Lille, dimanche après-midi, il pleut encore

August 23, 2022August 24, 2022Leave a comment

It stopped raining for a little while after lunch. After walking about the back streets of Lille in the steady drizzle to find a restaurant to sit down in and enjoy some ch’ti region food, with little success (most of the outdoor seating had closed up due to the rain, and places were generally full inside at lunchtime) I ended up eating at the cafe that was that day’s “hub” for the urban sketchers, near the Treille cathedral, and just had a fairly small snack. I ended up chatting with some German sketchers I bumped into, such as Basel-based Tine Klein who I had met at previous symposia, she paints dramatic watercolour sketches I really admire and was talking technique with her friend from Berlin. I didn’t see any of the other sketchers I know, I was planning to join them in the evening for the drink-n-draw (or rather “drink-n-look-at-amazing-sketchbooks”). So after lunch I went back to the hotel to dry off, and when I headed out again the rain had stopped. I headed towards the train station, Lille Flandres. I couldn’t remember if Lille Flandres was the French name for Ned’s wife, on the Simpsons. In the road leading up to the station, Rue Faidherbe, there are these big green sculptures, so I stood next to one and drew the Gare itself. It opened in 1842, known then as just ‘Gare de Lille’. I spent a lot of time in European train stations when I was younger. In the summer of 1998 I took a five week trip around Europe with a Eurail pass, carrying the big Thomas Cook Rail Timetable book with me, but I never passed through Lille Flandres. I love a train though. I got this far with the station and that was enough, because the rain was back.

I crossed the street and took shelter in the awnings of a closed cafe. The rain wasn’t heavy (yet), and I felt quite contented. As a resident of Davis California I don’t see much rain any more, so it’s still a thrill to get a downpour, even one that stops me sketching wherever I want (spoiler alert – it rained a lot more on this trip, I still made the best of it). I still had a decent view of the rear of the Eglise St. Maurice de Lille and I couldn’t resist all those triangular turrets. I plotted it out and started sketching, and then the heavens opened up. I’m assuming someone in the heavens left the bathroom taps on. The rain was the heaviest I had seen in a pretty long time, and it was getting hard to really see. It was also being driven in towards me, so I was still getting wet, though not as drenched as those dashing down the street. Well, I thought, no point in trying to draw in pen, so I gave up and went to the next page, and added a wash, before adding in what details I could with the paintbrush (below). Not the sort of thing I usually get to draw but I definitely enjoyed it, and it definitely reflects the mood of what I saw more than the line drawing. I left the original sketch as it was, that’s part of the story.

The day’s urban sketching exploration was over though, so I jumped from shelter to shelter and dashed to my hotel. I am glad I stayed in such a good central location. It wasn’t a fancy hotel, just a regular Ibis, but the room had a desk which is something I always look for in a hotel room, as a sketcher who sometimes has to finish stuff off.

In the early evening, I walked out to the citadel park, to a little bar where the Sunday night meeting of French urban sketchers was going to take place. There I met with people that I knew from sketching trips gone by, such as Sophie Navas, Vincent Desplanche, Mauro Doro and more, and enjoyed a beer and looked over some amazing sketchbooks. We then went on to meet with my Belgian sketching friends Gerard Michel, Fabien DeNoel and Arnaud De Meyer, as well as French sketchers Martine Kervagoret and Lolo Wagner, it was great to see them all again. There were some others who I did not know as well, and others whose art I was very familiar with such as Jean-Christophe Defline and Sylvain Cnudde, whose work I have been really loving for a number of years (his sketchbook is even more amazing in person, I tell you). We had a quick drink at a cafe, before many of us went off to find some dinner at a place big enough for an urban sketching evening. Aux Moules on Place Rihour was that place, we ate in the large room inside and the staff were very friendly. I did do some sketching on the paper placemat (as did others), and also drew a panorama. Sophie (who I had first met briefly at the Strasbourg USk France Rencontre in 2015, and who now lives in Strasbourg; her sketches are great and she also designs excellent posters) did ask if I minded that everyone spoke French (she knows my French is a bit rusty) but I said that I loved to listen, and that I did understand most of what was being said, but I probably couldn’t join in to speak as much! Vincent Desplanche had copies of his book of sketches from Japan to buy, I snapped that up.

