Last Few London Drawings

Sorry I've been away for a little while... I've been packing and moving. Sadly, my time in London is (for the time being) over. I'm sure to be back, however - my girlfriend and I love this city! We returned to Canada a few days ago and are still getting adjusted to life back on this side of the globe. Here are the last few drawings from London, done during a shopping trip on Oxford Street. I loved my time in London - what a great city! So much to do there, so much inspiration. However, I'm also happy to be back home. Over the next year I will divide my time between Montreal and Ottawa, so stay tuned for more sketches from two different places! Each city has its own charm: Montreal has great character, interesting people, while Ottawa (the country's capital) has its own character and also beautiful natural spaces. As always the rule will be whatever catches my eye... we'll see what happens! :)

By the way, I am currently working on putting my London drawings into a book - more details to come soon. Also, thanks to exposure from Flickr, it looks like I'll be the subject of a lead feature in an on-line publication called Downtown LA Life Magazine, an arts and culture educational and community magazine that reviews and informs about artists, art, etc and looks to have some pretty cool connections in LA! More information about that coming up too...

And finally, I wanted to say a TEMPORARY goodbye to all the friends I met in London. You made my time there very special! Thank you so much and we'll keep be in touch - I know we will meet up in one place of the globe or another! :)

At the Cafe Nero

This man was sitting with a coffee and cigarette and staring idly at the Strand, a major street in London, during a quiet gap in the traffic. That's a row of telephone booths and a double decker bus behind him (by his head)....

Waiting for... Godot!

It's been a weekend full of theatre for me! The day previous to our Hamlet adventure, and with the same brother I mentioned in the previous picture, we lined up at 6 am in front of the GORGEOUS Haymarket theatre in the heart of London's Theatreland to get tickets for Waiting for Godot. We scored some AMAZING tickets: front row for 10 pounds! In contrast to Jude Law's so-so performance as Hamlet (see other pic), Ian McKellen (aka Gandalf, Magneto) delivered what I can say, without exaggeration, was the best acting I've ever seen on stage! Wow. We even waited around the stage door to get an autograph for my brother. The only downside to that amazing evening was that the other great Shakespearean actor who was on the bill, Patrick Stewart (aka Capt Jean Luc Picard), was unable to perform because of a sore throat. His understudy took the part and was fine, though a bit stiff. What bad luck! But still.... an amazing evening and (again) worth the early morning wait. I call this piece Waiting for... Waiting for Godot :) 

Waiting for... Hamlet

My brother came to visit me in London this past week. He's a big theatre buff and so he somehow got me and my girlfriend to line up at 7am outside the theatre with a bunch of other people. We sat, read the paper, had coffee and chatted until 11, when the box office opened. The play was Hamlet at the beautiful Wyndham theatre. Waiting definitely had its benefits: we got seats in a box about 5 meters from the stage! Hamlet was played by Jude Law... so I got to see him up close. He's alright - not my favourite and actually pretty bad as Hamlet! But the shrieks of the women in the audience at the end smoothed over any criticisms and Jude's beaming face seemed to say "see, I really am as great as all that!" 

New Sketchbook... Same Brushpen

Ok so the unthinkable happened. I ran out of pages in my sketchbook... and forgot to bring a replacement to London with me from Montreal. This might not sound like a big deal but it is - the sketchbook I've been using was PERFECT for its rough pages that gave the brushpen its characteristic texture while holding the ink without bleeding - even when doing the thinnest lines. After a hard day's work of sampling different books (what is it with sketchbooks these days that have almost no "tooth" - smooth as glass plates?) I finally found a decent replacement book. These are the first few drawings from it (I bought it at the London Graphics Centre in Covent Garden so these scenes are all from the C.Garden area). Overall the results are good - it's textured enough to show what the brushpen can do; however, its ink retention leaves something to be desired (you might not notice but these lines all bleed, or "spider," in a way the previous lines in the other book didn't...). Still, I think it was a good buy in a pinch. When I return home in 2 months, I'll be sure to return to my original sketchbook - and probably buy 2 or 3 extras for the future! ............ Anyway, so these drawings are of an outdoor clothing market on Earlham St, Covent Garden (that's a car and bike in the foreground against the post if you didn't notice); of the famous 7 Dials in C. Garden, and finally of three lovely elderly ladies eating and gossiping in a regal looking pub... also in C.G.

Queen's Visit

Going to Britain and not seeing the Queen is like going to Canada and not seeing snow! --- and I can say that because I actually saw her today (for 0.5 seconds as she sped past in a motorcade in the rain). These sketches capture the mood of the various people gathered around.

