London · 2024
Small London is a small watercolor memory of London.
This piece is part of my collection. Originals will soon be available to buy online — write to me in the meantime.
The subject
Nothing says London in a single stroke quite like the red double-decker — and this little painting is built around one, nosing up a street of tall Victorian façades.
The bus is that unmistakable London red, the colour the city has painted its double-deckers for well over a century. It is the thing a visitor photographs first and a Londoner stops seeing — the ordinary machinery of getting about, turned into a symbol.
Behind it the street climbs between soot-and-honey brick terraces, a plane tree leaning in, an umbrella open on the pavement, the pale spire of a church catching the light at the far end. It is not a monument but an everyday London street — which is exactly what I wanted.
London is a city you read at eye level, from the pavement, in the rain. So I drew it that way: no skyline, just a corner you might actually walk round.
I wanted the London you walk through, not the one on the postcards — a wet street, a red bus, a church at the end of it.
So the painting is small and quick: the bus a single warm red note, the street washed in grey and green, and ink lines carrying the rest.
At ten by fifteen centimetres it is a pocket-sized London — about the size of a postcard you might actually send home.
See also · London London Big Ben small · London Bridge 1/5 · The London Big Ben