Poznań (Part 8) – Sunday morning

February 14, 2026Leave a comment

The Symposium was over, and it was the last morning in Poznań. I had a train to catch to Germany, but still a bit of Poland to sketch. I slept ok after getting back from the closing reception and the drink-and-draw that went on well after midnight, but still got up early to go out into the sunshine and finally draw that colourful row of chocolate-box buildings on the main Stary Rynek square. I drew fast and used my fountain pen; I didn’t have time to colour in there so did that later, but I drew a lot in a short amount of time. It was so nice out. There were still some sketchers about, and I even finally bumped into Joe Bean who I’d been trying to meet with for a few days. So many people at this symposium, it was hard to find everyone. I wonder how many others I didn’t get a chance to talk to this time. The little stalls in the arches were setting up, it would have been a really good day to just spend all day in the square sketching, but I was ready to move on from Poznań, interesting city though it was, Berlin was calling me. I did have time to do one more sketch below of a fountain I’d wanted to draw, which again I had to colour in later, but then I had to dash back to the hotel and get a cab to the train station.

Here are a couple more Poznań sketches, that I started but didn’t draw until later. Some graffiti I had spotted while about town, I really liked the two-headed cartoon pig. There’s the sign for Zabka, the little mini-market conveniently located everywhere, I missed that when I left. And below, I had really wanted to draw one of the nice manhole covers, these are the things I like to look out for in new cities. So that was my trip to Poland, a week in a very interesting country that had nice people, great architecture, good trains, convenient stores, fresh beer, good food, an attractive sounding language full of long words with frightening spelling. I’ll definitely be back to explore more some day, maybe I won’t leave 27 years in between trips this time.

And so, on to Berlin.

Poznań (Part 7) – Saturday Night

February 13, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

Before I knew it, the Symposium was coming to a close. I had a short rest at the hotel, and set out for the final big group photo. I have missed the final photo in at least two Symposiums and so was determined not to miss this one, and of course I very nearly did because I was walking to the wrong place. I figured it out in the end. Hundreds of us gathered in this big town square, Plac Wolnosci (that I had never been to before), and you can see the big photo on the Urban Sketchers site. After the big photo all the different sub-groups got together for their own photos, the Symposium Faculty, the Volunteers, the Poznan sketchers, the German sketchers, the Brazilian sketchers, the Californian sketchers (I’m in that group), the UK sketchers (I’m in that too but I missed their photo), the Antipodean sketchers (good contingent came from Australia and New Zealand) plus many more, all having lots of fun. My real group though was small, and we spent a while trying to gather us all together, we were the Last Remaining Originals from Portland 2010. There we are above – Elizabeth Alley, Shiho Nakaza, Liz Steel, Mike Daikabura, Kalina Wilson, and me. The only other Original who attended Poznan was Rita Sabler, but we couldn’t find her despite much searching. We took a few photos, and then I had them all do the ‘Brucie’ pose, (without explanation) as you can see above. Good game, good game, didn’t they do well. The more normal non-Brucie picture is below. By the way you can see the very first Symposium group photo on Liz Steel’s blog; fifteen years ago!

Once everyone started to disperse, the final Sketchwalk started. People got back into their ‘Sketching Zone’, we all have our Zone, before the festivities of the final reception would begin. I had been approached the day before by a local sketcher Martha, who asked if I’d be interested to give a demo or talk to some local sketchers. I didn’t really have time to arrange anything formal like that, but said if they wanted to come to the Sketchwalk I could show how I approach a drawing. So after everyone dispersed, they met me on the steps and it was just her, another sketcher, and her young son, and I let them watch over my shoulder while I drew the scene below, while I explained what I draw first, how I add people, perspective, little bit of paint in the sky. It was a fairly quick and simple sketch but hopefully I got my point across ok. Her young son sketched next to me and did a great job himself, and as I was sketching afterwards he came up and gave me his drawing! I was very moved by that, made my day. His mother Martha even left nice surprise of some Polish cakes at the Symposium hub for me, I ate them when I got back to London. So, I joined the rest of the Sketchwalk people at the end point and looked at everyones’ sketches, I was really impressed again by the amazing work from the Korean sketchers, it really is one thing to see these online and another in person, they blew my mind. Coming to the Symposia and seeing so many people out doing these incredible drawings really gives me that extra boost of motivation as an urban sketcher.

By the way, I drew that hydrant just before the big group photo, because I just had to draw another hydrant. I think it was at Stary Rynek, which by this point I was calling ‘Stary Stary Rynek’, but only to myself. That bobbly Moleskine paper makes the page look dirty, but it wasn’t, it;s just the way it scanned. You can see the same effect in the sketch below as well.

The closing reception of any Symposium is always exciting, because that’s where we learn the very secret location of the next Symposium. My guess would be a return to Asia, and since there was a big group from Korea I was convinced they would be announcing Seoul, which would be a fantastic choice. They really draw the announcement out (do I even need to say ‘pun intended’, that’s a given) but there is a lot of fun stuff before that. For example, there was a performance of traditional Polish music by a couple of classical violinists, one of whom was one of the local organizers of the Symposium. It was beautiful music, and as well as the musicians (above) I sketched a couple of sketchers listening to it below, Cecilia Novello from Argentina on the left, and Shari Blaukopf from Montreal on the right (I really enjoyed her workshop in Amsterdam). I sketched some others too, a few people in the row behind me, plus Eric Ngan from New Zealand who was on the USk Executive Board, and Dan Archer who is British and lives in Hong Kong, I chatted with him on the first day and he was very friendly, plus his work’s great. Anyway, the big announcement for 2026, the Symposium will be in…Toulouse! In the South of France! I was delighted to hear that; I’ve not visited Toulouse, but for me France (especially the South) is like going home. The day I met my wife (in Aix-en-Provence), she had just come back from Toulouse. That’s two European Symposiums in a row, a bit like 2018-2019. So I am hoping to make it to that Symposium, but you know, it’s very competitive to get in, I didn’t apply to be an instructor or give a demo or talk on time (early deadline, also very competitive) and summer 2026 is a bit of an unknown for me anyway, so we will see. I might apply to be the Correspondent, since I like going round drawing everyone anyway, but I wasn’t selected for Poznan, and that’s fine. Still, I reckon I’d be good at it, though July in Toulouse can be rather hot, and the World Cup is happening then…

I didn’t spend all my time sketching though, I mostly mingled and chatted to people, a number of whom I had no chance to see during the Symposium and people who I’d seen online but not met in person, such as Taria from Taria’s Sketchy Adventures, whose work is great, she is from England but lives in South Africa. I also chatted a lot with Fred Lynch and his wife, and caught up with Fabien DeNoel who I last saw in Lille. I spoke with a lot of people, and the food and drink was really good.