Girl Checking Herself in the Mirror

One of my favourite images ... typically it was done rather quickly at the end of the day, when I thought I had gotten all my good work out for that day :) 

Watching Football

These were done in a local eatery during the final of the European Championship (final verdict: Barcelona 2-0 Man U...)

In the Library - Part Two

Went to a local library the other day and sketched students studying for their final exams...! At least they kept fairly still :)

In the Library - Part One

Went to a local library the other day and sketched students studying for their final exams...! At least they kept fairly still :)

People in the Park

These are drawings of people in the Lincoln's Inn Field. It was a beautiful sunny day and there were many people out and about!

More from Lincoln's Inn

I've been busy putting these images on my Flickr site (make sure to check it out! Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/tom-pokinko/)... almost forgot to put them up here and hence have a bit of a backlog! The adventure in Holborn continues... more pics from Lincoln's Inn: some buildings (quite beautiful and abstract in their own way), a funny one with a lamppost dead-on obscuring the surrounding Chambers buldings, one of the garbage can in the nearby park (who says a garbage can can't be a great subject? :) and finally two of people - lawyers having pints after work and a man waiting for his taxi...

At the Pub (again!)

Some sketches from the Penderel's Oak on High Holborn. Been feeling like loosening it up lately so did these quick studies, with some patches (top one, of the man reading), some scratches (the middle one), and rather thickly applied ink (the guy's jacket and other bits in the bottom one).

Around Lincoln's Inn

Just because I had a request for it.... here are some initial images from around Lincoln's Inn, near High Holborn. More to come soon... It's a really beautiful part of London with some scenic old buildings (many now converted into law offices and the like) but what got me this time was the great big park in the middle of it. It was here that I settled myself down and sketched what caught my eye: a man watching pigeons wistfully, a row of jolly London taxicabs, and this one man sitting with his friend looking pretty sad. He was telling her something and she was just patiently listening, not really bothered or worried... just listening. This time around I really felt like being loose and dirty - lots of textures, lots of crumbling ink lines against the rough paper. As for the image of the rooftops, it just seemed like a poetic subject to me - silent watchers of the human drama from high above it all... I love the rooftops in London because they give great opportunities to indulge my love of abstract shapes and textures (this drawing is essentially just a series of rectangles set off against each other with different textures and shading). The cathedral dome in the background hopefully lends an air of old world dignity to the rather working-class subject matter...

Hit the Ground Running

While in London I'm hitting the ground running with a little illustration contract for Goodenough College, an academic residence in central London catering to graduate students and their families. This is the cover for their upcoming yearbook. They liked it so much they immediately asked me to provide illustrations of the College for a series of fridge magnets! Never done those before but there's a first time for everything!... This is done in my usual way when it comes to more detailed illustrations: first I draw the subject by hand in my sketchbook with my brush pen, then scan it in and manipulate it, colour it and add textures on my Macbook Pro. In fact this illustration is a composite of three separate sketches: one of the College building, one of the seated couple, and one of the man talking on the phone. Clever viewers will notice I plucked him from my Russell Square drawing (below) ;) For more illustrations like this please visit my website: www.tompokinko.com.

Around High Holborn...

My girlfriend works around Gray's Inn near High Holborn St., downtown London. This is a lamppost I sketched in a small park in Gray's Inn Field on our morning walk to her work. Also included here is a sketch of two men in a pub (The Penderel's Oak - also on High Holborn). I think I captured the contrast in their faces (and characters?) well enough...

First Week in London

Even though my base is Montreal, I travel a lot and bring my sketchbook with me. Starting now, I am spending the next three months living with my girlfriend in the heart of London, UK, so will be adding new sketches from London every week or so. Our place is a quaint one-bedroom flat five minutes from Russell Square (see my R.Square sketch of the businessman - many of them here in London! - relaxing while talking on his mobile). These, then, are the first few sketches from London. As you can tell I have been visiting here and there, keeping an eye out for what I think are exciting visual and design possibilities. I also try to tell a story where I can. I rarely try to capture a touristy scene. Rather, I'm more interested in exciting shapes, textures, and lines, and the way things of the natural world (perhaps a neck line, or the deep shadows within a dark pub) create things of visual interest. Inevitably I draw a lot of interiors... Lately I've been drawn to ever smaller things, like the abstract patterns created by dark patches underneath bush-like trees (where the light doesn't hit) or within confines like windows or corners, vaulted archways... etc. I try to heighten these contrasts by using the brush pen very thickly there. I almost always depart from what the scene actually looks like for the sake of heightening the contrast and making interesting abstract shapes. A good example is the drawing of a wooden bench in front of bushes and trees in the quiet little Heathcote Quad, London House, a part of the building where we are staying.