Subtle Curves

Following on from the muted colours of my last architectural image (click here to view Geometric Subtlety), here’s another one from last year. In this instance the geometric lines are not criss-crossed but swirl through the frame.

Both today’s image and the previous one were discovered while walking around central London searching for the Books about Town benches. There were a total of 50 benches, all identical sculpted benches that resembled opened books and were painted by 50 different artists to illustrate a particular well-known book or writer. The benches were placed all over London for about two months last summer – some in the City, some on the South Bank and at Greenwich and some in Bloomsbury. Finding them was like a giant Treasure Hunt (there was a map of placements). The consequence of spending two or three days walking around finding and photographing them was that I found myself in areas of London that I didn’t normally visit and, of course, that resulted in a lot of new images not related in any way to the primary search.

I really must produce a post or two on those benches, but as a teaser here are two examples of the quality of the illustrative art:

Paddington Bear had a bench all to himself and this image shows the style of the sculptured benches.

The second bench illustrates ‘Mrs Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf. I thought this was a superbly crafted illustration.