All the sketchers in the world were at the hotel bar. I nearly went home after the reception, but saw many familiar faces and went over to catch a last beer with them, joining Suhita, Liz, Paul, Omar, Uma, Joel, everyone sat around sketching and talking. I got to finally meet Peter Rush from Australia, who so many people had been talking about with his cereal box sketches. I sketched the group above with Omar in the middle, I didn’t know some of the people behind, but Andrew James from New Zealand who I’d met a few times on the trip, he’s in this twice, once standing up and once sitting on a very low stool. He told everyone a funny sketching story about a watermelon. I sketched some people in my brown paper book below, there’s Nick Patyczak again this time wearing a tie with pigs on it; there’s Taria again; there’s a woman whose name I didn’t catch; there’s Alessandro Britto from Spain/Brazil/USA, who said “you hold your stuff like a crazy person!” (yes, I do; Lapin called it “L’Incroyable Tenue du Crayon de Pete” back in Portland); finally there’s Andrew telling the watermelon story.

It was definitely bedtime after this, I was off to Berlin the next day. And so, that was the 2025 Symposium! We will see if I make it to Toulouse. If you are reading this and are thinking about going to a Symposium, well I’ll say you should do it and you will probably have a great time, it’s overwhelming, exhausting, and a lot for introverts like me, but it’s all about relaxing and meeting the other sketchers, we are all like that, and all learn from each other. I drew a lot, but if I wish I’d done anything, I wish I’d drawn even more other sketchers. The sketches of people in those quick moments are what makes the memories for me. They aren’t all accurate, not even 50%, but it’s what came out and it’s what I had time to record, and that’s what counts. Ok, one more morning left in Poznan, and then on with the journey.

Poznań (Part 6) – Saturday morning

February 11, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

Saturday came around fast. I was going to go for a morning run along the river, having been told about some good running paths by one of the volunteers, but it was a little bit rainy and so I went to the hotel gym instead. I had a 5k race the day after getting back to California so thought I’d better keep it up, but I had run a lot in London. I was here to sketch. After breakfast, which by the way at my hotel was really nice, lots of interesting Polish food, I went to the Symposium hub for the morning sessions. they reminded us to submit work for the auction, and also submit a postcard size drawing to win special prizes later, both of which I forgot to make time to do. Oops. When it’s in my sketchbook I can hide it away with my other sketches. Anyway, feeling a little disappointed in myself, I went to the first talk, and I had been waiting for this one. I’ve followed Detlef Surrey for years, the Berlin based illustrator who draws in a quick almost cartoon-like style in pencil and always captures the energy and spirit of the places he is drawing. I feel like I loosed up my own sketching after seeing his, and that helps when sketching scenes like above (and of the other talks) where I have to draw everyone quickly while writing down what he says. Detlef’s presentation was about his book, “Berlin: the Wall Revisited” in which he explores his home city by following the length of the Berlin Wall, or where it used to be located anyway. I was going to Berlin after my trip to Poznan and planned to do just that myself, so it was pretty inspiring. He showed us pictures from when he was younger, and the Wall was still up, and talked about the experiences of living in the divided city. I used to be fascinated with Berlin when I was a kid, when it was still West Berlin and East Berlin, and I remember so vividly watching the news when the Wall came down. Detlef showed us sketches of some sections where parts of the Wall are still up, and where the ‘Death Strip’ was located, where so many people were killed just for trying to go from one side to the other. I did visit that place myself a few days later. Detlef spoke with emotion, and it was a very moving presentation. I did look for his book while in Berlin but kept missing it (at one shop I was told they just ran out, because people who had been at the Symposium were coming to buy it). I ended up ordering it from the publisher after returning to America, and that took a while, due to tariffs and other issues where postal services would not ship to the US, and it ended up costing me more than the prices of the book to finally get it, but it was worth it as it’s a great read. While in Poznan though Detlef did give me a really cool little Urban Sketchers Berlin booklet, which I think was from an Urban Sketchers meetup the year before, full of sketchwalks and bits about different areas of Berlin, and I carried that around with me every day there, and it showed me where to go for the Berlin Wall Monument. Anyway, more on that in a later post. It was time to dash off to the first Sketchwalk of the day.

A large group walked over towards ‘Fredry’ for the Sketchwalk. It wasn’t raining now and in fact was quite bright and sunny. I chatted with Liz Steel for the first time in ages, it was really nice to catch up and hear about all her work and travels, she is so prolific. Once we all got over to Fredry I stood next to an interesting little kiosk next to an old red brick building and sketched that in pencil. I liked sketching a bit looser like that and I liked the outcome. That sketch above is one of my favourites from Poznan, I can’t explain why but it said what I wanted it to. I did have to get into a bit of shade on a bench under a small tree to finish it, I can’t stand in the sun for too long. I went back across the street to sketch some of the sketchers, see below. The two on the top are (left) Xana Jasmin, sketched during the morning talk; this was the first time I’d met her in person but had spoken to her online a few years ago when she invited me on behalf of Urban Sketchers Jacksonville to give a short talk and demo to their group over Zoom, which was fun. That was in the Pandemic times still. On the right is Gabriela Romagna who I think is from Austria, and who I had met a couple of evenings before at the Drink and Draw.

Above on the left is my old urban sketching friend Omar Jaramillo, another Correspondent from the earliest days of USk who I first met in Lisbon in 2011. He lives in Berlin, I think he was in Italy back in those days. He was sat with a Polish sketcher who I think was called Mateusz, I didn’t speak to him but I think I remember him from the Manchester Symposium, I didn’t recognize him so wasn’t sure at first. On the right is Alexandra who is from Berlin, I’d sketched her at the opening ceremony and drew here wearing her new hat which had mushrooms all over it. That was actually from the evening Sketchwalk but is on the same spread of my small brown paper sketchbook. As you can see I stamped the pages with the official stamps of the Symposium and of USk Poznań.

I went into this little courtyard where an art and craft market was being set up. There were some great printmakers there; I totally got a bunch of printmaking stuff the years before and totally stopped doing any of it, the lino printing and such, and felt like it’s something I really need to work on again. (Six months later, still not done any of it). I was feeling a bit peckish so went into this cafe, called Nowe Lokum Stonewall, and got a massive slice of cake and a beer, and sketched the bar area. I wanted to draw all the LGBTQ+ flags up on the wall, and I really liked all the rainbow colours above the bar. I drew with my fountain pen in brown ink which was ok on that awful Moleskine paper; I made the mistake of stamping it with the Symposium stamp, which as you can see did not come out smoothly. This place was cool, and it was nice to hang out and sketch an interior after all the street sketching. It did start to look a bit like it might rain, but didn’t. Still I had more to go and sketch before the final meetup.

