London Walk

Our Thursday outing in London (galleries, Dr. Johnson's house, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese) required a lot of walking, but fortunately we'd planned the day so that everything was within a reasonable distance.

The walk gave us a chance to see some street sights that we would miss in the Underground.

On the walk from the Saatchi Gallery to the National Portrait Gallery we passed Buckingham Palace. It's going to be long time before anyone here forgets Queen Victoria (above).

We walked for a while down Fleet Street, a historic area for newspapers and publishers. Love the mosaic message on the side of this building.

Kids at Trafalgar Square, where the National Gallery is located (and the National Portrait Gallery).

No idea what this building is, but I'm impressed, even if it is one of the smaller ancient buildings we've passed.

Not many adobe buildings here. Stone seems more popular. Probably a good idea.

Intriguing poster, but we didn't have time to see the exhibit at The National Gallery. There's way too much to see here.

Looks kinda windy in that store. 

More photos in the next article, London Walk 2.

Saatchi Gallery

Most of yesterday's plans ended up on the "done" list, but not all. When we arrived at the National Portrait Gallery for the Lucian Freud painting exhibit, around 3:00 pm, we discovered they were selling tickets for a 5:00 entrance time. Because we had plans to go to Samuel Johnson's house at 3:30, then meet friend Lynn at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese at 5:30, we had to postpone the Freud visit. But we've already bought online tickets for 10:30 am on January 20th.

After spending time today going through yesterday's photos, I've divided them into several different articles: Saatchi Gallery, London Walk, Samuel Johnson's House, and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

The Saatchi Gallery is on the cutting edge of modern art. Also the cutting edge of crappy art, but I'm not referring to the piece here, which is one of the more beautiful pieces currently being exhibited.

An unidentified woman is mesmerized by the greatness of the art, or maybe just by the size of it. Even though I sound cynical, I actually like this piece. Just needs to be a tiny bit larger.

This exhibit is part of their permanent collection. A room half full of oil. In the museum's previous location, the room's windows were lower and the oil covered the bottom half of the windows. I guess they spilled too much oil when they moved to their new location.

This looks like I'm standing in front of a painting, but Robin just happened to take my picture as I was having a brilliant idea.

A bored man or art? At the Saatchi it's difficult to know.

High praise to Zhivago for art-name honesty.  

What Michelangelo's nightmares must have been like.

Plumbing project or art? Art.

This is why I never work this large.

Some paintings just don't work well in a small room.

Could be just a teeny bit larger. Otherwise, very nice.

When possible, put larger and smaller paintings in the same room.

Yes, lady, it's weird.

One of the Saatchi exhibits was a collection of covers and photos from the past 50 years of The Sunday Times Magazine. Lots of stunning photos in large format, backlit frames. Above, Boy George.  

Powerful photos.

One of the featured photos is a bingo game in Roswell, New Mexico. I've been there and this is just an ordinary everyday Roswell scene. Come on guys, just use the special stuff.

Another piece of art I like. 

Who knew? Some of the best artists at the Saatchi are working in the gallery cafe. Artsy and tasty.

Istanbul Adventure Alert

February 25-28. 

Stay tuned...

Another Brunel Class Day

Robin's class was rescheduled from Wednesday to today, to accommodate some student scheduling issues, including a make-up class session for one of the students. While Robin taught classes, I found a quiet spot, did some writing for a couple of hours, then joined her class for the last hour or so.

Robin uses one of the library computers after class to look up some Shakespeare books she needs to check out.

On the way back to the flat, we (Wally, Maria, Robin, & me) stopped at the Metropolitan for dinner, a couple of pitchers of Woo Woo (above) and a couple of pints of cider.

Our occasional cat grabs a nap on the couch. He/she seems to have several apartments lined up and available.