My moules were great, the beer was nice and it was fun to meet up with old sketching friends (and listen to some French, if only occasionally speaking it!). It had been another long day, so I went off to bed and fell right asleep. Next day I would be off to Belgium for a few days of sketching and exploring.

la pluie à Lille

August 22, 2022August 22, 20223 Comments

The sudden storm from the night before turned into a steady shower through the night and all morning in Lille. I don’t mind, I like the rain, and the day before had been very sunny. On rainy days when travelling with a sketchbook you do have to be creative, and open to the fact that maybe you will need to sketch inside a lot more, or just have a different experience. I live in Davis California nowadays, so rain is a proper novelty. That said, I went out for breakfast pastries in the morning, and I just had to try and sketch the bakery. Paul is a chain, but the bakery still looked like a good sketch. However there was very little shelter across the street, so I stood back to the wall holding my sketchbook upright and drew what I could, adding in some colour when I got back to the dry hotel room to eat my pain au chocolat. Oh man, French pastries for breakfast is still my favourite thing to wake up. Although on our second trip to France in July, I could tell my wife was getting a bit bored of them. I particularly like the pain au chocolate aux amandes, the one with almonds in it, it’s delicious. Big fan of an escargot as well (the sticky raisin-filled pastry shaped like a snail’s shell).

As I say, you have to be creative as a sketcher when it rains, and you also have to seize the best spots before they are taken. Here at the back side of the Notre Dame de la Treille cathedral in the middle of Lille I found a shop on Rue de la Monnaie that was not open but still had its awnings out, with a good view down the alleyway leading to the bluish-grey hued church. It was raining steadily but not yet too hard, and generally people weren’t under umbrellas. Another French sketcher came and started sketching underneath the awning too; events like this are nice because there are so many sketchers around and they all say hello to each other, and you get to see other peoples’ styles. Some more passed by, evidently looking for a dry spot. Several French sketchers I had met were seeing Lille for the first time, like me, though I did speak to a local while drawing this as well, he was telling me about how he loves living in Lille. It’s a nice place (and in a great location, so easy to get to London…). Though as with everywhere else in this part of Europe, you get used to the rain. I spent a year in Belgium, I saw my fair share (it rained a lot more there than even in London).

Next up, I stopped at the interesting-looking Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse. While I didn’t go inside the museum itself (I’m here to sketch outside! Rain be damned!) it was interesting to walk around the courtyard and some of the grounds. There is a big purple ‘cosmic serpent’ sculpture as you go inside – two serpents, actually – but it was just too wet to really draw those. There was a small covered area in front of a corridor facing the courtyard, where about four or five sketchers had installed themselves on various little stools. There wasn’t much room, but I squeezed in out of the way, and held my sketchbook vertically to attempt to draw the clocktower. It looks like the two serpents are waiting for someone to come and let them in, or out. The rain was pouring down by this point. I listened to the other sketchers talking in French, they had some very nice art styles. Behind us there was a corridor leading to the Jardin Médicinale, and I could see someone drawing what looked like a little figure with a pumpkin for a head. The sketcher left, and I drew the corridor with pumpkin man at the end of it. He looked a bit dejected, poor pumpkin head. I walked down to the little garden, and it was full of similar figures with pumpkins and other such vegetables for heads. Very realistic little people they were, with believable poses, doing things like watering the plants, or climbing a ladder – I drew that guy quickly. They are called Minitos, and were made by Jean-François Fourtou. according to the Lille 3000 Utopia site, this project originated in “a tale that the artist recounted to his daughter about little characters who lived underground in their garden, digging labyrinths and growing things in the vegetable garden.” I enjoyed being around them. The rain kept on coming down though and I was getting hungry (though maybe not for pumpkin soup), so I went to look for lunch.

Lille weekend

August 18, 2022August 17, 2022Leave a comment

I arrived in Lille by Eurostar and was immediately overcome with a pretty happy feeling, the one I always used to get when arriving in a foreign country. I had all the time in the world. I was in Lille to attend the Urban Sketchers France Rencontre Nationale, a huge gathering of sketchers from all over France and neighbouring countries, just to sketch everything, not a bunch of workshops like the Symposium, it’s just all about sketching and gathering. I last went to one in 2015 in Strasbourg, one of my favourite cities: https://petescully.com/tag/usk-rencontre-nationale-2015/, and have always wanted to come back to France and sketch again. I usually know a lot of the people that come to these ones, and I have to work on French; this time I didn’t really tell many of my francophone sketching friends I’d be coming, mostly because I wasn’t 100% sure myself that I would make it. After the past three years, along with the family events happening in London (the day before was my dad’s birthday), I had low expectations of this trip actually happening, so I didn’t want to go making plans. So it was really funny when I first arrived in Lille just after lunchtime on the Saturday and was looking for my hotel, when I bumped into sketching friends Fabien DeNoel (from Belgium) and Vincent Desplanche (from southern France), drawing a complicated building across the street. That was a nice surprise! Fabien told me that Gerard Michel (his uncle and one of the urban sketchers I’ve known since the very start, I stayed at his house a few years ago before the Amsterdam Symposium) was sketching in the main square, but I could not find him. My hotel was very close to the square, which is pretty big, and so after putting my things away I went outside and drew the scene above, from right across the street. That is a very similar view to the one I did in my Virtual Tour de France last year (a virtual sketching project I am still working on, very slowly – I have had two real visits to France since starting the virtual one). The huge Beffroi of the Chamber of Commerce is impressive. Lille is an impressive place, and I can’t believe I’d never visited before, given how close it is to London. The station where the Eurostar stops was only a short walk away from the centre-ville, and the city had a nice buzz about it, a ‘first weekend in June’ kind of feel. I could see sketchers dotted about all over the place, I didn’t see many other faces I recognized yet, but I could walk past Godzilla and not notice. I passed through the Place du Theatre past the opera – there was a big musical performance happening outside. There was a pretty lavish looking building opposite – the Vieille Bourse – that I passed through, there was a courtyard in the middle with booksellers and a bunch of sketchers, and on the other side was the Grand Place du General de Gaulle, a big busy square. There were people with sketchbooks everywhere. I found a shaded spot under a tree directly facing the Bourse, and took to sketching all those windows. Other sketchers I spoke to in the following couple of days had also been sketching all those windows, so many windows. Every window counts! But they really do seem to multiply as you start drawing. As I was sketching, the Grand Place became more and more colourful, as this was the weekend of Lille Pride. They came through at just the right moment, a way to break up the monotony of drawing so many windows.

