Last weekend, was the Oxford ‘Open Doors’ – where some of the colleges, other notable buildings and landmarks are open to the public for a few hours.

After visiting a couple of smaller colleges, I took a wander around The Bodleian Library’s’ Old Quad and decided to draw the ornate Tower of the Five Orders. Here is a view of the tower. Being a Saturday it was fairly busy with quite a few tour groups but, setting up against the west wall, I was relatively ignored.

The Tower gets its name from the five sets of columns on either side of the main tower, each in a different style of classical architecture. The figure enshrined under the canopy near the top is that of King James and commemorates his presentation of a Latin edition of his works to the library in 1620.

Here is my initial sketch in progress and beneath a scan of this drawing.

Later, I decided to go back and complete the drawing, also adding a couple of people seen in my photo (above). Here is the result.