Tuesday 14 January 2025: The Victory Pub, Unit 1, The Balcony, Waterloo Station, London SE1 8SW

 Our first sketch date for the New Year will be Tuesday 14 January, we have found a new indoor venue, The Victory Pub on the Balcony of Waterloo Mainline Station.   You need to go into the Station, face away from the platforms, and you will see the Balcony.    Artists can sit on the Balcony and look out over the station interior, glazed roof, etc., and passengers both still and moving.  The pub's part of the Balcony features an artificial blossom tree, and inside looks Victorian/Edwardian but is brand new, and there is the major architectural feature of the enormous half moon window that is the top of the Victory Arch.   The Victory Arch entrance to Waterloo was built between 1907 and 1922, and was given its name to commemorate the railwaymen who gave their lives in the first and second World Wars.   

Images can be found here and  here     It is a good sketching location as there are many secluded nooks, hopefully the bar staff will be visible, and also the odd person (one of us) sitting at a table.  

We will meet in the pub at 11 o'clock, they are expecting us and are happy to have us sketch, and we can have lunch there.   The mornings are very empty so we will be able to spread ourselves around, and there are of course the art possibilities of the station proper.  

Meanwhile, we hope that you all have a very Happy Christmas and New Year, we look forward to seeing you in 2025, and indeed in the Victory Pub.

Finally, one further image to encourage you onto the sunlit uplands of your sketching journeys in 2025:

Image above by Sue Lees

Merry Christmas and a Great Sketching New Year for 2025

This December we are not having an outing. Our next outing is on Tuesday 14th January, venue to be confirmed. So we have decided to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Great Sketching New Year from the website.

Artists have sent in their contributions for the festive season. Sometimes Good Wishes and Seasonal Greetings, other times good memories from 2024.

Enjoy!!

Alison Gardner

A drawing she made for an English class for refugee women

Barbara Taylor

Her handmade Christmas cards

Gill Steiner. Collage "Batiko"

Diane Umemoto

Her favourite picture of the year. The last day she was in Thailand last February

Do Burgess

Walberswick on a glorious summer day

Janet Perkins

Lakeside restaurant in Lille

Peter Colley. Memories of a Suffolk Holiday in a Windmill

Lindsay Topping

Jazz on Sunday

Tricia Sharpe

Trinity Buoy Wharf on a glorious summer day

Vanessa Whinney

Christmas Greetings

Tricia Sharpe

Christmas Greetings

Priscilla Worley

Christmas Greetings

Janet Payne. Memories of a great holiday with our son and daughter in-law in Pembrokeshire.

St David's Cathedral

Seasons Greetings from Diana Marshall

Tuesday 19 November: Visit to the Museum of the Home, Hoxton

16 sketchers presented themselves at the Museum of the Home on a very grey and damp day, and we were relieved that we had not decided to take a chance on the weather being good and inflict an outdoor venue on everybody.  Despite this, several people took the outdoors as their theme, mostly through windows or frequently opening glass doors.  (One person came the following day and had better weather.) The great majority went for the warmth and sketched the many set-ups of home life through the ages in the Museum.

We then went out and had a very good Vietnamese lunch at the Song Que restaurant round the corner, and some of us went back to the Museum of the Home for further work.

We are most grateful to the Museum of the Home staff for kindly allowing us to go in and draw and paint in their fascinating building.

We won't be organising a December sketching day as everyone has so much else on at this time of year,  but we will be back with cheering trips out in January and February, with hopefully some extra sessions slotted in.

Meanwhile, enjoy our latest images below, and your later Christmas experiences.

Image above by Gill Steiner

 

 

 

Image above by Diana Marshall

 

 

 

Image above by Evgenia Osmani

Image above by Daniel Lloyd-Morgan

 

 

Image above by Ruijun Hu

 

Image above  by Peter Colley

Image above by Diane Umemoto

Image above by Janet Perkins

Images above by Janet Payne

Three images above by Audrey Rapier

 

 

Two images above by Priscilla Worley

Three images above by Diana Butement

Two images above by Sue Lees

Images above and below by Gafung Wong

                                                Image above by Sinead O'Reilly

Tuesday 19th October our visit to the Museum of the Home

Our next outing is to the Museum of the Home on Kingsland Road. This was previously known as the Geffrye Museum. It started as a collection of almshouses which were repurposed to become a series of rooms reflecting the historical furnishings of the ages. It has had two major refurbishments and extensions. One was more than twenty years ago when the architect Branson Coates introduced a new cafe in a central atrium and revamped one of the almshouse wings to include some more recent rooms, as well as a spiral stair down to some new community rooms. The next refurbishment was by Wright and Wright when the Museum was extended by creating and refurbishing the basement, again with extra rooms.

There is also a lovely historic garden at the back of the Museum. The Museum is free and they are expecting us and even have stools. Their website is www.museumofthehome.org.uk and their address is 136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA. Hoxton Overground Station (trains from Highbury and Dalston) is almost adjacent to the museum, Old Street Station is not far away and Liverpool Street is a short bus ride or walk away.

The Museum has some quite tight spaces as the rooms and corridors in the old almshouses are very small and they have asked that we spread out to avoid blocking through routes for other visitors. No easels. 

There is a Museum cafe but we thought we should visit Song Que at 134 Kingsland Road, which is a popular and reasonably priced local Vietnamese restaurant, very close to the Museum on Kingsland Road. I will reserve a table, but at lunch time they should be able to accommodate us.

Meet in the entrance to the Museum at 11 am

And finally a late image from St Mary le Strand from Audrey Rapier

 

Our outing to St Mary le Strand

It was a rather cold and overcast October day when a dozen sketchers made their way to the newly pedestrianised area of the Strand outside Somerset House, from whence there is good view of St Mary le Strand. This church is no longer isolated on a traffic island and so it is easy for artists to find a good view to sketch from. There are picnic tables and benches on the now traffic free section of the Strand. The benches are much frequented by the students from nearby Kings College, which makes it a very lively venue. Unfortunately the church of St Clement Danes just a bit further away was encased in scaffolding, so this church awaits another IAS outing when the scaffold is down.

One sketcher arrived later, and sketched a Degas statue inside Somerset House. We had lunch in the Somerset House courtyard cafe and braved the outside seating.

David Gilbert, whose garden we drew in September, has asked that he forward our pictures to the National Garden Scheme, which will then link back to the IAS Art in the Park website. If you don't want your picture to be included please let me (janetat48ock@hotmail.com) know by 27 October, otherwise consent will be assumed.

The next outing will be on Tuesday 19th November, venue to be confirmed.

So pictures below:

Chris Baker

Betty Wang

David Gilbert

Diana Marshall

Diane Umemoto

Do Burgess

Gill Steiner

Phoenix Wong

Janet Payne

Sue Lees

Sue Loder