Toulouse Part 8: Marielle’s Pink Morning

September 11, 2026September 10, 2026Leave a comment

After a long Thursday I slept pretty well, and took my time eating breakfast in the morning. It was overcast and looking like it would not be as hot which was a good sign. By the time I got to the Symposium Hub, I saw the long security line and knew the morning talks would already be mostly over, so I missed that and gathered for the morning Workshop. I had signed up for one workshop only and it was a good one, “Lights and Delights in the Pink City!” with French artist Marielle Durand. I have been a fan of Marielle’s work for years and especially her drawings in blue ink wash, which is really expressive and she has a book I’d like to read called ‘Bleu d’Auvergne’. It’s a very different from the sort of linework drawings I do, but really inspires me and is a style I really want to learn to play with. When I saw a few months before that Marielle’s workshop was available I quickly switched from the first one I had signed up for, and I’m so glad I did, as this really was very different for me and a lot of fun to play with. We were given some special pink acrylic ink to use (I did order some before, just in case), Rohrer and Klingner (from Leipzig) in Magenta, which is a very bright colour indeed. Toulouse was all about the pink. We were in the courtyard at the Hôtel d’Assézat, a 16th century building which now houses the Fondation Bemberg art collection. Marielle showed us a variety of techniques and had a really helpful handout. It was outside my comfort zone, seeing a scene in a different way, approaching it with layers, making my brain work a bit differently. We started with some simple exercises, I found it hard to get used to the ink at first.

I think I actually enjoyed sketching people in this style more than the architecture, which daunted me, like the opposite of my usual situation. I liked looking at things more simply though, in terms of basic shape blocks, how things related to each other, and starting with the lightest tones. We did some test sketches to see how this all worked.

I enjoyed talking to some of the other sketchers at this workshop, it was a really friendly group. Our final exercise was a larger drawing using the previous processes and trying to show more depth and light. I definitely found it tricky, just wanting to go more into some kind of line drawing, but it was a really fun thing to play with. I want to do more, in different colours (I went and bought some blue ink after that which I’ve yet to use; I did try some green ink sketching in London briefly) but playing in this bright pink was so much fun. Merci Marielle for a fun workshop! After it was done we had a group photo, and I went to an art shop nearby because there are never enough art materials to have. France has some really good stuff we can’t get in the US, but I held back, I already have so much. The sun wasn’t yet coming out, in fact it even started to rain a little, but it was still feeling sweaty so I walked back towards the hotel for a rest.

Toulouse Part 5: Thursday Morning

September 5, 20262 Comments

After the Halle de La Machine on Wednesday I went straight to the Symposium Hub, which was at a municipal building called Pierre Baudis, and unlike at any other symposium there was a security search and metal detectors before you could go inside. That slowed things down, and there was a long line to enter the building. Good place to chat to people, but it was annoying to have to do that every day. It was packed inside, but the system to get registered and pick up the lanyard and goody bag was well run; there were about 800 sketchers registered for this event, it was massive compared to how it used to be. Like last year, more than half were first-time Symposium attendees too. It really has grown so, so much since that first Symposium in 2010 (see these posts with tag “UskPDX10”!), and since Urban Sketchers launched in 2008 (see this post!). So many people were in pink, the colour of Toulouse, and not just the hi-viz volunteers. It was very exciting. It was also still so very hot, and not any less sweaty inside. I did sketch during the opening reception, and caught up with old sketching friends, but I will post that separately. I then went quickly to watch the England semi-final at a pub which, very annoyingly, they lost, against that lot. I already posted that. Let’s fast forward to Thursday morning, then. After a nice breakfast at the hotel I walked up to the Hub, about 20-25 minutes from my hotel, to catch the morning remarks. Of course I missed those, because the line to get through security was really long. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything too important. I did at least arrive in time for the Presentations, which is always one of my favourite parts of a Symposium, getting to hear another urban sketcher speak about something, I find it really inspiring. Last year’s ones (Elizabeth Alley adventuring in the Arctic, Rita Sabler telling difficult stories around the world and Detlef Surrey following the Berlin Wall) were really fascinating. I like to draw these talks and take loads of notes of course, as I do all the time anyway. This one was by Len Grant, a Manchester based artist whose work I’ve followed for a while, I think since the Manchester 2016 Symposium. He was presenting on the theme of “Publishing a Neighbourhood Sketchbook in 154 Easy Steps”. Since this is something I have been thinking about doing for ages, Davis, I was particularly interested in what he had to say. His books look great, and his talk was very funny, I took a lot of notes. I sat next to Yves Damin from Paris who also sketched. I am always surprised at how few people are sketching along at these talks these days, but I’m someone who can’t really stop. Len said he has four books based on neighbourhoods in Manchester, and that got me thinking, yeah I could do two about Davis, one for the city and one for the campus, but then what about London, I would love to do a Burnt Oak and Edgware book, then do one for every other part of London that has meaning to me, Crouch End and Highgate, Camden Town, Tottenham, and then I think wait, I’ve been talking about a Davis one for more than a decade and still haven’t found time. Well maybe I’ll get going on that. If I get time.

I had a one-workshop Symposium pass this time, same as last year, but my workshop was not until Friday so I joined the Thursday Morning Sketchwalk, which was going to be starting at the same place as the Welcome Sketchwalk the day before, down by the river. It was a fairly long walk down there but there were people to talk to. Spotting symposium attendees all around was easy enough, with our orange lanyards and nametags (great for when you can’t remember people’s names) and those bright yellow bags that all the art goodies came in, they might be my favourite symposium bags yet, with ‘Loulou’ on them. I sketched some of the volunteers at the start as we all gathered, many others were heading off on their workshops, and those tall sticks with the pink signs on were very helpful. The army of volunteers really made the whole thing run smoothly.