I could have sketched a number of pretty scenes in that area, and nearly drew the courtyard of the Imperial Castle / Cultural Center, or the dramatic tall concrete monument in Plac Adama Mickiewicza that many others drew, but instead I sat in a small park and drew this, the Katyń Monument, or Pomnik Katyński. Looking at it closely, it gave me the horrors. Reading a bit more about what it was a monument to, an awful series of mass executions in 1940 known as the Katyń Massacre, that gave me even more horrors. A lot of truly terrible atrocities happened in World War Two, and this was really horrible, 22,000 Polish officers were murdered by the Soviets on the orders of Stalin. After sketching, I had to just sit on a bench and think for a while. I couldn’t look at it for long. Soon it was time to meet up with the rest of the sketchers at the end on the steps of the Grand Theatre. That was when the skies opened up, and an enormous rainstorm, accompanied by a bit of thunder and lightning, exploded above us. We all huddled under the columns laughing and exchanging stickers and art cards, there was a large group from South Korea whose sketches were amazing (followed them all on Instagram and very much appreciated all the stickers, which I put in my new Urban Sketchers passport that I got at the Hub), and we all waited for the rain to stop before heading off for lunch back at the mall. My mood lifted a bit when I saw the football score, Spurs were beating Manchester City and that always puts me into a good mood. I could tell that 2025-2026 would be a really great season for Tottenham. (Narrator’s Voice, speaking in February after another defeat left us in 16th place – “it wasn’t”). Check back soon for Part 7…

Poznań (Part 5) – Friday evening

February 9, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

Long post, I am lumping the afternoon and evening sketches all together, and starting at the end. Above is the Ratusz, the historic town hall, in the main square of Poznań on Friday night, sketched after all the other sketching and meetings, before heading back to the hotel. I was walking back and looked up and just knew I had this one more sketch in me, another pencil at night looking up type sketch, and this time on the nicer Hahnemuhle paper (so none of that bobbling paper I got on the Moleskine). It’s a big, striking and very well-lit building, shining in the night time as much as in daylight. It was busy out in the Poznań city centre, lots of people around the main square and lots of young people enjoying the cafes and bars. I still wasn’t that familiar yet with the old town and got a little bit lost while walking back to the hotel, ending up in some less well-lit quieter streets, though I didn’t feel unsafe. The last time I’d been in Poland in 1998 a group of skinheads in Krakow had ambushed me on my way back to the hostel, failing to steal my watch they instead stole my glasses and ran off. I did get them back (it was a long night, but I was determined, I needed my eyesight); I’ve not forgotten that, and brought a spare pair of glasses with me on this trip, just in case. A little bit about the Ratusz, this building dates from the 1550s, replacing an earlier town hall from the 12th century, and is now a museum. Its most famous feature are the two mechanical goats that come out at midday. The tower (and goats) were destroyed in 1675 by lightning, when a time traveller from 1985 attempted successfully to drive his car back to the late 20th century. There was a hurricane that damaged the tower in 1725, and the building sustained a lot of damage in World War II during the Battle of Poznan, and was rebuilt in the 1950s. I really liked all the green metal dragon gargoyle features around the building. That was a feature I noticed on the Armoury in Gdansk. I saw many dragon features around Gdansk, it may be a popular symbol in Poland.

Speaking of popular symbols, this is ‘Pan Peryskop‘, a very unusual sculpture located in Plac Bernardyński. The logo of the Symposium featured a cartoon version of this, and I soon discovered that those same cartoons and variants were spray-painted on walls all over Poznan. (Poznan, by the way, what a city for interesting graffiti, I loved it). It turns out the cartoon figure came first, created by a mysterious street artist called Noriaki. There is an article on Urban Sketchers about it: https://urbansketchers.org/2025/08/17/from-street-art-to-symposium-star-mr-periscope-welcomes-you-to-poznan/ Whether the man I had met the evening before around the Drink and Draw, who told me he was the creator and gave me a load of really cool stickers of Pan Peryskop for free which I placed on my sketchbook (seriously, people were envying my shiny Pan Peryskop stickers), was really the artist himself I’ll never know, but let’s just say yes he was, because he told me he was and I love free stickers. I read somewhere that Noriaki is sometimes called ‘the Polish Banksy’. I saw many other sketchers had drawn the sculpture so I went to look for it, a short walk from my hotel. It reminded me of No-Face from Spirited Away, but with a curved mirror. The sculpture is actually called ‘Selfie Watcher’. There were a few sketchers dotted around, and I drew a couple of them below sat on a wall, Julia from Ukraine, and Laeti from Berlin (but who I think is French).

I stopped to draw a hydrant (see the end of the post) while walking back into the old city centre, where I would be joining the early evening Sketchwalk, which would be around the, at the, it was somewhere in the old town. I need to look up the location, I cannot remember any of those long street names. Skwer Roman Wilhelmiego. I picked a big brick building and drew the top of it. The sky looked like a blue white and grey camouflage shirt. You can really see that bobbly paper. Having drawn a lot of towers and spires in Gdansk I needed to up my quota here, but only managed two of them. I sat and listened to a couple of sketchers from opposite sides of the world have a conversation about, I don’t know, food or roads or whatever. I’m not a good listener, I forget things easily. I saw some graffiti that said “Warning! Artists in the Area” That was right. I saw more Pan Peryskops around, and several cartoon pigs, there were a lot of those about, I liked them. As we all sat or stood about sketching, volunteers in orange hi-viz vests walked about slowly looking down sternly, as if they were inspecting the sketches. I started to imagine them as prison guards, the Urban Sketchers Police, checking to see that everyone is following the Manifesto. “What’s that, a ruler? Guards!” As with every silly idea I have, I found it hard to get that image out of my head, so when they weren’t looking, I made a run for it.

I went a couple of blocks away and stood right in the middle of Stary Rynek, the main square, which wasn’t part of the Sketchwalk route but I’m an urban sketching rebel. Plus I couldn’t find the next location on the map. I wanted to draw one of the rows of colourful old buildings in the main square; see below. I only had 30 minutes before the official end of the Sketchwalk, and I didn’t want to be late, I’m not that much of a rebel. So I went FAST. It may be one of the fastest most detailed sketches I did that day. I didn’t colour it in, except the sky which was pure theatre. I umped into some sketchers I knew, but I was on a mission and once the sketchbook was out I was in the ZONE. I didn’t even notice Rita Sabler took a picture of me sitting on the cobbles when I was adding my paint, oblivious to the man looking over my shoulder looking utterly perplexed or amazed at my sketch. Or maybe he was just thinking “why is he holding his pen like that?” or “wait are those Jurassic Park socks?” (which they totally are by the way).

