Long post, I am lumping the afternoon and evening sketches all together, and starting at the end. Above is the Ratusz, the historic town hall, in the main square of Poznań on Friday night, sketched after all the other sketching and meetings, before heading back to the hotel. I was walking back and looked up and just knew I had this one more sketch in me, another pencil at night looking up type sketch, and this time on the nicer Hahnemuhle paper (so none of that bobbling paper I got on the Moleskine). It’s a big, striking and very well-lit building, shining in the night time as much as in daylight. It was busy out in the Poznań city centre, lots of people around the main square and lots of young people enjoying the cafes and bars. I still wasn’t that familiar yet with the old town and got a little bit lost while walking back to the hotel, ending up in some less well-lit quieter streets, though I didn’t feel unsafe. The last time I’d been in Poland in 1998 a group of skinheads in Krakow had ambushed me on my way back to the hostel, failing to steal my watch they instead stole my glasses and ran off. I did get them back (it was a long night, but I was determined, I needed my eyesight); I’ve not forgotten that, and brought a spare pair of glasses with me on this trip, just in case. A little bit about the Ratusz, this building dates from the 1550s, replacing an earlier town hall from the 12th century, and is now a museum. Its most famous feature are the two mechanical goats that come out at midday. The tower (and goats) were destroyed in 1675 by lightning, when a time traveller from 1985 attempted successfully to drive his car back to the late 20th century. There was a hurricane that damaged the tower in 1725, and the building sustained a lot of damage in World War II during the Battle of Poznan, and was rebuilt in the 1950s. I really liked all the green metal dragon gargoyle features around the building. That was a feature I noticed on the Armoury in Gdansk. I saw many dragon features around Gdansk, it may be a popular symbol in Poland.

Speaking of popular symbols, this is ‘Pan Peryskop‘, a very unusual sculpture located in Plac Bernardyński. The logo of the Symposium featured a cartoon version of this, and I soon discovered that those same cartoons and variants were spray-painted on walls all over Poznan. (Poznan, by the way, what a city for interesting graffiti, I loved it). It turns out the cartoon figure came first, created by a mysterious street artist called Noriaki. There is an article on Urban Sketchers about it: https://urbansketchers.org/2025/08/17/from-street-art-to-symposium-star-mr-periscope-welcomes-you-to-poznan/ Whether the man I had met the evening before around the Drink and Draw, who told me he was the creator and gave me a load of really cool stickers of Pan Peryskop for free which I placed on my sketchbook (seriously, people were envying my shiny Pan Peryskop stickers), was really the artist himself I’ll never know, but let’s just say yes he was, because he told me he was and I love free stickers. I read somewhere that Noriaki is sometimes called ‘the Polish Banksy’. I saw many other sketchers had drawn the sculpture so I went to look for it, a short walk from my hotel. It reminded me of No-Face from Spirited Away, but with a curved mirror. The sculpture is actually called ‘Selfie Watcher’. There were a few sketchers dotted around, and I drew a couple of them below sat on a wall, Julia from Ukraine, and Laeti from Berlin (but who I think is French).

I stopped to draw a hydrant (see the end of the post) while walking back into the old city centre, where I would be joining the early evening Sketchwalk, which would be around the, at the, it was somewhere in the old town. I need to look up the location, I cannot remember any of those long street names. Skwer Roman Wilhelmiego. I picked a big brick building and drew the top of it. The sky looked like a blue white and grey camouflage shirt. You can really see that bobbly paper. Having drawn a lot of towers and spires in Gdansk I needed to up my quota here, but only managed two of them. I sat and listened to a couple of sketchers from opposite sides of the world have a conversation about, I don’t know, food or roads or whatever. I’m not a good listener, I forget things easily. I saw some graffiti that said “Warning! Artists in the Area” That was right. I saw more Pan Peryskops around, and several cartoon pigs, there were a lot of those about, I liked them. As we all sat or stood about sketching, volunteers in orange hi-viz vests walked about slowly looking down sternly, as if they were inspecting the sketches. I started to imagine them as prison guards, the Urban Sketchers Police, checking to see that everyone is following the Manifesto. “What’s that, a ruler? Guards!” As with every silly idea I have, I found it hard to get that image out of my head, so when they weren’t looking, I made a run for it.

