London's sculpture trails

Back in 2010, a parade of elephants came to London to raise awareness of the need for elephant conservation.  The children and Graham and I had such a fun summer going elephant spotting around town - ticking the elephants we found off the checklist, taking photos and deciding which ones were our favourites.

A 10-year old Cam and a 7-year old Livvy with an elephant in Green Park

Livvy crossing elephants off the map in 2010

I thought at the time, what a wonderful idea it was.  The project really captured the public's imagination; everyone in London seemed to be talking about it.  It got us all out as a family, exploring London and sharing with each other the places we knew best (Graham knows the Royal Parks extremely well from cycling through them on his way to work for years, but I rarely go there) and the elephants were just very lovely works of art in their own right - sometimes beautiful and sometimes amusing.

So I was delighted to find that there are two really good new sculpture trails in London this autumn.  

There is a trail of fifty Paddington Bears scattered around London to mark the release of the Paddington film and to raise money for the NSPCC.  The bears have all been designed by different people, and are mostly clustered in a few parts of London so that you could easily see a whole bunch in an hour or two (although I am perversely tempted to trek all the way out to Heathrow to see the Chief Scout Bear designed by Bear Grylls).  The Paddingtons will be in London until the end of the year, so you still have a couple of months to see them all.

The second trail is to mark the 2014 Year of the Bus (I know - who knew?).  This one I stumbled across completely by accident as I was walking in the Olympic Park last week.  I found a beautiful, floral bus sculpture, read the label on it, and knew immediately that I had to come back soon with my smallest nephew - bus-and-train-mad, four-year-old Leo - to see how many of the rest of them we could find.  

At the weekend, my brother-in-law and Leo joined Livvy and me for a stroll around the park to find the buses.  Well, Leo scooted at high speed while the rest of us strolled.  Instead of the paper map that Livvy checked off the elephants with in 2010, this time we had an app with a QR reader so that we could 'zap' the buses as we found them and mark them off the map on my phone.  We had so much fun, and Leo adored looking out for the different buses.  The trail around the Olympic Park is one of three bus trails - the others are in Westminster and around St Paul's and the Tate Modern. 

Livvy and Leo find a bus in front of the stadium

Self portrait in the mirrored bus

David and Leo with the number bus

Found another one!

This paralympic themed bus was mine and David's favourite

The floral bus from the other side - in front of the Broadcast Centre

I've got a whole, happy autumn of bus and bear hunting around London ahead of me trying to spot as many of them as I can - sometimes on my own or with a friend on a weekday day off, and sometimes with the family at the weekend.  That makes me very content.  
    

Lounging

 

Sometimes when I go to an art gallery, I just get too weary from all the wandering around.

   

 It's tiring being this cultured.

   

So you might as well sit down.

   

Take the load off your feet, as it were.

   

 Ah, that's better.

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Miss Moss Stitch and I went to see Wool House at Somerset House - it's on only until 24 March, and I would highly recommend it.  That shaggy chair in the last photo was very comfortable.

Shoreditch street art

 

This morning Moss Stitch and I reprised our London walks of early 2011, and went to Shoreditch in search of street art.  Street art is flourishing in this part of East London, and we filled our cameras with examples of every imaginable size and colour.

 

 

The wit is what I like most.

 

Oh, and the colour and bold design too.  

   

If you go walking long enough you start to become familiar with the different artists - there were a few collections of phone boxes which I liked, and some detailed line drawings by the same artist.

Shoreditch is a small area, full of coffee shops and cafes - when I first lived in East London it was a very grimy, derelict part of town, and is now incredibly and self-consciously trendy in a polished grime sort of way.  Film makers now live and work in Shoreditch.  We zigzaged around and covered the whole area in barely a couple of hours (and this time included a record THREE cafe breaks because the weather was so arctic we needed warming up with frequent cups of coffee).

As Shoreditch gets trendier and wealthier, I really hope the street art stays.  It's a reminder of the happy soul of the place, and also its working class past.  Plus, I just really love it. It makes me smile on a bitterly cold early spring day in London.

 

 

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If you are interested in finding out more about street art you might enjoy:

• Street Art London
• The Shoreditch Street Art Trail at HiddenCity
• Hooked blog
• More photos from the walk in my Flickr set

 

Day off

I have learnt since I started this work placement that days off are not actually days off - Graham calls them recovery days, which is more accurate.  If I work a couple of thirteen hour shifts in a row, then I spend most of the following day off napping and washing piles of uniform.  However, occasionally the shift pattern works in my favour and I have just one shift on, followed by a couple of recovery days .  Then the second one of those days becomes impressively full of possibilities as I am awake enough to leave the house, and do something interesting.

