My Dad's Diary : Wed 13th August 1947

"Hot day.

Went for walk at night round T. Estate."

The Team Valley Trading Estate was first begun in 1936  and opened by George VI in 1939. Laid out as a leafy park, even now it's quite a pleasant place to walk through, but in 1947 it was quiet and rural, there were a couple of woods and a river (much of it culverted, but not all) and it was a big change from the terraced streets of Bensham. I spent a lot of my childhood there.

Here's a photo of the layout in 1947:

Sketchbook No.2 (#2)

Up Cuthbert Street, 27 October 1991
(2B pencil in A4 sketchbook)

I'd recently discovered the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud when I drew this. Trying to capture something of his vertiginous San Francisco views, I chose one of the steeper streets in Gateshead and looked up Cuthbert Street to the  houses on Bensham Road.

I don't think I really caught Thiebaud's essence, but looking at this drawing now, complete with colour notes, I think it might still make an interesting painting.