Tuesday 10 May: The Olden Garden, Whistler Street, Highbury N5 1NH

On Tuesday May 10 we will be visiting the Olden Community Garden in Highbury, where we have been kindly given permission to come and sketch.   This is a real secret garden entered from a door in a high wall (opposite Number 22 Whistler Street). The Garden is a long strip alongside one of Islington's many railway lines, sloping downwards to the tracks and facing more or less westerly.  Hidden from the charming Whistler Street by the wall, there is a lawn, much planting, a summer house, pergola arches, lots of small vegetable patches, fruit trees, small terraced paths, greenhouse/s, and a woodland area.   The Garden will be gorgeous in May, with hopefully lots of glancing sunshine through the trees.   There will also be figure drawing possibilities as that day the volunteer gardeners will be in operation.   More details can be found here:

There is also  a loo, and a community room.  Artists' lunch must be brought in advance as we will stay there for the day.  (There is a Tesco Express at 71 Drayton Park, according to the internet, if anyone forgets.) The Garden closes at 4 pm.   We are sure that donations will be appreciated.

We will meet at 11 o'clock inside the Garden, the gate will be unlocked. 

The Garden is close to Drayton Park train station and the more widely known Emirates football stadium.  If you look at the map, you will see the railway line running south from Drayton Park station and just beside the word Park, you will see Whistler Street, which is a sort of triangle, very small in actuality.  The Garden is the sliver beside the railway track.  A better map can be found here:      The nearest Tube stations are Arsenal and Highbury and Islington, both 10 - 20 minutes' walk away.  It will be quicker to get on a bus going up or down the Holloway Road and get off as close as possible to the junction of Liverpool Road and Drayton Park.  Parking will be impossible as controls operate all day.

We suggest you bring your sketching stools and an umbrella.  There are various places to sit under cover, but they may not be where you want to be, and the summer house will not accommodate very many of us.  We are of course, hoping that the weather will be balmy! 

Looking forward to a lovely painting day.   Sue's telephone number for the day will be:07975 864142.

 

 

Visit to Granary Square on Tuesday 19 April 2022

11 sketchers came to Granary Square, the large open area in the centre of the vast redevelopment behind Kings Cross and St Pancras railway stations.  For some, it was a first visit, and for everybody it was wonderful to see the area more or less finished and largely free of construction operations.   It appears that everything which could be preserved has been kept, which includes various huge iron gasholders as well as a number of Victorian warehouses associated with the canal and the need for huge quantities of coal to keep steam engines running.    Consequently, there was quite a selection of architectural features to incorporate into our artwork, including the Regent's Canal and associated locks.   Our artists ranged widely, and have sketched quite a few of these features, and also bits of the new architecture. Two even caught what is left of the view of the iconic railway stations, now sandwiched between the many vast apartment and office blocks to the south of the canal.   And some drew the many people who were out and about enjoying the spring day.

Granary Square is clearly a place of artistic opportunity, and we are sure that we will go back before long. 

Image below by Daniel Lloyd-Morgan

  Image below by Priscilla Worley

Image below by Feroze Antia

Image below by Janet Payne

Two images below by Christian Cook

 

Image below by Maggie Pettigrew

Image below by Feroze Antia
 

Image below by Tricia Sharpe

 Two images below by Lindsay Topping

 

Image below by Sue Lees

Image below by Diane Umemoto

Image below by Daniel Lloyd-Morgan

Four images below by Lindsay Topping
 

 

 Image below by Pam Rigdon

 

Image below by Sue Lees

 

Image below by Feroze Antia

 

And finally, a flower by Avis Dennis who was unable to get to Granary Square.
 

 

 

 

Granary Square on Tuesday 19 April

Our next outing is to Granary Square, just north of Kings Cross. Post code N1C 4AA.

This is a short walk from Kings Cross station, north along Kings Boulevard and across Goods Way. Immediately after the Goods Way crossing there is a bridge over the Regents Canal. Cross the bridge and meet at 11 am to the left of the bridge at the top of the steps leading down to the canal. The steps are wide with people sitting on them in good weather and enjoying being outside. Not impossible to miss but the steps are there!!

Sketch Janet did last year of people sitting on the steps watching Wimbledon on a giant screen.

Granary Square  is also accessible from the buses on York Way.

Granary Square is a lively area with restaurants, cafes, fountains and wet children who run through the fountains. The University of the Arts occupies one side of the square and Coal Drops Yard with its shops and cafes is adjacent to the square. There is still construction taking place on nearby sites. Again another sketch by Janet from last year.

In case of rain the "Canopy Market" in the north east corner of the square is covered. The Waitrose next to the Canopy Market has customer toilets, and also snack lunch choices.