It’s hard to draw so many people moving past but I gave it a go! It was a very musical and entertaining parade, so colourful (using the waterbrush you have to be quick doing the colour changes) but thnakfully some people did stop for a bit so I was able to sketch them for longer. There is one sketcher on the edge of the picture, she was stood to my left, I think she was from Paris. My favourite sign was the one that read “Mieux Vaut 1 Paire de Mères qu’un Père de Merde” (“Better to have one pair of mothers than one shit father”; the pun works better in French). There was also one guy I sketched who kind of reminded me of Timmy Mallet. I wanted to draw the large elephant that was passing by as well (not a real elephant, just a massive painted model) but it went by so fast all I could get was a brief sketch of it from behind. Once the parade had all passed through, I got back to sketching the windows of the Bourse. I do enjoy drawing parades and marches, because it’s an intense quick piece of work and you have no idea how it will go, or what is most important to draw bigger or smaller, so all you can do is draw reactively and see how it ends up, and however it ends up, that is the experience. That said, I’d not been around so many people in a while – well, at least two days, since the Jubilee, a different crowd with more blues and reds and royalism – so my crowd panic was in there, and at those times I need to be drawing something to stay relaxed. The colours and music and festive atmosphere helped though.

It was a pretty warm afternoon, and so I wandered off for a cold drink, and found one of very few places that sold Pepsi Max, and sat outside to draw the view below, looking towards the thin tower of the Hotel de Ville. I like the distinct style of the towers on buildings in the far north of France, it reminds me of passing by places like Calais on the coach when I was young, along with the unusual water towers dotted around the countryside. I used to say I would love to write a book about those water-towers, and draw them all, but actually when I think about it, no I wouldn’t, I’d rather do something else with my time. I do like this particualr tower in Lille though, it’s comically thin, like a belfry that’s been on a diet. I enjoy drawing these streets, and if you look closely, some of the buildings look like the French flag.

I looked up where the early evening pre-dinner meeting of sketchers was going to be, and I walked over there but most of the people had left. I did see another sketcher who recognized me from one of the London sketchcrawls a few years ago, and a few other faces I wasn’t sure if I remembered. I didn’t have a ticket to the main dinner event and planned to meet up with my French sketching amis the next evening, so I just went back to the hotel, and rested my legs before heading out for dinner. The sky was grey by this point – rain was coming in – but the early summer evening light meant i had to grab one last outside sketch, so I drew the distinctive dome of the Hotel Carlton. I would have liked to have stayed here, but I saved a few Euros and stayed at the Ibis instead. The sunset was not so dramatic, but the light had a dramatic effect on me so I interpreted it like this – it may have been shades of sunlit grey but this is how it felt. There’s a lot you can do with a grey sky. I only needed the outline and a column of details down the middle and the sketch was done, this is all you need for the mind to fill in the rest, but this also makes the main focus stand out. I was quite proud of this sketch. The day being done, I went off to find some food.

toujours strasbourg

July 29, 20159 Comments

Here is the final post with my sketches from Strasbourg, though there will be one epilogue with a map. This might end up being quite a long post, so if you like long posts with a few sketches and a lot of talk about things from previous trips that I can barely really remember properly, then this is for you. Or if you prefer just looking at the pictures, you can do that by scrolling past the text, looking at the sketch without all of the barely related context, and you get the same effect. I do like to offer an insight into what might have been going through my mind when I sketch though, which is basically the side of the drawing that I see when I look at it, but you as the non-Pete can’t see. To be sure, you have the undoubted advantage of seeing a sketch just for what it is, while if I post a sketch of, for example, a bike shop in Davis, I can say that it reminds me of a podcast about the Peasant’s Revolt that I was listening to at the time, or the music that was playing in the bar down the street, or the smell of the food someone was eating as they walked past, or it reminded me of the time when my bike broke down and I had it fixed, or the time when and so on and so on.

