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:

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

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

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

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

Alive Actually, Amsterdam

March 10, 2020Leave a comment

When I posted my sketches from Porto in 2018 every post had an alliterative “p” title, and I am doing something similar for Amsterdam, but making far less sense. I could put more thought into it, but that would not be indicative of how my mind was completely melted by the heat there. I was all over the place. Some people go to Amsterdam and do that on purpose of course, through other means, but for me it was just the heat making me feel continuously confused. Also the streets – I love bikes and am a cyclist myself, but wow they are everywhere in Amsterdam, and sidewalks are super narrow. When it is busy it feels stressful. On the second morning of the symposium though I felt quite good, raring to go, I had even got up and had a run around the emptier morning streets, before I marched along to the Zuiderkerk to meet up with my workshop group, chatting away to people I hadn’t seen in a year, today was going to be great. However I had mixed up which workshop I was supposed to be doing, thinking that I was in Ian Fennely’s class. When it came time for roll call though he made it very clear my name was not on the list for the workshop, “no, you are not on the list.” Ok, I’m not trying to sneak in, maybe I wrote it down wrong. Turns out I had got my days mixed up (first sign my mind was not functioning at capacity), and that I was going to Shari Blaukopf’s workshop. That cheered me up as I was really looking forward to her class on sketching boats, which is why I thought I had selected it to save for last. She is an exceptional watercolour painter and I of course am not a painter, though I use watercolours to colour in my drawings, I am all about the lines so I really wanted to learn from her, and while my results weren’t where I wanted them to be, I came away with lots of new knowledge and wanting to try some new things – such as drawing with brush pens.

Shari encouraged us to bring along brush pens and do some quick sketches of the boats with those. Of course I also drew her talking about the boats. Drawing in brush pen is not something I do a lot of – I realized that drawing people is super fun, especially adding a little watercolour – but those dark shapes and thick lines of the black and white boat drawings really helped to focus in on the values.

Drawing boats is good practice for perspective, and really good for shading and value. I don’t get much opportunity to draw boats in Davis, only when I go down to the City. Amsterdam harbour is the perfect place for boat sketching. Oh, except when it is very sunny, pushing midday and there is little shade. I was getting thirsty, so I walked over to NEMO (a huge building, very easy to find), which is a big science museum, to get a drink. I had to go to a cafe on the actual roof, climbing up these huge steps, and when I got to the cafe I couldn’t decide in my overheated mind what to get, so I think I got two types of fresh juice, one might have been a smoothie, and some fruit, and some water as well, and it still didn’t feel like enough. I think I was getting a bit of heat exhaustion. I carried on with the workshop, drawing the scene below, first with the brush pen (which I liked) and then just with watercolours (which I liked less).

My colours seemed dull. Shari suggested that perhaps my paints were a bit too dry, and that dulls the colours I would get. I didn’t quite understand, because they were wet, I was using water (I’m so thick), but I learned that if I had ‘wet’ paints, that is, paints from a tube and not dry in the pan, my colours would be a lot brighter. I got to experience that later in the day when Donald Saluling let me use his paints, and I could instantly tell the difference. I don’t really try a lot of different paints out, so that got me thinking maybe now is the time to invest in a bunch of tubed paints, maybe some nice Daniel Smiths or something. I’m so scared of that, but I think now’s the time to start being a bit bolder. (Fast forward to March 2020, I still haven’t bought new paints but I am using an iPad now and I can get way bolder! In a funny way this class really helped me think about digital sketching). Shari also showed us some very interesting travel paintbrushes too, and I have since got some of those, but of course haven’t yet tried them out (because as I have said before I like to let paintbrushes sit there for half a year before I pluck up the courage to actually use them for anything).

When the workshop was over, I decided I needed to draw a couple more boats before I had lunch. My hotel was only across the street, so I found some shade under a tree, and cooled off. This was a nice way to end the first part of the day. But it just kept getting hotter. After a rest, I grabbed some more nice juice and a sandwich from the Albert Hein supermarket, and headed out to the sketchwalk taking place at Spui. Clearly my forgetfulness was taking control because I totally forgot to attend Rita Sabler’s sketch demo. When I got to Spui I found the sketchers, and was meeting up with another Portland sketching friend Kalina. The heat was hitting me hard now, I was sweating and sluggish. And then I realized I had forgotten my paints. I wanted to spend the rest of the day painting watery scenes, putting into practice what I learned in the morning, but my watercolors were sitting on my bed at the hotel. Aargh! I saw Gerard Michel sketching on Herengracht and joined him for a bit. I then found a green Citroen and sat in a small gap next to a bike and tried to draw it. I spoke to a guy from Ohio and a woman from Germany who were also sketching it. There were so many sketchers everywhere. That’s how it should be. The heat was getting to everyone, but still we soldiered on, filling our sketchbooks. I added some colour later to this, if you are wondering.

