It seems to have rained almost every day for three months now. As an urban sketcher- or pretty much any kind of outdoor sketcher – this kind of cramps your style and limits what you can or might want to sketch. One solution is to find a nice cafe, get a beverage of some sort and do your sketching there ! In the case of this post that meant going into Oxford on an overcast wintry day, getting a seat next to the big windows of the John Lewis cafe and drawing my view of the Westgate Centre.

Here is my view from the comfort of the cafe…

… and here is my sketch, below.

The more observant of you might notice my sketch has an extra decoration – the Ox’s head surrounded by stars and other decorations (centre left). This is what prompted me to do this drawing in the first place. It’s a large hanging Christmas decoration, with the Ox being one of the symbols representing the city – as in Ox(en) ford – the city being named after an old fording point, which is probably somewhere near what is now Folly Bridge. Here’s a close up.

There being no particular shortage of rainy days I went back on another Sunday after the Christmas holidays and the decorations having been taken down, to finish my sketch and take the photo above.