In 2020 during the global pandemic we were asked to stay at home. I used the quiet time to pick up and complete a drawing that had started the year before but never got into it’s swing. An aerial hand drawing using isometric projection methods; it pulls together many of the famous landmarks around Edinburgh’s North Bridge, with the imposing Balmoral Hotel and Register House alongside the Scott Monument above Waverley, framed to the East by the iconic Dugald Stewart Monument on Calton Hill.
Across the bridge and we pass the Scotsman building and wind up Cockburn Street before meeting St. Gile’s Cathedral and New College to the West. Based on years of urban sketching and studying of these buildings the drawing maps their physical character and relationships, bringing them together in a familiar if not precise geographical union.
The drawing represents around 700 hours of work, using the finest pigment ink pen and on closer inspection shows many of the ghosted ‘construction lines’ used to keep the shapes and forms true. It is 60x60cm and sits on a heavy weight white cartridge paper.
It isn’t geographically accurate; it was never intended to be. It gathers icons and familiar buildings into an edited record of the amazing architecture that binds the old and new towns together around Waverley Station and the Bridges.
Andy Siddall Drawings 