David Gentleman has been drawing London all his adult life. But can you look afresh at the place where you live? Over the past year he has immersed himself in his home city to try & find out. London You're Beautiful" the resulting book of sketches drawings & watercolours arranged month by month shows a year in the life of London & reveals the city that is hidden in plain view. David's notes on his work offer us a privileged insight into how an artist sees & captures the ever-shifting light & colours movement & figures of a teeming city as it moves through the seasons. He describes how he chooses techniques & materials to render the spellbound children at his grandchildren's Camden primary school; the spectacular transformation of Hendon's streets from brown to pink to green with April's cherry blossom; the strange world evoked by the city under snow. Through David's eyes we see London anew as he shows us how the sun turns rubbish-strewn ditches into enchanting waterside glades or how just twenty-two lines on paper can deliver the dazzling complexity of Canary Wharf's windows. This book is for everyone who would like to understand how an artist works for lovers of the Olympic city that will be celebrated in London 2012 & for those who long to see a familiar world transformed. David Gentleman born in London in 1930 is a watercolourist & printmaker working in many media & scales. He has designed British stamps & coins & the platform-length mural at Charing Cross tube station well-known to Londoners that is blown up from his wood engravings. His studio is at the top of an early Victorian house in Camden Town between the crowded rackety Camden Lock & the green spaces of Regent's Park & Primrose Hill."