We gathered to sketch on the high Embankments by Place de la Daurade. The panorama sketch above was of sketchers looking out across the Garonne. It had pre-splattered it with light coloured paint, in fact this was done a couple of days before because I had expected to eb drawing fireworks but that didn’t happen, so I drew sketchers. Genine Carvalheira is there on the left, and there was a sketcher from Canada over there too who I spoke to for a bit (but cannot remember her name; this is why I write them down!). The others were a group of sketchers from Madrid who I didn’t get a chance to speak to that day, but I happened upon them a few days later in Carcassonne, and sketched alongside them, and made friends with them even though I speak no Spanish and they spoke no English. We speak Urban Sketching. Lovely people, they gave me an Urban Sketchers Madrid badge.

Here are a few more people I sketched down there, above you have Sander from Mechelen, in Belgium, sat sketching with his headphones on, we spoke for a little while, and then I drew a couple of sketchers from Austria, Victoria Krisai and Jelde Flessner (I mis-spelled his first name), very quick sketchesjust to capture the moment. I liked his pink hat.

One thing I will say about the Sketchwalks in Toulouse versus the ones in Poznan, the ones this year tended to cover a very large area, a long walk between start and end points, and also they are advertised only to Symposium attendees and not to the general public. That’s two things I will say about the Sketchwalks. I didn’t mind so much the second because the non-registered people found them anyway; there are always a lot of people who come for the ride, who could not get a regular ticket, but are still a big part of the whole Symposium experience and I met a lot of ‘Symposium Fringe’ sketchers, several of my sketching friends did just that. They don’t get the orange lanyard or the yellow bag, but Urban Sketchers did design a special Urban Sketching ID badge this year that people can download and wear even if they are independent sketchers in the whole thing, which is nice. Still, Poznan advertised their Sketchwalks with a lot of advance notice, Toulouse however may have been more conscious of the crowds, and not without reason – that Welcome Sketchcrawl was really over-populated, as was the final one on Saturday, so I can see why. No, my gripe was the long distance covered, and it was like that for all of them. One of the Sketchwalks had an end point over 30 minutes’ walk from the start and when you are sketching and it’s hot, that’s a long way to go for a short event (I walked and timed it, but missed the actual end photo). Just have it closer, focus on one area. This one was a bit of a walk too, but it was at Place du Capitole, right by my hotel, so not as bad. Before heading up there though I stopped to draw the scene above, because I loved all those rooftops. I wish I’d had a higher vantage point, so I could sketch them from above. I drew fast, then dashed up to the end point, where I didn’t miss the photo, I just didn’t join it because I was talking to people. I did a couple more people sketches (the one on the left, below, is of my long-time Urban Sketchers pal Omar Jaramillo, though it’s not very accurate, I was hot and tired. We got a nice photo together after. I declined to go to lunch though as I needed to rest and shower, the Toulouse heat already getting to me. I am glad I did. The next event was later in the afternoon, the Live Demos, and that was a walk back to the Hub and another walk back to the River. I definitely got my steps in in Toulouse.

Toulouse Part 4: Halle de La Machine

September 4, 2026Leave a comment

After hearing so much about and seeing so many sketches of this incredible place with all the machines and the giant Minotaur, I took Wednesday afternoon to look for it myself. I took a train to Montaudran, on the outskirts of Toulouse. It took a little while, as there seemed to be only one train an hour so I spent a lot of time waiting in the main SNCF station in Toulouse, Matabiau. I went into a photo booth and made some silly photos, you can get them themed on the World Cup where you copy the poses of various French players. Back in France 98, I got a similar thing which I still have, though I’m 28 years older now and so I am even sillier. Eventually the train came. Montaudran isn’t far, and the Halle de La Machine is a very short walk from the station. Short, but in blazing heat. The deceptively cool morning had turned into a furnace by mid-afternoon. I only had a couple of hours by now before I’d have to go back and get registered for the Symposium, pick up my packet and my pass, see all the people. That should be enough? Soon after arriving, I definitely wished I had longer. It’s one of the most unusual places I have ever visited, a collection of highly inventive and often massive machines housed in and around a large building on an old airport runway. ‘La Machine’ is the creation of François Delarozière, and it’s hard to explain them, so you should check out their website. Perhaps the most famous of the giant machines in their collection is Astérion the Minotaur, which I sketched above. It is gigantic, and kept outside. It has platforms on its back so people can ride on it, because it is not just a giant statue, it does actually move about, walking (with the aid of wheels) about the grounds, breathing smoke and bellowing. When I arrived,I was told Astérion was still sleeping, so I waited until it was being woken up before going to sketch it. There were, naturally, some other sketchers around, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at least half the Symposium sketchers visited at some point. It’s an urban sketcher’s delight. I had to pick what I sketched sparingly, as I only had a couple of hours, and I didn’t join the tour which was going around demonstrating how a lot of the machines work (which sounded really fun), but while I sketched the enormous unusual machine below, the performers of La Machine transported us into a different world.

This immense structure, made of steel, balloons, glass, and lots of botanical features, is called Le Module Aéroporté, created between 2010 and 2013 and built by Patrick Grevoz, and looks like some sort of flying greenhouse. It’s hard not to think of the sort of creations in Miyazaki movies, like Howl’s Moving Castle, and Castle In The Sky. ‘Steampunk’ would not do it justice. Ethereal live music started playing, and clouds were pumped into the space, propellors rotated slowly while performers on bungee ropes sailed up and down, giving the effect that this whole machine was flying slowly through the sky. It was a pleasure to be sketching at this moment, though I wanted to draw fast, as this thing was just so, so big. I felt quite emotional, it was such a piece of theatre, and I wanted to spend the time really taking it all in, but I also wanted to draw it, and I also knew I did not really have the time. It made me want to start drawing and inventing my own flying machines, which I always used to love doing as a kid, the more impractical the better. This is a place for the imagination alright.