I also added the colour later to this, but this was a scene I was determined to sketch, but in no real state to do so. This was the moment in the Symposium when I think the heat battered me the most. I really should have just been doing something else, maybe sitting inside a dark cafe with a cold cold beer. Beer did not sound that good to me right then though, my head was already a barrel filled with porridge. This by the way is at Herengracht and Leidsegracht. I should like to come back here when it is cloudy. Again, I added in the wash later, to reflect some of my mood.

This is what it looks like when you look through that bridge, and through a whole load of other bridges.

But my head could not handle such views. The bridges could have gone on for ever and ever. I needed some water, but then I found a cafe called Joe and the Juice. It was cool inside, and I liked the names of the drinks. I decided I needed a refreshing smoothie called “Stress Down”, that name just stood out to me. It was made with Aardbei, Gember and Framboos, which I determined was Strawberry, Ginger and Raspberry.

Honestly I have no idea why that combination worked so well, but it felt like a complete power-up. Like in a computer game when you find a floating heart and it restores your health. My sluggish mind and drained body suddenly felt much more energized, and I went outside, pulled out the brush pen, and immediately drew the sketch below, which I really enjoyed.

Finally feeling a bit better about my sketching, I went back to Spui and was finally ready for a beer, I met up with Kalina and we met Donald Saluling (first time I had met him in person), and we sat outside a bar filling the early evening with chat and good times. Even on hot days like this, it’s good to all be alive.

Long post this, could have been two. But it’s all one story. The next posts will be really much shorter. Or maybe longer. That day’s sketching was not over, and I did manage another brush pen sketch at a brown cafe, but I’ll save that for another day.

Amity and Ambience in Amsterdam

March 9, 2020March 8, 20202 Comments

The Urban Sketching Symposium is all about spending time with your fellow sketchers, many of whom are now old friends, especially those who were there at the very start, but it’s also about meeting new people. Often what happens is that you meet people, you are cordial, then you follow each other online and by the next time you see them, they’re like old pals. And of course we sketch each other. Above was a sketch from the first evening in Amsterdam, pay no attention to the parade of massive beers. The light was red, Lapin was sketching me, Matt was talking Italian to Mauro (I’d never met Mauro before, he is Italian living in Luxembourg), Arnaud (on this very hot evening there was no need for us to share a blanket as we had at an outside restaurant in Manchester, 2016) and Ludovina, who I did not know but was also sketching. Amstelhoeck was the place to meet everyone every evening.

Above is Lapin’s sketch of Matt and me, and you can really see the red light we were drenched in. This was not the red light district by the way. Lapin by the way likes to write down things that you say, just anything from the conversations, and they might be random, such as when I was talking about being “better than him at Mario Kart: (I was probably talking about my brother), while Matt said “there is not a middle in 4”. We joked that we would need to save any conversation not for the public for when Lapin went to the toilet!

This post will be of the sketches I did of my fellow sketchers, outside of the workshops. Below on the right is Donald Saluling from Indonesia, who I had not met in person but had conversed with (usually about football) over the years, so it was nice to finally meet him. I cannot recall the name of the guy on the left but he was also from Indonesia, nice guy. I was there at a cafe with my Portland friend Kalina after one of the sketchwalks, it was that super hot day where my head had been totally melted by the heat, when I had even left my paints at home. So Donald graciously lent me his (very nice) paints to colour in the sketch. That was a really enjoyable early evening, one of the nicest moments in Amsterdam, utterly exhausted but lots of fun hanging out.

On the final night of the Symposium there was a large final reception, where Amber Sausen (Urban Sketchers president) announced the 2020 Symposium would be…Hong Kong! I had guessed it, and hoped for it, but that it would be in April rather than summertime, due to the heat. Now as I write in March 2020, sadly the symposium has been cancelled, because of the social disruption that was taking place over the second half of last year. Now of course with the ongoing drama of the Coronavirus outbreak, it would probably have been cancelled anyway, but it’s a shame. So, there will be no Symposium for 2020. Amsterdam however was a big success, despite all the heat, and although I feel quite hugely overwhelmed by the sheer mass of people – when you are knocking closer to a thousand including those that come along just for the sketching, it feels a long way from the more intimate 75 or so of us that were in Portland – I say that every year – I still really enjoyed meeting new people. Below many of us are sat at a table late at night after wandering about Amsterdam looking for a restaurant that would stay open for us, and we found this one Italian place that put a bunch of tables together in the street for us. I love Europe. I tried to sketch all my neighbours, such as several amazing artists whose work I had not really seen before such as Johanna Krimmel, Eleanor Doughty and Jorg Asselborn. Also at the table are Jenny Adam, my Portland friend Rita Sabler, Matt, Arnaud, Mauro, Lapin, Marina, and a few others I can’t quite see.

