keeping an eye on the world outside my window

August 11, 2011August 11, 2011Leave a comment

In Lisbon I stayed at the Shiado Hostel on Rua Anchietta, a stone’s throw away from the symposium location at FBAUL. It was a nice hostel, modern and inexpensive with free wireless internet access and breakfast included. It had been years since I stayed at hostel; I stayed at mnay both good and bad all over Europe in the 90s, and this was definitely up there in the good. The staff were very friendly too. I did get woken up a few times by people coming into the room in the wee hours; on my second night it seemed I had the room all to myself, but then at 2:00 am three people checked in, moving all their rucksacks and stuff in with them. They tried to be quiet, of course, but coming in and out for the next hour wasn’t easy to sleep through. Still it makes little difference to me – I couldn’t sleep well in a room by myself last year, so it wasn’t a huge issue. One of the best things were the views from the windows. the view at the top was from the lounge area, sketched one afternoon when I just needed to go back for some quiet time. Below, views from the hostel dorm room window. The location was pretty unbeatable, and quite a few other symposium participants (such as Jason, Paul, Rolf, Oona) were staying there.

the lisbon streets at night

August 11, 2011August 11, 20112 Comments

Night-time sketching is fun, as the light is all different and in summertime in Lisbon, people are out on the streets enjoying life, or sketching the world. Right below the Shiado hostel on Rua Anchietta where I stayed was a cafe called Kaffeehaus (it was Austrian). I went there on a few occasions for dinner or a drink with some of the other urban sketchers who were staying at the hostel, such as Paul Wang (Urban Sketchers correspondent in Hong Kong, originally from Singapore), who I sketched above. I was pleased to have met Paul (who also spent some days in London prior to Lisbon, though I didn’t sketch with him) as I love his colourful sketching style, it’s so nice to look at. We were at dinner with Liz Steel and Omar Jaramillo; you couldn’t get a more multi-continental group of sketchers!. Our hostel was just around the block from a square where nightly open-air concerts filled the air with classical music, right up until bed-time. I’m no classical buff, so couldn’t really tell you your Schubert from your Chopin, but it was nice to hear. It was still going on when I got back to my room, and so I looked out of the window and sketched the scene below me.

Below: from the night before, sat in the same place, but this time sketching Florian Afflerbach and Rolf Schroeter, two of our USk correspondents from Germany. I appear to have sketched Florian and Rolf in slightly different sizes, kinda! The couple sat behind Rolf were enjoying themselves. We were there with Jason Das that night, having all just been at the USk correspondents dinner. One thing I remember most is the damn street-lamp flickering away…

come out, come out, wherever you are…

August 10, 2011August 10, 20111 Comment

The Fire Hydrants of Lisbon. You can just imagine how excited I was when I saw that they had them there, and that they didn’t all look the same. Some of them are rather Grecian-urn, others are more Venus-de-Milo, but with a suggestion of a dismembered C-3P0 in there too. Feel free to draw speech bubbles and make them talk.

Most of the hydrnats were red, but the occasional one was yellow, such as this one near Rua da Bica, splotched with purple. Beside it, a shapely one sketched over at Rua Santa Justa in Baixa.

Finally, an unusual hydrant – it has a plastic cover! I sketched this on the long sloping street that winds down from FBAUL, as scores of sketchers walked by on their way to the sketchcrawl meet-up on Praca Comerco.

lisbon symposium, day 2: light of lisboa

August 9, 2011August 9, 20114 Comments

The afternoon workshop on day two was “Light of Lisboa”, led by Matthew Brehm. This workshop, located in the largos and ruas north of Rossio, was great, and the exercises Matt gave us – making quick pencil sketches of no more than three-four minutes, focusing on the darks to make the light stand out more – were refreshingly liberating. Having spent all morning on what felt like a bit of a painstaking drawing it was nice to free myself up a bit. I like drawing in pencil – I do it so little these days that I forgot how enjoyable it feels. Of course, I ultimately like seeing my pen drawings, and so I did my ‘longer’ drawings in pen, but played about with one particular view (below), my favourite of them being the quick one in orange micron pen. It made me want to do all my drawing like that. I won’t, but it will for sure influence the drawing I do usually do.

I think this was one of the workshops that I came away from with the most new knowledge; the simple tips Matt pointed out to us really made me think about certain aspects of making a sketch. That’s what these symposia are all about, learning from the way others do things.