There are so many machines and inventions, not just the giant ones. Several were musical instrument based, with guitars and drums mixed in with strange steel contraptions and bicycle wheels. I watched a demonstration of a guitar machine called ‘La Pete Townshend’, where the performer would play some tunes on the electric guitar, and then a huge rotating metal arm would swing around performing the famous Townshend windmill power-strum. Another machine used wheels and parts of s ewing machine to create a device that painted pictures. Another had eight guitars bolted to a giant wheel, I have no idea how that was supposed to work. There was a massive banquet table with iron machines on it to open and pour bottles of wine and sort out your plates and cutlery. I wish I could have watched it all. There were two giant spiders, one inside and one out, so I found a chair and sat to draw the inside one, looking right at me with massive creepy-doll saucer eyes. I thought about the neighbour kid in Toy Story. Spiders do scare me so this would have been terrifying to see in action. I drew it quickly and coloured it in later. I heard an announcement that the Minotaur was waking up.

It was sweaty enough inside where it was cool, outside was scorching by this point. I started to draw the Minotaur when one of the little French kids waned me that it would be waking up any moment and I had to be careful or it would probably walk on me, thanks for the warning kid. I followed the crowd out of the way, and stood in some shade across the runway. The assembled kids and their families were treated to a show of mechanical fountains and what might have been snow machines dotted around, scaring the life out of the parents, and me too. I drew the Minotaur from the side, before being chased from my shady spot by a nearby fountain nozzle that probably wouldn’t have hit me, but I took no chances. I resumed my spot next to Astérion the Minotaur and watched it wake up. It was a spectacular sight. A woman in the cockpit area controlled its movements, and the eyes opened, steam came from its nostrils, its mouth opened to murmur and bellow, its arms made shapes and the wooden panels that made up its hide moved in and out as it breathed. It was incredible. I was not there long enough to watch it move about, but I experienced enough of it to be super impressed. I picked up a few bits in the gift shop, and went to catch my train back into Toulouse. If you are ever down that way, I recommend visiting the Halle de La Machine, and maybe going in the morning to give yourself more time there.

Toulouse Part 2: around Capitole

August 30, 2026August 30, 2026Leave a comment

I should really call this ‘Part 3’ since I already had one Toulouse post before ‘Part 1’, which was when I posted the sketches of the World Cup semi-finals, the first of which took place on the first day I was there, July 14.Call that one a Bonus Track. This is basically the rest of the sketches from July 14 that I didn’t put in Part 1, probably because I was in a hurry. After cooling off at the hotel I headed out into Place du Capitole, and walked over to the nearby Place Charles de Gaulle where I had seen some random sketchers dotted about, and figured I would also draw this big building which is located at the rear of the Capitole. I believe it’s called the Donjon and dates back to 1525-30 (the top was added later). I had to find a good spot in the shade where I could sketch it, and settled on standing on some grass behind a bench. This was the first page of a new sketchbook, another Hahnemuhle A5 portrait size book, which is Sketchbook #63 in the official chronology but was not my main book, I used the landscape one most (Sketchbook #62). By the way those numbered sketchbooks are just my ‘main’ ones in order, and doesn’t include ones such as the small brown book I usually carry, or other ‘side-project’ sketchbooks. I didn’t actually sketch the main Capitole building itself, despite having a hotel right across from it, because it was a very big building full of windows and decorations, and I figured other people would draw that, I’ll draw something else. Looked like it would just take too long, and at the end of it I’d be like, ok well I drew that. I quite enjoyed drawing this, but it was getting into eraly evening already and I wanted to eat something before the big semi-final, so I hurried it along. I did draw some of the lads sat opposite me though, because I really liked the football shirts. The one on the left is a Sporting Lisbon shirt (probably a training shirt), but the one in the middle was a fantastic Mali shirt, and I had already drawn one Mali shirt just a few weeks before in Davis. This was a square where lots of people were hanging out, shaded from that sun, there was a childrens play area, trees and grass, and fountains coming out of the ground that had signs saying ‘don’t play in the fountains’ but on a crazy hot day like this, everyone’s playing in the fountains, as they should. Some older men were gathered on the bench next to me, having an evening drink, I liked listening in. I spoke to some other sketchers, who were Spanish, and wished them luck in the game that night.

I did another quick sketch in the Place du Capitole, of one of the street corners in the evening light. Toulouse is the pink city, la ville en rose, but I was feeling more purple and just wanted to catch how the shadows were drawing you in. I like a quick sketch like this, it’s more of a snapshot, a mood. I couldn’t fill all my time with sketches like this because I do like making a nice detailed drawing (and I draw those pretty fast too), but if I did, in all different colours, that would be quite a fun book to look through. I saw so many styles and colour schemes in peoples’ sketchbooks on this trip that it did give me a new bag of ideas to use in my sketches going forward. I keep thinking I should take a weekend in San Francisco and just draw like this, get as many quick sketches in as possible, playing with colours, see what the end result would be. I don’t know, right now in August 2026 I have been drawing loads of trees, portrait format, full colours, lots of detail, and that is, as they say, my jam. Though I did draw a series of sketches in different colours of the Davis Farmers Market earlier this month, which by this rate I might post on here some time in the new year.

