After a good nights sleep (I had expected French fans partying in the street until the wee hours, but they lost the semi-final to Spain), I woke up early on July 15 and had a nice breakfast at the hotel. This was the first day of the Symposium, but official check-in wasn’t until late afternoon, and I had the day to do whatever I wanted, as long as it was sketching. There was going to be a big ‘welcome sketchwalk’ down by the river in the morning, open to anybody whether part of the Symposium or not, so that was my plan. I also wanted to try to get down to the Halle de la Machine as well, and sketch the big Minotaur. thankfully after the roasting hot day before, this morning was much cooler, with some cloud providing a bit of a break from the oppressive sun. (Spoiler Alert, it didn’t last and the afternoon was even hotter) I walked down Rue Gambetta, which is where my hotel was (on the corner of Place de la Capitole) and it turned out that Rue Gambetta was the most interesting street in France. It had great cafes and bars, sure, but it had record shops, comic shops, loads of bookshops (most of which turned out all to be the same huge bookshop with different entrances, based on its themed areas), games shops, guitar shops, and even (and I am not makin this up) a football shirts shop, in which they had many classic shirts including the maroon Portland Timbers shirt I got a couple of years ago. I stood outside a board games shop which had not opened yet, and drew the scene above. It was a fairly narrow sidewalk, and as I sketched, various fellow sketchers passed by, on their way down to the Garonne. I recognized a few, who said hello/bonjour, and as more and more people passed by with sketchbooks and stools over their shoulder I was definitely getting excited. Like when you go to a football match and see your people on the tube in their Spurs shirts, and then you do the long walk up Seven Sisters, and you get closer to the stadium and can hear the crowd and smell the onions on the hot dog stand, and the people selling scarves and programmes, and the lads coming out of the pub and the kids on their dads’ shoulders. Well it wasn’t really like that at all, actually, but I was still excited to be at the Symposium, around the world’s sketchers again. My crowd. It might have felt a little performative, standing sketching while everyone was heading towards the sketchwalk, but urban sketching is urban theatre, “all the world’s a page” and all that. (I thought of that phrase a few years ago when writing a workshop I never ended up teaching) When I’d done enough I walked down Gambetta towards Place de la Daurade, where the Sketchwalk was happening. And wow, there were a LOT of people down by the river.

I saw some people I recognized and said hello, but mostly just wandered about looking for sketchers to draw. I zeroed in on this one guy in a beret, whose name was Akalu, and who lived in Michigan (but originally from Ethiopia). I wanted to sketch fast and often, using my fountain pen in my little brown book. It was nice to chat with people, find out what they like sketching, and be friendly and open. The Symposiums are so, so big now that it can be easy to feel a little lost in the throng, and a usually shy person like me would, if this were my first one, probably just hide. I still do, really. So I like to try to talk to people, and sketch them. I met a lot of people I didn’t sketch, and among all the people there I do now find it hard to remember people as well when I’ve not sketched them too. Oh by the way, the little stamp on the page, that was the official Symposium logo, the little mascot is called ‘Loulou‘ and was designed by local illustrator Olivia Marcus. I loved the logo. Also below, I met a sketcher from Houston called Chris Fitzgerald, who told me stories about San Francisco while I drew her. Then (after spotting my old pal Omar who I last saw in berlin last year) I found a spot with a view across the river, among the trees and the hundreds of people, and tried to capture the scene (above). This was a lot of sketchers. Probably too many sketchers. But each of them was doing what we do, just drawing the world, like I do every day. Capturing the occasion. I listened in to people talking to each other, in English and in French (and some German). I always worry in crowds like this whether I’m going to get a bit lost and not find the people I know, but as I wandered about, I came across them, had a few nice reunions.

I did want to sketch the sketchers hard at work though. Usually I’d go and show them, sometimes I’d forget. You can see in the second sketch below there’s one of the volunteers, wearing the distinctive bright pink hi-viz vest they made them all wear. I really liked her yellow bumblebee-striped hat.

It was so nice beside the river. I drew the sketcher above, whose name was Heike (she was from either Germany or Austria), and then sketched the two ladies fanning themselves on the embankment. It was already getting very warm. I ended up getting one of those hand-held paper fans myself, as many people did, and made good use of it during that week. And then, we all gathered up to look at all of our sketchbooks, but there were so many people that I didn’t really see anything. As we know I’m not a fan of the whole “put your book on the floor and have loads of people wonder whose book it is” thing they like to do at the sketchwalks. I wandered off back to the hotel, and planned the rest of my day. It was definitely getting hot again, there was no escaping it.