I went to the final meeting spot of the Sketchwalk, which was uphill by the castle, the Zamek Królewski w Poznaniu, the Royal Castle of Poznań. I saw a few friends there, and sketched one of the volunteers (who signed it as Patyczak when I saw him again next day and was quite a funny guy) just before his call for the final photo, “Everybody here now!” We took our photos and most people went off to the drink and Draw; I was hoping to see Joe Bean in the main square so headed back down that way, thinking I’d join the others later. I never made it, too far to walk after the busy day, so after I bumped into a group of sketchers I knew I sat and had a drink in the main square, sketched them and looked through some incredible sketchbooks. I chatted with Sybille Lienhardt from Germany who had taken Peter Rush’s workshop, he is from Australia and he draws on the back of cereal boxes, these amazing big drawings. It’s something I should like to try. I also looked through her sketchbooks, wow! Her colours really jumped out. Detlef Surrey was there too but left early, he had to practice for his talk about his Berlin Wall book the next morning. I met for the first time Anne-Rose Oosterbaan, whose work I have followed for years and was amazed to finally meet, and see her incredible sketches in person (plus she knew of me!). I’ve seen so much of her work online that it doesn’t look real in person, and she was so productive on this trip. Also there was Peter Dutka who I had met in Manchester years before, I think he didn’t remember my name but called me Captain America (I wore the Cap hoodie in Manchester), I sketched him. His sketchbooks too were well impressive. Then there was the great Hungarian urban sketcher Örs Lévay whose sketches I have admired for years but I’d never met in person, lovely bloke. I sketched him in his hat. Also there was a sketcher from Hamburg whose work I have definitely seen but didn’t really know, Nicola Maier-Reimer, and I tell you what looking through her sketchbooks was a highlight of the trip, I’d never seen so many amazing sketches, particular her very comic style of sketching people, and her love of cars as well, there were so many stories everywhere on her pages. I sketched her too. Eventually it was getting late, there was another busy day tomorrow, so I went back to the hotel (but stopped to sketch the Ratusz, as you saw at the start of the post).

for some reason I’m putting these last two at the end of the post, they just seem to go together. One is a very old metal water pump I sketched on the Sketchwalk, how could I resist that. When I see metal pipes coming out of the ground I have to draw them. It’s like, these foreign cities know my algorithm, they know how to slow me down, make an ornate metal pipe appear every so often, and I’ll never get to my destination. I draw them fast though. The other is a red hydrant from Austria that I sketched on another street with a name I’m not even going to attempt to pronounce. And that was Friday, there was one day left of the Symposium, and that will be about three more posts, maybe a fourth. It’s only taken me six months to say what I did in Poland, and then there’s Berlin, and a few more days in London. Not to mention the rest of 2025. I’ll never catch up.

Poznań (Part 4) – Friday morning

February 7, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

Friday morning at the Poznań Symposium, I was up at a good time and ready for a day of sketching. I had no workshops or demos to attend, but was planning to join two of the organized Sketchwalks in different parts of the city. I realized that I had not as yet been to the Old Town, just seen other peoples’ sketches of it posted online already. This morning though I’d be heading out with the group to Cathedral Island. Before that, I headed to the Symposium Hub at the Novotel Hotel for one of the morning presentations, and this one was by my friend Rita Sabler (who I also first met at Portland in 2010), who is an urban sketcher, journalist, musician and story teller, and gave a really moving talk called “The Power of Drawing in Telling Difficult Stories”. She travels all over, and so was presenting some of the stories she had documented on various assignments. I have sketched one of Rita’s talks before, back in 2016 in Manchester, and she is a really good presenter and empathetic teller of stories. “Drawing opens doors that would otherwise remain shut.” I drew another woman with pink (or maybe purple) hair listening to the talk (below) but didn’t catch her name. After Rita’s talk (there we are in the photo below, I’m wearing my Cameroon football shirt), I headed out to the meeting point for the Sketchwalk.

The sketch next to Pink-purple-hair by the way is London sketcher Lis Watkins, in the green jacket, who I’ve met a few times on our London sketchcrawls, I’m a big fan of her work. She was sketching over at Cathedral Island with so many of us. As a big crowd, we all got into the Poznań electric tram, and I chatted with some sketchers from Scandinavia. “This is the Symposium right here” I said, as we all squeezed in and tried to read each others name tags, “more than the sketching, it’s about all cramming into a tram and seeing where we end up.” It reminded me of the streetcars in Portland, or the buses in Manchester, or squeezing into that elevator in Amsterdam, sketchers off on an outing. We arrived at Ostrów Tumski, ‘Cathedral Island’, which is an island between branches of the river Warta, and is where the city of Poznań originated. The cathedral itself is one of the oldest in Poland. I’m a sucker for a cathedral, but it’s really nice to see one that looks so different from the big Gothic cathedrals of western Europe. I found a shaded spot in a garden by the river, chatting with Elizabeth Alley who told me a lot more stories about her Arctic adventure, and drew the view below. The bridge was red by the way but I never ended up colouring it in. I got to a point and was like, I’m done. This being on the portrait size paper, double spread, they always take a bit longer and I was really only interested in the cathedral. Looking at everyone else’s sketches though it did start to feel like I was deliberately not colouring in the obvious big red bridge, like a contrarian, but I really didn’t want to distract from the cathedral and that north-central-east European sky.

I went over the river and sat a bit closer to the Cathedral. I drew in pencil because I thought I might not spend as long faffing out with my pen, probably correct. I love those green oxidized roofs. It was peaceful over there, quiet. There were sketchers everywhere, quietly getting on with it. We all get it, we all know what it’s “for”. We all get it. It’s one of the things I love about symposiums, I don’t have to explain or feel like I need to justify why I need to stop and just bloody draw the world around me. I felt quite chilled at the end of this sketchwalk.

When we were all done sketching, we gathered in front of the Cathedral and did the obligatory and inevitable “Throw-Down”. People bloody love the Throw-Down don’t they. They all put their sketchbooks down on the ground, where people’s feet go, and all stand around the books like mourners at a grave, looking down at all the sketches from a distance of 5-6 feet which is totally how you look at art, no idea whose is whose. Like when I go to a museum, I always prefer it when they put all the paintings on the floor and make you look down at them. As you may know I don’t do the Throw-Down on my sketchcrawls, I prefer a show-and-tell, or maybe if we absolutely have to lay them out, then somewhere a bit higher up like a bench or a table. I don’t like leaving my sketchbook lying down on the pavement anyway. I did it once in France and a bike ran over it.

I met Kalina again who was wearing a Thor t-shirt, and also met with Mohan Banerji, a sketcher and actor who lives in Berkshire who I first met in Manchester 2016, it was really nice to see him again. I got the tram back to the city centre with him and a sketcher from Australia, Stuart Jenkinson (I sketched them both) and we had lunch at that place in the mall (where I had lunch every day, it was nice and there were always sketchers about). So far I was really enjoying Poznań, though I had still not sketched in the old town. I managed to finally do that in the evening, but had a brief rest at the hotel first to strum my ukulele and put my feet up.

Poznań (Part 3) – Thursday Afternoon Activities

February 6, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

On the first day of the Poznań Symposium I had a busy schedule, so taking a short afternoon break at the hotel was a good idea. I relaxed, didn’t sketch, strummed my ukulele, and then dashed back across that park to join the Afternoon Demos. This is where the instructors, the Symposium faculty, all get to show a small group how they go about making a sketch, offering advice, encouraging to join in, but mostly watching and learning. I had signed up for Stephanie Bower‘s demo “Look Up!”, and we crowded around her stool and little easel to watch how she plots a drawing out. I’ve met Stephanie a number of times and always liked her sketching style, which is very strong with perspective and depth, and she has been a teacher for many years. Sometimes when she does these drawings with a very defined one point perspective they feel so grand you feel you can walk right into them, and when I see a certain type of scene (an old library interior or a town square in Italy) I usually think of how Stephanie might draw it. I have her book which is part of the ‘Urban Sketching Handbook’ series and refer to it often, but I’d never taken a workshop or demo with her so it was nice to hear her talk it through in real time. Of course, I cannot sit or stand still so I took the opportunity to draw the whole thing and many of the people attending as well.