Amsterdam Usk People 4 sm

Below are a few sketches from the final reception, the red-hatted Belgian man is Etienne Legrand, who I sketched while waiting in line for a drink. I always enjoy speaking French at these events, I feel like I’m a little bit part of the Francophone sketching world, though as we’ve established my French cannot be understood except in Charleroi, where nobody ever goes. The wild-haired fellow on the right is Richard Briggs, who I had met in Porto, one of the most creative artists I’ve met at these symposia.

Here he is again with Aurore from Israel, Marina also from Israel (I’m a big fan of hers since the start of Urban Sketchers), and Hugo Costa.

More Amsterdam sketches to come, but these were all the random people sketches I did this time, fewer than usual, but I’m always glad for capturing these moments.

Above and Around Amsterdam

March 8, 2020March 8, 20202 Comments

First workshop day of the Urban Sketching Symposium! We got a big bag of goodies this year, loads of paints and pens and sketchbooks. I still have goodies from the first symposium in my art cupboard. This year symposium attendees all got bright red bags to carry our gear, which also made it easy to spot the other symposium people. The first thing I drew in the morning was the castle-like building called ‘Waag’, in the Niewmaarkt. I think everyone sketched this. It sits there nice and sketchable. I drew it from the most obvious angle. Perhaps I should have sat closer and made more of an effort, but I was in a hurry, I needed to get to my first workshop: “Amsterdam Rooftops” with the very nice Hugo Costa. I met Hugo in Porto, so was eager to take one of his workshops, and he really had an advantage over the other workshops, in that we were going to be looking out over the top of the city, but also sketching in a cool air-conditioned rooftop restaurant, “Blue”. I drew him introducing the workshop below.

For the class we had to bring large sketchpads, like A3 size, which of course is not my usual thing but I wanted to give it a go. Definitely enjoy attacking something so big and detailed on a large piece of paper. I decided against adding colour, but just added a bit of shade. I took this photo of it. I submitted this into the end-of-symposium auction, and it sold! Most of all, I enjoyed observing Amsterdam from above. There is something so peaceful about sitting above a city, counting the spires, watching it stretch to the horizon. The Netherlands is a very flat country. When I was a kid I had a map of Amsterdam on my wall, and I loved how the canal rings curved around the city centre. It’s amazing I have not spent that much time in Amsterdam in my life, but I have never really spent much time in many of the places I used to read all about when I was a kid (I had a map of Sydney too, never been to Australia, as well as those little Berlitz books about Hong Kong, New Zealand, Norway and the Rhine Valley, none of which I’ve been to. YET.).

This is one of my favourite photos from the symposium, the various workshop attendees from all over the world all huddled together in an elevator going up to Blue, all ready to sketch. I made some silly joke about “watch out for pickpockets!”. This was a really nice workshop experience, we had some nice conversations.

Here is Hugo taking a look at some of the sketches.

After the workshop many of us stayed for lunch. I caught up with Daniel Green, always nice to chat with him, and sketched the view looking down what I think is Regulierbreestraat. This is a city I would love to explore so much of, maybe in a slightly less busy time of year (whenever that is!).

After lunch I headed back to the hotel and then went out to see something I just had to see – the Ajax Arena. Well it’s called the Johan Cruijff arena now after the most famous footballing son of Holland. I wanted to go there because I love Dutch football (well, I like it) and have always admired Ajax, but maybe the real reason is that my team Tottenham knocked Ajax out of the Champions League semi-final in a most dramatic last-minute way in 2019, and I wanted to wear my emerald-green Spurs top there, just for a laugh. I got a few comments in the club shop, “oh you can’t wear that here.”