Take the sketch above, which is of a winstub/bierstub (it’s what they call cute little places where you can drink beer or wine in Alsace), “Au Vieux Strasbourg“. This is just down the street from the Cathedral on what is very much one of the main tourist runs. I stood against a wall and sketched as all nationalities walked by. To my right was a man selling little paper puppets in the street. These puppets would dance, all by themselves, making people (mostly kids) laugh and give money to buy one. At one point, the vendor sat at a table and had a drink at Au Vieux Strasbourg, and another man came long, and tried his best to figure out how the puppet was dancing. He looked at me, a glint of excitement in his eye and said “it’s on a line! I can see it, it’s on a line!” Obviously this was in French. “No,” I replied, “it’s magic. See?” “No, no, no,” he said, “it’s on a line. It’s hard to see, but it’s there.” “It’s hard to see because it’s magic,” I insisted. I don’t know how I became the spokesperson for dancing paper puppets but if there’s a cause I’m willing to stand up for, then well. He scratched his head as if he had made some revolutionary discovery but still didn’t quite believe it. ‘Sacre bleu’ I thought, and just carried on drawing, while the puppet master, still sitting with his cold drink, just shrugged. I actually couldn’t see the line, so it might have been magic. Further down the street, two musicians who had been playing an accordion and, I don’t know, something else, were joined by a middle aged American who decided it would be brilliant if he whistled loudly and in great tune along to their music. It reminded me of the guy Walter from the Muppets movie a few years ago. More puppets. When I was done, I had a cold beer at Au Vieux Strasbourg, and watched the world go by, and the little puppets kept on dancing.

This is the interior of “Les Aviateurs“, an American-themed bar I had heard of years ago but I don’t think I ever visited. There are model airplanes on the ceiling. As I was walking back to my hotel from the Cafe Atlantico on the Sunday evening, thinking about dinner, I happened across it. So after dinner I made a point of coming here to do a sketch. I was pretty exhausted, so I just had one drink and sketched furiously until my purple pen expired. There was only one other person in there for the most part, other than the barman, who chatted to me in English because, as he said, one needs to practice a foreign language otherwise you really do lose it, it”s not like riding a bike. Amen to that my friend, that’s exactly how I felt with my French on that trip. This bar is cool, and has been here since 1984, so I am glad I was able to find it and sketch it (here is their website). The music was all British indie music from the mid 1990s which was very appropriate.

There are a lot of municipal flags of towns from all over Alsace hung above the streets of Strasbourg. At least that is what I presume they are, and I think it’s a fairly good guess.I like that green one that looks a bit like a pair of y-fronts. This was on the rue des Orfevres, also known as Goldschmittgass, and this Foies Gras vendor that I stood next to had a golden goose as its shop sign. Strasbourg however loves its storks, they are the symbol of Alsace and the mascot of tourist shops everywhere in the city. I never sketched those.

The Place de l’Homme de Fer (above) is the central downtown hub for the Strasbourg tram. It literally translates as Iron Man Place, and the large circular structure above the tram station reminds me a bit of an arc reactor. Twenty years ago when I first saw it, I had no idea what an arc reactor was (and barely remembered anything about Iron Man) so I never made that connection then. This was however, with the exception of the cathedral, the thing I was most impressed with about Strasbourg. Coming from London which at the time had the very old rolling stock of London Underground trains (the old grimy greying trains with the ghostly front face and the partially wooden interior, not the shinier more colourful ones you get now, with their LED screens and automated “the next station with this train is Colindale” announcements), the Strasbourg trams and their futuristic downtown station were a glimpse into the space age. This is what life could be like. I enjoyed riding the tram so much, arriving at ‘Langstross’ and other exciting locations. I’m a bit less easy to impress with futuristic technology now, in this age of smartphones and holograms and teleporters, but on my last day I did take a ride on the tram again just for old time’s sake. I went down to Neuhof, which was where, in 1995, I had been on that exchange trip to the Lycee Jean Monnet. I walked about the neighbourhood for a little while, remembering all the old fun of that trip, all the people that I met. It hadn’t changed very much, though to be honest I could not remember enough to say what would have been different. There was a lot of that in Strasbourg, turning a corner and another distant memory popping up, much in the same way that you remember last night’s forgotten dream the moment you hit the pillow, and then it’s gone again. I passed by the street where my old friend Roland used to live, who I last saw when we watched the 1998 World Cup semi-final on TV, France beating Croatia. There were lots of celebrating fans on the streets that night.

I was hungry, so I didn’t sketch around Neuhof, and just jumped back onto a tram and headed to Les Halles for a Quick and some more shopping (or rather, leche-vitrine, window shopping – my backpack was too small to buy all the cool things I wanted to buy, such as big new Ninjago and Marvel Lego sets at the toystore which even now are not yet available in the US, much to my son’s annoyance).