I liked the sketch above because Stephanie is demonstrating how she uses her tools to find the vanishing points and the measure out perspective, and you can see the space we were working in. I kept it fast and very loose in pencil and a little paint. It’s funny, I did use pencil more on this trip, and I myself use pencil to measure things out, but then I sharpen the pencil and it gets a little shorter every time, so when I am using it to measure 45 minutes into the sketch, it’s not the same length any more. I’ll be honest, sometimes I do that thing with the pencil where I hold it out and close one eye just to make it look like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t really. I have talked about the performative aspect of being an urban sketcher before and that’s one of the theatrical tools I use, like a magician with that little wand and top hat. Anyway while I listened and watched Stephanie’s drawing unfold, I thought about whenever I have given a demo, and how difficult it is to maintain that zone you get into when drawing, I was impressed at how Stephanie managed it so well.

I got the brown paper sketchbook out for some people sketching, and was using the thick black pen a bit more which helped me create some more defined sketches. I really liked how these ones turned out. The pens were a Pigma Graphic 3 (the bigger block nib) and the Zebra pen I first picked up in Amsterdam, I don’t use it much but it’s nice. Coloured with watercolour, also some white gel pen. The sketches above are Ronaldo Kurita from Brazil who I had sketched badly the day before, this one looks much more like him. He was looking down watching Stephanie’s demo and really enjoying it. The next one is Rebecca Rippon who is from San Francisco, I’d never met her before but she said she had shown work at the Pence Gallery in Davis, small world! (It also reminded me I had a drop off deadline at the Pence that very day so sent a reminder back home to bring my drawings there for the Art Auction). I also drew Anna Zięntkewicz, who is from Poland and was on official duty as one of the Symposium Correspondents, being the local one. She was going from demo to demo documenting everything in her sketchbook, I think she liked my drawing of her hard at work. The other sketch on the opposite page was not drawn at the Demo, but at the Sketchwalk later on in a different park, she was a sketcher from Trieste in Italy called Giovanna Pacco and was one of a group (dressed in yellow) that came who were not registered for the Symposium but were joining in on the big Sketchwalks which were open to all. There were hundreds that came like that to Poznan (like I did in 2013 in Barcelona), and it felt like there was almost a ‘fringe’ symposium happening all over the city. I had been on the forums and groups leading up to the symposium and people were connecting and arranging to meet, it was great to see so many sketchers from all over the world coming together like that. I spoke briefly with her and her group, I have been to Trieste myself many years ago (right after graduating from university I took a few days in Trieste and Venice).

Before joining the Sketchwalk I walked to the other side of the park and drew the view looking down the hill, the shadow of that church spire cast on the colourful wall. There were so many sketchers dotted about, so many solo sketchers on their stools with that look of intense concentration. I know that look, I have lived that look for years. The strange fish drawings underneath were from some graffiti I saw, which is based on a local landmark ‘Pan Peryskop’ that has become a symbol of Poznan, and I’ll talk about in more detail later. This Pan Peryskop symbol was even in the Symposium logo, and appeared all over town. More on this later. I joined the Sketchwalk and we headed down to a bigger park nearby, called Park im. Karola Marcinkowskiego, and there was no way I was remembering that. I’d passed through it the day before when walking from the station. The streets around it were busy with traffic, but we ended up congregating around a small lake and I found a spot and drew that view, below. I enjoyed this sketch less, it didn’t really do what I wanted it to, it felt like an end of the day sketch. I liked drawing the people sketching on that log in front. The evening sunlight was good. I spoke with some sketchers but kept to myself mostly.

On the way back to my hotel, I drew this little old bench which was two stone goats holding up the seat.The goat is another symbol you will see everywhere in Poznań. The original goats, the Koziołki poznańskie, are two mechanical goats that come out on the City Hall and butt horns. The goat symbol crops up everywhere, but I think this was the only place I sketched them. I wrote down the name of the street they were on, but I’m not typing that out here, life’s too short.

And then after a brief rest it was time to head over to the mall again for the Drink and Draw that was happening at the restaurants just outside. Wasn’t really as good a location for a Drink and Draw as in some other Symposia, but I was planning to meet with Kalina Wilson (long time sketching friend since Portland) and see some other sketchers I’d not seen in ages. That was great, and I bumped into Fabien DeNoel, Arnaud De Meyer and Mauro Doro, the Belgium/Luxembourg lads who I’d not seen in a few years, always great to see them. While I was there a local artist, who it turned out designed many of the Pan Peryskop imagery you see everywhere, pointed out a little Peryskop figure and commended me on the pin I was wearing (that came with the symposium goodybag), and he gave me a bunch of really cool stickers of that image which I was delighted with, and went on my sketchbooks. I sat down with Kalina and some others and we all had a great evening chatting, I sketched Kalina who was in her red hat (the very same one from Portland 2010 which I had sketched when I met her there), and also drew Joel Winstead, who I first met in Manchester 2016 but had had a nice dinner with him and his friend back in Porto in 2018, so it was nice to see him again. There were also some sketchers from Germany and Austria with us, I had met one before but it was nice to meet the others (though I didn’t sketch them at that point). I also saw Joe Bean from Leeds who I’d been hoping to chat with, we ended up missing each other a lot during the Symposium but I saw him briefly on the final morning before I got my train. After all these nice meetings, and a long day, I went back to bed and slept well.

Poznań (Part 2) – The First Morning

February 5, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

The first morning at the Urban Sketching Symposium is always full of excitement and anticipation, or at least I assume it is, I am always late for most of the morning messages. I had not yet found the shortcut to the hub and followed my phone directions in a strange route that didn’t seem quite right, but I got there in the end and caught the tail end of the morning greetings. At least I didn’t miss the first event, which I was really excited to hear about. Elizabeth Alley, who I first met at the 2010 Symposium, was giving a talk about her adventures as an artist on a boat expedition to the Arctic Ocean. “Sketching In The Arctic Circle“. It was utterly fascinating. I sketched and took notes, and was so impressed by the whole adventure. It was on a ship filled with other artosts, not just sketchers or painters but writers, performers, even a game designer, all there to document the Arctic and our impact upon the whole natural environment. The audience was captivated. She mentioned polar bears, something I’ve not yet encountered as a sketcher! This post Elizabeth made on her website talks a bit more about the experience. Here is her post before she left showing her sketching materials. After the talk, it was time for the first workshop…

I like the chaos, the very well organized chaos, of the mustering for the workshops at a Symposium. The volunteers holding the signposts make themselves well seen, so it took no time at all to find my group. I was taking a workshop called “Vignettes” with one of my favourite urban sketchers Fred Lynch, whose work I followed since the start, but only met once in 2016 in Manchester. I used to love his monochrome travel drawings with their precise detail and values, I remember his drawings from Italy, Viterbo I believe. Here is Fred’s website, fredlynch.com. He made a joke to the group about not being anyone’s first choice for workshop; he didn’t believe me, but he actually was my first choice, I was very keen to see Fred teach and was not disappointed, he had a great way of explaining his concepts to make them simple and enjoyable, and very relaxed. My various sketches of him (above and below) appear to show four completely different people but I assure you they are all of Fred Lynch, this is just my quick people sketching in a hurry. We were to be sketching in the little park next to the old brewery. I would find myself walking through that park a lot on this trip, it was part of the shortest route home to the hotel (though a bit dark at night, when I’d prefer to walk around).We found a nice shaded spot where Fred explained what we’d be doing that day.