I didn’t get to go inside the stadium but that is ok, I just sketched outside. I did meet one Ajax fan though who was not a fan of Tottenham, let’s say. I was standing outside a restaurant next to the stadium which was called “Burger Bitch” (one of the burgers was called “That’s a huge bitch”) and he came dashing out to tell me, no you cannot wear that Tottenham shirt here. Not so much for us beating them, which he blamed completely on Ajax, more for how he and other Ajax fans were treated by the police when they visited our new stadium in the first leg (he never got to see the game because some English hooligans attacked them, and so the police just took them away and sent them to Leicester Square, no game for them). I felt bad for the guy, we had a good chat about footy, but yeah at first I thought he might chase me away. He told me of his other stories about traveling with the Ajax, such as when they were in Turin and the Italian ultras of Juventus would attack them with knives, and a guy he knows got one of those infamous knives in the buttock that are popular with Italian calcio hooligans. I had heard of this being a thing. He told me that was the worst thing because they cannot sit. Actually he might have said “cannot shit”, it was hard to tell the way the Dutch sometimes say their “s”, but either way not a nice injury to have. I didn’t tell him about when my brother in law fought against Ajax fans in the early 80s on a canal boat in Amsterdam and he was attacked by a guy with a samurai sword and had to jump ship. I’ve always wondered about that story. Anyway after all this fun chat I went back into central Amsterdam, and decided I might not wear my Tottenham shirt out to the pub that evening.

D. Blind leading D. Blind

“What do they call a whopper?” “I dunno I didn’t go into Burger King”

A couple of photos. I was particularly proud of my quip when I saw the picture of Danny Blind holding hands with a young Daley Blind, two generations of Ajax player, when I said “D. Blind leading D. Blind”. But nobody was there to hear or care. And there it is, Burger Bitch, to prove it’s a real actual place.

I had to wait ages for the metro. The station at the Arena was absolutely packed, largely with people traveling home from work, but the heatwave was causing more delays I think. I sketched a little. When I got back, I rested for a while at the hotel before getting back to the sketching job. I drew the Zuiderkirk from the banks of the Zuiderkerk from Kloveniersburgwal canal…

…before drawing the sunset at the Amstelhoeck. I then spent the rest of the evening drinking beer and hanging out with sketching buddies, another very fun evening. A very hot but very productive day. The next day was even hotter…

Arrival in Amsterdam

March 7, 20202 Comments

And so, on to Amsterdam. Due to the heat-related travel chaos I arrived later than I’d hoped (but still, I was lucky to make it), and so I missed the opening ceremony of the 10th Urban Sketching Symposium. This annual event started in Portland in 2010, and I’ve gone to many of them since. Boy how they’ve grown. I arrived in Amsterdam, waded through the crowds at Centraal (I’ve never been a fan of that station, and it’s just how I remember it), and checked in to my hotel, a spectacular historic building called the Scheepvaarthuis, now the Grand Amrâth Hotel. This might have been my favourite thing about Amsterdam, and in fact many other sketchers would come to draw the building. I didn’t stop too long though as I wanted to go and meet up with the other sketchers that I know. There were a LOT of sketchers milling around. I found many of my old Urban Sketchers pals who I met at the first symposium, and some went off to eat while I went off to sketch with Matt Brehm and Lapin, because you have to draw before you can eat. We drew the scene above. It was my first time in Amsterdam in 20 years, and I remember it as somewhere I always wanted to go back and sketch, but was not a fan of the crowds. These crooked buildings are just the thing to get me started though, and I like those girders that stick out at the top which are used as a pulley to bring things up to the higher floors of those narrow houses. After this, the three of us headed down to Amstelhoeck, which was where many urban sketchers would be gathering each night for a drink and draw, and we had much merriment, always nice to hang out with those lads. I’ll add in my people sketching in a later post.

So here is my hotel, the Grand Amrâth. I spent a lot of time online looking for the right hotel. Everything was pricey, and I knew that I could stay further out and save some money, because the public transport is so good in Amsterdam and well connected, and I could even ride a bike around (spoiler alert, I never ended up riding a bike in Amsterdam, despite being a cyclist in America’s self-styled ‘biking capital’ Davis, I wasn’t brave enough!). But I also wanted to be in short walking distance from the symposium, without having to pass through too many crowds. I wanted somewhere with character rather somewhere bland and corporate, or meagre and depressing. Having stayed at an ok place in Porto which ended up being up a really steep hill and was modern having little character, I wanted to choose a bit more wisely this time. I found a decently priced room at this place, the Grand Amrâth, about the same price as many of the other dingier looking places, and chose it because the building looked like a haunted castle. In fact some of the reviews said it actually was haunted. So when I showed up and saw that it was in fact a five star hotel I was surprised. The place is an architectural wonder. The Scheepvaarthuis (“Shipping House”) was built in the early part of the twentieth century, and was the ornate headquarters of several shipping comanies. Architecturally speaking it is perhaps the finest example of the ‘Amsterdam School’ (and I say this knowing full well I don’t know any other examples). I enjoyed the elaborate stained glass windows, as well as the decorative ironwork, but also the entertaining moustachioed statues, one of which looked a bit like my sketching friend Arnaud de Meyer (he pointed it out, that it was the most accurate drawing I have done of him). Have a butcher’s at all of this though. I would definitely stay here again, if only for the sketching opportunities.