And then it was time to go home. my flight back to London was late on a Monday evening (and very cheap too, about $15, plus it took just a few minutes to get to the airport from Strasbourg train station). The Monday was my day of exploration, so I spent time in bookshops such as Librairie Kleber (I love the smell and feel of French bookstores, even if the spines are all upside down), and of course the big store FNAC. The FNAC in Strasbourg was the first ever FNAC I had been to and it hasn’t changed much. I spent ages in their BD section – that’s Bande Dessinee, or comic books. French (and Belgian) BD is amazing, especially the artwork, and often comes in large hardbound volumes. There were a good number I would probably have bought, had I not brought such a small backpack with me (Ryanair carry-on friendly). I did buy one small-ish new piece of Ninjago Lego for my son though, so clawed back a few Daddy Points for all the other Lego and Playmobil I didn’t get (I did buy him some French ‘Pokemon’ cards in Monoprix though, his friend apparently had some German ones from his dad and he wanted to go one better). I bought biscuits in nice little Alsace tins, had a take-out curry dinner which I ate on a bench on the Rue du 22 Novembre, before finishing off with one last sketch of the large Place Kleber, Strasbourg’s big central plaza. The cathedral poked above the rooftops, looking towards Rue des Grandes Arcades. The Marks and Spencer that used to be here is gone, but the McDonald’s is still here. Why mention the McDonald’s? Back in 1997 they gave me a Big Mac instead of a Chicken Sandwich. I didn’t realize until I was already on the coach back to London, so I couldn’t change it (me not being an eater of the hamburgers). My friend Terry ate it instead, and we’ve basically joked about this ever since. We agreed that if ever I went back there, I would go to that McDonald’s, slowly walk up to the counter like a bounty hunter in an Old West saloon and say, “1997, September. You gave me a Big Mac. I asked for a McChicken sandwich. That was one long, hungry bus journey. I’m here to claim my debt.” I didn’t, but it would have made a brilliant BD.

a little petite

July 27, 20153 Comments

More sketches from Petite France, the old picturesque part of Strasbourg, famous for being where they put diseased soldiers centuries ago. The scene above is one of the most beautiful views in the city, where one of the canals of the river Ill twists past the narrow medieval lanes surrounding the Place Benjamin Zix (“Zixplätzel” in Alsacien). Benjamin Zix was a painter and sculptor in the Napoleonic era, born here (well, on rue des Moulins) in 1772. The building in the middle is the Maison des Tanneurs, dating from 1572, which is now a restaurant. I sat here by the narrow lock for a couple of hours, as tourists walked by, and other tourists in groups whirred by on those Segway things. I don’t know how you can go around Petite France on those Segways (which remind me of the STAP flying platforms ridden by battle droids in the Phantom Menace while attacking Gungans on Naboo), but a lot of people did manage it.

Below is the rue des Dentelles (Spitzegass), which I sketched on the first day. There is a really interesting shop there called ‘Un Noel en Alsace’, which sells Christmas ornaments, mostly Alsatian. The most recent visit to Strasbourg I had made was in December 2004 with my wife, when we came to visit the Christmas market, or “Christkindelsmärik”. Strasbourg, if you don’t know, is the home of the traditional Christmas market. It is the oldest one in Europe, dating back to 1570, and is a lovely experience (albeit rather crowded). Strasbourg calls itself the ‘Capital of Christmas‘. It seemed to cover most of the centre-ville, and there was mulled wine (or maybe gluhwein, both of which I’m not keen on) being passed around. I do love Christmas time though, and Alsace does it pretty well.

On the final day in Strasbourg I decided I would do more exploring than sketching (I spent a lot of time in bookshops), but I just had to go back and sketch more Petite France. I wasn’t done with Petite France yet. There was one scene which again is picturesque, tourist-photogenic, detail-heavy timber-framedness. The view from the Pont St. Martin towards the back end of the rue des Moulins (below). I spent an hour and a half sketching all the ink, and added most of the colour later. Below me, the water was gushing down from the locks. Behind me, the sound of children playing at a nearby school. Around me, tourists from all over the world lining up to take pictures of each other. I did consider making this a two-page panorama (and even plotted out the left hand page) but knew I wouldn’t have the time to draw it. Still, I’m well happy I took the time to come and draw this.

Still more to come!

it is like a finger, pointing away to the moon

July 27, 201511 Comments

It might be my favourite building in the world. And this year, 2015, La Cathedrale de Notre Dame de Strasbourg is 1000 years old.

