loose wet-on-wet start, followed by some more detailed brushwork. Yesterday’s version is below. I think today’s version is better on the whole, but, as seems inevitable, there are bits of each I would like to see combined in one. I think today’s version has too much fiddly detail in painting the plants and I quite like the areas in the picture below where I have outlined some of the plants with the brush, leaving quite a bit of white paper. The building below is too bright in colour, and should be more muted. Never mind, I am keeping in practice and one day I will be back painting on location again.
A visit to Mirepoix
Mirepoix is a small town in southern France, south-west of Carcassonne. At the centre is a cathedral and a medieval town centre with a busy market place. I’ve visited and sketched there several times. Locked down in London, I have been looking through sketchbooks and decided to use some images to paint new versions of places I have been. Here is the sketchbook page, from July 2018:
I decided I wanted to simplify, and focus on the decorative facades of the buildings, and give a sense of strong light and heat. So the trees, for example, are excluded. The first new version is at the head of this post, and here is my second attempt:
My third version was done very quickly, and leaves out the nineteenth century (I’m guessing) covered market building on the right:
