Toulouse Part 3: Big Wednesday Morning Sketchwalk

September 2, 2026Leave a comment

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.

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…

Let’s Gdańsk

January 31, 20262 Comments

Time, finally, to post my sketches from last summer in Poland. This is what I should have done in September, but I was busy, then I was busy in October, very busy in November, December’s a write-off, and well January is almost finished. See how quickly time flies. While I was in Poland I kept a daily diary, which I have not been doing for years, but I did so because I knew I’d probably post months later and forget all the details. Now I have forgotten where that diary is. I’ll do my best. I have always wanted to go to Gdańsk (which I may or may not write with the little accent above the n), since I knew it was an important port in the Solidarity era of the 80s, and also a really pretty Hanseatic city on the Baltic Sea. I had this idea over twenty years ago that I would like to do a tour of the whole Baltic, starting and finishing in Copenhagen, exploring all the different but connected cities and cultures along its shores, and drawing them too. It’s something I’ll never get around to (and I will probably never get to visit St. Petersburg) but it’s a fun dream project. Gdańsk was one of the big attractions of that project. It seemed like a lot of people didn’t really know about it, though it’s more popular today. When I heard that the Urban Sketching Symposium would be in Poland in 2025 (in Poznań), I knew I had to take the opportunity to attend and finally visit Gdańsk, so I booked a couple of nights at a nice hotel in the city centre and flew over from London. I was definitely not disappointed, and my sketchbook got a lot of exercise. I had been dreaming of drawing the view above, the view from the banks of the Motława river, with the big pirate ship (one of two that give tours) moored on the quai. I woke up early to go and sketch this, taking about two and a half hours to draw it all, though I did bump into a couple of urban sketchers from the US who I’ve known for years (Amber Sausen and Daniel Green) which was really nice. I was surprised not to see more sketchers about, since many of us who were in Poland for the symposium were doing our tours of the country before the big event. There was a big pre-symposium meeting hosted by the local USk group on the weekend before, that I missed. I enjoyed sketching this, a big relaxing panorama, but it was a lot of windows, and a beautiful day. I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere, but my mind does sometimes go to all the places I miss out on seeing because I’m sat there sketching. When I was done, I walked down the river a little bit more to draw one of Gdansk’s most well-known buildings, the tall 15th century crane standing high above the river. It was built in 1444 – it was destroyed in 1945 in the Siege of Gdansk (quite a lot went down in that year) but it was restored in the 50s, and then completely renovated just a few years ago. I stood in the ever-decreasing shade next to the moving footbridge (it swivels in the middle of the river to let the big ship pass by).

I had arrived in Gdansk the evening before, and this was my first time back in Poland since 1998. The country has changed an enormous amount since then, but so have I. Poland is so much more modern than it was in the 1990s, but so am I, with my iPhone and my credit card. I went to an ATM to get some cash out at the airport when I landed, but the options of denominations were confusing; I would have ended up taking out hundreds of dollars without realizing it, but I noticed the exchange rate and decided against. I exchanged some dollars at a bureau de change, so I at least had some cash (I was shortchanged by 20 zloty, though that isn’t much), but everywhere took credit cards even for small purchases so I hardly used any cash while I was in Poland, unlike in Berlin where a lot of places said ‘cash only’. Meanwhile back in 1998 I had all my cash for the trip in a little plastic tube around my neck, I had no phone, a cheap film camera and a small backpack with a few changes of clothes for a five week trip around 12 countries. I travelled light enough in 2025 though, but I had more sketching supplies. I didn’t sketch much in the 90s, but I wrote a lot on that trip. As soon as I left my hotel to walk about in the evening I was in love with the city, and knew I’d enjoy my time in Poland (which I really did). I had expected it to be full of drunken tourists from the north of England (not just the north, other regions’ drunken tourists are available), or huge groups of American college kids but it was full of Polish families, many with young with kids, visiting from other regions of Poland. Poland, by the way, is a really big country, much bigger than you think. I could spend a few weeks exploring it all and see a real diversity of cities and regions. In fact I realized that I actually knew very little about those regions, which was highlighted when I went for lunch that day at a ‘Kashubian’ restuarant near my hotel. I wondered where Kashubia was, I thought it was maybe in the Caucasus or somewhere, until I realized like an ignorant tourist that I was actually in Kashubia, and this was the local food. After a bit of reading I discovered that Gdansk actually is not technically in Kashubia, with that region being just to the west, but it’s still considered Kashubian. For a long time Gdansk was ‘Danzig’, a German-speaking Prussian city, but that’s just one part of this interesting city’s long and complex history.