I enjoy this part of the Symposium, when a presenter tells us their stuff and I get to draw them and write down ideas and phrases as quickly as I can. “Always remember, people are READING your drawings.” I liked that. “Illustration is Writing with Pictures.” He spoke a lot but was remarkably concise – you can tell he has many years teaching experience, it really comes across. He is also very funny. He said something about some drawings looking slick but boring, “sometimes the fancy car has no engine.” That always strikes a chord with me. I enjoy capturing these moments quickly like this, because there is personality there and a capturing of the moment, which is what quick sketching should be all about. I didn’t get the official correspondent role for the Symposium (I may have been too tired anyway) but I love the idea of going from workshop to workshop and trying to document them in this way. I enjoy this more than the actual drawings I do for the workshops!

We went out to draw some quick observations. I drew the brewery, and it was ok, got that done, everyone drew it at some point. I did a quick one of the orange leaved tree near the church at the edge of the park, and of another sketcher sketching (Ute Plank, I think from Germany), and then sketched a couple of my fellow workshop attendees Ewa Broll from Poland and Hyan Chong Yun from Korea. We then went out to do a slightly longer sketch, vignettes from around the park. I didn’t have many ideas but produced probably my strangest sketch of the Symposium, below. Ok, all around the park are these funny looking metal shapes. There must have been about 17,000 of them. Maybe not that many, but a lot, all along the paths, spaced fairly evenly, all about 3.5 feet high. I had no idea what they were for, but they were the perfect height to put my watercolours on while I painted. Why can’t these be everywhere in Davis, instead of me holding my paint set? These were perfect. It turns out they are lamps, just not very tall ones. Great for seeing the path or your feet, not really for seeing faces. Perhaps this was useful in the Cold War when meeting spies. Either way they made an interesting subject to draw over and over again from different angles. I say interesting, everything is interesting if you take an interest in them. I’ve already given them a spy thriller back story. Anyway my angle was that I would draw a person in each sketch along with the funny metal lamp thing, to show people enjoying the park on this sunny Thursday lunchtime. I wonder how many other sketchers drew these on this trip. Surprisingly few, from the sketchbooks I looked at. This is a very me thing to draw, but showing it at the end, I was a bit embarrassed about it, spending all my time essentially drawing the same thing over and over and over. That’s so unlike me.

I had a great time at the workshop though and saw some other great styles. Then it was time for lunch, and the mall had some great options in the food court, a lot of other sketchers were up there so I sat and chatted with people I had never met before and heard about their workshops, it’s fun getting to be a sociable person for a few days of the year. I went back to the hotel for a rest (old Symposium me was not doing that! I was Go Go Go back in 2011) before the rest of the day’s activities. See you in Part 3.

Poznań Symposium – (Part 1) – Arrival

February 4, 2026February 14, 2026Leave a comment

And so, finally to post my many sketches from the 2025 Urban Sketchers International Symposium in Poznań, Poland. I arrived by train from Gdańsk, a ride of about three hours across the Polish countryside, and I could tell Poznań was a much bigger city. My walk from the train station to the hotel took about twenty minutes, and I nearly got run over once, but it missed. I got quite lost walking from the hotel to the symposium hub, which was in the conference area of the Novotel Hotel, near a big (and very nice) mall, but I arrived in time to check in and get suddenly lost and overwhelmed among the hundreds of people. It was my first Symposium since 2019, that’s six years, and I didn’t see any familiar faces at first. I picked up my goodie bag (there were so many goodies this year), mooched around the Art Market, and eventually bumped into a few sketchers I met at previous Symposiums and chatted for a bit while looking at all the art materials in our goodie bags. (I still have stuff from Portland 2010 in my art cupboard!) I find myself extremely shy these days when in a big crowd, and nervous about meeting people I don’t know every well in case I don’t remember them, or them me, but we’re all sketchers and all a bit like that I think. I did see a few sketchers who I’ve followed online but hadn’t met yet, but was a little shy to go and say hello. So I went outside to start sketching, because that’s what we are here for isn’t it, before the big evening reception that would kick the whole thing off. I sat on the steps outside the hotel and drew this scene above, which lots of solo sketchers were also sat about drawing. It was a busy road looking over at an old brewery building that had been converted into a mall and entertainment area, and this would be the starting point for most of the workshops and sketchwalks. I had a Workshop Pass where I’d take just one workshop (with Fred Lynch, big fan), and just sketch free on the other days. The sky was interesting, the paper in my sketchbook however still horrible, and this was shown up when I pressed the Symposium stamp on the paper, it looks like a brass rubbing with a crayon. Still as I sketched I did see people I knew occasionally and got up to greet and hug, it’s been a really long time. I saw Liz Steel from Australia and Paul Wang from Singapore, both of whom I’ve known since the start of Urban Sketchers, and so we got our now traditional photo of the three of us, which we’ve done since Lisbon 2011.

I started sketching in my small brown sketchbook which I was reserving for the quick people sketches I knew I would do a lot of on the trip. I often keep a small ‘people’ book at the Symposiums. This is my opportunity to draw as many people as possible, and I’ve remembered sketchers years later just because I drew them. I’ve been drawn many times myself, I look very funny when I sketch. Below are Delphine Devoilles, who I didn’t know but is from Clermont-Ferrand (I’ve met a few sketchers from there), and Reham Ali from Egypt, whose work I’d seen before. They got to be my first sketched people of Poznań!

After this, I took a break at the hotel (first of all getting extremely lost in the underground car park of the mall; ‘flight of the navigator’ strikes again) before heading back over to the hub for the Opening Reception. That was a lot of fun, there was food and drink, and I got to see many familiar faces from past Symposiums. I wandered and sketched people, and the current Urban Sketchers leadership as well as the organizing team from Poznan opened the massive event. I was lucky to get a ticket. When registration opened, it was the middle of the night over here in California, and I was out of town with friends visiting from England, so my wife got online and was able to get me registered when it opened at 3am our time. Tickets sold almost immediately. I knew a lot of people who could not go, and many came to Poznan anyway to join in with the activities open to the public. This event was for registrants only, and it was revealed that of the 500 people who registered, more than half were first-time Symposium attendees. Only a handful of us were there at the first one in Portland (but we got together on the last day for a special photo). I drew Ronaldo Kurita, from Brazil, speaking to the crowd. My first few people sketches were a bit shy and fast, but I got into the swing of it eventually. I drew the tall German sketcher Stefan Günther who I had never met before, this was a good trip for meeting new sketching pals, though I was still shy to say hello to people I did recognize but had not met yet.