I went a couple of blocks away and stood right in the middle of Stary Rynek, the main square, which wasn’t part of the Sketchwalk route but I’m an urban sketching rebel. Plus I couldn’t find the next location on the map. I wanted to draw one of the rows of colourful old buildings in the main square; see below. I only had 30 minutes before the official end of the Sketchwalk, and I didn’t want to be late, I’m not that much of a rebel. So I went FAST. It may be one of the fastest most detailed sketches I did that day. I didn’t colour it in, except the sky which was pure theatre. I umped into some sketchers I knew, but I was on a mission and once the sketchbook was out I was in the ZONE. I didn’t even notice Rita Sabler took a picture of me sitting on the cobbles when I was adding my paint, oblivious to the man looking over my shoulder looking utterly perplexed or amazed at my sketch. Or maybe he was just thinking “why is he holding his pen like that?” or “wait are those Jurassic Park socks?” (which they totally are by the way).

I went to the final meeting spot of the Sketchwalk, which was uphill by the castle, the Zamek Królewski w Poznaniu, the Royal Castle of Poznań. I saw a few friends there, and sketched one of the volunteers (who signed it as Patyczak when I saw him again next day and was quite a funny guy) just before his call for the final photo, “Everybody here now!” We took our photos and most people went off to the drink and Draw; I was hoping to see Joe Bean in the main square so headed back down that way, thinking I’d join the others later. I never made it, too far to walk after the busy day, so after I bumped into a group of sketchers I knew I sat and had a drink in the main square, sketched them and looked through some incredible sketchbooks. I chatted with Sybille Lienhardt from Germany who had taken Peter Rush’s workshop, he is from Australia and he draws on the back of cereal boxes, these amazing big drawings. It’s something I should like to try. I also looked through her sketchbooks, wow! Her colours really jumped out. Detlef Surrey was there too but left early, he had to practice for his talk about his Berlin Wall book the next morning. I met for the first time Anne-Rose Oosterbaan, whose work I have followed for years and was amazed to finally meet, and see her incredible sketches in person (plus she knew of me!). I’ve seen so much of her work online that it doesn’t look real in person, and she was so productive on this trip. Also there was Peter Dutka who I had met in Manchester years before, I think he didn’t remember my name but called me Captain America (I wore the Cap hoodie in Manchester), I sketched him. His sketchbooks too were well impressive. Then there was the great Hungarian urban sketcher Örs Lévay whose sketches I have admired for years but I’d never met in person, lovely bloke. I sketched him in his hat. Also there was a sketcher from Hamburg whose work I have definitely seen but didn’t really know, Nicola Maier-Reimer, and I tell you what looking through her sketchbooks was a highlight of the trip, I’d never seen so many amazing sketches, particular her very comic style of sketching people, and her love of cars as well, there were so many stories everywhere on her pages. I sketched her too. Eventually it was getting late, there was another busy day tomorrow, so I went back to the hotel (but stopped to sketch the Ratusz, as you saw at the start of the post).

for some reason I’m putting these last two at the end of the post, they just seem to go together. One is a very old metal water pump I sketched on the Sketchwalk, how could I resist that. When I see metal pipes coming out of the ground I have to draw them. It’s like, these foreign cities know my algorithm, they know how to slow me down, make an ornate metal pipe appear every so often, and I’ll never get to my destination. I draw them fast though. The other is a red hydrant from Austria that I sketched on another street with a name I’m not even going to attempt to pronounce. And that was Friday, there was one day left of the Symposium, and that will be about three more posts, maybe a fourth. It’s only taken me six months to say what I did in Poland, and then there’s Berlin, and a few more days in London. Not to mention the rest of 2025. I’ll never catch up.