Rough Guide: Surfaces in Kensington

On our first week of term we were given a project where we were to create a rough guide to london. We got split up into 5 groups and were sent to location either;

• Shoreditch
• Brixton
• Kensington
• Soho
• Southbank

My area was Kensington.

Out of the 5 options, Kensington is the place I have the least interest in and know the least about. As an area it's pretty predictable, clean white/pastel houses which manicured lawns and designer clad inhabitants. I decided to focus on parts that they can't gloss over which are typical parts of London; decay and destruction from everyday use, I focussed on interesting colours and textures in Bricks from the houses as well as chipped paint and cracked or stained tarmac on the floor. I took over 100 pictures, here are some of my favourites.

I like the blue stain contradicting with the shrivelled petal. I think it shows a scruffy side of Kensington that would usually be swept under a coat of white paint or tiles or something. It also looks like a mistake an art student would make whilst documenting the area.

I particularly like the vibrancy of this image, this was taking along Portobello road, which is arguably the most interesting part of the area. I like how the crack creates such a strong contrast to the shocking red paint.

I arranged the images as thumbnails and places them in my sketchbook as colour swatches, using colour classification system. The sketches were done using Conte chalks.