"Today 6 teenagers will hear the words 'you have cancer', 6 will hear it tomorrow and 6 the day after..."(source: Teens Unite)

We want to say a HUGE thank you to everyone that supported our Santa Run in December. Adrian Day ('Editor - Greenwich Magazine'), Maria Livings ('LUSH Designs'), Dominic Aldridge ('Good Ship'), Ben Oakley ('Ben Oakley Gallery') and myself successfully completed the 5km run on the 4th December around Greenwich Park. I was still standing at the end (just about!) but it was so much fun though and such a good laugh, and I think for a very worthy cause. Teen Unite do some really amazing work and we’re so pleased, that with your help, we’ve been able to make some contribution to their campaign.

The final total…drum roll please…is £1,842.50 (including gift aid donation). Amazing! Thank you to each and every one of you for your donations and encouragement – we exceeded our £500 target over and above it by three times!

The festive white-bearded present-giving man in the red suit may have been and gone but the vivid memories of doing that run dressed as Santa will remain for so much longer! If you didn’t make it to the side-lines on the day this is what you missed!

Taking a leisurely pace so as not to tire out, trying not to push myself too hard (as I’m not known for my running abilities!) I was feeling quite good about things…until a friend’s 13-year-old son told me, “I walk quicker than you can run!” But I finished the run (eventually)…then had to recuperate for a few days after! I am looking forward to the next running challenge, ahem, but hopefully not too soon…

It truly is a magnificent building, though maybe not quite my cup of tea! But I can appreciate it for what it is and the extraordinary amount of detailing work that has gone into it. When you look at certain details on the building I find the analogy to nature quite fascinating. There is this great combination between the traditional gothic cathedral elements and the references to nature – like parts of a tree, flowers, plants, even bones and skeletons!

I really enjoyed drawing this part on ground-level around the entrance, the portico, and playing about with the shape – to me it looks a bit like bones, with the columns almost like legs and feet! The lower part of the eight towers I really wanted to depict the internal staircases which wind around inside, and also by adding some shadow, light and highlights on the towers I thought this would be a nice way to show them in an appealing 3-dimensional form.

The hardest part was definitely just straight above that, all those tiny little nibbles sticking out in different directions on the upper part of the towers (a very big headache!) as they’re supposed to follow the rules of perspective. Now I know I can bend the rules a bit but they’re not allowed to! So anyway, I persevered and finally got them in place. The entire building is just so incredibly detailed and of course, this makes it tricky to get just the right balance – the suggestion of very fine detail without crowding the drawing and making it messy (the cause of a few sleepless nights!).

So, although back in Gaudi’s lifetime only part of the building was completed (and it’s still on-going work) you can clearly see his fascination with nature in all the details. You can see analogies to trees, for example, inside the church the internal columns look like trees with branches, the column bases as the roots of the trees. I find that when you see the tall towers it reminds me of a skeleton and bones, like in some parts you can see the shape of a skull. The tips of the towers look like grasses or lavender (yes, those nibbles again!).

The original first façade of the building reminds me of sand-castles – when you take wet sand and let it drizzle down in your hand and you can make lots of little shapes – with lots of intricate details of turrets, sculptures and ornaments. It also reminds a bit like a limestone grotto with stalactites and stalagmites.

After Gaudi, the construction has been an interpretation of how would it have been in his spirit but you can already see that the front towers of this façade here are a lot more modern. Of course, they’re still full of detail but perhaps a bit more sober, more technical even. This is the one that I prefer and I enjoyed drawing it the most.

Viewing the Sagrada Familia from a distance, it’s a striking landmark that’s for sure, and then also when you see it close-up I can appreciate the detail, but I think looking at it sort-of medium scale, standing in front of the building – especially here, on this square in front I just find it too much, over the top. After seeing it in person I definitely knew from which side I wanted to draw it.

Just realised that I never completed this blog entry series regarding the Sagrada Familia image Hartwig finished last year - apologies!

I think the result shows this fantastically quirky building in a great way:

Picking up from where I last updated on this - the next stage for Hartwig was to start the final and percise line drawing, which will later be scanned and coloured digitally.

This is the part I personally love the most as Hartwig, very patiently, picks out the details form the drafts in red below using his fine black marker:

The next stage was to scan the finished line drawing and put it all back together again on screen to start the colouring process:

It started out as an idea. Try and sum up the ethos behind the artwork from Hartwig in a crisp and clear quote somewhere within the gallery. We had a (literally) blank canvas for a wall (well, a sloped ceiling overhang!) which was the perfect location to display a quote from the artist in pride of place above his work. Great idea you think…though my shoulder’s certainly not thanking me for it now (ouch)!

Taking the original quote from Hartwig, printing it off in large font on our large format printer I made up some stencils and cut out the individual letters.

Then each letter was traced around on the wall firstly in pencil and then coloured in with black ink (must be picking up some Hartwig influences: his trademark style of tracing then colouring in!)

It really did take hours…and my shoulder is testament to that! But it was well worth it. We’re really happy with how it came out and hope you like it too.

And so for my next project… stay tuned!

Isaac