Boating lake in oil pastels

Victoria Park West Lake

I've indulged myself and bought a big box of 72 oil pastels. My old ones were all dried up so I threw them out. I wanted to work with a larger range of colours and I've never had so much choice.

Earlier today I braved the blustery wind and strolled into Victoria Park which is right next to where we live and set up my garden chair underneath a tree near the West Lake where they have boats for hire.

I was attempting to try and convey moving water with the boats bobbing around on the surface. I have tried to do this before in a different medium and was reasonably pleased with the results. I think the best approach is not to be too critical of the results and just accept whatever you come up with. I also wanted to include some of the ducks that were busy swimming around but you have to be careful to not make them too big otherwise they can end up looking like the Loch Ness monster.

One of the hazards of working outside, apart from the weather, are the passers-by who might like to offer advice, talk about themselves, or if they are children just make a lot of noise and stare at you. I was fortunate today that I must have been virtually invisible because only two people made any comment and they were polite and undemanding.

This box of pastels are made by Sennelier and they are easy to hold and lovely and oily. I didn't realise until I read the information that they only exist because Pablo Picasso asked Henri Sennelier in 1949 if he could 'create a new medium that had qualities of oil paint and soft pastel in an easy to apply stick form.' So that's a high five to Picasso!

This is part of my view from my chair under the tree

Strange seating in Victoria Park

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

I can remember singing this in the school playground. I didn't know then that it is just the first verse of a very long nursery rhyme about the numerous bridges that have been known over the years as London Bridge.

In 1968, when I was 11 years old, London Bridge was sold to an American oil tycoon, Robert P McCulloch, for $2,460,000. I can just about remember the astonishment this sale caused and the assumption was that the buyer probably thought he was buying Tower Bridge which looks completely different. It was later dismantled and shipped to Lake Havasu in Arizona, where it was reassembled and still stands today. I've just had a look at some photographs of the bridge in its present location and it looks lovely and as though it was designed for the place.

That bridge was built of granite and was designed by John Rennie in the 19th century and replaced a previous bridge which was built in 1760 by Sir Robert Taylor and George Dance the Younger, and demolished 1823. The stone alcove you can see above is one of a pair from that earlier bridge that found their way to Victoria Park in 1860.

You can just see the second alcove in the distance

There is an inscription inside both alcoves which reads: 

This alcove which stood on

Old London Bridge

was presented to

Her Majesty (Queen Victoria)

by Benjamin Dixon Esq J P

for the use of the public and was

placed here by order of

the Right Honourable W. Cowper

First Commissioner of

Her Majesty's Works

and Public Buildings. 

1860

I have wondered where these alcoves were stored in the intervening years between the old bridge being demolished in 1823 and 1860 when they arrived in the newly opened Victoria Park. Apparently other alcoves from the same bridge were given a new lease of life somewhere else. Maybe people sit in those alcoves too gazing across green grass and admiring the skyline in the distance pretending to be listening to the sound of the Thames flowing in and out according to the tides just the same way I do.

The sketch I made while sitting in one of the alcoves