Poznań (Part 3) – Thursday Afternoon Activities

February 6, 2026February 5, 2026Leave a comment

On the first day of the Poznań Symposium I had a busy schedule, so taking a short afternoon break at the hotel was a good idea. I relaxed, didn’t sketch, strummed my ukulele, and then dashed back across that park to join the Afternoon Demos. This is where the instructors, the Symposium faculty, all get to show a small group how they go about making a sketch, offering advice, encouraging to join in, but mostly watching and learning. I had signed up for Stephanie Bower‘s demo “Look Up!”, and we crowded around her stool and little easel to watch how she plots a drawing out. I’ve met Stephanie a number of times and always liked her sketching style, which is very strong with perspective and depth, and she has been a teacher for many years. Sometimes when she does these drawings with a very defined one point perspective they feel so grand you feel you can walk right into them, and when I see a certain type of scene (an old library interior or a town square in Italy) I usually think of how Stephanie might draw it. I have her book which is part of the ‘Urban Sketching Handbook’ series and refer to it often, but I’d never taken a workshop or demo with her so it was nice to hear her talk it through in real time. Of course, I cannot sit or stand still so I took the opportunity to draw the whole thing and many of the people attending as well.

I liked the sketch above because Stephanie is demonstrating how she uses her tools to find the vanishing points and the measure out perspective, and you can see the space we were working in. I kept it fast and very loose in pencil and a little paint. It’s funny, I did use pencil more on this trip, and I myself use pencil to measure things out, but then I sharpen the pencil and it gets a little shorter every time, so when I am using it to measure 45 minutes into the sketch, it’s not the same length any more. I’ll be honest, sometimes I do that thing with the pencil where I hold it out and close one eye just to make it look like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t really. I have talked about the performative aspect of being an urban sketcher before and that’s one of the theatrical tools I use, like a magician with that little wand and top hat. Anyway while I listened and watched Stephanie’s drawing unfold, I thought about whenever I have given a demo, and how difficult it is to maintain that zone you get into when drawing, I was impressed at how Stephanie managed it so well.

I got the brown paper sketchbook out for some people sketching, and was using the thick black pen a bit more which helped me create some more defined sketches. I really liked how these ones turned out. The pens were a Pigma Graphic 3 (the bigger block nib) and the Zebra pen I first picked up in Amsterdam, I don’t use it much but it’s nice. Coloured with watercolour, also some white gel pen. The sketches above are Ronaldo Kurita from Brazil who I had sketched badly the day before, this one looks much more like him. He was looking down watching Stephanie’s demo and really enjoying it. The next one is Rebecca Rippon who is from San Francisco, I’d never met her before but she said she had shown work at the Pence Gallery in Davis, small world! (It also reminded me I had a drop off deadline at the Pence that very day so sent a reminder back home to bring my drawings there for the Art Auction). I also drew Anna Zięntkewicz, who is from Poland and was on official duty as one of the Symposium Correspondents, being the local one. She was going from demo to demo documenting everything in her sketchbook, I think she liked my drawing of her hard at work. The other sketch on the opposite page was not drawn at the Demo, but at the Sketchwalk later on in a different park, she was a sketcher from Trieste in Italy called Giovanna Pacco and was one of a group (dressed in yellow) that came who were not registered for the Symposium but were joining in on the big Sketchwalks which were open to all. There were hundreds that came like that to Poznan (like I did in 2013 in Barcelona), and it felt like there was almost a ‘fringe’ symposium happening all over the city. I had been on the forums and groups leading up to the symposium and people were connecting and arranging to meet, it was great to see so many sketchers from all over the world coming together like that. I spoke briefly with her and her group, I have been to Trieste myself many years ago (right after graduating from university I took a few days in Trieste and Venice).

Before joining the Sketchwalk I walked to the other side of the park and drew the view looking down the hill, the shadow of that church spire cast on the colourful wall. There were so many sketchers dotted about, so many solo sketchers on their stools with that look of intense concentration. I know that look, I have lived that look for years. The strange fish drawings underneath were from some graffiti I saw, which is based on a local landmark ‘Pan Peryskop’ that has become a symbol of Poznan, and I’ll talk about in more detail later. This Pan Peryskop symbol was even in the Symposium logo, and appeared all over town. More on this later. I joined the Sketchwalk and we headed down to a bigger park nearby, called Park im. Karola Marcinkowskiego, and there was no way I was remembering that. I’d passed through it the day before when walking from the station. The streets around it were busy with traffic, but we ended up congregating around a small lake and I found a spot and drew that view, below. I enjoyed this sketch less, it didn’t really do what I wanted it to, it felt like an end of the day sketch. I liked drawing the people sketching on that log in front. The evening sunlight was good. I spoke with some sketchers but kept to myself mostly.

On the way back to my hotel, I drew this little old bench which was two stone goats holding up the seat.The goat is another symbol you will see everywhere in Poznań. The original goats, the Koziołki poznańskie, are two mechanical goats that come out on the City Hall and butt horns. The goat symbol crops up everywhere, but I think this was the only place I sketched them. I wrote down the name of the street they were on, but I’m not typing that out here, life’s too short.

And then after a brief rest it was time to head over to the mall again for the Drink and Draw that was happening at the restaurants just outside. Wasn’t really as good a location for a Drink and Draw as in some other Symposia, but I was planning to meet with Kalina Wilson (long time sketching friend since Portland) and see some other sketchers I’d not seen in ages. That was great, and I bumped into Fabien DeNoel, Arnaud De Meyer and Mauro Doro, the Belgium/Luxembourg lads who I’d not seen in a few years, always great to see them. While I was there a local artist, who it turned out designed many of the Pan Peryskop imagery you see everywhere, pointed out a little Peryskop figure and commended me on the pin I was wearing (that came with the symposium goodybag), and he gave me a bunch of really cool stickers of that image which I was delighted with, and went on my sketchbooks. I sat down with Kalina and some others and we all had a great evening chatting, I sketched Kalina who was in her red hat (the very same one from Portland 2010 which I had sketched when I met her there), and also drew Joel Winstead, who I first met in Manchester 2016 but had had a nice dinner with him and his friend back in Porto in 2018, so it was nice to see him again. There were also some sketchers from Germany and Austria with us, I had met one before but it was nice to meet the others (though I didn’t sketch them at that point). I also saw Joe Bean from Leeds who I’d been hoping to chat with, we ended up missing each other a lot during the Symposium but I saw him briefly on the final morning before I got my train. After all these nice meetings, and a long day, I went back to bed and slept well.

