How Long Does It Take to Draw a Picture of Every Pub in London?

At 10:30 am, a recent Wednesday in south-eastern London, artist Lydia Wood was standing next to a garbage dumpster and installed her easel.

She rubbed a sunscreen on her neck and dimensioned her subject: Lord Clyde, a Southwark pub, just south of the Thames, which was built in 1913. Then, for an hour, she pulled flat, her eyes passing between the large tiled boozer and her page.

“Oh wow, it’s so good!” said Emily Finch, 33, going through a lunch break early.

“Thank you,” replied Ms. Wood. “I have a long way to go.”

It was more than one title. Ms. Wood, 31, is responsible for drawing all advertising in London. It completed around 300 and has around 2,500 to play, according to data on the ads in the city of CGA by NIQ, a research consulting firm.

THE project he gained tens of thousands of social media Subscribers. This also gave him a front seat to the fears of the future of city pubswho are struggling with arrow rents, noise complaintsThe rise of sober And Other pressures. Ms. Finch, the passer -by, said that the Clyde had become one of its essentials, because “many of my inhabitants have closed”.

This led some to wonder if Ms. Wood’s project is an ode, an archive or, for male pubs, a requiem.

“What will be painful is to see, when it begins and the moment when it ends, how many have closed,” said Alistair von Lion, advertising historian and tourist guide who directs a website called the London ad explorer.

It is believed that British public houses would have evolved wine bars – or trader – Introduced by the Romans after invading about 2,000 years ago. These roadside inns have become known as Tavernes and tended to serve more British manufacturing beer than wine.

Over the centuries, neighborhood advertising played a vital community role in many towns and villages. Today, he monitors the first dates and post-work and breaks. It is a living room for friends whose apartments are too small to organize a birthday party, a micro-stadium for a sports fan that cannot afford a subscription and a kitchen table for solitary and too practiced.

Ms. Wood, a self-written “advertising person”, chooses her random subjects, in zigzaging through the city on instinct and whim. Even the most attractive have value, she notes. “To someone,” she said, reflecting in her studio, “the kind of flat roof ad and in fringes of London could be the most important place in the world.”

Ms. Wood, who attracted her childhood to London and then studied art in Goldsmiths, sees her project as a documentation of several decades – a work of life, not a series of isolated sketches. She tries to get two to three a week, depending on the weather.

“I am at the start of a project essentially 30 years,” she said, shading in a part of the brick and fixing a line with an eraser.

Ms. Wood taught art to the coronavirus pandemic. When her classes were dried up, she started drawing ads to earn additional money and offered drawings for sale on social networks in 2020 for £ 40 each (around 55). Orders began to flood and friends began to beg her to draw their premises.

It was such a success that it became his full -time job. It now charges approximately £ 380 for original A4 paper, on the size of a standard letters sheet in the United States, although the prints are less than £ 50. She also sells advertising calendars, which she presents as a one -year ad tour.

Sometimes she takes commissions, but not often: each ad has its regulars, so its originals tend to sell itself quickly.

It spends at least a full day on each drawing, regardless of popularity and the beautiful – or how popular and forgotten this pub can be.

“I felt like somehow bring them all to a uniform playground,” she said. Although she knows that many London pubs face at difficult times, she is most worried about “really, really tacit, or those whom people forget – or some people have not interrupted their feet.”

Before the pandemic, there were more than 3,000 pubs in London, according to CGA de Niq. Now there are about 2,800. The coronavirus hurts the whole night industry, while people have used to stay at home, order and spend time on their phone rather than with other people. And Independent pubs were already faced with additional pressure from the increase in rents and competition from the prices of large advertising channels.

“The economy is the main problem,” said Michael Kill, director general of the Night Time Industries Association, a sales organization. While the price of a pint continues to go up, he said, people have fewer drinks or drink cheaper supermarket beer at home, even if it’s more lonely. “People have so much money in their pocket,” he said.

Outside the Clyde, a group of people stopped to watch Ms. Wood as she finished her outline. Adam Colebrooke-Taylor, 60, a former firefighter who became a fire instructor, started a conversation when he ended his glass in the early evening.

He said that the ad has been loved by generations of firefighters from London, who would come for a pint after learning in a training center at the nearby fire, adding that the pub was part of the “folklore of the London firefighters”.

“Each firefighter has crossed here,” said his colleague, Naomi Simington, 47.

“I never thought I would see her get one in real life,” said Iona Davidson, 22, who recognized the artist by his signature red stool, a must of his videos.

Ms. Wood’s profile has increased in recent months. She had an exhibition of her drawings in January. Eight publishers brought up on his book proposal in April. And his fans like to weigh with ideas.

“I think I recommended drawing this,” said Daniel Wright, a fan of his work, who noticed him while walking for lunch.

“Do you have?” She replied, looking up with a delighted surprise. “Oh, well, thank you very much!”

Mr. Wright, 45, said he considered the Clyde – with his lively terrace, his excellent selection of craft beers and his traditional interior – being “the quintessence of a London pub”. He also fears that the increase in subsistence costs has removed people from pubs.

“This is an archive of places that are really important,” he said, his project. “All the conversations that matter in advertising,” he added. “These are sort of small track points and signals in your memory.”

Ms. Wood smiled and continued to work. She ran the crowd of happy afternoon drinkers, who would obscure her vision of details that would make the Clyde unique.

At 6 p.m., his hand had started to crash and the ad has filled. She crossed the windows with skillful, practiced clashes. She sketched in a pigeon that landed on the roof and broke her head.

Then she put her pencil and fell back: “I’m happy,” she said. And she went for a well -deserved pint.