Today was one of those days.  I headed for the National Portrait Gallery, which always has new things to see, and is a delightful and not too busy treasure right in the middle of London.  I wanted to see the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize exhibition, which only has another 10 days or so left.  It was as good as I hoped it would be - the photo of Mo Farah was my favourite.

I prowled around the rest of the gallery, catching sight of the Kate portrait, swinging by the Tudors and the Stuarts and playing 'spot the women' in the Victorian galleries (other than Queen Victoria herself, there are not many).  One of the few I found was this one of Florence Nightingale.

After I was tired of wondering around, I retreated to the wonderful Digital Space on  a mezzanine in between the ground and first floors.  Here you can sit in comfy chairs and play with the gallery's Portrait Explorer software on large touch screens.  I had fun looking up the other portraits of Florence Nightingale, which the gallery holds but does not usually display.  There are 33 of them, and after looking through all of them I felt I had a much better idea of what Miss Nightingale looked like than I did after looking at just one portrait.  She had a very elegant, slim face, a determined mouth and rather captivating eyes.  I am not surprised she was a force to be reckoned with.

I left the National Portrait Gallery, and as I crossed the road heading for Embankment tube station I stopped to admire the large statue opposite me, which has long been one of my favourites in Central London. 

The statue is of Edith Cavell, another nurse who should really be as famous as Florence Nightingale.  In most hospitals today, you will still find a ward called Cavell Ward, after this legendary figure.  She was a great nurse, and a pioneering teacher of nurses, who was executed by the Germans during World War I for helping British and French soldiers escape from the Red Cross Hospital she was matron of, in German-occupied Brussels.  The National Portrait Gallery holds four portraits of Edith Cavell, none of which are currently on display, but all of which can be seen on Portrait Explorer here.

As I the tube rattled me home, I even travelled past the hospital where I am doing my placement, and I reflected that even on my days off I don't seem able to stray too far from nursing.

Art ideas for older children - revisited

Both the children continue to produce large piles of drawings and paintings.  It is what they usually do after school during the week: get home, make a cup of tea and settle down with some drawing.

After I wrote my earlier post on art ideas for children last month, I've had so many comments and emails from people sharing what books and resources their children love - they have been so helpful and interesting.  Have a look in the comments of my earlier post for some of them. The Ed Emberley books in particular seem to be loved and used by everybody.

I decided to buy a manga book and some manga pens for C and O first. I bought Manga For the Beginner - Chibis by Christopher Hart and some promarker pens.

Manga for the Beginner by Christopher Hart

Manga promarkers

It was like opening floodgates!  They both produced page after page of manga drawings, and still do so most days.

O's manga

I ended up buying a second manga book, so that they didn't have to share, and went for Super-Cute Chibis by Joanna Zhou, which is also excellent.  I also bought more promarkers, but have my eye on the manga pens by Faber-Castell too, which look very good and come in a good range of colours.  You can buy both the promarkers and the Faber Castell manga pens at branches of Hobbycraft and most independent art shops, as well as online.

Super Cute Chibis by Joanna Zhou

From Super Cute Chibis by Joanna Zhou

From Super Cute Chibis by Joanna Zhou

C's manga

Other than manga, other successes have included How To Draw Fantasy Art Warriors, Heroes and Monsters which I bought for C, thinking he might like drawing things similar to his Warhammer figures.  I was right - he loves this book and has been really inspired by it.  The author, Mark Bergin, has a whole range of 'How To Draw' books out in the same series, which look excellent.  C wants to get the Trees and Woodland one next.

How to Draw Fantasy Art Warriors, Heroes & Monsters by Mark Bergin

For O, we bought Let's Draw Happy People by Sachiko Umoto which is just so lovely.  Again, I am planning on getting the other books in the series by the same author.  This book is an English translation of a Japanese book, and I find it very reminiscent, visually, of the Japanese craft books I own.  O adores it, and it lives permanently propped open on her desk.

 

 

O's happy people

Do you have any more art or craft book recommendations for older children?  What books do your children enjoy?

Flowers - paper and real

I bought myself some daffodils from the supermarket, but until they come out I am enjoying this paper and twig bouquet made by O and her friend F last week.

