As a change to sketching and drawing in the centre of Oxford I will sometimes venture out a little to explore different areas. One of these is along the Cowley Road. This has a colourful collection of eateries, fast food places, charity shops, bicycle shops, pubs, coffee shops and convenience stores. It is a bit less well-heeled than some other parts of the city but is an interesting and colourful area -as long as you don’t mind a bit of ‘street culture’. There are also some interesting buildings, often reflecting the area’s changes and development over the past 100 years or so. It is a good spot for some urban sketching.

I choose to sketch one of the many shops – the Zaid store, including a large billboard on the side of the building. Here is a photo of this view…

… and an initial sketch in-situ.

Later, I turned this into a watercolour sketch, below.

A while after finishing the above sketch I decided to go back and take some more photographs, concentrating on the shop window – with the idea of producing a more detailed drawing of this.

Now there was a different poster…

Here is my photo of a side view of the Zaid shop

An initial sketch..

… and my finished watercolour sketch.