And here I am with my sketchbook, and my Giants t-shirt.

sketching the urban sketchers (part 2)

August 9, 2011August 9, 20111 Comment

More attempts at quick portraits of some world-renowned urban sketchers at the Lisbon Symposium…

(Above left): Miguel Herranz, aka Freekhand, Urban Sketchers correspondent in Barcelona whose distinctive work I’ve enjoyed for years. He did a great sketch of me! (Above right): Rolf Schroeter, the amazingly prolific USk correspondent from Berlin, sketched at Kaffeehaus in Rua Anchietta.

(Above left): Jason Das again, aka Floodfish, USk correspondent from Brooklyn. This was sketched during the correspondent’s dinner. (Above right): Florian Afflerbach, aka Flaf, USk correspondent in Cottbus. I’ve followed Florian’s amazing work for years and so was delighted to finally meet him in person. I’ve said it before, more red-haired/glasses-wearing urban sketchers is a good thing! This very quick sketch is best viewed with 3D glasses…

Allez les Belges… (Above left) Saidja Heynickx, from Aarschot in Belgium, sketched during lunch on the first day. Always nice to meet more Belgians! (they always laugh when I tell them I lived in Charleroi!) (Above right) Gerard Michel, one of my sketching heroes, who I first met and sketched with last year in Portland, and who I sketched here in Lisbon during one of the morning welcomes.

More sketches of sketchers to come!

lisbon symposium, day 2: lisbon perspectives

August 9, 2011August 8, 2011Leave a comment

Day Two of the Lisbon Symposium started with the eagerly awaited Lisbon Perspectives workshop, led by Gerard Michel from Liege, Belgium, and Florian Afflerbach of Cottbus, Germany. I met Gerard last year and talked about curvilinear and other forms of (very difficult) perspective with him; he is the master of the art form! I have wanted to practise it for a while (did a couple of drawings last year, but none since) so the tips Gerard gave me were very useful. The drawing I did, which took me a lot longer than a drawing normally does, was a lot of fun but I didn’t stretch my curves anywhere near as much as perhaps I should; I was a little reticent I think. It gave the impression that I was sat a lot further back than I actually was. Still, I’m pleased enough with the overall effect, but I really want to practise more now! Gerard gave me a couple of his large and amazing prints; they’ll serve as inspiration.

Below, Gerard shows some of his examples of 360-degree perspective, and Florian does an impression of Tower Bridge…

Above: some very quick impressions of Gerard speaking about six-point perspective (in French), while below, Jason Das looks at the world through a grid.

And here are the sketchbooks! More symposium sketches to come…

In the meatime, you may like to check out everybody’s sketches and photos in the Lisbon 2011 Flickr pool…

from the lecture hall in lisbon

August 8, 2011August 8, 2011Leave a comment

At this year’s Urban Sketching Symposium in Lisbon the lectures were not small intimate affairs as they were last year, but larger ones to which all workshop attendees could attend, so nobody would miss out on one they might like. They were in the large lecture hall at FBAUL. Unfortunately I was only able to attend a few of them, partly due to long lunches going over on Lisbon time, partly due to the need to call home at those particular times, and from the sketchers I saw dotted around the streets at those times I got the impression many would much rather be out on the sunny streets sketching than inside a big lecture hall. However I was glad to have been able to make the ones I did get to. I particularly enjoyed Matthew Brehm’s lecture on the second day, “Sketching on Location: Teaching and Learning”, as he gave many very interesting tips on how we learn and how we can learn from the work of others. He made some very good and very positive and encouraging points; I enjoyed his talk in last year’s symposium on the history of urban sketching, and he was much quoted afterwards (notably by Lapin) that it was the ‘Woodstock of Sketching’ (and it really was; Portland was definitely an important starting point for greater sketching networks and events, the larger Lisbon symposium being the biggest example).