They were inspired by this excellent and inspiring papercraft book of F's - I am planning on getting O her own copy very soon, and writing an update to my post in January about art and craft books for older children and teenagers.  Stay tuned!

Reminding myself why I love London

Seen on the tube between South Woodford and Piccadilly Circus:

• 3 people wearing Converse plimsolls
• 5 people listening to iPods
• 4 people reading the Metro
• 4 people reading books
• nobody reading an e-reader
• 1 person asleep
• 2 women wearing black woollen tights (one of them with black Converse plimsolls - very good)
• 3 people texting, emailing or playing games on their smart phones (or maybe reading ebooks actually?)
• 2 men wearing suits and ties
• 1 sleepy-looking teenager carrying a yellow vuvuzela in a matching yellow Selfridges bag

Seen at the Sargent and the Sea exhibition at the Royal Academy:

• sunsets over the mid-Atlantic
• boys playing on a Normandy beach
• Breton oyster sellers carrying unwieldy baskets on their hips
• pencil sketches of rigging and furled sails
• stormy seas
• the grey skies of Whitby
• the saturated heat of a Mediterranean beach
• gondolas in Venice

John Singer Sargent, 'En Route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish)', 1878.

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I met my parents at the Royal Academy today, and we went to see the Sargent exhibition together.  Every aspect of my day reminded me why I love living in London so much:

• The entertainment that is to be found by people-watching on the tube.
• The ease with which the tube whizzes us around this enormous city.  Londoners like to moan about the tube, and admittedly commuting endlessly on it is tiring and crowded, but secretly I think it is wonderful.
• The endless exhibitions, shows, plays, sports and other activities that are put on for Londoners and visitors all through the year.  There is no need ever to be bored living in London.

I am starting to put together a list of the things I want to do around London this autumn.  So far my list looks like this:

• Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes Exhibition at the V & A
• trips to Kew Gardens to see autumn colour and smell the damp earth
• The Glasgow Boys exhibition at the Royal Academy
• A late evening visit to the Natural History Museum.  Like almost all of the big London museums, the NHM opens late on a Friday evening and puts on special events, free to the public.  I really like the look of this one next week, and am wondering if the children would be up for an evening trip out
• A series of walks to explore the Lee Valley Regional Park, which runs within walking distance of our house, and about which I know almost nothing.
• A visit to the Olympic Park, which is going up really fast and gives me tingles of excitement every time I see it.
• Another visit to see the Egyptian mummies at the British Museum, because O is studying the Ancient Egyptians at school this term, and I never tire of the British Museum and its amazing roof.

What are your favourite London destinations? Where do you head for first if you are visiting for a day?

Ten things

• Leyton, where I live, is not picturesque, and does not often feature as a literary setting. So I've always perversely loved the opening line of Meera Syal's Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee: "Not even the snow could make Leyton look lovely". I think that even Meera Syal would have been impressed with the massive rainbow that appeared in the thundery skies over Leyton last weekend though.
• I took O to the National Gallery on Saturday. We sat in front of the Impressionists and tried to copy their pictures. It did not take us long to decide that being an Impressionist was too much like hard work. Both of us are more into great sweeps of colour than lots of delicately balanced blobs of colour.
• A deep chuckle and then a cry of "whoops-a-daisy!" from the nurse is top of my list of Things I Don't Want To Hear When I'm Having a Smear Test. And then she asked me why I looked so tense.
• All week at work the harmonious colours of my diary, my iPod case and my little tin of tinted Vaseline have given me much pleasure.
• The Vaseline Rosy Lips is the nicest lip balm I have ever had. Ever. I'm sorry to say that it has even knocked my homemade cocoa butter and coconut oil version off the top spot. The Vaseline one has rose and almond oil in it and smells and tastes as lovely as the tin looks.
• Anna sent me a Be-Ro recipe booklet, which is enchanting. It even has a recipe for little biscuits called 'Sticky Blobs' - how cool!
• I bought some embroidery transfers from Sublime Stitching. I have started on some designs from her Camp Out range and I hope that they will shortly become bunting for when we go camping.
• We've just finished the last jar of jam from 2008. O wants to add raspberry jam to our repertoire this year so I am keeping an eye on the progress of the crops at the PYO.
• I have bought some glow sticks from here to take camping with us this weekend. At Orchard Campsite, where we went last month, they threw handfuls of them out to all the children once the sun had set. This was such fun.
• This is my 199th post, and it is almost exactly two years since I started this blog; that Camping Masterlist is still very much in use. I think this merits a giveaway. Come back next week to find out more!