Artist who wants to draw London’s all 3,500 pubs- see pics
Creating art is her full-time job
The 28-year-old artist has built up a sizeable TikTok and Instagram following with her detailed sketches of well-loved London pubs.
The project came about during the coronavirus pandemic when lockdown meant she was unable to work providing children's after-school art classes.
The freelance artist had always drawn some pictures of pubs to sell at Christmas markets.
Now creating art is her full-time job, mostly carrying out individual commissions, including pubs and houses.
She also sells prints on the e-commerce craft site Etsy.
Sketches getting thousands of likes on social media
Wood's drawings get thousands of likes on Instagram and TikTok, where she posts short videos about the process, then holds up the finished sketch in front of the pub.
So far she has managed "a few hundred", many of them near to her home in Catford, southeast London, she told AFP.
People's hearty welcome to the artist
The Atlas pub, near Earl's Court, was suggested by a TikTok follower and sits on a quiet side street near a leafy cemetery.
But The Atlas, its bricks painted glossy red and the upper walls covered with creeper vines, is closed until late afternoon.
Some publicans have given her a hearty welcome when they realised she was drawing their buildings.
Inside, the Victorian-era pub has lovingly preserved period features such as wooden panelling.
It is now a "foodie" pub serving dishes such as risotto or confit leg of duck for dinner.
"It looks quite posh," said Wood.
Goes to pub for a sense of vibe and not as an ‘excuse’
While she does not see the project as an excuse for a pub crawl, she likes to go into the places she sketches to get a sense of their vibe.
A "local" with regular drinkers has a completely different atmosphere from a central London pub with its transient passing trade.
"When I've been inside a pub after I've drawn it, there's definitely a different kind of feeling of 'oh yeah I know that pub and I can recommend it to someone'."
Next visit to London’s rudest landlord's pub
A few days later, Wood is in busy Soho to draw a very different pub, The Coach and Horses on Greek Street, which she has been into before.
The central London pub in a historic 19th-century building has had a colourful clientele, including journalists from satirical magazine Private Eye.
She chose the pub because a commentator on one of her TikTok videos told her of a family connection to the pub. Their grandfather, Norman Balon, was famously known as "London's rudest landlord" and ran the pub for more than 60 years.
"I loved that sort of anecdote," said Wood. "It immediately drew me towards it."
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