Liz Steel is in London and sketching High Tea!

Sketching High Tea at Fortnum & Masons - 3 hours after we started.....

I was 'missing in action' yesterday because "the famous Liz Steel" (Liz and Borromini; Sketching Architecture) arrived in London and together we visited the 245th Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. (See 10 reasons to visit the RA Summer Exhibition 2013).

Followed by a walk across the road to the 4th floor of Fortnum & Mason in Piccadilly and High Tea in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon.

Liz and I arrived at 4.15pm and we left nearly 5 hours later - such a lot of catching up, talking and sketching with my fellow Urban Sketcher!

This is the scene at 7.30pm. I'm sketching in Coloured Pencils and Liz is painting in watercolour (in her 4th sketchbook of her trip!).  At this stage we've both eaten a savoury starter and our cream tea and sketched the patisserie twice and eaten none of them.  One more cake and one more sketch to go!

Right click the photo and open in a new tab to see a much bigger image of our unfinished sketches.

You can see:

• my sketches of our High Tea on my Travels with a Sketchbook blog later today.  See
  Sketching High Tea at Fortnum & Mason with Liz Steel.  Plus, for the foodies, I'll tell you what I had to eat!
• more of my foodie drawings on my Pastels and Pencils website.

You can also see more sketches of Liz's trip to Europe and photos of her participation in the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Barcelona on her Flickr Photostream.

Note:  We had a big giggle about the number of times she's now heard the term "the famous Liz Steel" in introductions or responses from people on first meeting her.  It's truly amazing how sketching can change your life - and international status! :)