I had Japanese noodles for dinner, an interesting first meal in Toulouse, and then met with fellow sketcher Kalina (who I knew from the Portland Symposium all those years ago) to watch the World Cup in a reasonably crowded Irish pub near Place du Capitole (O’Brien’s, right across from my hotel). France lost the semi-final, as I reported in an earlier post. Spain went on to win the World Cup, but that’s another story. Kalina showed me her sketches from that day, and she had been to a place called ‘Halle de La Machine’ which looked incredible, she sketched this gigantic wooden Minotaur which moved about and she and a load of others had ridden on a platform on its back – it looked amazing, and I decided I’d make the time to go there the next day. While I did sketch the people watching the match (see that earlier post) we also sketch a group of younger people, one of whom was dressed as a pirate, and we had drawn so many pirates in years gone by. We ended up chatting away with them for a while, and it was nice to meet some Toulouse locals on the first night there. Still, it had been a very very long day, and I needed a good night’s sleep for the actual start of the Symposium next day.

Toulouse, Part 1: sketching the Garonne

August 27, 2026Leave a comment

Alors! Instead of continuing to play catch up and post things in order, before this summer slips away I am going to post my sketches and stories from the 2026 International Urban Sketching Symposium in TOULOUSE, France. It’s now over a month since the Symposium ended and I am still brimming with sketching energy and missing all the interactions with urban sketchers from around the world, though I am not missing the sweaty, sticky heat. I did a lot of drawing, though I always come away thinking ‘but it wasn’t enough’, having seen so many other sketchbooks. I did a lot of urban exploring but again always feel I could have seen more (if the sketching didn’t slow me down). I met a lot of people and spent time with a lot of old sketching friends (and new ones too), but there’s never enough time to see everyone. I did spend almost a week in Toulouse though, and that was a good time to get to know a place and come away with good memories of somewhere a bit different, but being France, still familiar. Plus I got to speak a decent amount of French to the point where I have been actually trying to keep it up and want to improve it now I am back home again. So let’s get on with it. I landed in Toulouse on July 14th, the Fête Nationale (what we call ‘Bastille Day’ but they don’t really). This was the day that France were due to play Spain in the World Cup semi-finals and I expected people everywhere to be wearing their France shirts and buzzing with excitement since they had been, so far, the best team in the tournament. Except maybe Spain who just looked very solid. In fact people I spoke to were definitely not getting carried away with Les Bleus’ chances, knowing Spain were actually a bit good. Still I was looking forward to some celebrations and fireworks that evening. As it turned out, they held the firework display over the river the night before, and France ended up losing the semi-final. Still, I had a very nice first day in Toulouse, and got right to work with the sketches. The bus from the airport was easy, my hotel was in an amazing central location right by the Place du Capitole, and I walked right down to the Garonne river that afternoon after checking in. It was very hot, and I had taken the long way. I stood in some shade on the high embankments, and looked out over to the Chapelle St. Joseph de la Grave. The Garonne was a fresh greeny-blue matching the dome, and the buildings were reddish-ochre, but you can see why they call Toulouse ‘La Ville Rose’, the Pink City, because in the light everything feels tinged with a bit of pink. The stone on a lot of the buildings does have a pinkish hue, especially in the evening, being made with what they call ‘brique rose’ (pink brick). The bridge to the right is the Pont St. Pierre. This was still early- to mid-afternoon and the sunlight was very strong, and I had to drink a lot of water. It was relaxing to draw by the river though. Three Moroccan lads sat near me and were chatting on their phones, one was admiring the sketch. I had already seen quite a few urban sketchers about town, their familiar sketching poses making me feel right at home, but had not seen anyone else I knew yet. The river turned out to be a place we would come back to sketch a number of times during the Symposium, but I got the big view out of the way first.

I walked further down the high embankment (the Quai Lucien Lombard), shaded with rows of plane trees, and found a spot on the corner to draw the historic Pont Neuf. France likes to call its oldest bridges ‘Pont Neuf’ (back when they made their bridges with irony rather than iron), and this beauty was constructed between 1544 and 1632 (it took a while; the Garonne was not an easy river to tame) and completed by the famed architect Jacques Lemercier during the reign of King Louis XIII. I adored those arches, even though I don’t like drawing arches (add to the list of things I don’t like drawing: circles, feet, hands, dogs, Arsenal shirts). As I sketched I bumped into the first sketchers I knew and they were old urban sketching friends, Liz Steel and Suhita Shirodkar, which was a very nice surprise. There were going to be many hundreds of sketchers all over Toulouse the next few days, so it was nice to bump into people I have known since this Urban Sketchers thing all started. I drew quickly and did what I could with the river, it was the colour I wanted) and started to head back into centre-ville again. There were lots of things I wanted to sketch, but it was so hot so I kept it simple as I headed back towards the hotel, and I drew this really interesting post-box on the corner of Place de la Daurade.Then I went back to the hotel to cool off before heading out for some more sketching before dinner.

I should include my in-flight sketch, Ryanair from Stansted to Toulouse. I always draw on the plane, like most urban sketchers, it’s how I relax and get my sketching exercises in. I had a small A6 size brown Hahnemuhle sketchbook with me, as well as the two A5 Hahhemuhles (one portrait, one landscape), as well as the tiny accordion Hahnemuhle. I should do a post on the materials I took to Toulouse, and those I got while there, but not just yet. The Sun is up now and I need to go for a morning run before work. Join me soon for part 2…

