On the northern outskirts of Oxford they are building what is called the Oxford North ‘Innovation district’ . This will be a mixture of offices and laboratories with additional houses with some small park areas. Possibly its main feature is ‘The Big Red barn’ – which is likely to be more offices in something that looks a little bit like a barn. On the other side of the A34 ring road there is also a proposed brand new football stadium so all together it it is a pretty big development.
For the past couple of years it has been one big building site but over the past year the frame of the larger buildings have been going up. As you go past on the A34, the mixture of the concrete and steel framework with two tall cranes is quite striking. As an ‘urban artist’ I thought a Sunday afternoon was a good time to go and have a look and do some sketching.
After a bit of looking around, I selected a spot near to the Wolvercote roundabout and started drawing. Here is my view and my initial sketch.
The road in the foreground of these pictures is the A40 from Oxford to Witney and stations west. Commuters from Witney into Oxford will be quite familiar with the long tailbacks here and there was a steady queue of traffic heading into Oxford as I drew. if you look a little closer you will see I’ve added a very basic sketched bus – you only get about a second or two to draw these vehicles as they progress.
Later, after scanning and some tidying up, here is my finished sketch.
At this stage the sun was starting to go so I moved on to the nearby village of Yarnton to draw something a little bit older. in this case that was the Old School House, but that will be the subject of another post.
For those of you that would like to explore further here are a couple of links to previous posts
OxfordArtist 