Dimensions
146 x 197 x 30mm
David Gentleman has been drawing London all his adult life. But can you look afresh at the place where you live? Over the past year he has immersed himself in his home city to try to find out. His days have been spent drawing and painting it: the surprising expanse of its changeable skies and the crushed closeness of the tube, as well as the hidden places and unique people from Rainham Marshes to Hampstead Heath.
The resulting book of sketches, drawings and watercolours, arranged month by month, shows a year in the life of London and reveals the city that is hidden in plain view. David's notes on his work offer us a privileged insight into how an artist sees and captures the ever-shifting light and colours, movement and figures of a teeming city as it moves through the seasons. He describes how he chooses techniques and materials to render the spellbound children at his grandchildren's Camden primary school; the spectacular transformation of Hendon's streets from brown to pink to green with April's cherry blossom; the strange world evoked by the city under snow. Through David's eyes we see London anew as he shows us how the sun turns rubbish-strewn ditches into enchanting waterside glades, or how just twenty-two lines on paper can deliver the dazzling complexity of Canary Wharf's windows.
This book is for everyone who would like to understand how an artist works, for lovers of London, and for those who long to see a familiar world, transformed.