“No Pulisic? No Problem!” USA on G Street

June 28, 20263 Comments

“USA! USA! USA!” they were all singing. It was just after lunchtime, the Juneteenth holiday so we had the day off work, and the pedestrianized block of G Street in downtown Davis was full of soccer fans, most of them dressed in USA gear to cheer on USMNT in their group match against Australia. Win this, and they go through to the knockouts. There was a big screen set up, and loads of people on their lawn chairs, which every soccer-mom and soccer-dad has in the back of their car. It was hot, and very sunny, so I sketched under the cover of my hat and some hastily applied sunscreen on the back of my legs, drawing on the last page of my sketchbook which I had pre-splashed with some ‘Inktense’ paints. I had to change positions a couple of times, and then just headed into the shade completely. There were some Australians, but the US were playing in front of a soccer-crazy Seattle crowd and were pretty dominant, even though their Main Man Christian Pulisic was not playing; “No Pulisic, No Problem!” announced the excited commentator. When they scored, a massive cheer erupted, and chants of “USA! USA! USA!” echoed across downtown. I wondered to myself if anyone would start replying “USB! USB!” and thought that might be a good thing to sing at a Chargers game, and then the US got a second goal, scored by someone called A. Freeman, the #16. I thought to myself, they have missed a trick there, A. Freeman should have been Number 6. (As in “I am NOT a NUMBER, I am A. FREEMAN!”). Someone I know (Adie) was wearing an Alexei Lalas USA ’94 shirt, #22, so he had to go into the sketchbook. He had not grown the beard (funny story, right, I actually did grow the beard back in 1999 mostly as a laugh but also partly to annoy someone). I always wanted that kit back in 1994. I did consider wearing the one USA national shirt that I own, the very smart one from 2006, but the thing about shirts from the 2000s is they don’t really work on 2020s Pete. It is curious that my football shirts from the big and baggy ’90s still fit me but nothing from about 2002-2010. Oh well. We didn’t actually stick around for the second half, instead going to McDonalds for some massively overpriced chicken nuggets that came with commemorative World Cup cups with players on them (We got Pulisic and Lamine Yamal). We watched the rest at home, but it was a done deal and the USMNT topped their group with a game to spare in this unusually designed World Cup format. They would go on to play against Turkey and lose late on, but it was a meaningless match, if any game is really meaningless. They will play again in the Round of 32 on Wednesday against Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the big screen will be out on G Street again.

I had gone down to G Street a little early, to check out the Davis Soccer Fest. This has been set up to happen before the US games, and also before the World Cup Final, where there are lots of soccer related activities, including a big dartboard where you can kick a ball at it to score points (I didn’t give it a go but I sketched it). It is organized by Davis community Soccer, who are a new group in town run by many of the same people who have run soccer in Davis for a while now, from the AYSO and AYSO United organizations, of which I was a member; I coached for years and was one of the original coaching team for United but retired in 2022, though I am still on the Davis World Cup committee, and design the World Cup logos and medals. Davis Community Soccer started this year, though it was a surprise to me (since it is effectively replacing Fall AYSO this year, though Davis AYSO has said it’s not going away) and I’ve not had a chance to talk to anyone involved about it all yet, but good luck to them, I hope it’s a success. I like their logo, it reminds me of the one I designed for the 2022 Davis World Cup a bit, I like that retro font. It’s nice to see them create fun stuff like this as well, and so as I sketched I did get a chance to chat with Sam and Adam who I’ve not caught up with in a while. They had a tent pitched up where kids could get soccer tattoos. It was a really fun event for kids, with others playing soccer tennis further up the street.

Here are some more of the crowd. I drew the USA fans there while I was stood in the shade on the sidelines. That reminds me, the USA will celebrate its 250th anniversary this July 4, I don’t know if you heard. I may actually try to sketch the fireworks this year, to mark the occasion, I will need some more gel pens to sketch on dark paper. While 250 doesn’t seem that old to a Brit, it’s worth getting a nice cake for, and I never liked it when I would turn 30, 40, most recently 50 and there is always someone older going, hah you’re so young, wait until you’re my age. For July 4 I might even try to squeeze into that 2006 USA shirt if I can. Below, some of the other shirts on display, a Scottish fan in a kilt waiting, Scotland were playing later that day (spoiler alert, they lost the game, but they won over the city of Boston, and that’s what really matters). There was a young lad in the 2002 Brazil shirt, I think he was a USA fan but that’s a great top. The guy next to him was in a red USA away kit from about 2011, that was a nice one. There were a lot of other kits on display, but overwhelmingly the current USA home kit was most common, the one with the red wavy horizontal stripes like a flag. Will they win it this year, the actual World Cup? I mean, nobody really thinks so, because they just don’t do they, but well, they could. Their group was not hard, and their route to the quarter finals is not exactly filled with heavyweight teams, and with the big West Coast crowds chanting “USA! USA!” (except for those few confused LA Charger fans singing “USB-C!”) they just might pull it off. The Women’s team have done it enough times. If they do, well it’ll be ‘Hydration Breaks’ everywhere. Maybe when they have won ‘FIFA’ as they call it, they can get rid of penalty shootouts and replace them with that thing they used to do in the early years of MLS, when they would have someone run from the halfway line to go one on one with the keeper, the best Americanization sport has ever seen. But that won’t happen because as we all know deep down, this year, 60 years on, Its Coming Home.

supergrass in san francisco

April 10, 2026Leave a comment

I’d been back from Europe for less than a week and I was off again, this time down to San Francisco to see a performance by the band Supergrass. I had been planning this for ages, and would be staying overnight in the city. I got into Supergrass back in 1995 when I was still just about a teenager, but in all those years I never got to see them play live. They were doing a special tour playing their first album I Should Coco, the mark its 30 year anniversary. Now is the real resurgence of the old 90s Britpop bands, coming back out and playing again; we saw Pulp for the first time in 2024, then they brought out a new album in ’25, but the big news comeback was the massive reunion tour of Oasis (another band I was well into but missed seeing live). I knew there was no chance I’d get to go to that tour, since it sold it out so quickly, and tickets were astronomically overpriced. Supergrass though was such an exciting prospect for me, I loved that youthful optimistic first album, but I was massively into their second album In It For The Money. My friend James in England (fellow Supergrass fan when we were at uni) saw them at the Roundhouse (and was standing next to James McCartney at the show) and had told me how good it was, that they also played a bunch of other classics as well as running through the album. So I was well looking forward to it. Then the night before leaving, I was talking to my wife and she said that, well you know Oasis are playing in Los Angeles this weekend, there are apparently still some tickets. Yeah, but I’m going to San Francisco to see Supergrass, I can’t do both. Why not, she says. We looked, there were still some good seats at the Rose Bowl on Sunday evening. Sure, but where would I stay at this short notice? Flights would cost so much, too days out. As it turned out, I had a Southwest credit from a cancelled trip to Vegas earlier that year (I had planned to fly down meet my friend in Vegas, who was participating in a big poker tournament, but he had to cancel due to illness). My wife was able to find a room at a nice hotel in Pasadena on points, and so I booked the ticker… this was going to be the big 90s Britpop weekend, Supergrass and Oasis, 19 year old me would be freaking out with excitement, and it only took me thirty years and a lot of mileage to finally see them. Sure I was still exhausted after the long summer trip but as they say, here we go.