The day I got back to London last month, I was looking for some drawing pins at my mum’s house when I happened upon an old badge that was mixed in with them. It was a small metal badge of Strasbourg Cathedral, which I must have bought on my first trip there, and has been sitting in a drawer at my mum’s for years and years. What a coincidence, as I was shortly going to go back there. Strasbourg might have a European parliament building, and lots of pretty timber-framed buildings, but it is a city dominated by its massive cathedral. It sits in the centre of the Grand-Ile with its single solitary spire pointing high into the heavens. It can be seen for miles around. Locals told me that if ever I were lost, I should just look up and find the cathedral. Of course that only really helped if I were going toward the cathedral, so on this trip I booked a hotel right next to the thing (the Hotel Cathedrale, I recommend it). It was the scene above, the view down the tourist-trail of Rue Merciere, that I longed to sketch. I was stood almost in Place Gutenberg, where stands the statue of Johannes Gutenberg, who invented the printing press right here in Strasbourg. I stood there mid-afternoon, and because my hotel was just around the corner I took a break halfway through, and went back to do the rest. I had promised myself that I would sketch the cathedral at least three times, from three different angles, and so I did. I love this building.

In 1997 I came to Strasbourg with my oldest friend Terry. We came on an overnight Eurolines coach (remember taking those, in the days before budget airlines? Yeah those days are thankfully gone). I remember that it was the day after Princess Diana died (it was funny, French people kept asking us how we were doing, all concerned like, and we were both like, um, we’re fine, thanks, not realizing all the national weeping nonsense going on back in England). As we approached Strasbourg, I could see the huge spire in the yellow dawn mist towering over the city, and it was an image that stuck with me, like an illustration from a fantasy novel. Its shape is so distinct. It looks like it is missing a spire, and in fact it is – the second steeple was supposed to be built, but was never constructed. I was told many stories about this cathedral, how for several centuries it was the tallest building in the world, how during the French Revolution the cathedral was covered up with a giant cap to save it from those revolutionaries who wished to tear it down. In the sketch above, you can see how the rear is also covered over, but this is just renovation, not revolution. I had a nice time sketching this one. Several of the Belgian sketching group were there too; Gerard Michel (the cathedral expert, my inspiration) was gathering a crowd of onlookers. As I sketched, a group of young schoolchildren were gathered in the plaza (which was not as nice and open as this the last time I was here), and several times they sang La Marseillaise, which echoed off the grand building beautifully. As well it should – for as much as Strasbourg has been swapped between the French and German realms, that national anthem of France was actually composed not in Marseille, not in Paris, but right here in Strasbourg.

The sketch above is the pre-breakfast early-morning drawing. My hotel being where it was, I just had to roll out of bed, grab the large sketchbook, and stand out in the Place de la Cathedrale before all the tourist shops opened. I said ‘bonjour’ to a few people holding machine guns, as you do. The cathedral is being well guarded by soldiers, walking about the building at all hours. It’s not a scene that I’m used to, but I’m not unfamiliar with in France (I remember years ago walking past a large cadre of soldiers on the Paris Metro, their fingers on the triggers of their automatic weapons), and it’s a reminder of the terrorist dangers that France has had to deal with this year. I stood next to the 15th century Maison Kammerzell, which I drew in the foreground in black ink, and drew the cathedral in brown-black ink. This is a famous shot. I started this at about 7:30am, but by 9:00am I was getting hungry so I stopped there, and went for a pain au chocolat at a boulangerie around the corner. It was such a delicious pain au chocolat that five minutes later I was back there asking for another. The woman in the bakery gave me such a dirty look when I came back and for a second one, as if to say “why didn’t you just buy two the first time?”. At least I got that much. On two other occasions that day (in FNAC and in Librairie Kleber), the shop assistant serving me barely acknowledged my existence other than holding out a hand for my money, looking away in another direction. But then I also had many occasions where I was helped by super friendly (and above all patient) people in shops and cafes.
And so, the Cathedral celebrates its millennium this year. I didn’t realize this before I came to Strasbourg, so it was very good timing. Later this year they are having lots of celebrations and events. The picture below, taken from a display outside the cathedral, shows the history of its construction. As with most massive building projects in the middle ages, this took several centuries to complete. It stands at 142 metres tall (that’s 466 feet). It doesn’t sound like much when you put it like that. The first stone was laid by Bishop Werner von Habsburg in 1015. One of the most prominent architects involved was Erwin von Steinbach, who died in 1318, and the cathedral is one of the best examples of high Gothic architecture.