There were a few women dressed in traditional looking dresses with massive (and heavy looking) floral headwear; these were the ‘Bambers‘ and are from Poznań. Well, as they explained, the Bambers were actually originally from Germany, from the city of Bamberg, but had moved to Poznań centuries before. In the early 18th century, this part of Poland experienced a terrible loss of population die to war and plague; in Poznań, the population had gone from 12,000 to 3,000. The Polish King Augustus The Strong (definitely a pro wrestler) invited families to settle in Poland, as long as they were Catholic (and especially if you wore massive hats made of flowers), and many families from Bamberg settled in Poznań and became known as ‘Bambers’. I think one went on to host the TV quiz show University Challenge many years later but I may be mistaken. The Bambers became very ‘Polonised’ (a new word I have learned, which means ‘assimilated into being Polish’ and has nothing to do with bees or indeed flowers, but I can see where you might make the connection). They are a very important part of Poznan’s identity and culture, and another reminder that every area in this big country has so many stories we might not know unless we go there.

I went around sketching some more people; above are Alexandra Rudneva (‘Barsketcher’) from Germany, who I had met briefly in Porto (she was in my sketchbook though I don’t think we spoke at that time), and Sybille Lienhardt, also from Germany, who I had met in Amsterdam and have followed her work since. I always enjoy meeting the German sketchers, there were a lot more at this Symposium being geographically so much closer, and I finally got to meet Detlef Surrey, the Berlin-based illustrator whose work I’ve been a fan of for years. I sketched him below. Also above are a couple of sketchers I’ve known for many years, Daniel Green (who I had already seen briefly in Gdansk) from Minnesota, and Elizabeth Alley, from Memphis, who I first met in Portland in 2010, another Symposium Original. It was really nice to catch up with them; I did sketch Elizabeth’s talk about her adventures in the Arctic which was so fascinating, I’ll post that later.

Above, Detlef Surrey (as I mentioned), he also gave a fantastic talk about his book which was all about sketching where the Berlin Wall was (I’ll post that later), and a local Polish sketcher Katarzyna Kostera (Kasia), who was volunteering at the event. There were so many volunteers, and they kept the Symposium running so well. Kasia noticed I was busy sketching and didn’t have a drink so offered to go and get me a beer with my drink token, which was a really nice thing to do, so I sketched her with her beer. The beer was very good, and the food was nice too, but the opening reception was soon over and I wandered home to bed, a long roundabout walk since I still had not found the shortcuts. I did however see this incredible fire hydrant on the way, and stood to draw that, and a German sketcher who had been at the reception stopped and talked for a while while I drew, but I didn’t catch their name. I felt pretty tired by the time I got home, and it was a busy schedule next day. Check back at some point for part 2…

September Trees – Part 2

October 9, 2024Leave a comment

Time for side two of the album of trees from September. It is October now, the weather is still very hot (over a hundred for several days now) and I haven’t stopped drawing trees, though I am tired of this heat and need some cooler weather now please. It was cool standing in the shade of the big tree above, on Mrak Lawn. You can see one of Arneson’s Eggheads there, “Eye on Mrak/Fatal Laff”, one of the most photographed of the Eggheads. This was on the Friday before the new academic year began, just before the rush, the last moment of calm. I like the new year starting, usually, but this year I was feeling a bit of apprehension. I have quite enjoyed the quiet, even though the Davis summer is long and hot. I know that once all the people are back and things are moving that I always feel differently – I’m a city person after all – but maybe I am just always seeking the quiet spaces now, away from the noise. The world feels so noisy these days, with the news and the adverts and the endless sewage of voices that are shoved in your faces every time you look at your electronic devices that supposedly connect us all. This leaves our heads feeling noisy, as thoughts bounce around in there like birds trapped in a glass room not really sure where to land. The trees absorb some of that noise, I think. They just stand silently, no plans to go anywhere. They are alive, I wonder sometimes if they are happy with where they have ended up or if they don’t like some of the other trees nearby because they are always dropping leaves or attracting squirrels, or if they don’t really think about it because they are, you know, trees.

It’s at this time of year the trees start changing and getting ready for winter. Not all of them do, some stay the same. I start thinking about when I might start wearing my warm sweaters again – not any time soon, if this heatwave continues. It’s getting busy at work as we get on with the general running of this big university, helping the branches of academia grow and develop, insert tree-based analogy here. On the other side of the world this week, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the 2024 Urban Sketching Symposium is about to start. Sketchers from around the world are descending upon that colourful capital and starting to post their experiences already, their sketches, their photos, their connections with each other. October is not a good time for me to go to a Symposium. Last year it was held in New Zealand, another far-flung place I have always wanted to visit, but at another time that was not really possible for me due to timing (April). The last one I went to was the huge one in Amsterdam, 2019, when about 800 or more sketchers descended on the Dutch capital in the middle of an unbearably hot summer, back in the pre-Covid world that feels like a different planet in so many ways (though it’s still unbearably hot). Sure, we are ‘back to normal’ now, but so many of us are still not really. I think I’ve reverted back to the solitary reclusive sketcher that shies from the big events, and the small ones too. This has been happening since before the pandemic, but the past few years have made me even more so. It’s hard for me to really explain it. I sketch, I post on my website, I also post on Instagram, and while I keep up with a load of sketchers online who still inspire me daily, I don’t interact so much with all the wider groups these days, your Facebooks and so on. The algorithms are a mess. Instagram’s ok but a bit limited, I’ve stopped posting on the old Twitter, and Threads is useless. I post to Flickr, but not in the old groups which all feel so 2006. This place right here is my main outlet, old fashioned though the blog is. At the launch of Urban Sketchers I was a correspondent for the main USk blog, but I have not posted there for years since it’s not really for that any more, and is more about the network of local chapters. I never did set up an official local chapter round here. Keeping up with all the global sketching community is overwhelming now, it’s massive. I’m in my little corner doing my thing. I am feeling more reclusive than ever with sketching (and in general, if I’m honest), going back to the default setting of hiding away. Maybe I just need a proper Symposium experience, like in the old days, to kick me out of this, and give me some new ideas and energy.