The first sketch I did in the city was of that pirate ship down on the river. Yes, I realize my ignorance of tall-masted boats by calling it a pirate ship, but hey I like pirates, I used to dress up as a pirate and go to the Swashbuckler’s Ball in Portland, and this my friends is a pirate ship. Standing on the quai in quickly fading light I could not get super detailed, but I was very excited to have this be my first sketch in Poland. The first of many, a great many. You can see though that the horrible new watercolour Moleskine paper gives it a rough and bumpy feel, it wasn’t much fun to draw on either, and I’m not using those Moleskines any more (unless I can find some with the older, slightly smoother blend of paper), I’ll stick with the Hahnemühles. On this trip I brought both brands, a landscape Moleskine and a portrait Hahnemuhle (the umlaut was there but it kept rolling off), you can see I used the smoother but still slightly textured Hahnemuhle for the crane sketch. That’s enough paper talk, maybe I will do a post about my materials for this trip another time.

As a pirate, and wearing my Portland Timbers football shirt, I naturally had to take a trip on the pirate ship. There are two of them, and the one I drew the night before was called the ‘Czarna Perła’ which I think means ‘Black Pearl, and if that’s not a pirate ship name then my name is Kapitan Jacek Wróbel. This was my tourist time, I wasn’t going to sketch (except for that very quick one above – I can’t help myself, but look at that bumpy paper, it looks dirty but it’s not). I went from the cool shade to the sunny deck to enjoy the view as we toured up the river towards the historic shipyards. I got a nice big beer, and we were told all the stories about Gdansk’s maritime history, its importance as a Hanseatic League city, its shipbuilding industry, and as the birthplace of the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement led by the magnificently moustached labour leader Lech Wałęsa. I remember hearing about him on the news as a kid in the 80s, and he appeared to be a lion of a man. It was in these shipyards that the old Soviet bloc started to fall, and Gdansk is very proud of their role in history. I didn’t get off the ship at the destination in Westerplatte to explore and sketch the big old shipyard cranes, instead I stayed on the pirate ship to have another beer and listen to the Polish folk singer with his guitar, I sketched him in the small brown sketchbook below. He was really good. There is a little bit of industrial architecture in the background.

Below is a sketch I did on the fairly busy main pedestrian street of Długa, the ‘Long Lane’ I enjoyed all the flags, but I kept this quick and sketchy. It leads up to the ‘Golden Gate’ (Brama Złota), but the tall tower you see in the distance is the, wait let me look this one up, it’s called the ‘Przedbramie ulicy Długiej’. Now one thing I must point out, I am usually pretty good with European languages and do a fairly passable job with pronunciations, but when I see Polish my brain just says ‘leave it Pete, you’ve embarrassed yourself enough!’. I had this Berlitz European Phrase Book when I was a kid and I got my head around Hungarian and Russian, but sheepishly slowed the book when I would read the Polish pages. I love hearing the language, listening to people speak it was beautiful, and I really appreciate its consonant heavy words and those letters with diacritics you don’t see anywhere else (like that l with a line through it that sounds like a ‘w’). If I ever get a chance to take some Polish lessons where I can hear it and say the words out loud, I would like to do it. Reading it though I get a block, because I have to hear it out loud (I have a similar issue with Irish, even though it’s actually a more phonetic written language than English; it’s probably why I can’t read music). So when I see ‘Przedbramie ulicy Długiej’ I know it’s not really that difficult, but my brain says its deep water and you can’t swim well, so can you look up the English name? Well, it looks like it is called the ‘Foregate of Long Lane’ but part of the building is the ‘Katownia’ or, er, ‘Torture Chamber’. Moving swiftly on. The other part of this sketch is just what I could draw while eating my Kashubian lunch, which incidentally was chicken soup with dumplings (they love a dumpling here), followed by potato ‘plince’ with cream cheese and trout. It was delicious. I enjoyed it so much I went back to the hotel and had a two hour nap. I must have needed it!

I have quite a lot more Gdańsk sketches to share before we get to the Poznań stories, but first I have to show the in-flight sketch from Stansted to Gdańsk, reading Agatha Christie on Ryanair like a boss. I watched Poland unfold below me and wanted to visit each village, though I knew I’d never be able to pronounce their names. Check back for part two.

