Tag: Toulouse

Toulouse, Part 1: sketching the Garonne

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Toulouse Garonne Hopital Pano 071426 sm

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.

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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.

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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…

STN-TLS 071426

Toulouse: two lose in the semi-finals

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TLS France v Spain 071426 sm

The Longest World Cup Ever is over, at last, and I am done with football for a while. FIFA and its All-Powerful Leader, He-Who-Must-Be-Shown-Onscreen-In-The-13th-Minute-Of-Every-Game, have been very quiet since it ended, nothing controversial happening, very low profile. Maybe this will be the last ever World Cup. It’s just the shirts I like anyway these days. The game itself, well good games are few and far between. Certainly the World Cup Final was one of the most boring games I have ever pretended to enjoy. I am glad Spain won that final, Argentina were about as anti-football a team in that game since the Argentina of the 1990 final, unsporting thugs. I didn’t sketch the Final, as it came at the end of a very very busy Urban Sketching Symposium in Toulouse, and anyway who would sketch that game, better to just paint my page and watch it dry. The Third Place Game between England and France was unmissable but I missed most of it, because those games are usually missable, and besides I was busy. I did however watch and sketch what I could of the Semi-Finals. I will post the Symposium story and my Toulouse and London sketches soon (and then get back to catching up from 2025, by which time it will be 2028 and time for the Euros). For now tough it seems a good moment to close out my World Cup documentation. I arrived in Toulouse on July 14, which we call Bastille Day but the French call the Fête Nationale. They held the fireworks the night before on the July 13, and this night was all about the football. I watched it in a bar right across the street from my hotel, O’Brien’s, with fellow sketche Kalina. It was full of locals dressed in the colours of Les Bleus (ie, blue), some draped in French flags, lots of bières blondes (it was happy hour, buy one get one free), and a lot of nervous anticipation. I was probably expecting more noise and atmosphere, as France had been the most exciting team in the tournament and I fully expected them to win the whole thing with goals and panache, but people were not getting carried away. Not like in 2002, when they were on top of the world and the atmosphere in France was triumphal to say the least (I was living in Aix that year), until they completely flopped in the group stage. It was a bit more like 1998, I was there for the semi-final then as well, watching it at my friend Roland’s apartment, and people did not want to get too carried away, until the final whistle blew and wow, they were actually in the Final, and would play Brazil, in Paris, and boy did they celebrate that night. Well this night felt a bit more like that, but with the opposite outcome. Even at the start, when the national anthem La Marseillaise played on the TV, it was fairly subdued, save a few people singing the rousing part “aux armes, nos citoyens!”. I had been expecting that scene in Casablanca, or even Escape to Victory, but it was more like the opening to All You Need Is Love. It was a quiet game too, France could not lay a glove on Spain, who were a defensive masterclass without being boring. I had to add in a few yells at the screen on my page, but even they didn’t really happen (nobody says “Zut Alors!” in France, except maybe in the Tricolore textbooks). It became clear that France were not getting back into this game, so there was very little edge-of-your-seat tension, and people seemed a bit relieved it was over by the end. At least France have won two World Cups in our lifetimes (or one, based on the ages of many in the bar), so it’s not like with England and their famous ‘Years-Of-Hurt-Ometer’ which has now been reset to ‘At Least 64’). After the game, many left but the bar did not empty and we stayed and sketched and had fun conversations with some locals, and it was nice.

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I did watch the second semi-final, of course, as it was England vs Argentina, and yeah, I am disappointed with the result. I missed half of the first half because I was at the Symposium Opening Reception, but ducked out early to a pub called The George and Dragon, which is about as sure a place to watch an England game as you can get in Toulouse. About half the people in there, maybe less, were in England shirts, the rest were either not really watching, or were French but cheering for Argentina, mostly because Messi, or maybe because they wanted to play England in the 3rd Place game, if they cared about that game. Mostly they wee not that bothered. England were winning for quite a while, and then they weren’t, and then it was extra time, and shortly before the end they weren’t winning even more, and I went back to my hotel to get some pre-Symposium sleep. Football is rubbish anyway, it’s only the shirts that I like. The Premier League will be starting again soon, how excited am I, ooh I can’t contain myself.

BYT I drew these on the reverse side of the accordion sketchbook that I drew the USA-Belgium game on, in the previous post. I got that sketchbook in Poznan in the Sympsoium goody-bag, and I don;t really like the bumpy watercolour paper much.

Anyway, I was in France and London recently and I have so many sketches to post. And then after that, catch up with 2025 and the first half of 2026. I can’t stop sketching.