Saturday came around fast. I was going to go for a morning run along the river, having been told about some good running paths by one of the volunteers, but it was a little bit rainy and so I went to the hotel gym instead. I had a 5k race the day after getting back to California so thought I’d better keep it up, but I had run a lot in London. I was here to sketch. After breakfast, which by the way at my hotel was really nice, lots of interesting Polish food, I went to the Symposium hub for the morning sessions. they reminded us to submit work for the auction, and also submit a postcard size drawing to win special prizes later, both of which I forgot to make time to do. Oops. When it’s in my sketchbook I can hide it away with my other sketches. Anyway, feeling a little disappointed in myself, I went to the first talk, and I had been waiting for this one. I’ve followed Detlef Surrey for years, the Berlin based illustrator who draws in a quick almost cartoon-like style in pencil and always captures the energy and spirit of the places he is drawing. I feel like I loosed up my own sketching after seeing his, and that helps when sketching scenes like above (and of the other talks) where I have to draw everyone quickly while writing down what he says. Detlef’s presentation was about his book, “Berlin: the Wall Revisited” in which he explores his home city by following the length of the Berlin Wall, or where it used to be located anyway. I was going to Berlin after my trip to Poznan and planned to do just that myself, so it was pretty inspiring. He showed us pictures from when he was younger, and the Wall was still up, and talked about the experiences of living in the divided city. I used to be fascinated with Berlin when I was a kid, when it was still West Berlin and East Berlin, and I remember so vividly watching the news when the Wall came down. Detlef showed us sketches of some sections where parts of the Wall are still up, and where the ‘Death Strip’ was located, where so many people were killed just for trying to go from one side to the other. I did visit that place myself a few days later. Detlef spoke with emotion, and it was a very moving presentation. I did look for his book while in Berlin but kept missing it (at one shop I was told they just ran out, because people who had been at the Symposium were coming to buy it). I ended up ordering it from the publisher after returning to America, and that took a while, due to tariffs and other issues where postal services would not ship to the US, and it ended up costing me more than the prices of the book to finally get it, but it was worth it as it’s a great read. While in Poznan though Detlef did give me a really cool little Urban Sketchers Berlin booklet, which I think was from an Urban Sketchers meetup the year before, full of sketchwalks and bits about different areas of Berlin, and I carried that around with me every day there, and it showed me where to go for the Berlin Wall Monument. Anyway, more on that in a later post. It was time to dash off to the first Sketchwalk of the day.

A large group walked over towards ‘Fredry’ for the Sketchwalk. It wasn’t raining now and in fact was quite bright and sunny. I chatted with Liz Steel for the first time in ages, it was really nice to catch up and hear about all her work and travels, she is so prolific. Once we all got over to Fredry I stood next to an interesting little kiosk next to an old red brick building and sketched that in pencil. I liked sketching a bit looser like that and I liked the outcome. That sketch above is one of my favourites from Poznan, I can’t explain why but it said what I wanted it to. I did have to get into a bit of shade on a bench under a small tree to finish it, I can’t stand in the sun for too long. I went back across the street to sketch some of the sketchers, see below. The two on the top are (left) Xana Jasmin, sketched during the morning talk; this was the first time I’d met her in person but had spoken to her online a few years ago when she invited me on behalf of Urban Sketchers Jacksonville to give a short talk and demo to their group over Zoom, which was fun. That was in the Pandemic times still. On the right is Gabriela Romagna who I think is from Austria, and who I had met a couple of evenings before at the Drink and Draw.

Above on the left is my old urban sketching friend Omar Jaramillo, another Correspondent from the earliest days of USk who I first met in Lisbon in 2011. He lives in Berlin, I think he was in Italy back in those days. He was sat with a Polish sketcher who I think was called Mateusz, I didn’t speak to him but I think I remember him from the Manchester Symposium, I didn’t recognize him so wasn’t sure at first. On the right is Alexandra who is from Berlin, I’d sketched her at the opening ceremony and drew here wearing her new hat which had mushrooms all over it. That was actually from the evening Sketchwalk but is on the same spread of my small brown paper sketchbook. As you can see I stamped the pages with the official stamps of the Symposium and of USk Poznań.

I went into this little courtyard where an art and craft market was being set up. There were some great printmakers there; I totally got a bunch of printmaking stuff the years before and totally stopped doing any of it, the lino printing and such, and felt like it’s something I really need to work on again. (Six months later, still not done any of it). I was feeling a bit peckish so went into this cafe, called Nowe Lokum Stonewall, and got a massive slice of cake and a beer, and sketched the bar area. I wanted to draw all the LGBTQ+ flags up on the wall, and I really liked all the rainbow colours above the bar. I drew with my fountain pen in brown ink which was ok on that awful Moleskine paper; I made the mistake of stamping it with the Symposium stamp, which as you can see did not come out smoothly. This place was cool, and it was nice to hang out and sketch an interior after all the street sketching. It did start to look a bit like it might rain, but didn’t. Still I had more to go and sketch before the final meetup.

I could have sketched a number of pretty scenes in that area, and nearly drew the courtyard of the Imperial Castle / Cultural Center, or the dramatic tall concrete monument in Plac Adama Mickiewicza that many others drew, but instead I sat in a small park and drew this, the Katyń Monument, or Pomnik Katyński. Looking at it closely, it gave me the horrors. Reading a bit more about what it was a monument to, an awful series of mass executions in 1940 known as the Katyń Massacre, that gave me even more horrors. A lot of truly terrible atrocities happened in World War Two, and this was really horrible, 22,000 Polish officers were murdered by the Soviets on the orders of Stalin. After sketching, I had to just sit on a bench and think for a while. I couldn’t look at it for long. Soon it was time to meet up with the rest of the sketchers at the end on the steps of the Grand Theatre. That was when the skies opened up, and an enormous rainstorm, accompanied by a bit of thunder and lightning, exploded above us. We all huddled under the columns laughing and exchanging stickers and art cards, there was a large group from South Korea whose sketches were amazing (followed them all on Instagram and very much appreciated all the stickers, which I put in my new Urban Sketchers passport that I got at the Hub), and we all waited for the rain to stop before heading off for lunch back at the mall. My mood lifted a bit when I saw the football score, Spurs were beating Manchester City and that always puts me into a good mood. I could tell that 2025-2026 would be a really great season for Tottenham. (Narrator’s Voice, speaking in February after another defeat left us in 16th place – “it wasn’t”). Check back soon for Part 7…