Back Windows 3

7"X5.5" Pencil on paper

I seem to have posted little but sketchbook studies for the past while. I will start to do some more painting soon, honest.

Back in London, I did this quick drawing of the view from my bedroom window. It could be almost anywhere in London, or in many other towns of the same vintage. There must have been hundreds of thousands of houses built between about 1870 and 1920 that follow much the same floorplan, with the variation being mostly one of scale. It seemed to work though, they are very livable houses and I still like them better than most of what has been built since.

Many have been chopped up into rooming houses or flats. Some, ever adaptable, wings added on the back, rooms knocked together into open plan "great rooms", have been turned back into single family dwellings. What I noticed more this time was how many have attic conversions with dormers being cut into the roof line and gardens added to flat-roofed rear extensions.