The Theatre of the Thames

January 19, 2026January 19, 2026Leave a comment

More from last August in London. It was a lovely day down by the Thames, one of those perfect weather days, not too hot, nice river breeze, sunshine with a few wispy clouds. We were going to have a family day out down here, watch some theatre, eat some dinner, walk down the river. I came down a little early to get some sketching in, and drew the view over to St. Paul’s and the City. That skyline has changed so much since I left 20 years ago. I had bought tickets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, in the seated areas rather than standing in the groundling spots, and I got the comfy cushion too. Those seats are a lot more than the standing sections, but I thought, well it’s important to support the London theatre scene. I did donate to the Globe during the pandemic when they were closed, they were posting full performances online and they were fantastic. To my shame I had never been to see a play at the Globe, in all those years since it opened. I’ve been to the gift shop loads of times. I remember when the Globe opened, as I was a drama student at Queen Mary at the time, and I wondered if it would get confusing that there is another theatre called The Globe down by Shaftesbury Avenue (that was subsequently renamed The Gielgud). Our ‘Places In Performance’ class taught by Richard Schoch (he is a published Shakespeare expert; he also recently wrote a very well-received book about Sondheim) did a tour of the new Globe, and some of the faculty at Queen Mary were part of the Friends of the Globe. I remember trying to walk there from north of the River and thinking, we could really use another bridge here you know, a pedestrian bridge nearby to St. Paul’s; a couple of years later we got the Millennium Bridge. I remember the tour, learning about Sam Wanamaker, the American actor (and Zoë Wanamaker’s father) who was the driving force behind the idea to rebuild the Globe right here in Southwark, but who did not live to see it finished. Yet in the twenty-seven years since my visit, I never ever saw a play there, until now!

I selected our seats carefully, considering how the sun might move in this afternoon play, but obviously I completely miscalculated that because for the first half we were baking in the sun. Note to self, evening performances next time! It was great though, the performances were fun, I couldn’t tell if everyone was really following it but the costumes and physical humour was top notch. I did try a quick sketch before the show started (above) but didn’t draw during the show. I would like to do a proper sketch of the Globe’s interior some day, I’ve drawn the outside as few times.

This was not the only theatre I saw while I was back – I booked tickets to see My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on Drury Lane, a stage adaptation of one of our favourite animated Miyazaki films. It was without doubt one of the best things I have ever seen, so good that I immediately booked tickets to see it again when I got home. It was that good, especially how all the live music was performed. Looking at the program I realized that the director was Phelim McDermott, who co-founded Improbable Theatre Co, and I’d forgotten that name until that moment. I had seen his production of Shockheaded Peter many years ago at the Battersea Arts Centre, in about 2000 or 2001, and it erupted my imagination; some of the style of Totoro rang a bell with me. There were some elements of my own production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in Aix-en-Provence in 2002 that were definitely inspired by that show. As a former drama student I don’t actually go to the theatre very much at all, so to go several times in one trip felt like making up for lost time. I even bought cheap five quid groundling tickets for Twelfth Night at the Globe a couple of weeks later, after my trip to Poland and Berlin, but ended up going sketching instead. I must go and see some more theatre though, and make more of an effort to see more in London.

Sometimes the best theatre is out on the streets though eh. Ooh, cheesy and not actually true. No, the streets is not the same as the theatre which takes a lot of effort in writing, acting, costumes, lighting, front of house; no, just standing on the streets and looking at things is not the same. The view above is quite a theatrical backdrop though. But nevertheless I do just that, I like to fill the sketchbooks with the stories of the world I see, and that is all my own story, my own theatre. I have often thought about the interaction between theatre/performance and urban sketching. As urban sketchers we ourselves might not see ourselves as performers but in a real sense we are. The act of standing on a street and observing makes us the ‘watched by C’ part of the Peter Brook equation of “A plays B watched by C” (that’s a very rough and probably inaccurate summarizing of his ‘Empty Space’ idea but I learned this in the first term of my drama degree, and that was in 1997 and I barely understood anything about theatre then, and probably even less now, but this ideas we discussed stuck with me, that everything can be boiled down to performance in some way). If I decide to observe and describe the scene in my sketchbook, I then become both observer (C) and performer (A), while the scene I am sketching becomes (B), the thing I am performing. I am starting to see why we drank so much at university now. That confusing calculus aside, the urban sketcher themself becomes a performer and attracts observation from people passing by, or sketched by other sketchers (A performs B watched by C who becomes A making the original A become B who is also performing another B which is also A; I’m surprised I didn’t get a D for that class). So we urban sketchers are performing in the act of drawing, and also in the act of sharing online with our fellow sketchers, who are the audience who then hopefully become inspired to keep sketching themselves. The thing I think about most though is that urban sketching, perhaps unlike more fine art styles, is an accessible art form that people feel more of a connection to when they see it. This is the everyday world as seen by the people living in it, who draw it because it’s there with the tools they have. I was always more interested in the basic idea of theatre as a storytelling device, one that anyone can take part in. I appreciate amazing acting, and the incredible hard work that goes into it, but it never interested me personally as much as the storytelling itself. We learned about interactive and forum theatre and the work of Boal, and I was very interested in Brecht. I look through the hundreds of posts each day that my fellow urban sketchers across the world are posting (that is, as much as the dreaded algorithms allow), and in very small and very big ways we are telling the story of the world we live in. It’s not necessarily in big determined narratives or five act structured entertainments but it’s all theatre of a sort, storytelling is at the heart of it, even if you don’t realize you are telling a story. I think a lot about this and try to get this small idea across in the sketchcrawls I organize. As with the interactive theatre work we did it’s all about accessibility and inclusiveness (in those first sketching events I ran, I brought along extra art materials and mini sketchbooks for people who saw us and might want to start sketching themselves) and what tools you have to tell your story with, that’s how I approach urban sketching. Or maybe, as with so many things with me, it’s just another excuse to draw.

