Thursday afternoon in Toulouse. After my break at the hotel I had a late lunch at a little place called ‘Les Burgers de Papa’ on Rue des Lois, and had a conversation with a French sketcher who was in there too, before walking to the Hub to join the gathering for the Afternoon Demos. This is the part of the Symposium where everybody has to pick a Demo (when they register, in the few seconds they have to decide their whole schedule), just one Demo, and then everyone heads out en masse to a spot where their Demo instructor will give a demonstration of their urban sketching theme or technique, and speak and draw or paint for about an hour while you watch. Often during workshops there is never enough time to just watch the instructor do a full picture so these can be useful, but there’s only one opportunity to attend a Demo. I quite like them because they are a bit more relaxed. In Toulouse, one thing it did mean was even more walking. After the long walk up to the Hub, our group gathered and then had another very long walk (about 30 minutes) back down to a shaded square overlooking the Garonne. I had signed up for Róisín Curé’s Demo on ‘Fast People Sketching’. Since this is something I like to do a lot at Symposiums I was interested to pick up some different tips and tools, and Róisín (who is an urban sketcher from Galway) spoke a lot and shared a lot of techniques. I had originally signed up for her Workshop, but changed to Marielle Durand’s one afterwards (big fan of Marielle’s work and wanted to learn her technique; see the post on that Workshop later!), I switched from the first Demo I’d signed up for to this one. We gathered under the shade of some big plane trees and Róisín started quick sketches of people that were sat at nearby cafes, and I took the opportunity to sketch the scene myself, taking notes as I do. One of my favourite moments from the Poznan Symposium was sketching Stephanie Bower’s Demo, drawing all the people there watching, and then meeting and speaking to them after. It is a fun way to document what the Symposium is all about. In the sketch above, the guy I captured briefly in the hat is a sketcher from Croatia called Mario that I spoke with afterwards and now follow, he was nice and he just mailed me a copy of his sketching zine from Hvar, that was a great read. Below, I drew the volunteer (whose name I didn’t catch), she was seated and would be translating some of Róisín’s comments into Spanish for a couple of the Spanish-speaking sketchers who were there.

There is Róisín again above talking and sketching. It was pretty hot out and everyone was sweating, but I was glad for the shade. There were some other Demos happening nearby, I spoke with one sketcher from England (Peter) that I’ve met a few times who had left his assigned Demo because it was not interesting, better to wander and sketch. I really enjoyed this one though and wanted to sketch the scene from the other side, so I drew the group there fast, adding in a few pink shapes for the background, it was all it needed. I liked that massive stripy hat that one woman was wearing, I did draw her hat twice during this Symposium as she ended up in one of my Saturday sketches too, when she was sketching nearby, though I never spoke to her. I did chat with some other sketchers after the Demo and walked back to the Hub (another long walk) with a sketcher from Germany, Gabriela, in time for the start of the next activity, the evening Sketchwalk (which would be taking place about 40 minutes’ walk from the Hub, seriously; thankfully for that, I jumped on the Metro, but a lot of people did make the trek). Too much walking in the late afternoon heat. I drank plenty of water.