As were most other non-stop sketchers in attendance, I found I just had to draw and draw and draw while listening. I did make a lot of notes from Matt’s lecture, but still got some sketching in. I don’t know the man I sketched listening to the lecture but I’ve been experimenting with the way I draw people, and I drew a LOT of people in Lisbon, other sketchers mostly. I’m starting to enjoy sketching people more these days.

lisbon symposium, day 1: unfinished business

August 8, 20112 Comments

The second workshop of the first day was “Unfinished Business”, led by Nina Johansson from Stockholm and Jose Louro from Lisbon. The theme was drawing sketches that are not finished, that by showing only part you tell a larger story, what is not said says more than what is said. Grabbing bits and pieces to show a larger impressio rather than finished drawings, that sort of thing. I’ve explained it well, I see. This took place up at Praça Camoẽs, one square over from the morning’s session. Among other great sketchers who were there (such as the amazing Liz Steel from Sydney, who I had sketched with in Portland) was Luis Ruiz from Malaga in Spain, whose work I’ve been a big fan of for ages; it was great to watch him work. There he is below, in fact, sketching away, between the tram stop and the statue.

My last sketch of the session, below, was perhaps always going to be unfinished, but I hadn’t meant to leave it quite so unfinished! Still, as Alan Partridge might say, you get the idea.

One of the features of the workshops this year was a more formalized meet-up at the start at a location in FBAUL (the art school in Lisbon that hosted the Symposium) where the instructors would explain the workshop and perhaps talk a little about their own technique. Nina and Jose produced a very useful little booklet full of colour illustrations which they handed out at the start, and it provided the sketchers with tips that can help them out as they go. At the end of the workshop, we all met up in the middle of the square and laid our sketchbooks together. This is one of the best moments, seeing how diverse everybody’s ‘sketching voices’ are.

lisbon symposium, day 1: exploring chiado

August 5, 2011August 4, 20113 Comments

The 2nd International Urban Sketching Symposium began on the morning of July 21 at FBAUL in the hilly but central Chiado district of Lisbon, and after meeting lots of familiar faces and new people at the morning meet-up, and getting our bag of goodies (free sketchbooks, including a gorgeous one by new company Stillman and Birn), it was time for the first workshop. The last workshop that I took in Portland was that of Frank Ching, the famed architecture professor emeritus from the University of Washington in Seattle, and so it was that my first workshop was also led by him, alongside Lisbon Urban Sketcher Pedro Cabral (great sketcher, and a nice guy). It was a very exciting workshop to be part of; also in attendance were Eduaro Bajzek from Brazil, whose work I’ve loved for ages, Melanie Reim from New York, who is an inspiration, and Joao Pinheiro, also from Brazil, who was the winner of the Urban Sketchers fellowship to come to Lisbon as the official symposium correspondent. Frank came around to everyone offering good solid advice, pointing out what could be improved, and same as last time you come away really remembering what he has said. Above, a yellow tram pulls itself up to the Largo Chiado, as an urban sketcher busily sketches away on the street corner.

Above is the famous cafe “A Brasileira” on Rua Garrett. Below, the statue of ‘O Chiado’ himself, the poet António Ribeiro. while sketching this, a very loud street shouter stood next to me and announced to the world in several languages, via the medium of a plastic glass, that he was the emperor of the world or something. We were being filmed by Portuguese TV at the time, and so perhaps he felt that it was an opportunity to spread his message of global overlordship, though I’m sure he is there every day. Well I had to sketch him. If it turns out he does rule the world, I can say I did a drawing of him when he was just a simple street shouter.

Exploring chiado with frank Ching and Pedro cabral

the sketchbooks, 'exploring chiado'

been around the world…

August 4, 2011August 4, 2011Leave a comment

More sketches from Belem, on the day before the Symposium. This is the Padrao dos Descobrimentos, or Monument to the Discoveries. Portugal was a big big player in the Age of Discovery, paving the way for other European nation states to sail across the sea and stake their claims, trade or otherwise, across the world. This huge monument juts out into the Tagus, looking towards the Atlantic, headed by a statue of Prince Henry the Navigator. Sure, the monument was built by the dicator Salazar but, you know. It’s still pretty impressive.

Portugal’s maritime past is celebrated everywhere in Belem, and in front of the Padrao dos Descobrimentos is a large mosaic map, decorated with images of Portuguese ships (such as the one drawn to the left). It’s quite an incredible story, how this very small nation managed to somehow span itself across the globe, and ultimately gave birth to the large and politically important nation of Brazil.

As Portuguese interests expanded and riches brought back, cities such as Lisbon grew in global importance and buildings were constructed to consolidate this. The Torre Belem, seen below with my sketch of it, is one of the most famous symbols of this time. A fortification built on a small island in the Tagus River, it was completed in 1519 and served to protect Lisbon and act as a gateway to the city.

And so, with the sketches of ‘day zero’ over, now to talk about the Symposium…