The scene above, of the 2025 version of the City of London skyline, was drawn before the sun started setting, stood by Hay’s Galleria while people around me enjoyed an evening pint by the Thames. That skyline has changed so much in the 20 years since I left my home city, it’s unrecognizable. After this, my wife and I decided to walk down the Thames, and we walked and walked all the way to Charing Cross Station, for some reason. It was a really long way, and the South Bank was busy, really busy. London’s great, the Thames is my favourite, but it can be long and exhausting, just like some Shakespeare. Or some blog posts.

Richmond, by the river

January 17, 2026January 16, 2026Leave a comment

We met up with my friend Simon who was back visiting from Dublin, and took the Overground train down to Richmond. I was there last in the previous winter with Simon exploring the old pus and riverside walks, and wanted to go back in the summertime with the family. Richmond is London, but I hardly ever go there, it’s quite far but always worth a visit. I drew the White Cross pub, above, which we never went into but I know if it from videos I’ve seen online, apparently when the river tides get a bit high it cuts off the exits, and they lend you wellington boots to wade through to higher ground. I’d probably just stay in the pub. There are a lot of ducks around here, not surprising really. We had a nice refreshing drink at the cafe on one of the boats floating on the Thames. It didn’t go anywhere, but it was nice to sit and catch up. I sketched Simon (below; I was worried I was making him look like Pep Guardiola or Enzo Maresca, but it looked more like him this time, I always struggle sketching him for some reason). I was starting my new small Stillman & Birn brown paper sketchbook which would be my ‘people sketching’ book for this trip, and indeed I would get a lot of use from it in Poland at the symposium, Simon was a good page 1 subject. Some ladies were watching me sketch and asked if I could draw them, I respectfully declined (as they weren’t all that respectful themselves).

I tried to draw Richmond Bridge while sat on the boat but only got as far as outlines, I ended up finishing the rest off later on. The bridge dates from the 18th century.

On the train back into central London I sketched a little more in that brown book, this time using some interesting Derwent ‘Inktense’ paints I had picked up, fun to test those out, I don’t think I’ve used them since. I drew my wife, and also drew Simon again looking very different this time. Outside, it started raining, and got very heavy by the time we reached central London. Nothing more English than a mid-August downpour.

Friday night by the Thames

August 16, 2023August 15, 2023Leave a comment

We definitely had to sleep in after getting back in the wee hours from Scotland. Exhausted, not feeling too well, and probably having withdrawals from all the Irn Bru and Tunnocks Teacakes, I didn’t have a lot of energy. However I had planned to go down into central London to attend the London Urban Sketchers Friday evening sketching meetup at Bankside, and despite my headache, I’m glad I did. It was cooler by the Thames, with a nice river breeze. I got there a bit too late for the start, so I just got my sketchbook out and started. As you can probably tell, this is Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, with the tall tower of Tate Modern in the background. There were a lot of tourists about, enjoying the last day of June next to my favourite river. It was extremely relaxing for me to get down here and into my sketchbook. People lined up to see the latest show at the Globe; I really wish I’d had the forethought to book tickets to see something there, as I’ve never actually seen a play there, even though it opened while I was a drama student twenty-odd years ago. I remember our Places of Performance class did visit the Globe in about 1998 or 1999, when it was still a new addition to London, for a tour. During the early part of the pandemic, our family would watch full plays provided by the Globe online for small donations, filmed in the preceding years, since they were closed back in 2020 and we had no idea what would happen. So I love the Globe, but still have yet to go there properly. Some day.

I have also never been mudlarking by the Thames. The tides were low that evening, so there were quite a few people down there looking around in the silty mud and stones, looking for whatever the old Thames has dredged up. People find things that are centuries old. I sketched them in my little Fabriano, looking down from the Embankment, and then sat on the steps leading down to the River. A couple of hours later, the water was already way back up there (I presume everyone got back up before that?). The Thames is a tidal river, at London anyway, due to its proximity to the Thames Estuary which is where it meets the North Sea. So the river goes right up and down a couple of times each day.

The London Urban Sketchers met up again outside the Tate to look at each others sketchbooks. It wasn’t a huge crowd this evening, but I gather that the monthly “Let’s Draw London” sketchcrawl attendances have been so big that they have started holding them twice per month in the same location. These smaller evening events are bonus meet-ups for the summertime. I spoke to a few familiar faces, and looked through sketchbooks of some newer sketchers, and remembered how much I always enjoyed this part of urban sketching. I’d not organized or even attended a sketchcrawl in Davis or anywhere for quite a long time, so it was great to get to meet the sketchers again. I resolved to start organizing more in Davis again (and I just held one this past weekend, in fact, on a very hot mid-August morning). When we were done, I was not quite done yet. I stood beneath the Millennium Bridge (to all those tour guides who still insist that Londoners call it the ‘Wobbly Bridge’, no they don’t, do they. They did back in 2000 when it opened, and when it wobbled so much that all the high-end architects involved in its design were stumped and they closed it, but then they fixed the wobble and reopened it in early 2002. Nobody is still calling it the wobbly bridge except tour guides telling a story. And I used to be one of them, but that was in 2000 when it was actually still wobbling) . Anyway, I drew that ever-changing City of London skyline again. Every time I return, it looks different. The top of Tower 42 was decked in Pride colours. I forget the names of all these towers now, the walky-talky, the big spinach, the witch’s watering can, the flake, I honestly cant keep up with all the silly names. Call them what you want. Call the Millennium Bridge ‘the Wobbly Bridge’ if you like, it doesn’t really matter. That’s the great thing about London, names just spring up out of nothing, sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t. Even the Thames gets a name change when flowing through Oxford, where they call it the Isis, though maybe in more hushed tones than before.

And finally, Morph. This year in London there are loads of statues of Morph, painted in a million different ways, and this one outside the Globe was as you’d expect painted to look like William Shakespeare. For those who for some reason have no idea who Morph is, Morph was a little plasticine stop-motion animated character created by Peter Lord, and appeared on the TV shows of the late Tony Hart, every kids favourite fatherly TV art figure (quickly checks online, we still think he’s ok right, no scandals there yeah? Phew, he’s fine. You never know when it comes to our 70s and 80s kids TV heroes in Britain). Tony Hart was also the only person we knew of who was named after three body parts. Morph was a national treasure though, even though he could only speak in little sounds, and he had a friend called Chas and this little brush that would follow them round like a dog. Oh, and he had a super power where he would turn himself into a kind of cylindrical tube of plasticine and ‘morph’ his way through the solid wood of a table. Having sketched Morph, the sun was finally down over the Thames, so I got a very crowded tube back home.

as long as I gaze on, i am in paradise

July 11, 2023July 10, 2023Leave a comment

Before heading over to Mile End, I got out at Embankment station and onto Hungerford Bridge. Sorry, I mean the Golden Jubilee Bridge (Hungerford Bridge is just the rail bridge in the middle now, but I still remember the shaky old walkway on the side from years ago, it’s much nicer now). I wanted to start my day with a little bit of my favourite river, and draw this view towards Waterloo Bridge once again. I had intended to add in the blue and white sky, the brownish tinged Thames, but I got too hot standing on the bridge. I went and sat on a bench on the embankment beneath a tree to add it all in, but by that time the moment had passed, and my perspective changed all the colours, (that can happen with reflective objects like a river), and so I went to Mile End instead. But I’m glad I got this sketch done, as it’s been a while. Below are two other panoramic sketches from a similar location (not exactly precise, but same half of the bridge). The colour one is from 2016, the other is from 2012. Well, you can see the difference in the skyline. Obviosuly the bottom one includes the Shard but I didn’t go that far in the other two, but in the City itself, the buildings are all change. When I left London, it was just Tower 42 (the old Nat West Tower) and the Gherkin (Swiss Re as it was called, but it was always the Erotic Gherkin), just to the right of St. Paul’s. Now those are all but invisible from this view. There will probably be more coming, unless the economic downturn means fewer novelty skyscraping, but next time I draw this in about four or five years, we will see. I’ll need better glasses then, my eyes ain’t getting any younger.

Click on any of these sketches for a slightly bigger view, that will save you just moving your face closer to the screen.

VTDF #4: Amiens

July 16, 2021July 16, 20212 Comments

Stage 4 of the Virtual Tour de France finds us in the northern city of AMIENS, on the river (and department) Somme. It is difficult to say the name ‘Somme’ without thinking of the historic atrocity of the 1916 Battle of the Somme, in World War I. Three million soldiers fought in that battle, with over a million wounded or killed. Amiens is right in the heart of World War 1 country, and itself saw a 1918 battle that ended in an Allied victory. World War II didn’t exactly pass it by either, with another Battle of Amiens in 1940 when Germany took the town, and later on pretty heavy bombardment by the Allies in 1944 before it was liberated. There were wars and sieges and sackings here in the many centuries before, but Amiens and the Somme are inescapably linked with the awful World Wars.