There are benches but best to bring a sketching stool if you can. Plenty of choice for lunch including stalls and cafes but not the cheapest.

Pics to susan@lees.org.uk. Sue's number for the day is 07975 864142.

And finally one more pic from the RAF Museum at Hendon from Maggie Pettigrew.

Our Visit to the RAF Museum

On 15 March 2022 seven artists made their way to Colindale and onwards to the RAF Museum. It was a beautiful early Spring day, not too cold with glorious sunshine. Colindale proved to be a major redevelopment area with lots of new high rise flats, complete with the usual gym and Costa. The bus or a brisk walk from the station took us to the RAF Museum, which occupies several modern hangars plus a large and largely empty car park.

There were not too many visitors but there were parties of primary school children in 'hi vis' being marshalled round the site. They enjoyed the specially plane shaped equipment in the play ground.

There was no map available of the rather large site but we hung on through the hangars to find suitable scenes to sketch. There were some tiny planes that only one person could sit in and some huge science fiction flying machines that certainly struck fear into your organiser.

One artist used to work at the Museum as an intern in the Art Department many years ago and so was able to describe what the museum used to be like.

The site was very impressive with lots to draw and learn. We had lunch outdoors in the cafe in warm sunshine and shared drawing tips, as well as drawing!!

Sue Lees

Audrey Rapier

Gill Steiner

Pam Rigden

Janet Payne

Janet Perkins

And a photo of a seaplane which features in Janet Payne's and Audrey Rapier's drawings above

Audrey Rapier has submitted a pic from our visit to the Museum of the Order of St John.

Almost never too late to submit a pic

Friday 4 March 2022: Visit to the Museum of the Order of St John, Clerkenwell

 A dozen sketchers presented themselves at the antique entrance to the Museum of the Order of St John in Clerkenwell, to a warm welcome from Amie Hampsheir-Gill, our guide for the day.   It was a truly fascinating place.  We were taken upstairs into the sixteenth century chambers, plus the much larger Chapter Hall which was built around 1900 in traditional style.  The original building had been built by the Knights of St John (the Hospitallers) in early Tudor times, but was lost to the Order as part of Henry VIII's  reformation seizures.  A deeply traumatic moment, reflected in the effigy of the prior of the time, who died under the shock of the loss; we saw his bony effigy in the Crypt (Norman and slightly later).

The Knights of St John's headquarters for several centuries was in Malta.   Although our artists did not really focus on this part of the history, being preoccupied with getting on with their sketches, the heroic effort by the Knights and the Maltese who held off the vast navy of the Sultan of the Ottomans, the Mediterranean superpower of their day,  in a terrible siege of the Island in 1565, has a resonance right now.    The Knights and the Maltese fought off a much larger aggressor then: the Ukrainians have the determination to do it today.

When we were taken across to the Priory Church, as well as the skeletal effigy of Sir William Weston (noted above), we saw the effigy in full armour (plus lion and pageboy) of Don Juan Ruiz de Vergara, who died fighting the Turks at sea off Marseilles later in the century, and might have also been at the Great Siege, this is not clear from the literature. 

Due to the sensitive nature of the buildings, we were asked to use only dry materials while on the premises, but some artists pre-prepared their paper in advance, and some applied paint (and possibly other materials) afterwards.   Many aspects of the Museum and Church caught our eye, it was difficult to decide which area to focus on.  Our artists' work reflects the multiplicity of choices.

We very much appreciate the generosity of the Museum of the Order of St John in allowing us to sketch in their spaces, and the helpfulness of our guide, Amie.   We also very much enjoyed hearing something of the history of the buildings and of the Order, which over the centuries has evolved from its knightly origins into the much loved St John's Ambulance Brigade and also runs an eye hospital in Jerusalem.    We hope very much to come back in the future to sketch and to learn more more of the history.

We had one continental visitor with us on this occasion, who kindly pointed out that down in the Cote d'Azur there is a very active urban sketcher group based in Nice, which we would be very welcome to join in with if visiting this lovely part of France.  One day!

Enjoy our images:

Image below by Priscilla Worley:

Image below by Janet Payne: 

Image below by Pam  Rigdon:

Image below by Sue Lees:

 Images below by Audrey Rapier:

 

Audrey Rapier was able to complete this oil on gesso board painting below at home later based on her sketches:

Images below by Marianne Heredge:

Image below by Daniel Lloyd-Morgan

 Image below by Diane Umemoto:

Image below by Gill D'Ambrosio:

 Image below by Gill Steiner:

Image below by Daniel Lloyd-Morgan:

 Image below by Audrey Rapier: 

Image below by Gill D'Ambrosio:

 Image below by Sue Lees: