Sketching the Martyrs’ Monument, Oxford

September 15, 2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

The Martyrs’ Monument is an elaborate structure on St. Giles’, just outside the old city North Gate. Nowadays, it is largely a spot for tourists, locals or maybe the city’s homeless to sit and have a sandwich or maybe wait for a bus. It is also quite elaborate and difficult to draw, but I thought […]

The Waterstones building, Oxford. Pt. 2

September 13, 2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Last week I posted a drawing of the Waterstones Bookshop in Oxford and was going to also post a watercolour of this drawing – but was rather overtaken by events. Here is that post. Below is my original sketch. If you are wondering, the large object to the left is a traffic sign – and […]

Castle Cars, Oxford

September 11, 2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

This weekend it has been the annual Oxford ‘Open Doors’ where various colleges and other institutions open their doors to the public for a limited time. This year I ventured around a couple of the smaller colleges, doing a couple of drawings as I went, before visiting the Oxford Castle. Here there were a small […]

Sketching the Oxford Waterstones

September 8, 2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I ventured into Oxford to have a look around and do some sketching. The city is noticeably busier now that the summer holidays are over and the schools are back. I set up to draw the Waterstones building near the City’s old North Gate and luckily was […]

The Stables at Tackley Manor

September 7, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

Tackley is a village a couple of miles off the main Oxford to Banbury road. One striking thing about the western side of the village is that it obviously developed around the 17th-century Manor. There is a small triangular green and a row of houses fronted by some rather grand windows and it is not […]