Gerard Michel and other sketchers from Liege, sketching Strasbourg cathedral with an audience

The massive rose window, photographed from the inside

The view of the cathedral when I arrived in Strasbourg in the early hours of the morning

Here’s that metal badge I bought twenty years ago (and found again last month), along with the USk France 2015 badge.

rencontre 2015: strasbourg, city of sketchers

July 24, 20154 Comments

When I first read that Strasbourg was the location for the third annual Urban Sketchers France ‘Rencontre Nationale’, I knew I finally had an excuse to go back there. I still left it a long time ultimately deciding, but I tied it into a short visit back to London (to surprise my dad for his birthday), and then threw Aix into the mix as well. I had wanted to go to one of the French ‘rencontres’ since the first one in Lyon a couple of years ago. These are literally just large gatherings of urban sketchers from all over France (and neighbouring countries too), serving as sketchcrawls held over several days, informal, relaxed and friendly. I like the International Urban Sketching Symposia, the sixth of which is now taking place in Singapore, but they sometimes feel like a lot of rushing around and can be pretty overwhelming, with all the workshops and organization. Sometimes I prefer something a bit more simple, like this (that said, I do really wish I were at the Singapore symposium sketching with everyone!). The sense of freedom afforded just wandering about a city with no time restraint, but still having the opportunity meet and learn from other sketchers, especially those whose work you’ve followed online, is great, and I really love following Urban Sketchers France. Of course, I’m often shy and my French is atrocious so those don’t go in my favour, but thankfully there were several familiar faces here!
The 2015 Rencontre National USk France was organized largely by local illustrator Lolo Wagner, who had put together an impressive programme of information and suggested sketching routes and locations, as well as places to stay, to eat, to drink. Every evening after the sketching was done the croqueurs urbains would meet up en masse at the Cafe Atlantico, on the banks of the river Ill, to boire un verre and check out sketchbooks. If you wore your USk France badge you got a good price on your beer too. As you can see above, it was a pretty nice location to end the day. We also met up on the Saturday evening for a large group get-together to eat tarte flambée. Many sketchers stayed at a local hostel called CIARUS, a place I myself have stayed a couple of times back in the late 1990s (a nice place too).

I sketched the scene at Cafe Atlantico (top sketch), and you may notice that the page is a bit dirty. What happened there was that I was talking to some people, and my hand which was covering my page luckily saved the sketch from a random bird’s dropping, falling from the sky. That was a good save! So I joked about how American I am now because I am prepared with hand sanitiser and wipes, and I put my sketchbook down for a moment on the ledge next to me which was also the sidewalk and…a bike cycled over my book. It was right by the railing, not like in the middle of the street, but it left a big tyre mark across the page. Oh la la, I said. The cyclist apologized, we all shrugged (gallically of course), not that big a deal. He said it makes it look more artistic. No, not really, it looks like a bike cycled over it. I got most of the track marks off, but you can still see it, and I decided not to get rid of it in the scan because – the cyclist is right – it does at least mean I can tell this story. It’s not necessarily a very good story, but it’s a thing that happened.
As I mentioned, we got together on the Saturday evening to eat Tarte Flambée at the Brasserie De La Bourse, a large 1920s-era restaurant in between Place d’Austerlitz and Place de l’Etoile. I don’t eat certain meats, so my tarte flambée came without lardons, but normally this most Alsacian of dishes – which is kind of like a flat pizza-like bread covered in cheese and onions – usually comes with little strips of pork called lardons, a bit like bacon. They love lardons in France, and my non-pork-eating status means I’ve missed out on many lovely French dishes (in Aix one of my colleagues often came to our apartment to make ‘tartiflette’, which was delicious but I had to pick the lardons out.

There were some sketchers I knew and a few I was meeting for the first time. My sketching friend Gérard Michel, the famous urban sketcher from Liege in Belgium (who I first met in Portland in 2010) was there, and it was great to see and chat with him again, and see his amazing sketchbooks. If you’re not following Gérard Michel on Flickr, your really should be. If you want to see what you can do with the art of perspective, have a butcher’s at his album ‘Perspective Games‘. Mind-blowingly good. I keep hoping to finally have time to visit Belgium again to sketch architecture with him, and the Liege crew. His nephew Fabien DeNoel, who I first met in Lisbon in 2011, was also there, and his work is equally as impressive. I sat with them and some other Liegois sketchers, in fact there was a large Belgian contingent at the Rencontre. I had met some others such as Corinne Raes in Lisbon and Barcelona (she’s great and I got to meet her husband Werner, who took video at the Rencontre), and it was nice to meet a few more too. I also finally met Dutch artist Rene Fijten, whose work I’ve admired for many years, he’s a nice guy. I had met Paris sketcher Martine Kervagoret a couple of times before so it was nice to see her again, I like the Paris urban sketchers. I met for the first time some of the sketchers from the Aix-en-Provence group, such as Caroline Manceau (I think she actually lives in Marseille) whose work is great, and Nicolas Doucedame, whose sketchbook was mightily impressive. I really hope to sketch with the Aix group in the future, they organize regular sketchcrawls down there in my old home. A couple of other sketchers I met whose sketchbooks really impressed me were Sophie Navas, who I think is from Clermont-Ferrand and had some amazing sketches (I did meet several Clermont sketchers when I was in Barcelona, and I’d love to finally attend the Rendez-vous de Carnet de Voyage in CF some day, it’s just I never get the time), and Vincent Desplanche, who had an unbelievable amount of sketches in a short time, and is my new hero of the two-page spread. His style is loose, in pencil and watercolour, but so effective.