No plans for tomorrow, but Thursday we're going in to London early to visit the Saatchi Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. The Saatchi is always guaranteed to be an interesting, if not weird, experience. And the National Portrait Gallery has an exhibit of Lucian Freud paintings. Lucian, son of the famous Sigmund Freud, died just last year and was considered the pre-eminent British painter of his time. His paintings are amazing, so we're looking forward to an inspiring visit there.

After visiting the galleries, we have dinner reservations at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a famous pub on Fleet Street. Our friend Lynn, from Oxford, and her son James are meeting us there for dinner. According to Wikipedia "this pub continues to attract interest due to the curious lack of natural lighting inside which generates its own gloomy charm." 

Gloomy charm. Definitely gotta sample that.

Some of the "regulars" at the Cheshire Cheese were Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Mark Twain, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's assumed that Samuel Johnson  must have been a regular here also, because he lived nearby. In 1755, after nine years of work, Samuel Johnson published A Dictionary of the English Language.

Speaking of Samuel Johnson, after dinner at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese we're taking a tour of his nearby house. Sounds like there will be plenty of photo ops on Thursday.

Monday Morning Moon Meeting

Monday Morning Moon Meeting. It's a confusing title, I know, but alliteration in headlines makes you look smarter.

Or is that not working? Maybe not.

In any case, we met Jon Moon for coffee at Costas coffee shop in Uxbridge's town centre. Jon is a consultant, an author, and a leading authority on document clarity and impact. His book, titled How to make an impact, is a regular in Amazon's top books on communicating and presenting. He and Robin have known each other for a while through email, so Jon came to Uxbridge to meet her in person and to chat.

Jon's a very cool guy, friendly, with lots of interesting conversation. We've planned to get together again before we return home. He lives closer in to London, 20 or 30 minutes from here.

Jon brought Robin's book, The Non-Designer's Presentation Book, for her to sign.

A good visit. Good coffee also. Or, to continue a theme, literally lovely lattes.

From the coffee shop we made the short walk to Sainsburys, bought a rolling cart full of groceries, and walked back to the flat.

Robin (on the wine aisle) with the rolling cart we use to drag groceries back to the flat (wine bottles are heavier than I noticed back home... when I was driving to the store and back).

Why don't we have these grocery carts at Albertsons in Santa Fe? They roll sideways as easily as back and forward. 

Sketches & Sketchers, Part Two

OK, I'm getting wild and crazy now: white chalk on black paper. 

At the end of the day we all took our drawings into another room, taped them to a wall, and held a brief exhibit. I can now say that I've studied Shakespeare and exhibited at the Battersea Art Centre, in London. I'm officially big-time.

This is either a cute, young London artist, or Hollywood Casting planted her here to play the part of a cute, young London artist. Notice the quintessential torn leggings... big Hollywood clue.

A very London experience. 

When drawing gets out of control...

I went to the other room to get my coat and bag. When I came back nearly all the drawings and people were gone. Must have sold everything really fast.

Thanks to BAC, London Drawing, and Spirited Bodies (they provided the models) for a memorable Saturday.

Sketches & Sketchers, Part One

There were two rooms to sketch in. The smaller room had a couple of models in it. The larger room had at least a dozen models posing all at once. Later in the day more models showed up and joined in. I stayed in the large room since there was more than I could draw anyway.

The variety of styles being used during the day-long sketch session was amazing. The photos below show some of the participants and some of the drawings. As you can see, some people get creative and experimental. London Drawing likes to encourage innovative, experimental, and creative stuff.

Me too, but mainly I just like to draw. And wish I could draw like Manet, Degas, and Toulouse Lautrec.

Very nice. I like this one a lot.

A mid-morning exhibition of sketches. 

Redhead model. 

When I got back to the flat and tried to photograph my drawings, the terrible lighting of the apartment made it impossible to get good photos of the sketches, which were originally drawn with black and white charcoal on pinkish-mauve colored paper. So I converted all the photos to sepia tone (above) to hide the weird color casts that were showing up in the photos. 

More of my drawings below (the sepia ones), but first, some of my favorites by other artists:

Back to old-school drawing (click an image to see a larger version):