This is a nice view though, down by the river, looking up at the cathedral. I could imagine coming here and eating lunch by the Somme, before driving on to another town for a bit more history. I found out recently that an ancestor of mine from Dublin fought in World War 1 and was wounded in a gas attack at Loos, not far from Lens. I saw my great-great grandfather’s photo (his name was James Higgins, as was his father, and his son who I think also fought in that war?) and he had the most amazing bushy “General Melchett” moustache. He wasn’t a general though, just a regular soldier. I also saw a postcard he sent home to his wife (my great-great granny) in Dublin from Loos before the battle took place. Fascinating stuff, I never knew he even existed until recently. I never inherited the moustache. It was a big handlebar one with two pointy tails, that reminds me a bit of the Red Bull logo, or two rats fighting. I would not know how to take care of an amazing moustache like that, I would probably get it in my soup, this is why I shave. I only briefly had a moustache, though it was part of a goatee, and that was for a few months in the 90s and that my friend is where for most people goatees should have stayed. Funnily enough I never saw anyone in France with that classic French moustache, the one with the twirly sides, that all cartoon French people have (along with the beret and the onions and the baguette), but I have seen many hipster people in America wear that ‘tache. I couldn’t pull it off.

There does appear what looks like a lifesize Subbuteo figure standing in the river, to the left there. I think it is called “L’Homme sur sa bouée” (“The man on his buoy”). It seems that it’s common for the people of the town to dress him up, put t-shirts on him and so on. He is the work of German sculptor Stephan Balkenhol and was originally installed there in 1993, but being made of wood and manhandled by so many locals it degraded a fair bit over the years and was replaced in 2019 by the artist, this time in aluminium. Or maybe it is still wood but now painted in aluminium, it’s hard to tell. L’Homme sur sa bouée has become a bit of local celebrity in Amiens. There are two other similar statues by the same artist placed nearby against the walls of buildings that the man in the river is looking at. If I ever got to Amiens I will look out for them all.

After Amiens we leave Picardy behind and head into another part of France famous for its role in World War II: Normandy. So join me on the Road to Rouen.

Dublin part 1: This Is Your Liffey

November 11, 2020November 11, 2020Leave a comment

Earlier this year during the first months of the pandemic, Sheltering-In-Place, I decided that since there was no travel back to Britain this year I would do a virtual tour of the island, and that was a fun and enlightening journey. I wanted to do another virtual tour, maybe of France, but the thought of it overwhelmed me a bit (the planning, fitting all the places into a certain number of pages, and pretty much everywhere in France is sketchworthy) so I picked up a much thinner sketchbook a mate gave me last year from Dublin and decided to do a shorter virtual tour around Ireland. This quickly became limited to just Dublin (there are only fifteen spreads in the book) as the paper was very thin, too thin for watercolour, and I knew I’d need to add a bit more paint to the Irish countryside. Well, mostly green, and probably grey for the sky. But a trip around Dublin, well that sounded pretty grand. My mate who gave me the book was in the process of moving to Dublin while I drew this, so I was thinking of him at the time, but also of my own family history, most of whom came from Dublin, from my grandparents’ generation backwards (3 from Dublin, 1 from Belfast). I still have loads of family in Dublin, the vast majority I’ve never met or know anything about, except for my great aunt and a couple of my mum’s cousins I met when I was a kid. I only just recently learned about the family beyond my nan’s generation, when my sister dug a bit further, finding out some very interesting things about great-great-grandfathers with big General Melchett moustaches. Nothing too exciting, just regular Dubliners going back years. We just didn’t really know much though, people didn’t talk about the past. It was a fun bit of discovery, but Anyway, let’s start this Dublin journey off with that most important of Dublin buildings, above: the GPO, or General Post Office, on O’Connell Street. The first time I came to Dublin in 1988 this was one of the first places we came to (right before going to eat at Beshoffs, which I’ll never forget because I poured sugar all over my chips and got upset). I knew about the 1916 Easter Rising – hard not to, I was brought up on the rebel music – and this was the epicentre, the headquarters of the rebellion it was here that Pádraic Pearse read out the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. So, a good place to start, but we had a lot of city to cover, in no particular direction. So let’s set off around Baile Átha Cliath.

