Seasonal Photos around London

I've been taking photos of the Christmas lights and decorations, ice rinks, markets and shop fronts on my visits around town.


I always feel a bit excited when the streets are lit up, what ever the occasion. I didn't manage any fireworks this year so the Christmas lights are making up for that. Bit disappointed with the lights at Covent Garden this year, though the kissing tree is a bit of a novelty.

The Market on the Southbank is bigger this year and the Chocolate Festival was on when I went and seeming very popular.


One of the stalls had some amazing chocolate objects including shoes,gloves, Reindeer heads and potted flowers.

Sketches and throwies

Doing a few sketches with oil pastels, with a rather nice set of Sennelier artist quality pastels.
I haven't used oil pastels much recently, usually working with a selection of different soft pastels.
My problem with soft pastels is how to fix and store them easily. I am working on organizing my work into different folders and so on, not something that comes easily to me.

Following a brief article on the Graffiti Research Lab, and the idea of throwies,( link is to video about throwies) little LED lights fixed to batteries and thrown onto urban structures vehicles ect. I decided it might be one way of working with lights, and I found a supplier of LED lights and ordered a few to experiment with.

The Graffiti Research lab has a good website with photos and videos of various interventions including clever uses of laser tagging and filling in by computer. I like the idea of using something temporary and harmless to make comments on social and political issues. It's almost incongruous the idea of pretty little coloured lights making a statement about war for instance.

Snow and Christmas lights

The weather has turned colder, I caught the snow on the way to the tube. Leyton looking pretty bleak in these images.
The Christmas lights are on in Walthamstow, not that there are many, this blue net of lights strung along the lime trees brings a bit of a show. Interestingly with the lights of the shopping centre behind we could imagine we were somewhere more continental.