With the weather closing down as we head towards the winter solstice it becomes harder to go out and do some sketching. Perhaps I should just toughen up – more layers, more hats and scarfs – that sort of thing. Or I could just indulge in some more sketching from a car. This is not something that I’ve done a lot of but it does have some obvious advantages – like not having to go out in all that weather.

On my travels around Oxford I’ll sometimes go around to the Botley Road. This is on the western side of the city and partly cut off from the rest of the city by a massively over-running infrastructure project at the railway station. I’ll not go into that but I’m sure the people of Botley and particularly the local business’s might have something to say on the subject. But- hey! – this is Oxford and despite everything there is still an extensive building programme going on. On the Botley Road this includes a big new concrete and steel office block (or whatever it is) along with its attendant construction cranes. I quite like cranes so took the opportunity to sit in the car in the car park of a well known electrical technology store – and do some sketching.

Here is my view

By the way – those cranes are pretty complicated things when it comes to drawing them, particularly when they have a habit of moving around during working hours. The construction crew seemed to be doing a good job as a whole new bit of building was added while I was sketching.

Here is my sketch. this is just a scan of my sketchbook, relatively un-cleaned-up – but you get the idea.

I include below links to a couple of other sketches of cranes around Oxford for comparison.

Oxford – The Boswell’s Crane

Sketching Oxford North

Oxford cranes – at the Observatory

From a big barn to a ruined barn – sketching outside of Oxford