Poznań (Part 2) – The First Morning

February 5, 2026February 5, 2026Leave a comment

The first morning at the Urban Sketching Symposium is always full of excitement and anticipation, or at least I assume it is, I am always late for most of the morning messages. I had not yet found the shortcut to the hub and followed my phone directions in a strange route that didn’t seem quite right, but I got there in the end and caught the tail end of the morning greetings. At least I didn’t miss the first event, which I was really excited to hear about. Elizabeth Alley, who I first met at the 2010 Symposium, was giving a talk about her adventures as an artist on a boat expedition to the Arctic Ocean. “Sketching In The Arctic Circle“. It was utterly fascinating. I sketched and took notes, and was so impressed by the whole adventure. It was on a ship filled with other artosts, not just sketchers or painters but writers, performers, even a game designer, all there to document the Arctic and our impact upon the whole natural environment. The audience was captivated. She mentioned polar bears, something I’ve not yet encountered as a sketcher! This post Elizabeth made on her website talks a bit more about the experience. Here is her post before she left showing her sketching materials. After the talk, it was time for the first workshop…

I like the chaos, the very well organized chaos, of the mustering for the workshops at a Symposium. The volunteers holding the signposts make themselves well seen, so it took no time at all to find my group. I was taking a workshop called “Vignettes” with one of my favourite urban sketchers Fred Lynch, whose work I followed since the start, but only met once in 2016 in Manchester. I used to love his monochrome travel drawings with their precise detail and values, I remember his drawings from Italy, Viterbo I believe. Here is Fred’s website, fredlynch.com. He made a joke to the group about not being anyone’s first choice for workshop; he didn’t believe me, but he actually was my first choice, I was very keen to see Fred teach and was not disappointed, he had a great way of explaining his concepts to make them simple and enjoyable, and very relaxed. My various sketches of him (above and below) appear to show four completely different people but I assure you they are all of Fred Lynch, this is just my quick people sketching in a hurry. We were to be sketching in the little park next to the old brewery. I would find myself walking through that park a lot on this trip, it was part of the shortest route home to the hotel (though a bit dark at night, when I’d prefer to walk around).We found a nice shaded spot where Fred explained what we’d be doing that day.

I enjoy this part of the Symposium, when a presenter tells us their stuff and I get to draw them and write down ideas and phrases as quickly as I can. “Always remember, people are READING your drawings.” I liked that. “Illustration is Writing with Pictures.” He spoke a lot but was remarkably concise – you can tell he has many years teaching experience, it really comes across. He is also very funny. He said something about some drawings looking slick but boring, “sometimes the fancy car has no engine.” That always strikes a chord with me. I enjoy capturing these moments quickly like this, because there is personality there and a capturing of the moment, which is what quick sketching should be all about. I didn’t get the official correspondent role for the Symposium (I may have been too tired anyway) but I love the idea of going from workshop to workshop and trying to document them in this way. I enjoy this more than the actual drawings I do for the workshops!

We went out to draw some quick observations. I drew the brewery, and it was ok, got that done, everyone drew it at some point. I did a quick one of the orange leaved tree near the church at the edge of the park, and of another sketcher sketching (Ute Plank, I think from Germany), and then sketched a couple of my fellow workshop attendees Ewa Broll from Poland and Hyan Chong Yun from Korea. We then went out to do a slightly longer sketch, vignettes from around the park. I didn’t have many ideas but produced probably my strangest sketch of the Symposium, below. Ok, all around the park are these funny looking metal shapes. There must have been about 17,000 of them. Maybe not that many, but a lot, all along the paths, spaced fairly evenly, all about 3.5 feet high. I had no idea what they were for, but they were the perfect height to put my watercolours on while I painted. Why can’t these be everywhere in Davis, instead of me holding my paint set? These were perfect. It turns out they are lamps, just not very tall ones. Great for seeing the path or your feet, not really for seeing faces. Perhaps this was useful in the Cold War when meeting spies. Either way they made an interesting subject to draw over and over again from different angles. I say interesting, everything is interesting if you take an interest in them. I’ve already given them a spy thriller back story. Anyway my angle was that I would draw a person in each sketch along with the funny metal lamp thing, to show people enjoying the park on this sunny Thursday lunchtime. I wonder how many other sketchers drew these on this trip. Surprisingly few, from the sketchbooks I looked at. This is a very me thing to draw, but showing it at the end, I was a bit embarrassed about it, spending all my time essentially drawing the same thing over and over and over. That’s so unlike me.

I had a great time at the workshop though and saw some other great styles. Then it was time for lunch, and the mall had some great options in the food court, a lot of other sketchers were up there so I sat and chatted with people I had never met before and heard about their workshops, it’s fun getting to be a sociable person for a few days of the year. I went back to the hotel for a rest (old Symposium me was not doing that! I was Go Go Go back in 2011) before the rest of the day’s activities. See you in Part 3.

Poznań Symposium – (Part 1) – Arrival

February 4, 2026February 3, 2026Leave a comment

And so, finally to post my many sketches from the 2025 Urban Sketchers International Symposium in Poznań, Poland. I arrived by train from Gdańsk, a ride of about three hours across the Polish countryside, and I could tell Poznań was a much bigger city. My walk from the train station to the hotel took about twenty minutes, and I nearly got run over once, but it missed. I got quite lost walking from the hotel to the symposium hub, which was in the conference area of the Novotel Hotel, near a big (and very nice) mall, but I arrived in time to check in and get suddenly lost and overwhelmed among the hundreds of people. It was my first Symposium since 2019, that’s six years, and I didn’t see any familiar faces at first. I picked up my goodie bag (there were so many goodies this year), mooched around the Art Market, and eventually bumped into a few sketchers I met at previous Symposiums and chatted for a bit while looking at all the art materials in our goodie bags. (I still have stuff from Portland 2010 in my art cupboard!) I find myself extremely shy these days when in a big crowd, and nervous about meeting people I don’t know every well in case I don’t remember them, or them me, but we’re all sketchers and all a bit like that I think. I did see a few sketchers who I’ve followed online but hadn’t met yet, but was a little shy to go and say hello. So I went outside to start sketching, because that’s what we are here for isn’t it, before the big evening reception that would kick the whole thing off. I sat on the steps outside the hotel and drew this scene above, which lots of solo sketchers were also sat about drawing. It was a busy road looking over at an old brewery building that had been converted into a mall and entertainment area, and this would be the starting point for most of the workshops and sketchwalks. I had a Workshop Pass where I’d take just one workshop (with Fred Lynch, big fan), and just sketch free on the other days. The sky was interesting, the paper in my sketchbook however still horrible, and this was shown up when I pressed the Symposium stamp on the paper, it looks like a brass rubbing with a crayon. Still as I sketched I did see people I knew occasionally and got up to greet and hug, it’s been a really long time. I saw Liz Steel from Australia and Paul Wang from Singapore, both of whom I’ve known since the start of Urban Sketchers, and so we got our now traditional photo of the three of us, which we’ve done since Lisbon 2011.

I started sketching in my small brown sketchbook which I was reserving for the quick people sketches I knew I would do a lot of on the trip. I often keep a small ‘people’ book at the Symposiums. This is my opportunity to draw as many people as possible, and I’ve remembered sketchers years later just because I drew them. I’ve been drawn many times myself, I look very funny when I sketch. Below are Delphine Devoilles, who I didn’t know but is from Clermont-Ferrand (I’ve met a few sketchers from there), and Reham Ali from Egypt, whose work I’d seen before. They got to be my first sketched people of Poznań!

After this, I took a break at the hotel (first of all getting extremely lost in the underground car park of the mall; ‘flight of the navigator’ strikes again) before heading back over to the hub for the Opening Reception. That was a lot of fun, there was food and drink, and I got to see many familiar faces from past Symposiums. I wandered and sketched people, and the current Urban Sketchers leadership as well as the organizing team from Poznan opened the massive event. I was lucky to get a ticket. When registration opened, it was the middle of the night over here in California, and I was out of town with friends visiting from England, so my wife got online and was able to get me registered when it opened at 3am our time. Tickets sold almost immediately. I knew a lot of people who could not go, and many came to Poznan anyway to join in with the activities open to the public. This event was for registrants only, and it was revealed that of the 500 people who registered, more than half were first-time Symposium attendees. Only a handful of us were there at the first one in Portland (but we got together on the last day for a special photo). I drew Ronaldo Kurita, from Brazil, speaking to the crowd. My first few people sketches were a bit shy and fast, but I got into the swing of it eventually. I drew the tall German sketcher Stefan Günther who I had never met before, this was a good trip for meeting new sketching pals, though I was still shy to say hello to people I did recognize but had not met yet.

There were a few women dressed in traditional looking dresses with massive (and heavy looking) floral headwear; these were the ‘Bambers‘ and are from Poznań. Well, as they explained, the Bambers were actually originally from Germany, from the city of Bamberg, but had moved to Poznań centuries before. In the early 18th century, this part of Poland experienced a terrible loss of population die to war and plague; in Poznań, the population had gone from 12,000 to 3,000. The Polish King Augustus The Strong (definitely a pro wrestler) invited families to settle in Poland, as long as they were Catholic (and especially if you wore massive hats made of flowers), and many families from Bamberg settled in Poznań and became known as ‘Bambers’. I think one went on to host the TV quiz show University Challenge many years later but I may be mistaken. The Bambers became very ‘Polonised’ (a new word I have learned, which means ‘assimilated into being Polish’ and has nothing to do with bees or indeed flowers, but I can see where you might make the connection). They are a very important part of Poznan’s identity and culture, and another reminder that every area in this big country has so many stories we might not know unless we go there.

I went around sketching some more people; above are Alexandra Rudneva (‘Barsketcher’) from Germany, who I had met briefly in Porto (she was in my sketchbook though I don’t think we spoke at that time), and Sybille Lienhardt, also from Germany, who I had met in Amsterdam and have followed her work since. I always enjoy meeting the German sketchers, there were a lot more at this Symposium being geographically so much closer, and I finally got to meet Detlef Surrey, the Berlin-based illustrator whose work I’ve been a fan of for years. I sketched him below. Also above are a couple of sketchers I’ve known for many years, Daniel Green (who I had already seen briefly in Gdansk) from Minnesota, and Elizabeth Alley, from Memphis, who I first met in Portland in 2010, another Symposium Original. It was really nice to catch up with them; I did sketch Elizabeth’s talk about her adventures in the Arctic which was so fascinating, I’ll post that later.

Above, Detlef Surrey (as I mentioned), he also gave a fantastic talk about his book which was all about sketching where the Berlin Wall was (I’ll post that later), and a local Polish sketcher Katarzyna Kostera (Kasia), who was volunteering at the event. There were so many volunteers, and they kept the Symposium running so well. Kasia noticed I was busy sketching and didn’t have a drink so offered to go and get me a beer with my drink token, which was a really nice thing to do, so I sketched her with her beer. The beer was very good, and the food was nice too, but the opening reception was soon over and I wandered home to bed, a long roundabout walk since I still had not found the shortcuts. I did however see this incredible fire hydrant on the way, and stood to draw that, and a German sketcher who had been at the reception stopped and talked for a while while I drew, but I didn’t catch their name. I felt pretty tired by the time I got home, and it was a busy schedule next day. Check back at some point for part 2…

Towers of Gdańsk

February 2, 2026February 1, 2026Leave a comment

Do you like towers? Gdańsk has plenty. When I got up from my late afternoon nap (getting old) it was already after 5:30 so I calculated how much daytime there was left to sketch as much as possible, and so here’s what I did. First I went through the big gateway at the end of Długa and stood by the busy Okopowa main road, looking up at the imposing tower of, er, that place I mentioned a couple of posts ago, Przedbramie ulicy Długiej. Well the bit in front, that’s the Torture House. It was not torture to draw though, I long to sketch these types of buildings. Not torture houses, I mean, just big impressive buildings with interesting towers and not too many windows. The sky was a delight; you don’t know how refreshing it is to come to Europe and draw these dramatic skies after so many boring blue skies in California. In Davis we either have months of blue, or a few months of fog with blue days in between, and relatively few of the sort of cloudy-blue sky days I grew up with. I like painting them, but they are more interesting when there is some cool city scene below them. Often I decided not to colour the buildings in (sometimes I colour those in later if I haven’t the time, or not if I can’t be bothered) but all of these were coloured there and then, to capture what my eyes were telling me. Poland, well this part of Europe in general, has some of the most incredible towers, not just church steeples but on the civic buildings the most, and I especially love the green copper towers, they remind me of the ones I saw all over Copenhagen when I first arrived there in 1995.

This is the view down Ulica Długa towards the big town hall / museum of Gdansk building that I drew the previous night. It’s such a massive impressive building, I ended up drawing it three times from three different angles. It’s a popular and busy street this, always decked out in flags of the city of Gdańsk. I saw a number of historical photos of Długa, including one from after Nazi Germany invaded and Hitler paraded down here, with swastikas draped from these very buildings. I got many more reminders of those dark moments of history on this trip, especially while walking around Berlin, but the last time I was in Poland 27 years before I had visited Auschwitz, and that disturbed me so deeply, I never want to go back. Długa (Long Lane; Langegasse in German) was laid out in the 13th century and forms part of the ‘Royal Route’, but many of the big stone buildings are 16th century, though many were severely damaged in 1945 and rebuilt later. I stood out of the way next to a restaurant to sketch behind a lamp-post. I could have spent the rest of the evening sketching the old buildings along Długa but I wanted to go into the Old Town, and draw some more towers.

The tall brick tower above is called the Jacek Tower, and I stood next to a newspaper kiosk to draw it while the light was still good. It was next to a very ornate looking market hall that at first I thought was a train station, called ‘Hala Targowa’; on another day I would be sketching that place. Speaking of shops, one of the place I loved most in Poland were the Zabka convenience stores, which were everywhere. And I was well pleased for it. They always seemed to pop up just when I needed a snack or a cold drink, and it was while sketching this that I got what might be my favourite fizzy drink – Pineapple Pepsi Max. Those who know me know full well that I love a Pepsi Max, and I also loved Lilt, the pineapple and grapefruit drink that used to have those great Jamaican music adverts back in the 90s. Sadly Lilt is no more. However in Poland they have Pineapple Pepsi Max, and that may have been the discovery of the trip for me. Ok technically it is ‘Pepsi Zero Sugar’ like it was renamed in the US, but I still call it Pepsi Max. They have Mango Pepsi Max too, but that wasn’t as good as Pineapple. Anyway Jacek Tower (Baszta Jacek) was built in the 15th century as part of the medieval city’s fortifications, and you can still see a lot of bullet holes in the brickwork. ‘Jacek’ is Jacek Odrowąż, aka Saint Hyacinth of Poland, who was a priest and missionary in the 13th century. Yes yes I also thought about Hyacinth Bucket when I read the name, and that the tower was really keeping up appearances, ok that’s out of the way. Apparently there is a Polish phrase that goes, “Święty Jacku z pierogami!”, which means “Saint Hyacinth and his Dumplings!”, which means, well, it’s probably the Polish version of “Gordon Bennett!” or maybe even “I Don’t Believe It!” (wait, wrong show). I decided to draw this in pencil, but actually wish I’d gone for pen, like the other sketches I’d been doing. I was just really taken by the late evening sunlight still bathing the tower against the sky. Still, I wanted to press on and draw some more towers before dark. They were the only parts of the buildings the sun was still shining on.

The next two above were drawn in quick succession, very close to the Jacek Tower. The first one is the tower of the ridiculously tall Muzeum Nauki Gdańskiej (I had to concentrate writing that down), which was another big museum, this time of Science. I would very much have liked to spend some time in there and was ruing my limited days in the city, but life is only so long and I had a symposium to get to the next day. It was tall though. Actually I think the museum was just part of the building, as the tower was part of a large church called St. Catherine’s (or Kościół Rektorski Ojców Karmelitów pw. św. Katarzyny, and yeah I had to look that up because there was no way I was writing all that down in my sketchbook). There was a statue nearby of a famous 17th century astronomer and native of Gdansk, Jan Heweliusz (Johannes Hevelius). That statue and the little park it is in sit before the old town hall building (Ratusz Staromiejski) which houses the ‘Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury’ (I wrote that down from the sign above the door) which means ‘Baltic Sea Cultural Center’. My Polish guesswork is getting slightly better, it must have been the Pineapple Pepsi Max. The sky was absolutely positively going towards night-time now, so I headed back to my hotel for a brief rest before some night-time sketching (see my last post). I was satisfied with my sketchbooking, but there’s always more.

The next morning, after not sleeping very well (nice hotel, uncomfortable bed) I had planned to get a few hours of drawing in before my train, but noticed it was raining so had a lie-in. After a leisurely breakfast and a short workout in the gym I went out to stand in a doorway and draw the big old Ratusz Głównego Miasta tower again, this time from behind some pretty buildings. One place I didn’t sketch, the huge basilica across from my hotel, but it was so big I thought, leave it, next time. Givent hat it was 27 years since my previous trip to Poland there’s no knowing when ‘next time’ will be but the Pineapple Pepsi Max is a pretty big draw. I was getting a few raindrops on me while sketching this, so took my book back to my hotel room and painted it while sat at a desk, much comfier. Then I walked out to the train station, Gdańsk Główny. This was yet another beautiful building, though I was most disappointed not to find any Pineapple Pepsi Max in the building and had to make do with another less satisfying fizzy drink for my journey to Poznan. I am glad I arrived early, as it was a little confusing as to where my train would be leaving from, but I still had time to do a quick sketch of the station (below). I mean, I have sketched some train stations in my time but this one is pretty nice, from a tie when cities took real pride in how they looked to visitors. And that was my brief trip to Gdansk, now on to Poznan, and I should stop forgetting the little accent above the ‘n’ (I do have to copy-paste it every time, bloody WordPress editor not having the Special Characters button any more, and I don’t have a Polish keyboard). I told my mum and sister about Gdansk, and they must have been impressed because they came here themselves for a short city-break just after Christmas, taking the pirate ship, walking about the old town, and even getting a massive snowstorm that made everything look Christmassy (and presumably very slippery). I would come back to Gdansk, and maybe explore the shipyards and museums a bit more, but well, I want to go everywhere and draw everything.

And if you thought that I was travelling to a new city and not sketching a fire hydrant…well you’re wrong, here is one I sketched right after drawing the first sketch in this post. It’s a tower after all. The hydrants here are tall and more like ornate bollards. Stay tuned for my sketches of Poznań!

danzig in the moonlight

February 1, 2026February 1, 20262 Comments

Continuing with the Gdansk sketches from last summer’s Poland adventure. I loved all the big spires, of which Gdansk had so many. On the first night there, before going to bed, I sat out on Długi Targ (‘Long Market’), the nice town square at the end of Długa and looked up at the very tall tower of the main town hall building, the Ratusz Głównego Miasta, which is the Museum of Gdańsk. I wish I’d made time to go inside, there were a few museums I came across that I never had time to explore. I was staying there for two nights, but really it was just one full day (of sketching, pirate shipping and napping), since I arrived in the evening and left in the morning. You can’t do it all. I decided to draw the tower in pencil and watercolour rather than the usual paint, I wanted to mix it up a bit on this trip, and also change my perspective from landscape to very tall portrait. It was night-time but I had good light to draw in, and could lean on the stone wall of the steps I was standing on, with the winged lady sculpture in the foreground. I enjoyed sketching this, and for a summer evening in a good-sized European city and tourist destination it was remarkably chilled out. I was frustrated with the new Moleskine paper and the way it made the paint bead up in those little divots, it was not the texture I was going for but it’s all part of the story now. I was determined not to stop using the book, having started it, but since this was my main symposium book I just figured that if I want to finish it then I need to draw loads more to try and complete it. I’m a completist like that, and when I’ve had annoying sketchbooks in the past I have, by the end of it, come around to their charms, but not in this case. It might be the last watercolour Moleskine I use, after 29 of them, but maybe I will find one with the old paper in (in my scary art cupboard of endless not-yet-started sketchbooks and bags of still-ok pens I must have one hidden). This sketch really pleases me though, and given how I post so many landscape panoramas in this sketchblog format that end up looking tiny, it’s nice to show one where you can really see it, and have to scroll down to see the bottom. Of the sketch, not the sculpture, whose bottom was hidden. I liked drawing in pencil too, but it has to be the right pencil. I did get quite a few types of Blackwing before I left, but they end up being too soft on this paper and I end up using an old Staedtler (though I picked up a Leuchtturm pencil at the Symposium that I really love, so far). I tried to sketch in pencil more on this trip, but it’s fun when doing these night architecture sketches which need to be quicker.

Here is another night-time looking-up sketch that I did on my second evening. I have a load more sketches I did in between my later afternoon nap and this point, but I’ll post them separately. I wasn’t kidding when I said I sketched a lot. This is another pencil and watercolour at night sketch, and I stood at the corner of Ul. Piwna and Kołodziejska, a short walk from my hotel. Quite a few people out passing by, and my light was not great, but I wanted to look up at this magnificent building which is called the Great Armoury, or Wielka Zbrojownia. Sometimes I look at a building and think, if I draw this with my usual pen and try to get all this detail in, I’ll make a right dogs dinner of it and not always like the look of it afterwards, thinking of the effort and the awkwardness of looking up. As it happens I drew in pencil and focused on what stood out the most – the building’s colours and the contrast with the night sky – and I propped my paintbox in a lit shop window to see what I was doing. As I sketched, I did get interrupted by a nun with a suitcase. My first thoughts were ‘spy movie’ and I was hoping to hear some elliptical spy passphrase like “When the squirrel eats marmalade, it rains lemons in Bucharest” or something (and yes I know “elliptical” isn’t the right word but it sounded right when I wrote it, and still does). She just asked me where the train station was. I am not a Catholic but was brought up to be helpful and polite to nuns, and especially Polish ones because the Pope was from Poland. I explained I am not local, but looked it up on my phone and gave her directions. It was quite late in the evening to be catching a train, but who am I to question a spy, or a nun for that matter. Besides I was catching a train myself the next morning so needed to look it up anyway.

When I was done with that sketch I saw there was a little bar opposite that looked interesting, and had good music coming out of it. It was called ‘Joseph K. bar’ and had a really cool vibe about it, plus loads to sketch. I stood in line for my beer and got a nice dark Polish beer whose name I have forgotten. Polish beer, like Czech beer, is really nice and I especially like the dark beer. I sketched on this sofa, because I have never sketched enough, and had a chat with a nice English guy who passed by to have a look. I liked how colourful this place was, but it was just really relaxed, and a short walk back to my hotel.

Let’s Gdańsk

January 31, 20262 Comments

Time, finally, to post my sketches from last summer in Poland. This is what I should have done in September, but I was busy, then I was busy in October, very busy in November, December’s a write-off, and well January is almost finished. See how quickly time flies. While I was in Poland I kept a daily diary, which I have not been doing for years, but I did so because I knew I’d probably post months later and forget all the details. Now I have forgotten where that diary is. I’ll do my best. I have always wanted to go to Gdańsk (which I may or may not write with the little accent above the n), since I knew it was an important port in the Solidarity era of the 80s, and also a really pretty Hanseatic city on the Baltic Sea. I had this idea over twenty years ago that I would like to do a tour of the whole Baltic, starting and finishing in Copenhagen, exploring all the different but connected cities and cultures along its shores, and drawing them too. It’s something I’ll never get around to (and I will probably never get to visit St. Petersburg) but it’s a fun dream project. Gdańsk was one of the big attractions of that project. It seemed like a lot of people didn’t really know about it, though it’s more popular today. When I heard that the Urban Sketching Symposium would be in Poland in 2025 (in Poznań), I knew I had to take the opportunity to attend and finally visit Gdańsk, so I booked a couple of nights at a nice hotel in the city centre and flew over from London. I was definitely not disappointed, and my sketchbook got a lot of exercise. I had been dreaming of drawing the view above, the view from the banks of the Motława river, with the big pirate ship (one of two that give tours) moored on the quai. I woke up early to go and sketch this, taking about two and a half hours to draw it all, though I did bump into a couple of urban sketchers from the US who I’ve known for years (Amber Sausen and Daniel Green) which was really nice. I was surprised not to see more sketchers about, since many of us who were in Poland for the symposium were doing our tours of the country before the big event. There was a big pre-symposium meeting hosted by the local USk group on the weekend before, that I missed. I enjoyed sketching this, a big relaxing panorama, but it was a lot of windows, and a beautiful day. I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere, but my mind does sometimes go to all the places I miss out on seeing because I’m sat there sketching. When I was done, I walked down the river a little bit more to draw one of Gdansk’s most well-known buildings, the tall 15th century crane standing high above the river. It was built in 1444 – it was destroyed in 1945 in the Siege of Gdansk (quite a lot went down in that year) but it was restored in the 50s, and then completely renovated just a few years ago. I stood in the ever-decreasing shade next to the moving footbridge (it swivels in the middle of the river to let the big ship pass by).

I had arrived in Gdansk the evening before, and this was my first time back in Poland since 1998. The country has changed an enormous amount since then, but so have I. Poland is so much more modern than it was in the 1990s, but so am I, with my iPhone and my credit card. I went to an ATM to get some cash out at the airport when I landed, but the options of denominations were confusing; I would have ended up taking out hundreds of dollars without realizing it, but I noticed the exchange rate and decided against. I exchanged some dollars at a bureau de change, so I at least had some cash (I was shortchanged by 20 zloty, though that isn’t much), but everywhere took credit cards even for small purchases so I hardly used any cash while I was in Poland, unlike in Berlin where a lot of places said ‘cash only’. Meanwhile back in 1998 I had all my cash for the trip in a little plastic tube around my neck, I had no phone, a cheap film camera and a small backpack with a few changes of clothes for a five week trip around 12 countries. I travelled light enough in 2025 though, but I had more sketching supplies. I didn’t sketch much in the 90s, but I wrote a lot on that trip. As soon as I left my hotel to walk about in the evening I was in love with the city, and knew I’d enjoy my time in Poland (which I really did). I had expected it to be full of drunken tourists from the north of England (not just the north, other regions’ drunken tourists are available), or huge groups of American college kids but it was full of Polish families, many with young with kids, visiting from other regions of Poland. Poland, by the way, is a really big country, much bigger than you think. I could spend a few weeks exploring it all and see a real diversity of cities and regions. In fact I realized that I actually knew very little about those regions, which was highlighted when I went for lunch that day at a ‘Kashubian’ restuarant near my hotel. I wondered where Kashubia was, I thought it was maybe in the Caucasus or somewhere, until I realized like an ignorant tourist that I was actually in Kashubia, and this was the local food. After a bit of reading I discovered that Gdansk actually is not technically in Kashubia, with that region being just to the west, but it’s still considered Kashubian. For a long time Gdansk was ‘Danzig’, a German-speaking Prussian city, but that’s just one part of this interesting city’s long and complex history.

The first sketch I did in the city was of that pirate ship down on the river. Yes, I realize my ignorance of tall-masted boats by calling it a pirate ship, but hey I like pirates, I used to dress up as a pirate and go to the Swashbuckler’s Ball in Portland, and this my friends is a pirate ship. Standing on the quai in quickly fading light I could not get super detailed, but I was very excited to have this be my first sketch in Poland. The first of many, a great many. You can see though that the horrible new watercolour Moleskine paper gives it a rough and bumpy feel, it wasn’t much fun to draw on either, and I’m not using those Moleskines any more (unless I can find some with the older, slightly smoother blend of paper), I’ll stick with the Hahnemühles. On this trip I brought both brands, a landscape Moleskine and a portrait Hahnemuhle (the umlaut was there but it kept rolling off), you can see I used the smoother but still slightly textured Hahnemuhle for the crane sketch. That’s enough paper talk, maybe I will do a post about my materials for this trip another time.

As a pirate, and wearing my Portland Timbers football shirt, I naturally had to take a trip on the pirate ship. There are two of them, and the one I drew the night before was called the ‘Czarna Perła’ which I think means ‘Black Pearl, and if that’s not a pirate ship name then my name is Kapitan Jacek Wróbel. This was my tourist time, I wasn’t going to sketch (except for that very quick one above – I can’t help myself, but look at that bumpy paper, it looks dirty but it’s not). I went from the cool shade to the sunny deck to enjoy the view as we toured up the river towards the historic shipyards. I got a nice big beer, and we were told all the stories about Gdansk’s maritime history, its importance as a Hanseatic League city, its shipbuilding industry, and as the birthplace of the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement led by the magnificently moustached labour leader Lech Wałęsa. I remember hearing about him on the news as a kid in the 80s, and he appeared to be a lion of a man. It was in these shipyards that the old Soviet bloc started to fall, and Gdansk is very proud of their role in history. I didn’t get off the ship at the destination in Westerplatte to explore and sketch the big old shipyard cranes, instead I stayed on the pirate ship to have another beer and listen to the Polish folk singer with his guitar, I sketched him in the small brown sketchbook below. He was really good. There is a little bit of industrial architecture in the background.

Below is a sketch I did on the fairly busy main pedestrian street of Długa, the ‘Long Lane’ I enjoyed all the flags, but I kept this quick and sketchy. It leads up to the ‘Golden Gate’ (Brama Złota), but the tall tower you see in the distance is the, wait let me look this one up, it’s called the ‘Przedbramie ulicy Długiej’. Now one thing I must point out, I am usually pretty good with European languages and do a fairly passable job with pronunciations, but when I see Polish my brain just says ‘leave it Pete, you’ve embarrassed yourself enough!’. I had this Berlitz European Phrase Book when I was a kid and I got my head around Hungarian and Russian, but sheepishly slowed the book when I would read the Polish pages. I love hearing the language, listening to people speak it was beautiful, and I really appreciate its consonant heavy words and those letters with diacritics you don’t see anywhere else (like that l with a line through it that sounds like a ‘w’). If I ever get a chance to take some Polish lessons where I can hear it and say the words out loud, I would like to do it. Reading it though I get a block, because I have to hear it out loud (I have a similar issue with Irish, even though it’s actually a more phonetic written language than English; it’s probably why I can’t read music). So when I see ‘Przedbramie ulicy Długiej’ I know it’s not really that difficult, but my brain says its deep water and you can’t swim well, so can you look up the English name? Well, it looks like it is called the ‘Foregate of Long Lane’ but part of the building is the ‘Katownia’ or, er, ‘Torture Chamber’. Moving swiftly on. The other part of this sketch is just what I could draw while eating my Kashubian lunch, which incidentally was chicken soup with dumplings (they love a dumpling here), followed by potato ‘plince’ with cream cheese and trout. It was delicious. I enjoyed it so much I went back to the hotel and had a two hour nap. I must have needed it!

I have quite a lot more Gdańsk sketches to share before we get to the Poznań stories, but first I have to show the in-flight sketch from Stansted to Gdańsk, reading Agatha Christie on Ryanair like a boss. I watched Poland unfold below me and wanted to visit each village, though I knew I’d never be able to pronounce their names. Check back for part two.

literally Marylebone

January 22, 2026January 22, 2026Leave a comment

I walked over from Fitzrovia to Marylebone. London is just a big collection of villages they say, I mean they are quite big villages with lots of big expensive buildings. When a man is tired of London, he is tired of cliches about London. That said, I lied exploring this part of town, which I don’t really ever come to. In the case of Marylebone High Street, I don’t remember ever coming here. I must have when I was young, I remember doing a job at a big upstairs-downstairs type house around here, when I was a waiter in my teens, serving tea and sandwiches, but I didn’t explore the area. So finally in 2025 I decided to wander through, do some sketching, and visit Daunt Books. I’d seen pictures of the place, and of course those little bags everyone likes that have the drawing of the bookshop on it. I was asked once by another bookshop here in California if I could do a drawing for a similar bag ‘just like the Daunt Books one in London’ but I didn’t have time to do that. I made sure to pick up one of these famous bags (they aren’t cheap, I got a small one for my book purchases that day). I didn’t realize it’s primarily a travel bookshop, but carries all sorts of other books and literature as well, but everything was organized by geographical location. Not just the guidebooks and phrasebooks, you would expect that, but novels too. I was looking in the Berlin section, ahead of my trip there, and all the novels that were set in Berlin were to be found there. I liked that a lot, it made more sense. It was a big store to explore, but a bit of a squeeze upstairs. I sketched it from across the street, and added only the green which made a lot of sense. That woman entering the shop probably wasn’t wearing the same green as the lamps, but maybe she was. Maybe she didn’t exist and I just needed to draw a generic person walking into the bookshop. It was busy, Saturday afternoon in Marylebone, lots of shoppers out, people standing outside the pubs, and expensive cars pulling up and people in expensive clothes with expensive haircuts speaking expensive languages, it’s quite an upmarket village. Yet it still felt like an active neighbourhood, and there were little places of calm. I went up to Paddington Street Gardens South, a little park in the middle of Marylebone, and sat for a while in the calm under the trees.

I walked over to the Monocle Cafe, I wanted to sketch it since I saw another artist I follow (whose name escapes me now) do a really nice drawing of it several years ago. Also, I have a friend (who I haven;t seen for years) who has worked at Monocle, the magazine, since it first launched almost twenty years ago now. I still have somewhere the first edition that he mailed over to me. It’s a really good magazine, focusing on culture and travel and all sorts of stuff, but admittedly not one I read regularly, it’s quite big and I don’t buy magazines as often as I used to (except the occasional history or football magazine which I get from Newsbeat, and sometimes the one about ukuleles). They would always end up piling up around the house, not wanting to throw them away until I’d read all of it, which I never did. I still buy magazines more than most people I know though, and almost always British magazines (American magazines are terrible, they weigh a ton, there are far too many advertisements, and finding the actual articles is like trying to solve an escape room). This is a nice little cafe, tucked away on the quiet Chiltern Street. They have other cafes in cities like Zurich, Paris, Hong Kong, as well as shops, all connected to the magazine. This one is very pretty and sketchable though, but it being the end of the day, I kept it pretty simple, as I had to get the tube home. One of the staff came over to check out the sketch and offered me a drink, but I had to go soon. Some ladies from the middle east were very excited to see the sketch and I think they wanted to be in it, but I just let them pretend one of them were the figures inside (they weren’t) and they took photos. I was pretty tired though, and this was all I had left in me to sketch (I’d already drawn two pubs, one bookshop, the BT Tower and had three beers since Hampstead, it was time to go home for dinner). I saw all sorts of other places I’d like to sketch or explore around here, such as Marylebone Lane, and even Baker Street underground station so will be coming back at some point, when I’m next in London.

the king and queen of fitzrovia

January 21, 2026January 20, 2026Leave a comment

I went for a walk around an area I don’t visit often, Fitzrovia. This is the area of London to the west of Gower Street, south of the Euston Road, east of Great Portland Street, north of Oxford Street. I got out at Warren Street and walked down that way to Cleveland Street. It’s a quieter area than you’d expect on a Saturday afternoon in central London, full of surprises. London is full of surprises. I walked down Cleveland Street and sketched one of my favourite buildings in London, the BT Tower, and then walked further and sketched the King and Queen pub, on the corner of Foley Street. I had heard about this pub, being famous as the place where Bob Dylan first played in London, and they do mention this in a few places around the pub, but I was pleasantly surprised to find this was not some tourist trap full of Bob Dylan fans, but just a normal looking proper pub with locals and good beer. They even had a Southern Comfort mirror on the wall, proper old pub style, exactly the same one we used to have on our dining room wall when I was a kid (very likely from a pub). It was quiet around here, no traffic rushing by, hardly any of those bloody delivery cyclists cutting corners and red lights, and after I had sat across the street drawing I popped in for a couple of pints. This sketch took me a bit longer than I wanted, I was getting a bit bogged down with details, but I enjoyed sitting in the pub listening to the chat and the football results (Spurs won). Proper pub. These are a dying breed in this city. I was reluctant to leave, but I had some more wandering and sketching to do before I went home.

Here is my first sketch, which I drew while sitting on a wall outside the George and Dragon pub. By the way, look at that bumpy paper the watercolour Moleskine now has, I don’t like it. I prefer the Hahnemuhle I used in the other sketch. I love this building though, poking out above those old rooftops. It’s been the BT Tower (or Telecom Tower) all of my life, though when I was a kid it was still called the Post Office Tower by older Londoners so that’s how I first knew it. I always like that it looked like a lightsabre, but also it was visible from so many places, being all up on its own and very unique in the London skyline, a bit like the Fernsehturm of Berlin. The top featured a revolving restaurant, so you could never complain about the view. BT Tower is located at [REDACTED]. Ah, yeah I forgot, it’s a secret. Yes I know you can see it, but like a rainbow, you aren’t supposed to know where the base is. This is genuine, it was designated as an official secret back in the 1970s, and was referred to by a judge as “Location 23”. This is presumably due to its importance in national communications during times of emergency, this was the Cold War after all. Apparently the tower was recently sold by BT to an American hotel company who will turn it into a luxury hotel, hopefully restoring the revolving restaurant. They will have to find it first.

oxford’s treats

January 20, 2026January 20, 2026Leave a comment

I went to Oxford with my Mum, a city I’d not been to in years. It’s been on my to-sketch list for some time. We stayed at the Randolph Hotel in the city centre, which is where Colin Dexter wrote the Inspector Morse books, in the hotel bar. That bar is called the Morse Bar now, and the drinks all have Morse-themed names, pictures of John Thaw are all over the walls. I’ll tell you, before that trip I didn’t know who Colin Dexter was, and while of course I knew the Inspector Morse TV show (it’s really famous after all), I didn’t used to watch it, and can’t remember what the famous theme tune was. I know it was set in Oxford, and that his partner was that guy who played Neville in Auf Wiedersehen Pet. So I picked up a copy of the first Morse book from Blackstones (who had a first edition of the book, Last Bus To Woodstock, behind the counter) with the intention of reading it in that bar over a fancy drink, but I didn’t actually start reading it until after I got back to the US (I was still reading an Agatha Christie book, Lord Edgware Dies, and I’m a very slow reader). The book was pretty good, I didn’t feel like reading more in the series just yet. I did get out and draw before dinner, sketching the timber-framed buildings on Cornmarket. It was pretty busy in Oxford, this is a tourist centre, lot of people about. I saw a nearly-fight between one drunk guy and a busker, I think the drunk guy knew the busker because he kept calling him specific names. I had a conversation with one bloke who was really interested in learning how to draw and was asking me for advice, hopefully I gave good advice. Hopefully I was following it myself. I think the building I drew is actually a hat shop. This was page 1 (or spread 1) of a new sketchbook, the portrait format Hahnemuhle watercolour book. I really like their paper.

This is one of the most famous sites in Oxford, the Radcliffe Camera. I got up early to go and sketch it before the crowds came, and had a really nice view in some warm morning light. That iconic stone you see all over Oxford, which is called Headington stone, exudes a warm and highly academic feel. The amount of clever that has seeped into these stones over the years has probably supercharged it with particles of extreme knowledge. If you put your ear up to the walls you can just about hear the theme tune to University Challenge. Radcliffe Camera is a big circular library, and the building was completed in 1748. It’s not open to the public, but I saw quite a few academics going in. I believe it is part of the Bodleian Libraries; we had wanted to do a your of the Bodleian, but couldn’t get a reservation. It looked pretty incredible. I love libraries, I mean I know people all say that, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate them and apparently want them gone. I love public libraries, but I love a university library and spent so much of my twenties in them; I miss that quiet, spending all day hidden away there researching. I wonder if I would have done well if I had been a student at Oxford, or Cambridge, or Oxbridge wherever that is. I don’t know. I like to think I would have, but then I get bored with the mandatory training videos at work and I spend a month reading an Agatha Christie novel and I wonder if I ever really did have the mind for serious academia. Who knows. If life had taken a different path maybe I would be organizing ‘Let’s Draw Oxford’ sketchcrawls around the old cobbled paths. I still ended up working for a university in a college town full of bikes. As I sketched the Radcliffe Camera, morning tour groups were already passing by telling their stories to American and Chinese tourists. Radcliffe Square and its Camera are named after the 17th century physician and MP John Radcliffe, who treated King George III, and whose money helped found the library after his death. It sits in between Brasenose College and All Souls College. Just around the corner from there crossing over New College Lane is another of Oxford’s most famous sights, the Bridge of Sighs, which I sketched below (much more quickly in pencil and paint, while walking around the area with my Mum). Unlike the similarly named bridge in Venice this one does not go over a canal. Cambridge has a Bridge of Sighs too, and that one goes over the river Cam. The proper name of this one is Hertford Bridge (being connected to Hertford College).

I could spend weeks sketching around Oxford. When I retire, if my eyes and hands still work by then, maybe that’s what I’ll do. I bought a really good book of Oxford drawings at the second hand bookshop in Davis which I read to give me inspiration, and I’ve seen a lot of travelling urban sketchers drawing these same buildings and giving workshops there. It’s an attractive city. I think if we lived in England again it’s a city I’d want to live in, although I do have a soft spot for Cambridge. On the drive in, we passed through one suburb of Oxford and I saw out of the corner of my eye that house with the big metal shark sticking out of the roof. I didn’t draw it, but having seen it only online I was so excited to see it in person.

Here is a sketch of another interesting detail, the Tumnus doorway. I don’t know if it is actually called that, but that’s what it is, a big wooden door with two gilded fauns holding up the awnings around it. The fauns look exactly as you imagine Mr Tumnus from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and of course CS Lewis was a professor here in Oxford (and used to meet regularly with JRR Tolkien at the Eagle and Child, which currently is not open). This used to be the City Arms pub in centuries past, closing in 1881, and the building is now part of Brasenose College. On the wooden door is the face of a lion. Now I don’t know if Lewis saw these and thought, yeah I’ll have that, but it might have been an inspiration for him, maybe passing up here on a snowy evening lit by gaslamp. I loved that story, and adapted it for the stage when I was in France decades ago.

