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.