Daniel Te, an American artist living in London, has set his sights on sketching distinctive landmarks at the city’s 272 active Tube stations.
The 27-year-old recently completed all 16 stops on the Victoria Line in a 10-hour sketching marathon, beginning with Brixton and concluding with Walthamstow Central. He spent about half an hour at each stop drawing something near the station.
“I think drawing landmarks helps create a more distinctive sense of what a place is exactly,” he told SWNS. “Seven Sisters was the most memorable, and I really like the origin story — it’s the symbol of the place, just seven trees in a circle.”
Te said he was surprised by what he discovered, not having researched the stations in advance. For example, at Highbury & Islington, he spotted a green plaque marking where George Orwell used to live. “And that’s something that I never knew,” he remarked.
When he got to the final stop at Walthamstow Central, it was getting dark and hard to see what he was sketching. “I felt relieved, hungry, tired, and satisfied,” Te said. “It was fulfilling, and I really liked the journey.” And despite increasing costs of transport, his day of traveling cost him less than $10.
Te moved to London from Portland, Oregon, in July, inspired to explore European city planning. “One of the reasons why I started doing Tube sketching is that I wanted to see more of London and have an excuse to go out and about,” he explained, adding, “I really do love the process of just exploring every single destination.”
He has visited many cities, including Amsterdam, Vienna, and Prague, and has completed drawings of Berlin’s S7 S-Bahn and the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. Whenever he sketches, he likes that people come and talk to him, share their own art, or simply watch him in action.
Next up? Te is inviting fellow Londoners to join him at Farringdon Station at 11 a.m. tomorrow to begin sketching the Circle Line. And further down the line (pun intended), he plans to turn the sketches into a book or expand his work to cover other locations.
This article was originally written by Tahira Amini for SWNS — the U.K.’s largest independent news agency, providing globally relevant original, verified, and engaging content to the world’s leading media outlets.
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