Burford is sometimes known as ‘the gateway to the Cotswolds’. Like other popular Cotswold towns, it can often be a bit overwhelmed with parked cars and traffic – especially on a Bank holiday weekend. It can also sometimes be quite daunting to draw here – if you can find a space and your view isn’t too full of cars. Luckily, I managed to visit the town on a quieter day and found a spot to draw from, across the main road from the Cotswold Arms, one of Burfords’ many fine old stone-built pubs.

Here is a view of the pub…

… and here is my drawing in progress. I initially focused on the rough shape of the building, the windows and doors, trying to get some contrast between these and that Cotswold stonework.

I arrived quite late in the afternoon and then found the shops around me all closing up at 5pm with the place becoming a lot quieter – good for sketching! Here is a scan of that drawing.

Later, drawing from the above photos, I decided to add some more detail and firm up some of those lines. Here’s the resulting drawing:

I then also added some simple watercolour to produce the painting below: