Coronavirus: Architect keeps lockdown sketchbook 'diary'

An architect has been keeping a visual diary of his family's life under the lockdown.

Prof Alan Dunlop has filled three A4-size sketchbooks with drawings over the last eight weeks.

He has sketched scenes inside and outside the family home in the Queen Elizabeth Forest, near Aberfoyle.

His daughters Leah, 20, and Anna, 23, feature in his drawings, along with pets and the wildlife that visit the garden.

Prof Dunlop said he had been relatively lucky during the coronavirus pandemic.

But he said: "One of the projects I was doing before the pandemic was a renovation for a client in New York. When I think things are bad I think of her being at the epicentre of the problem."

Prof Dunlop also has concerns about the virus' lasting economic impact on his profession.

"I don't know how many architects' businesses will come out of this, I hope they do," he said.

Prof Dunlop, who also teaches architecture to university students, describes his lockdown sketches books as a visual diary and a record of his experience of these times.

"Sketches are like a time machine," he said. "I still have sketches I made 20-25 years ago and looking at them they instantly transport me back to the time when I did the drawings.

"Hopefully I'll still be around in another 25 years and be able to look at these new sketches and remember the events of the last eight weeks - and for how many more weeks the lockdown lasts."

All images copyright Prof Alan Dunlop.