I took the Amtrak down, sketching the view from the window. I planned to hang about in the city during the day before checking into my (cheap) hotel, and going to the show. I’d be getting up next morning to fly from SFO down to LAX, but as always I try to fit in as much extra sketching as I can, because there’s NEVER ENOUGH SKETCHING is there. I jumped onto the Muni, and headed out to the Inner Sunset area around Irving Street. I like it up there. I drew some of the colourful shops (and then didn’t even colour two of them in). Sketching in the bigger portrait format like this I tend to do larger drawings, and they tend to take a bit longer, and I tend to get bored drawing them. But I enjoyed standing out on this street watching everyone go by and drawing these buildings, I know I have sketched this row before (see how it looked in 2010 when that ‘Easy Breezy’ cafe was a placed called ‘Tutti Frutti’). This place must have a contract that when it becomes something new, it should still have a rhyming name.

I had some lunch in Crepevine on Irving Street, and sketched a couple of people chatting in my little brown book. I just liked the pinks and greens.

Later in the afternoon I went over to the Little Shamrock pub, opposite Golden Gate Park. I have sketched here before; they still have one of my drawings on the wall, which I did back in 2013. It is one of the oldest pubs in the city, established in 1893. I sat on one of the little benches outside and sketched in pencil, but regretted the pencil I was using and wish I’d drawn in pen. It’s this two-page portrait format, it seems like a good idea, then I get bored and impatient with it, the bigger size. Still it’s good to sit and observe. I was being observed by the people at the bar, who would occasionally come out to have a look.

When I was done, I came in for a pint. It’s cash only, I rarely carry cash any more. I do like the interior, there is a lot to draw and usually a good atmosphere, on a Saturday afternoon. I’ve never been in the evening. I sat and sketched this interesting little corner, and then turned and drew the bar area. I used my fountain pen this time. I think I was a little conscious of time, and unwilling to really dive into too many details. I still had to get back to Union Square and check into my hotel, eat something, then head to the Supergrass show.

So I did that. My hotel was the King George, and it was a bit crummy to be honest, the room was pretty grim. I was going to stay in the nice new hotel next to the Warfield, but figured I was not going to be there long enough to need anything nice. In hindsight I wish I had; the couple of blocks or so between the King George and the Warfield were, well very sketchy to say the least, classic Tenderloin. It did not feel very safe walking down there during daylight, and I’d have to come back this way after dark as well. A lot of very dodgy people hanging about, it’s not a great place to be by yourself. I got to the Warfield early; it’s a fantastic venue. I last went there in 2015 when we saw Noel Gallagher, and the acoustics were very impressive, like being inside a gramophone. A lot of famous bands have played here over the years. My seats were good. There were some Italians seated next to me; I was wearing my AS Roma shirt. The opening band were pretty good, I did do a quick pencil sketch of them singing about the A1 road in England (or maybe it was a song about European paper sizes, I don’t know). Then Supergrass came on, and I was 19 again. Well no, if I was 19 I’d have been pogo-ing about down in the crowd and not wearing glasses. They were really good, for being older (they weren’t very old when they first started so we’re about the same age; singer Gaz Coombes is a month younger than me, the drummer Danny Goffey shares my birthday but is two years older, the bassist Mick Quinn – not the former Coventry and Liverpool striker – was born in 1969 so he is ancient). We all look good for our ages I think. Supergrass had a lot of fans in San Francisco, mostly of a similar age to me. They played the whole of the I Should Coco album, including my favourite track from that, Sofa of My Lethargy, which I used to listen to over and over in my old bedroom in Burnt Oak. They stopped and started on a couple of tracks, maybe a bit out of practice, or maybe some of the album tracks are just well difficult to play live, they were really creative with their switching of time signatures and interesting chord sequences. This was live music though, man, and it felt pretty real, hearing these songs I only knew from my old CDs being played in real time. Watching the drummer put in a proper shift. It was great stuff. They played a few other classics, including Richard III, which I rocked out to in 1997, Late In The Day, and Sun Hits The Sky, which definitely had a different element to it as a live track. There were no fancy theatrics, just really good live music. They finished with Pumping On Your Stereo, which was never my favourite of their singles but had a fun video, and was a feelgood way to round off the show. Well enjoyed it.