We move down across the Liffey to the corner of Suffolk Street, Church Street and St.Andrew’s Street, to the huge O’Neill’s pub. I’ve never been here but I like the look of the building. This was the page that convinced me I wouldn’t be adding paint to any other pages (though I gave it a go one more time). You’ve got to draw pubs in Dublin. If I should come back I’d mostly be doing that. In fact I’d go when it is most likely to rain so I’d have an excuse to go to more pubs. I hear the rainy season is shorter than people say though, it’s only from August to July. (I got no problem recycling jokes from my London tour bus days, feel free to use that for whatever city, Manchester, Portland, Brussels). This one is near the Molly Mallone statue. Molly Mallone wheeled a wheelbarrow through streets of all different widths selling coppers with muscles from Hawaii Five-O.

Here is the river Liffey, with the Four Courts along the north bank. The river isn’t green, it just appears like that in with the trees reflected in it. It’s not been dyed like that one in Chicago does on St.Patrick’s Day (is it Chicago, I don’t know, or care). Also, it’s just green paint on thin paper. The Liffey (An Life in Irish) flows from the Wicklow Mountains, curves around a bit and ends up in Dublin Bay. Dublin is centred on the Liffey and has some lovely bridges, the most famous being the Ha’penny Bridge, the iron footbridge which I did not bother drawing because it’s difficult and I couldn’t be bothered. I’ll draw it in person maybe if I go there unless it’s raining in which case I shall be in the pub drawing people playing bodhrans. Last time we were in Dublin my wife twisted her ankle on it. The bridge you can see is called the O’Donovan Rossa Bridge which is from the 18th century. I remember a fountain/statue that used to be on O’Connell Street called the Anna Livia which represented the female embodiment of the River Liffey, my great-aunt told me they called it the Floozie in the Jacuzzi. It’s moved somewhere else now.

And this is Christ Church Cathedral. We stayed in an apart-hotel near here last time we were in Dublin, six years ago, and went to the Dublinia exhibit located in the big section to the left. That was a lot of fun, learning about Dublin’s Viking history in particular. There’s a lot of Viking in Irish history, my great-uncle Albert Scully used to tell me that the Scullys had Viking origins, but I don’t think he really knew, but it would explain why I read so much Hagar The Horrible when I was a kid I guess. I did love Hagar. Sorry, Hägar. And Helga, and Hamlet, and Lucky Eddie. They did that advert for Skol on TV where they’re all singing Skol-Skol-Skol-Skol but Lucky Eddie doesn’t know the words. That might be where the Scully name really comes from, people singing Skol-Skol-Skol. Skol is actually from the Danish for Cheers, skål, though in fact the beer originated in Scotland. This is really off topic now. By the way I am aware that ‘Scully’ bears zero relation to ‘Skol’ but it doesn’t stop Americans mispronouncing my name to sound like Skol, or mis-spelling my name with a k despite seeing my name spelled with a c literally all the time. It comes from “O Scolaidhe” meaning “scholar”, and like so many Irish names has one of those nice little shields you can get on keyrings in gift shops all over Ireland. My family names are pretty common Irish names: Scully, Higgins, O’Donnell, McIlwaine (that’s the branch from Belfast), plus there’s Barrys and Kennedys and Crokes and Byrnes and more in my siblings and cousins families, plus who knows what. I do remember going to Rock of Cashel (the ancient seat of the Kings of Ireland) when I was 12 and being stunned to find so many graves bearing the name of Scully, along with the big Scully Cross, which is more of a pillar these days, because the top of it was blasted off when struck by lightning in the year of my birth. Moral: don’t make a Scully cross?

Join me next time for part two of my virtual Dublin tour, when we visit another pub, a publisher, a campus, and I dunno, another pub.

Alleviating All Anxiety of Amsterdam

March 11, 2020March 10, 2020Leave a comment

Moving on to the next day and the final day of the Symposium, I woke up Saturday morning definitely feeling the heat exhaustion. I decided to skip my final workshop (I did go and let them know so they wouldn’t be waiting for me) and find a spot to sketch peacefully. I hadn’t yet drawn the dancing houses along the banks of the Amstel from Groenburgwal, so I found a nice bench and drew away. I met another sketcher doing the same. It was quiet, the weekend heat had not yet started cranking up, and my stress-headache was clearing up immediately. I didn’t need to be in a class, stopping and starting and rushing, being “on”, I needed to be in “breathe-in, breathe-out, sketch” mode. It worked. I had met Lapin earlier the morning, and I was going to go and sketch with them (as it turns out he and Gerard and co went to sketch my hotel), but I decided to draw the Dancing Houses. They are impressive. Many houses seem to ‘dance’ in Amsterdam, leaning this way or that – my perspective tip of following the windows to find the vanishing point on the horizon doesn’t work as well here, where the windows follow lines more suited to more Marty Feldman’s binoculars (Young Frankenstein reference). Crooked buildings are fun to draw. By the way I did overhear one sketch instructor scoff at counting the windows on houses in Amsterdam, but counting the windows really helped the composition of each element, and also helps get the scale right. Besides, in Amsterdam they are usually three windows across as a rule. The patchwork nature of the architecture breaks up the monotony you find in many cities, it’s just so fun to draw. Looking back I probably could have had the energy to do some more group sketching and plough on, be a bit more sociable and awake, but mental health came first and I look at this sketch and immediately I feel more relaxed. Breathe in, breathe out, sketch.

