It all begins with a line, a line from Thomas Flintham
How did you learn to draw?
By doing lots and lots and lots and lots of it! My school books were always covered in drawings and doodles, and my pockets were always full of bits of paper with drawings on them. The more you draw the better you get and the easier it is to find your own individual way of drawing things.
Is learning to draw the same thing as learning to see?
When you learn to draw you certainly learn to see things differently. I mostly work from my imagination and very rarely work from life, so I try to really look at the world around me and take things in so that I can picture them in my mind when I need to. Because of this I was able to plan out the whole of this picture of London from memory, as I’ve lived here for a long time. To get the details right I then did some quick sketches and doodles using photos of the various places and buildings I was drawing. This was a really fun process and the more I looked at the various photos the more details and patterns I noticed that I hadn’t taken in before.
Thomas’s panoramic view of London is out now as part of the Pictura line from Templar in their new spring collection of eight colouring books which are proving popular with adults and children alike.
You can see more of this great artwork on Thomas Flintham’s own website where the whole panorama and more details from the scenes are featured. With huge thanks to Nghiem Ta for her superb design skills and Katie Cotton at Templar for editing the words.