I didn’t enjoy the walk back to the hotel. Market Street after dark was not somewhere to hang about, and there were plenty of spaced-out unpredictable people outside the venue. I took a slight detour away from Mason Street, which was dark and foreboding but was the quickest route to my hotel, and grabbed a chicken burger in Carl’s Jr a block away, though that was a fairly scary experience itself, like I was stuck in a scene from Blade Runner. When I finally got my greasy tasteless food, I left the grotty fast food place and headed towards the hotel. There’s an Irish pub on the way that I remember going to once (with my Mum, when we stayed down here years ago; she actually loved the Tenderloin), Johnny Foley’s, so I popped in to have a post-show beer and sketch. There was a band playing old 60’s numbers, they were really good. I sat at the bar and sketched it, while tourists from China came in and drank pints of Guinness next to me. It was then time to to go to bed, because I had a long day ahead of me on Sunday – Oasis in Pasadena.

back again, late summer

April 3, 2026Leave a comment

When I’m so far behind with posting it feels like I’m telling stories about a time I don’t remember any more. End of summer 2025 seems like such a long time ago, the world just keeps getting further into horrible history. Up is down and right is wrong and who knows where it ends. Still, I go into my sketchbook to try to understand if not the universe or the world, then just the place that is right in front of me. I was pretty tired after that long trip, and eager to get back to routine. September is still very hot in Davis, so I sat in the shade on a bench outside the Varsity Theatre and drew that. I hadn’t come back from my big sketching trip with some sort of new insight into sketching, so this is just the usual say-what-you-see, I have to draw something type of of sketch. Work is still quiet in early September, it’s the tail end of Summer, and Davis isn’t that busy again yet. I did see an interesting car on D Street painted in DHL logos, so I started to draw that, but ended up taking a photo and doing the rest later, as the owner came and drove off. It looked like a large toy car. It reminded me of the story told by Eddie Jordan, the late great Eddie Jordan (he died just last year), former Formula 1 team boss, whose team Jordan Grand Prix used to race in a distinctive yellow livery. In 2002 DHL started sponsoring them, and in those days DHL’s colours were white and red, but Jordan raced in yellow, due to a contract with a previous sponsor, and they didn’t want to change their colours. So DHL instead changed their branding colours to match Jordan, and the famed yellow and red DHL branding you see today is apparently a result of that.

auf wiedersehen, Berlin

March 26, 2026March 26, 2026Leave a comment

I’ll finish up with the remainder of my Berlin sketches and thoughts. I definitely had a lot of thoughts when visiting the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Memorial) in the northern section of the city, close to the Nordbahnhof. before heading up there I walked over to the Hackescher Höfe, which I had visited a couple of days before with Omar. I wanted to visit the art and bookshop there, at the Haus Schwarzenberg, which is covered in graffiti and has a stairwell full of art and posters and stickers (and signs saying not to take photos; I broke that rule). The shop I visited was called ‘Neurotitan’ and was an incredible place, I bought some zines and stickers there, and asked the assistant if they had Detlef Surrey’s book ‘The Wall Revisited’ (I’m pleased to say I held a conversation in German and was totally fine; normally I need a couple of beers before the German comes flooding back). I had heard that this store stocked it, but she said that the last copy had just been sold that day, probably by someone else who had seen his talk in Poznan. I showed her my sketches of that talk, she said that I could probably get in touch with the publisher to get a copy (I did, once I got back to the US, but it took some time and a bit of extra money – thanks a lot, bloody tariffs – to get one sent over to America). I had that book on my mind now especially because I was going up to the Berlin Wall Memorial, which Detlef had talked about at length. I took the S-Bahn out to Nordbahnhof (I realize that sentence implies that I simply got on the S-Bahn, and just went to Nordbahnhof, but leaves out that I got on the wrong train in the wrong direction at least twice, like when you try to fix a scratch but end up smashing up the table, but I did end up at Nordbahnhof in probably more time than it would have taken to walk). The Berlin Wall Memorial is a preserved section of the Wall and the Death Strip, along Bernauer Strasse. It was already early evening when I arrived at Nordbahnhof (sketched below), which during the Cold War was closed down, a ‘Ghost Station’ on the divided S-Bahn system, where West Berlin trains would not stop but passengers would catch a glimpse of a time capsule manned with armed guards. I found the Berlin Wall Memorial chilling. This was not like the East Side Gallery, here was the Wall as it looked, along with rows of metal poles installed like bars you can walk through. One section remains closed off to give an idea of what the Death Strip really looked like. Berlin is a city that dares you not to forget its past. On a metal display in the middle of the grass are the names and faces of every person who was killed trying to escape from the East into West Berlin, 136 in all. The faces as they look out at you, some so young – even children – was frightening. There were blocks occasionally showing where people were shot trying to escape. The Wall was up from 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989. I didn’t get to see all the areas of the Memorial, nor the documentation center, but I sketched the Wall as the light was fading, then took a tram out to Prenzlauerberg and back to the hotel.

After a late dinner of spaetzle from the hotel restaurant I walked back over to Hackescher Markt. All over Berlin, but especially around here where there had once been a large Jewish population, you find the ‘Stolpersteine‘, or ‘stumbling stones’, which are actually little square brass plaques in the pavement that are slightly raised so that you might trip on them, by design. Each has the names of people who lived there previously, usually Jewish but many Roma, homosexuals, disabled, who were removed or forced to flee by the Nazis, along with the year, how old they were, and their fate (you see ‘Ermordert in Auschwitz’ a lot). This is an initiative by the artist Gunter Demnig started in the 90s, and has now spread to many other cities commemorating victims of the Holocaust. Each of the Stolpersteine is handmade. Berlin makes sure it does not forget. I went back over to Hackesche Höfe and had a beer at the Cinema Cafe, which I sketched in the poor light. It is interesting that a lot of places in Berlin are cash only, where I got so used to using my card everywhere in Poland, same back in California. It wasn’t a busy evening, it was Tuesday, but it was an interesting cafe to sketch, and I used my fountain pen. The outside area of the cafe is in that alley with all the graffiti and would have been an interesting sketch, if I could find somewhere to sit with a good view, which I couldn’t. After this, tired, I went to bed.