I wandered about a bit more, bumping into the occasional sketching friend, I met Nina Johansson (long term urban sketch idol of mine since the beginning) teaching a class nearby here, the tall Montelbaanstoren. It was pretty peaceful over here too, a couple of blocks from my hotel, in fact the workshop I had skipped was being taught close by, but I decided not to join late. I sat by the canal and drew the tower as best I could, with a bike in the foreground. I was going to add full colour, but stopped at the blues, it just felt right for the relaxed mood.

After doing a few sketches of the hotel (I posted those already), I wandered over to Niewmaarkt to enjoy one of my favourite discoveries in Amsterdam – poffertjes. Little mini pancakes, from a friendly guy called Tony Benson. I spoke with Tony and a woman who was with him, we talked about Belgian footballers (maybe because I was wearing my Belgian shirt again), she was really inot Eden Hazard and asked who my favourite Belgian player was (Super Jan Vertonghen obviously!). The poffertjes were small but delicious. I could eat some of those now.

In the afternoon, there would be another sketchwalk, over near the NEMO center, culminating in a huge group photo (the ones I usually miss at every symposium), and then the final reception over at the Muziekgebouw. I was going to meet up with everyone there, but at the hotel I realized I really needed more rest, not more rushing around in the heat. Here’s how I rested:

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I also rested by spending an hour or so in the amazing blue-tiled pool in the hotel’s basement, and relaxing in the hot-tub. Best decision I ever made. Matt Brehm was right, you don’t have to draw.
The sketchwalk was nice, and although I turned up too late for any sketching, I did meet up with a lot people I had not seen during the symposium. Many of the local groups got together for their local group photos – I am one of the Californians, but I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo with them. I did at least make the final group photo, but there are so many people in the picture that I obviously can’t be spotted, even with my bright red Belgium 1984 shirt. Actually though, in this photo of the whole group (by Belgian friend and photographer Marc Van Liefferinge) I can be spotted near the middle of the back. Proof I made it there.

You know what, there are loads of sketches you can find from other symposium attendees, if you go to Flickr and search through the tag “amsterdam symposium“. Of course most people now just bounce them out on Instagram and so on too. There are a LOT of Amsterdam sketches to be found. I went over to the final reception (a very very long walk, I went with Mauro and Fabien, though Fabien stopped on the way for a beer and to wait for Gerard, they were not coming to the reception but actually driving back to Liège that night). At the reception I caught up with all the people I had not spoken to as much so far, such as Gabi, and Liz (we snuck up on Paul Wang and got our annual symposium pic of the three of us, guerilla-style), Elizabeth, James, and of course Rita, and did a little people sketching, but mostly chatting. I also got to meet Danny Gregory for the first time, he was there with all the Sketchbook Skool lot, that’s a big thing now. I had been a chapter in one of his books years ago, the one with my drawing of Vipins ont he cover, and we’d tried to arrange a video interview to go on his website but it was always dinnertime in my house and we never did it, so it was nice to finally meet. (Though I suspect I he didn’t remember who I was). I also met a number of people who I’ve since started following on Instagram, it’s what these whole events are about really. And then in the end, it was the gathering off for dinner, I went off with a big group of the usual sketchers, and we had a great evening. The best bit though was finishing off with some late night or early morning) car sketching. A bunch of us led by Lapin sat in a narrow street by a canal and drew a couple of classic Citroens. This is apparently a tradition at the Clermont Ferrand festival. My habit of sketching fire hydrants at 3am when I travel does not seem so odd now; these are my people. One of though people though, Hugo Costa, nearly fell in the canal when his stool broke – lucky escape! Here’s what I drew, and a photo of some of us sketching in the darkness of Amsterdam.

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Now this little fire hydrant I actually drew at night on the first night in Amsterdam, but I’ve saved until now because why not. As for the blog post title, “Alleviating All Anxiety of Amsterdam”, I mean it says it all but seriously I might come back and change all these titles some day.

And that was it for another Symposium. I have more Amsterdam sketches to share here, plus a bit more Belgium, a bit of Disneyland Paris, a few from London, and then loads more of Davis, then some from Santa Monica, and Portland again, and Hawaii. But after this long day of relaxful sketching Citroens by lamplight, I had a well-earned lie-in on Sunday. After all the heat, there was a little rain coming, but so were my family.