After recently being away on holiday to Spain I thought I’d revisit Oxford City centre for a bit of Urban sketching.

The area between the new Westgate Shopping centre and the Castle is something of a favourite to sketch. Perhaps it is the contrast between the glittering new shopping centre and the remnants of the older town around it or just the contrast in architectural styles.

I’ve done several sketches and posts of Castle Street including this study of the restaurant on Castle Street and also the Swan and Castle. It’s an area that’s being redeveloped, with the corner of Paradise Street and Castle Street presently being turned into new City centre flats. The striking thing about this is that, when I drew it, it was a mass of concrete and scaffolding.

I was going to draw this from the steps of the Westgate shopping Centre but a) it is quite daunting from an urban sketcher’s perspective and b) the security guards at the Westgate don’t like people sitting on the steps – even if it’s to do a bit of urban sketching!

Instead, I decided to try the view looking the other way from Paradise Street. Here is a photo of that view below:

Here’s a view of my sketch in-situ:

And here’s a scan of my drawing:

That’s about it for this post – there is more – I will do another post when I turn this view into a watercolour!