On my last morning in Berlin, at the end of my Poland-Germany trip, I was ready to go back to London but had a last sketch or two in me. I had considered adding in a short trip to Denmark onto the end of this adventure, since it was 30 years since my strawberry-picking visit there, but decided a couple more days in London would be better for me. I had also considered taking the overnight train from Berlin to Brussels, a fairly new service, and passing a couple of days in my old Belgian haunts, but I’m glad I didn’t in the end. It was nice to spend some time by myself in Berlin but it’s not 1998 any more. I walked down to the Museum Island (sketching a man fishing in the Spree along the way) and sat next to the Dom, drawing the view of the Museums in pencil.

It is fun (and quick) to draw in pencil but I don’t really like straight lines much. I do love that sky though, and miss those wispy cloud skies. Before long I was back up in the wispy clouds myself, and sketched the view on my very small plane (see below). It was easy to get the S-Bahn out to the Brandenburg airport, but took a very long time getting through the security line, which seemed to have one line per baggage inspector and the inspector seemed to have to open up every single bag and inspect every single thing. I eventually had to ask them to let me through as I would miss my flight despite being there super early. Word of warning for you in Berlin airport, it can be slow. I flew back into a new airport for me though, London City Airport out past Docklands, a very small and convenient place to end up. I jumped right onto the DLR to Bank, and onto the Northern Line back home to Burnt Oak. Auf Wiedersehen Berlin, it was nice to reconnect after all these years. I would like to get back to Germany again soon, but I’d like to go back to the South and West again, maybe explore the Rhine Valley at last.

west side

March 24, 2026March 22, 2026Leave a comment

For my second full day in Berlin, I had a few things I wanted to do. You can’t do it all; I couldn’t for example go out to Charlottenburg, where I had never been; nor to Neukölln and Tempelhof, which had been recommended to me; nor out to Potsdam, which I had explored in ’98 anyway. Things always take longer when I have my sketchbook anyway, but I spent a bit of time going about on the U-Bahn and S-Bahn. I had a leisurely breakfast in my hotel room, sat looking out of the window and strumming on the uke, then headed out to West Berlin, to the Zoobahnhof, the busy shopping street of Kurfürstendamm, and to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) at Breitscheidplatz. I was covering old ground; this is one of the first places I visited in 1998 on the day I explored the city on my own. It is the shell of a large bombed out church, with the more modern church structure next to it, a large concrete edifice made up of small windows of stained glass. The older building stands as a monument to the destruction of war, and there is an exhibit of its history inside, along with an iron nail cross from Coventry Cathedral, also destroyed by aerial bombing in the war. The two cathedrals have held a long friendship together. The original church was not that old, having been built by Kaiser Wilhelm II in the last years of the 19th century, opening in 1906. The new church doesn’t look much from the outside, but inside the largely blue windows create a thrilling effect as they surround the space, it reminded me of Liverpool Catholic Cathedral, though this is a Protestant church. I had always thought (probably someone told me when I went there years ago) that the glass was recovered from the original building, but that is not the case, the glass in fact being designed by Gabriel Loire. That makes more sense, I think that when clearing up they probably weren’t saying “collect all those little bits of glass, ja, that might come in handy”. I really enjoyed sitting in the new church and sketching, something about all that blue really calms you down. I also liked the design of the floor, all colourful circles. There is a big golden Christ with a long face flying above the altar; it’s actually made from a bronze alloy metal called tombac and designed by Karl Hemmeter. I sketched in there (below) before sitting outside and sketching the old and new, above.

This is the commercial hub of the city and it feels like it, the Capitalist island in the old Communist sea; I remember that road map of Europe I had when I was a kid, West Germany was fully detailed, but only major cities were shown in the otherwise blank East Germany, except for those three autobahns that went from the West directly into the isolated West Berlin, with little warnings telling motorists they were not allowed to leave the road. According to that old road map, East Germany was a place that geographically didn’t exist. In his talk at the symposium, Detlef Surrey said that you got used to living with the Wall and the fact that there was this other place just over there, but that you mostly didn’t think about them, or maybe were encouraged not to. It was a different time, but I wonder about modern Korea, where you can say the Berlin Wall still exists, how do the people in the South think about those in the North. Germany is all one now, ever since 1990, but I hear many Germans say that it still feels like two, those divisions from decades ago and the years of change afterwards were a lot to expect to just heal. Was Germany ever really one? I always think about the north-south divide (sometimes called the Weißwurstäquator, depending on the type of sausage you might eat in different parts of the country), and the division between mostly Protestant and mostly Catholic regions, but in truth Germany as a federal nation has always been made up of very diverse places with differing histories. It’s a country and a language (all the different varieties) that has intrigued me since I was a kid, it is not a monolithic block. I would like to really explore it in more detail, but as I said, I don’t have time to go everywhere, mostly I’ll just draw the old buildings, and I don’t even eat sausages, well not pork ones. I was thinking of the old East-West as I walked around here though, since it had not changed as much as the other side had since my last visit in the 90s. I walked through the mall to find the toilet, and half expected to see posters of Hasselhoff in record shop windows. While we are talking retro, below is another photo of me in the 90s, posing like Bono with someone else’s sunglasses down in the Zoo station. Check out the little beard thing I had then, that is how you can tell it was the 90s. I took a photo of that sign as I pass through, it hadn’t changed much.

I had planned to take a wander through the Tiergarten. I wasn’t planning to go to the Zoo itself, who has time for that, but I love a massive park. This one is pretty big, and I only covered a small part of it. I started drawings some old lamp-posts, which were from all over the German-speaking world, plus some from other countries, a really interesting display of civic artistry all hidden together in this corner of Berlin. It was well past lunchtime now, and I was feeling hungry so decided to find the S-Bahn station and go back to the hotel for a rest before exploring the East Side. I wish I had been reading a novel set in Berlin, and that time passed a lot more slowly, to sit in the park or on the S-Bahn reading would have been perfect. As it was, I was still reading Agatha Christie’s Lord Edgware Dies (spoiler alert by the way) and it was taking me forever, because I’m a painfully slow reader.