East along the Thames

By James Hobbs, London, UK

Last Sunday, London’s Urban Sketchers headed east along the river Thames to Trinity Buoy Wharf, the site of London’s only lighthouse and much historic maritime activity, and now home to Container City, a studio and office complex created out of sea shipping containers. We were invited with other drawing groups by the Campaign for Drawing – the organisers of The Big Draw – to take part in a sketchcrawl and other drawing events in venues around the site.

Although the weather wasn’t kind, the turnout was excellent, and the Fatboy Diner did a good trade with sheltering artists. Across the river stood the O2 Arena (the old Millennium Dome), where Federer and Djokovic were due to play in a World Tour final, and a thicket of never-ending dockland construction, while people moved slowly through the sky to the east in London’s river-crossing cable car. 

It was an unlikely but popular venue, and one unknown even by many long-time London dwellers. It was great, as always, to meet up with our city’s array of urban sketchers, and meet new ones. A show of drawings by artists shortlisted for the 2014 John Ruskin Prize continues there until 30 November.