It was the very first Urban Sketching Symposium that effectively brought me out of my shell in the first place, so to speak. We’d only been a thing for barely a couple of years, but the idea of getting sketchers together for a few days of workshops, talks, sketching and mostly interacting in-person was always on the cards, so Gabi and co organized the first event in Portland, Oregon. Not too far from Davis, really. I nearly considered not going. I was part of Urban Sketchers from the start but that old feeling that my place is to hide away. I’d been going through a bit of a personal crisis at the end of 2009, feeling at my lowest ebb, and I think I took a decision in 2010 to figure out how to somehow grow more, take charge of myself a bit. I was encouraged by other urban sketchers to come to Portland, so I took the leap. It really was a lightbulb moment for me when I got there. The Correspondents had a dinner the night before the Symposium, and for so many of us, gathered from not just America but literally all over the world – Kumi from Tokyo, Gerard from Belgium, Tia from Singapore, Isabel from Mauritania, Simo from Italy, Liz from Australia, Lapin from Barcelona – who had not met in person before, but all knew each other and recognized all our different styles immediately. It was exciting to finally meet Gabi Campanario from Seattle, Matthew Brehm from Idaho, and Jason Das from New York, with whom I’d spoken a lot online already, plus several others whose work I loved and still do, Veronica Lawlor, Shiho Nakaza, Laura Frankstone. The Symposium itself started next day, and there were about 75-80 of us total, and it was far less rigorously structured than the Symposia now – we only realized on day two that name tags might be helpful – but as we all wandered about Portland in our groups, it felt like everyone there got to know each other, and I met a lot of people I’ve stayed sketching friends with (and huge fans of) since, such as Kalina Wilson, Rita Sabler, Don Colley, Mike Daikabura, Orling Dominguez, Elizabeth Alley, Vicky Porter, to name a few I discovered there for the first time. I had dinner with a group of the local Portland sketchers and have been back a few times since to sketch (and eat and drink!) with them on their monthly sketchcrawls. The talks were especially fun, the bit where I asked Frank Ching about curvilinear perspective and Gerard Michel got up and gave an animated explanation to the room in French was brilliant. One of my favourite moments was in Matthew Brehm’s talk, when he described it as the ‘Woodstock of Urban Sketching’, and he was absolutely spot on.

It really was where I lost my shyness as a sketcher too. I remember being in Frank Ching’s architecture workshop down in Portland’s Saturday market, and I didn’t know where to sit and sketch, normally looking for the out of sight place where I would not be bothered. I was sketching with Shiho (who introduced me to the pen that day that I still use daily) and we decided, why hide? Why not just sit in the middle of the market, and let people go around us? I think we were back to back. And it was fine, and people came up and watched, and I didn’t mind, for the first time ever I didn’t mind being watched. It was as if suddenly I realized, it’s ok to go out sketching, it’s normal, and not only are other people doing it, but by doing it ourselves we are giving other people permission to do it. And I drew pirates. I remember sitting outside a little bar one afternoon with a group of us and just seeing each of our minds racing with ideas, none of us able to sleep much, and I realized we need more of this to get sketchers together. On the plane ride home, I couldn’t sit still for ideas, and filled several pages of a notebook with thoughts and phrases and plans, and wrote down “Let’s Draw Davis!”, deciding to start a monthly sketchcrawl in Davis, making fliers that I would post about town and start an email list and make it open to anyone, and promise myself that I would get out of my shell and actually start trying to meet other artists and sketchers in this little city, and encourage others to become urban sketchers. I even brought extra pencils and little sketchbooks with me in case people wondered what we might be doing, and would like to get sketching themselves. And it worked! I’ve met a lot of the local art community over the years, and continued meeting sketchers from over the world, and organizing big events in London, all the fun art stuff. Yet now I find myself shying away again. Maybe I need to, if you will not excuse the pun, branch out a bit.

Let’s get back to the trees. The previous trees were from the Northstar Park, not too far from my house. The big old oak above though is outside the Chemistry building, right opposite the Bike Barn, and has seen a lot of construction right next door while that new Chemistry wing has been built. A number of smaller, younger trees had to be sacrificed for that building to happen, but thankfully this big old mighty tree remains. Its trunk is such an interesting shape, and I pass under its shade most days on my way to work, I am very grateful for its shelter from the sun. I try to find the path with the most shade, the sun does not fit well with my skin. I drew this in pencil as you can see, it made the drawing go a bit faster. It looks like a traditional map of languages, starting out with the big trunk of Indo-European, branching off early into Indo-Iranian and European, then getting all Indo-Aryan, Italo-Romance, Germanic and so on. Like Minna Sundberg’s illustration of it from about ten years ago. I love a language family tree. Languages were my obsession for many years; I’ve kind of let that go a bit, but I still get very excited when I read about it. It’s nearly twenty years since I wrote my Masters thesis, which was based around medieval English and its relationship with French. As far as family tree models go, they are very useful but of course don’t tell the whole story – certain languages having strong influences/cross-pollination on others not in the same branch (or even tree), mixed-language societies where code-switching leads to blurring of the boundaries and pidginization, enforced standardization, but on the whole they can be very helpful in showing how languages at their core developed from each other. Besides, as we have established, I just really love a drawing of a tree.

This is the second tree in this set which has a lot of yellow blooming on the sunny side. This one is next to the Bike Barn, drawn on the first day of Fall quarter. I did another type of tree drawing this summer – I finally updated our Faculty Family Tree. It’s something I have wanted to do for many years. Back in 2008, for the UC Davis Centenary, one of our Emeriti in Statistics, Professor Mack, created a massive genealogy, with lines carefully hand-drawn in pencil, small black and white photos, and names of all sorts of historical mathematicians and statisticians (that bit was typed by me), all collected into one huge board that we displayed for the Chancellor, and have had on our wall ever since. A lot of new faculty have joined us in the intervening years, some have left, and I thought that it would be nice to update it somehow (especially as we can now add Newton and Galileo to the map). And yes, you’ll notice I said ‘map’ there and not ‘tree’ because it was while I was in London this summer, on the Underground, that I had the idea of finally doing this project, and drawing it in the style of the tube map. I had kept a spreadsheet of the lineage of all new faculty who had joined us in the past sixteen years, and got to work in Illustrator, taking about a month to draw the whole thing up. I had it printed as a poster, and it made its debut at a special event in (funnily enough) Portland, at an event for our alumni held at the Joint Statistical Meeting and hosted by our Dean. It’s now on display in our main office on campus, and the great thing is I can update it every year as I find out more information, or as people come or go. It was even featured in the L&S Magazine back in August. Perhaps the biggest tree I have drawn this year.

And finally, two big old oak trees on the north-west corner of the Quad – above, the first day of the quarter, below, the last day of September. Everyone is back now, behind me groups of sororities and fraternities and clubs and other campus groups, as well as the Jehovahs who have been there patiently every day this summer, were gathered outside the MU grabbing the attentions of all the newcomers on campus. Bikes are whizzing by, and e-scooters which go faster and more silently, and e-bikes which go faster still, and now those e-bikes that look more like mopeds, but people ride them on sidewalks and bike lanes much faster than any regular bike; one nearly knocked me over behind Hart Hall the other day. I’ve not been out during the busiest parts of the day yet when classes interchange, but late September/early October is when most of the crashes happen. Yeah it’s great having the people back. I’m still drawing trees, and probably won’t stop any time soon. The Symposium is starting now. Maybe I should think about finally submitting a workshop, trying to teach something. I never feel confident enough to feel like I have anything to pass on; maybe I could teach about drawing trees. Yes, maybe I could. I will try to come out of the shell a bit more, be less of a recluse, I will, but for now, you’ll probably find me under a tree.

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:

656A08CA-1A5D-4FA8-9EEB-17238944DC7E

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.

D60DF3F5-1FE9-4E07-8BB3-517B3FDB8025

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.