Saturday afternoon in Toulouse, and it was time for the Final Sketchwalk. This is always a big public event where anyone can join in, and we were aiming for an end point outside the Basilique Saint-Sernin, which has a tall, tiered spire which dominates the skyline. I had intended on going straight there and just sketching around the square, but the street leading up there, Rue de Taur, was so sketchable as well so I just sketched along the way. I stopped outside a bookshop and drew the view up towards Saint-Sernin. There were sketchers everywhere, sat behind and across, walking around with their yellow bags. I noticed a sketcher sat at the corner ahead of me who had been at the same demo as me a couple of days before, I recognized her big stripy hat, and I like to sketch hats. I liked how the evening light brought out colours on those buildings, and the warm shadow creeping up the street. I enjoyed drawing this a lot, but I had not yet eaten so I went to get some dinner before carrying on. I went to this place called ‘Black and White Burger’ and had a delicious salmon burger. The bottom half of the bun was dyed jet black, probably by squid ink, which was unusual. Funny thing, eating bread dyed black, you really notice it later, as it were.

I walked further down and found a spot looking backwards down Rue de Taur from where I had come. It was a nice afternoon. Another sketcher sat nearby and we started talking, she had come from Germany, I think she taught art. One thing about meeting so many sketchers is discovering what their art background is, because we are all very diverse, some being architects, some being illustrators or comic artists, some being art teachers and professors, some are just people who have the need to draw all the time, like me, while actually doing other jobs professionally. It’s the great thing about Urban Sketching, we all come from different places artistically as well as geographically, but share that same thing, sitting or standing with a sketchbook out on the street. I saw some photos recently of King Charles III, the artist formerly known as Prince, over the years sat with his sketchbook and paints on location and I recognized that look on his face, the sketching face. The act of observing, taking it all in even if we aren’t drawing it all, it’s all the act of experiencing. Of course we as sketchers sometimes feel detached from the scenes we are illustrating, but if you listen to the sounds and the speech and feel the air it all soaks into your sketches. Just ahead of me, another group of sketchers sat down to draw, and I recognized one from the previous year, another sketcher from Germany. I had told her last year about the Totoro show in London, and so the next time she was there she went to see it. That’s awesome (and it put the Totoro theme in my head for the rest of the day), but also gave me the idea to go and watch it again when I got to London the following week, it;s still amazing. When I was nearly finished sketching, I saw some other familiar faces, Jean-Christophe Delphine came by, and with him was Tommy Kane, a very well known name among the Urban Sketchers. He was one of the original group when it was founded, same as me, so I have known him and his work for so many years but never got to meet in person, so that was great. I got to see his big detailed sketchbook, kept inside a protective bag, and it’s big and colourful and amazing as you might expect. We got a picture later. Time was already pressing on, and I probably wasn’t going to get a big close up sketch of the Basilique Saint-Sernin after all, which was fine, it would probably have felt a bit tired and rushed. I prefer these street scenes.

At the final meeting point outside the Basilique Saint-Sernin, there were many hundreds of people gathered about. This being an open sketchwalk, there were the registered people and the people who came to Toulouse to sketch anyway, so it was a huge and fairly overwhelming crowd. I saw many people I knew though. I thought I should keep sketching sketchers, but only managed to capture the two below, from Wolfsburg in Germany (I met a lot of people from Germany at this Symposium), though I did not have time to colour in her very colourful dress. Then everyone did that thing where you put your sketchbook on the ground somewhere and hundreds of people mill past it going, hmmm. I am not a fan of the ‘throw-down’ at the best of times, anonymisng the sketches while also placing them at a stupid low distance away from your eyes, with the added risk of being trodden on. Everyone laid their sketchbooks against the foot of a railing while the crowds ambled past in a line, solemnly; it reminded me of 1997, at the gates of Kensington Palace after the death of Diana (the Princess formerly known as HRH). There were too many people, and it was a pointless exercise, so I stood back from it and muttered disapprovingly. I spotted my friend Kalina at one point and went over to collect my book from the ground where it had sat for all of three minutes, and then an American lady started really complaining to her that she was moving in the wrong direction, “Why can’t you go with the flow?! We are all going this way!” Of course I had to then say, “Never go with the flow, always against it.” But she was not happy that we had decided to move in an opposite direction from the crowd of people looking down at hundreds of anonymous sketchbooks on the floor, and made sure we knew it. So I said that I don’t go with or against the flow, I am the flow. That got a nonplussed look, but it made me laugh. I don’t like crowds, but I learned how to get through them effortlessly on Oxford Street when I was young and it works for me. But now whenever I feel like I’m not in the same lane as the rest of the world or even on the same road (which is often) I say to myself, “I am the flow” and it all just works out.

And then it was time for the Big Family Photo, which is usually a bit hectic, but this year was chaotic, with no flow whatsoever, in a plaza with little shade and not much clarity on how the photo would be organized (if it ever was). I think they did a big 360 degree picture but I didn’t know where to look. I often miss the end photo because I’m lost or still sketching. These days, it is all about milling about finding the other members of your Chapter and getting the Chapter photo, often with a massive sign showing the name of your Chapter on it, maybe some flags. I tend to wander about a bit at that point. I don’t really have a Chapter; I was one of the OGs, the original Correspondents before we had Chapters, and so my group tends to just be the people who were at the first Symposium in 2010, or the old 2008-09 Correspondents. The old USk Correspondent thing, where we would post updates to the Urban Sketchers site, hasn’t been a thing in a really long time now, at least I haven’t posted (I just post here, in the Old School). I got called over to be included in the UK photo though which was nice. I’ve been away two decades but am still representing Team GB. I missed all the California sketchers getting a photo. While I am an original member of London Urban Sketchers (2012!), I don’t have a Chapter of my own despite running the Davis group since 2010 (‘Let’s Draw Davis!’), we never ended up becoming Urban Sketchers Davis, I never got around to submitting the forms (lazy, or possibly stubborn). Maybe we should fix that and become officially under the USk-brella. Go with the flow, as it were. Anyway, I did get some nice photos, I finally got a picture with Tommy Kane, it was great to meet him after 18 years. I also got some nice pictures with Kalina Wilson, Mike Daikabura and Liz Steel who I first met in person in Portland in 2010, and just as I did last year I had them do a Brucie. It’s a new tradition. It was hot and overwhelming in that square, and we were all going to head over to the Hub for the Closing Reception, but I bumped into Don Colley and we went to a cafe for a quick beer first before walking up there, it was really nice to catch up with him.