I did sketch at dinner a little, the restaurant windows above, and a few sketches of people (further above), including Gerard, Fabien, Vincent, Sophie and others whose names I have forgotten. However I struggle with sketching people, especially when I am surrounded by people who sketch people, I get more self-conscious than usual. I daresay if I was in a room full of fire hydrants, someone who doesn’t sketch fire hydrants may feel the same way, but I did my best, and in fact went one better. It wasn’t my idea (it was Fabien’s) but I did a sketch of Gérard Michel using a local material, namely the Tarte Flambée. And it actually did make a good likeness, or at least a better likeness than my pen sketch, I think I captured his famous smile. He loved it; here it is:

But we urban sketchers, Gerard and me and all the others, we sketch architecture, and cathedrals the most. Ok it isn’t to scale, but here is Strasbourg Cathedral, made out of Tarte Flambée. I’m sure I’m not the first. And it tasted great!

You can see some great posts from the Rencontre by USk France members at the Urban Sketchers France website (tag “rencontre USk France”). This post is particularly nice as it shows the group photo (taken by Marc van Liefferinge) as well as a newspaper article in DNA (Derniere Nouvelles Alsace): http://france.urbansketchers.org/2015/02/rencontre-usk-france-2015.html.

Lolo Wagner also put together this great album of photos from the Rencontre on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lolowagner/sets/72157654652186532

In the meantime I have more sketches to come…

Strasbourg!

July 20, 20152 Comments

The first time I came to Strasbourg was twenty years ago, and I arrived on a coach some time after midnight. It was part of an exchange program between sixth-form colleges in England and the Lycee Jean Monnet in Strasbourg, and from that trip in 1995 I fell in love with the city. I was learning both French and German at the time, so naturally Strasbourg was perfect. I went back a few times since, but the most recent was over ten years ago, and so when the opportunity (let’s call it the excuse) came up to visit Strasbourg again, to meet up with the French Urban Sketchers at the 3rd National ‘Rencontre’, I couldn’t resist. It was the twentieth anniversary of that pretty formative trip and Strasbourg was fading from my memory, so I simply had to come back and draw it, and draw it A LOT. Just as twenty years ago, I arrived after midnight, on a TGV from the south of France. I arrived to discover that the whole train station was now covered in a massive futuristic glass bubble. I walked to my hotel right by the cathedral, using the massive, towering steeple as a compass.

I met a group of French urban sketchers the next morning down at Petite France, where I stood on a bridge near the Ponts Couverts and sketched the scene above, the river Ill winding sleepily past timber-framed houses. You can see the sketchers gathered on the banks. I recognized a few from their sketches online; I’m a big fan of the French Urban Sketchers group, having met several of them in Barcelona, and I eagerly follow them on all the usual online places (the main site is france.urbansketchers.org). It was a cloudy morning, and the occasional raindrop splashed down, but there were no more storms, and eventually the sun came out. The weather here in Alsace was perfect for being out sketching.

Petite France is an area of Strasbourg famous for its narrow cobbled streets and old timber-framed buildings, where the river splits off into canals criss-crossed by footbridges and the occasional lock. It is very peaceful, or would be if it weren’t for the groups of Segway tourists whirring along the cobbles. There was a lot to sketch down here, and I would come back every day. Petite France is not, as the name suggests, a model-village based on the whole of France, nor is it made of Lego, nor are the people really small like Lilliputians. It gets its name from a disease, specifically Syphilis, which was known as the ‘French Disease’. Actually (according to a tour guide on a Segway) it was also known as the ‘Italian Disease’, because French troops brought it back from Naples at the end of the fifteenth century. Actually it was probably first brought into Europe from the Americas, but nobody knows for sure. Anyway, those affected soldiers were often brought here to this part of Strasbourg to be treated (or at least kept out of the way), giving the area the name “Little France” after those afflicted with the French Disease. The city was part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, not France – Strasbourg, or Strassburg, was for much of its history decidedly German, and its native language Alsacian is a form of Low Alemannic German.

Here I am in a France shirt (size Large, not Petite) sketching by the river Ill. Ironically people used to come here because they were ill. Anyway, all potential jokes and puns now exhausted, I decided to move along.

I stopped for lunch at a little place on Rue des Moulins, around the corner from the spot above, called ‘Le Baeckoffe d’Alsace’. I sketched the scene below while waiting for my food, and sipped a nice cold glass of ‘Fischer’ blonde beer (or Pecheur, depending on the glass), which was a real treat of a beer. Alsace knows its biere blonde. It also knows its food – I had the Cuisse de Poulet au Riesling (chicken leg in a Riesling-based sauce) with Spaetzle “Maison” (Spaetzle is a German side dish which my wife’s grandma used to make). This was superb, especially the Spaetzle, which was seasoned deliciously, and I could have eaten it all day long.