Now these last two sketches are quick ones I drew while exploring the Ashmolean Museum, across the street form our hotel. The big head above is about 2000 years old, probably the head of Apollo (the Greek god, not the boxer from Rocky). The smaller head below is a lot older, the skull of Homo Georgicus, about 1.8 million years old and found in Georgia (the country in the Caucasus, not the state in the deep South). As I drew it I couldn’t get the voice of George from Rainbow out of my mind, imagining the skull talking with that voice, “Oh Geoffrey, Zippy has been so naughty”. I really enjoyed the Ashmolean Museum, but we didn’t stay too long. It was a brief visit to Oxford, and I’d like to go back some time. We did stop off at the Trout Inn, a beautiful pub by the river Thames just outside Oxford, which I knew from the Philip Pullman books (specifically La Belle Sauvage, it’s where the main character of that book, Malcolm, lives with his parents). If I ever go back to Oxford I’d like to go back there for lunch.

The Theatre of the Thames

January 19, 2026January 19, 2026Leave a comment

More from last August in London. It was a lovely day down by the Thames, one of those perfect weather days, not too hot, nice river breeze, sunshine with a few wispy clouds. We were going to have a family day out down here, watch some theatre, eat some dinner, walk down the river. I came down a little early to get some sketching in, and drew the view over to St. Paul’s and the City. That skyline has changed so much since I left 20 years ago. I had bought tickets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, in the seated areas rather than standing in the groundling spots, and I got the comfy cushion too. Those seats are a lot more than the standing sections, but I thought, well it’s important to support the London theatre scene. I did donate to the Globe during the pandemic when they were closed, they were posting full performances online and they were fantastic. To my shame I had never been to see a play at the Globe, in all those years since it opened. I’ve been to the gift shop loads of times. I remember when the Globe opened, as I was a drama student at Queen Mary at the time, and I wondered if it would get confusing that there is another theatre called The Globe down by Shaftesbury Avenue (that was subsequently renamed The Gielgud). Our ‘Places In Performance’ class taught by Richard Schoch (he is a published Shakespeare expert; he also recently wrote a very well-received book about Sondheim) did a tour of the new Globe, and some of the faculty at Queen Mary were part of the Friends of the Globe. I remember trying to walk there from north of the River and thinking, we could really use another bridge here you know, a pedestrian bridge nearby to St. Paul’s; a couple of years later we got the Millennium Bridge. I remember the tour, learning about Sam Wanamaker, the American actor (and Zoë Wanamaker’s father) who was the driving force behind the idea to rebuild the Globe right here in Southwark, but who did not live to see it finished. Yet in the twenty-seven years since my visit, I never ever saw a play there, until now!

I selected our seats carefully, considering how the sun might move in this afternoon play, but obviously I completely miscalculated that because for the first half we were baking in the sun. Note to self, evening performances next time! It was great though, the performances were fun, I couldn’t tell if everyone was really following it but the costumes and physical humour was top notch. I did try a quick sketch before the show started (above) but didn’t draw during the show. I would like to do a proper sketch of the Globe’s interior some day, I’ve drawn the outside as few times.

This was not the only theatre I saw while I was back – I booked tickets to see My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on Drury Lane, a stage adaptation of one of our favourite animated Miyazaki films. It was without doubt one of the best things I have ever seen, so good that I immediately booked tickets to see it again when I got home. It was that good, especially how all the live music was performed. Looking at the program I realized that the director was Phelim McDermott, who co-founded Improbable Theatre Co, and I’d forgotten that name until that moment. I had seen his production of Shockheaded Peter many years ago at the Battersea Arts Centre, in about 2000 or 2001, and it erupted my imagination; some of the style of Totoro rang a bell with me. There were some elements of my own production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in Aix-en-Provence in 2002 that were definitely inspired by that show. As a former drama student I don’t actually go to the theatre very much at all, so to go several times in one trip felt like making up for lost time. I even bought cheap five quid groundling tickets for Twelfth Night at the Globe a couple of weeks later, after my trip to Poland and Berlin, but ended up going sketching instead. I must go and see some more theatre though, and make more of an effort to see more in London.

Sometimes the best theatre is out on the streets though eh. Ooh, cheesy and not actually true. No, the streets is not the same as the theatre which takes a lot of effort in writing, acting, costumes, lighting, front of house; no, just standing on the streets and looking at things is not the same. The view above is quite a theatrical backdrop though. But nevertheless I do just that, I like to fill the sketchbooks with the stories of the world I see, and that is all my own story, my own theatre. I have often thought about the interaction between theatre/performance and urban sketching. As urban sketchers we ourselves might not see ourselves as performers but in a real sense we are. The act of standing on a street and observing makes us the ‘watched by C’ part of the Peter Brook equation of “A plays B watched by C” (that’s a very rough and probably inaccurate summarizing of his ‘Empty Space’ idea but I learned this in the first term of my drama degree, and that was in 1997 and I barely understood anything about theatre then, and probably even less now, but this ideas we discussed stuck with me, that everything can be boiled down to performance in some way). If I decide to observe and describe the scene in my sketchbook, I then become both observer (C) and performer (A), while the scene I am sketching becomes (B), the thing I am performing. I am starting to see why we drank so much at university now. That confusing calculus aside, the urban sketcher themself becomes a performer and attracts observation from people passing by, or sketched by other sketchers (A performs B watched by C who becomes A making the original A become B who is also performing another B which is also A; I’m surprised I didn’t get a D for that class). So we urban sketchers are performing in the act of drawing, and also in the act of sharing online with our fellow sketchers, who are the audience who then hopefully become inspired to keep sketching themselves. The thing I think about most though is that urban sketching, perhaps unlike more fine art styles, is an accessible art form that people feel more of a connection to when they see it. This is the everyday world as seen by the people living in it, who draw it because it’s there with the tools they have. I was always more interested in the basic idea of theatre as a storytelling device, one that anyone can take part in. I appreciate amazing acting, and the incredible hard work that goes into it, but it never interested me personally as much as the storytelling itself. We learned about interactive and forum theatre and the work of Boal, and I was very interested in Brecht. I look through the hundreds of posts each day that my fellow urban sketchers across the world are posting (that is, as much as the dreaded algorithms allow), and in very small and very big ways we are telling the story of the world we live in. It’s not necessarily in big determined narratives or five act structured entertainments but it’s all theatre of a sort, storytelling is at the heart of it, even if you don’t realize you are telling a story. I think a lot about this and try to get this small idea across in the sketchcrawls I organize. As with the interactive theatre work we did it’s all about accessibility and inclusiveness (in those first sketching events I ran, I brought along extra art materials and mini sketchbooks for people who saw us and might want to start sketching themselves) and what tools you have to tell your story with, that’s how I approach urban sketching. Or maybe, as with so many things with me, it’s just another excuse to draw.

The scene above, of the 2025 version of the City of London skyline, was drawn before the sun started setting, stood by Hay’s Galleria while people around me enjoyed an evening pint by the Thames. That skyline has changed so much in the 20 years since I left my home city, it’s unrecognizable. After this, my wife and I decided to walk down the Thames, and we walked and walked all the way to Charing Cross Station, for some reason. It was a really long way, and the South Bank was busy, really busy. London’s great, the Thames is my favourite, but it can be long and exhausting, just like some Shakespeare. Or some blog posts.