Other sketchers came out to sketch here too at various points, such as Lapin, Arnaud de Meyer, Martine Kervagoret and of course Gerard Michel (click on the links to see their sketches of the building). Plus many more. However I am really glad that I stayed here during the heatwave. My room (which was very nice, and always well-stocked with a free mini-bar, always lots of nice cold water and Diet Coke to come back to every night) had good air-conditioning, unlike a lot of the hotel rooms in the city. From stories other sketchers and tourists were telling me, apparently a lot of them were breaking down, meaning it was very difficult for people to sleep in their intensely hot rooms, to the point that people were sleeping in the cooler hallways. Thankfully I did not experience that here. There was also a nice indoor pool in the basement that I definitely took advantage of when the intense heat got too much for me (and boy did it, it melted my mind). I never ate at the restaurant, but I did eat an ‘Uitsmijter’ (a Dutch dish, three fried eggs with cheese on thick bread) at the small bar, also having a nice cocktail there. Look at the building at night, below, one side facing a quiet canal shrouded in total darkness. It’s one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever stayed in. I was looking for character, I found a whole Pirandelli. I would come back to Amsterdam just to stay here.

As I say, it was very hot. Below is an unrelated picture of a mn pressing a button at a crosswalk, which is a diagram you see on the pole, showing you how to press the button in case the ehat has melted your mind so you might forget. Next to that, a photo of a Mango flavoured Fanta. Mango Fanta is delicious. They do a whole spectrum of flavours of Fanta in the Netherlands (though what I drank most were the delicious fresh juices you get everywhere, so good), but the fancy flavors are expensive. I think this can was like 3.50 Euros, just for a can of soda. When the man in the shop opposite the hotel told me the price, my eyes popped out and I was like, no way dude, that’s a lot for a can of drink. I’m thinking, tourist shop, silly prices. So I went next door, where the price was exactly the same, and so I thought oh well, that’s what it costs, I’m thirsty. But as I walked past the other shop I hid my drink, the walk of shame. It was worth it though, best Fanta ever.

As always when I recount my stories from the sketching symposium it might take a few posts, but I’ll try to mix them up a bit. I sketched a lot in Amsterdam, but because of the heat destroying me I always felt like I could not sketch enough. The symposia always feel like a big competition to draw the most, when that’s never really the point of them, it’s about spending time with other sketching friends, learning from each other, seeing and experiencing the world. Matt Brehm said on this trip, “It’s ok not to draw.” All that said, I really did draw a lot…

porto party

August 19, 2018August 18, 20182 Comments

And so here are some sketches from the final evening of the Porto Symposium. On these final get-togethers we usually spend a lot of time chatting and sketching, often speaking to people we may have not had a chance to see yet (easily done in this 800-large event), before going to dinner very late and generally feeling exhausted. Some wine was also drunk. Above, I sketched Marina Grechanik, from Israel, who this year was one of the symposium correspondents and another old urban sketchers friend whose work I’ve admired for years. She has a very creative and playful style (she appeared in my last book, on people sketching) so we drew each other in a portrait duel. I do love portrait duels and wish I could do more of them, I didn’t do enough of them in Porto. Also on this page are Paul Heaston (who of course I know and have followed for years, but didn’t meet until 2016) and Hugo Costa, from Porto, who I’d not met before but whose work is awesome.

Below are Arnaud De Meyer, from Luxembourg, who I met in Manchester 2016. I really like his sketching work (especially his two page spreads), and really hope to sketch with the Luxembourg group some day; two sketchers I do not know but were from Germany, Jonatan and Alexandra; and Joe Bean, who I had the pleasure of meeting at a London sketchcrawl in 2016 and whose work I also really admire (in particular his in-construction sketches of Headingley Stadium in Leeds).

Below are a couple of sketchers I also met in Manchester 2016, Peter Dutka (UK) and Tine Klein (Switzerland), and though they both had colourful outfits I had didn’t have time to add paint while I stood with them. They both had amazing sketchbooks though, I spent some time looking through them, very productive and creative.

And below, the only other sketch I did, of a very tried and hungry group of urban sketchers – Liz Steel (Australia), Elizabeth Alley (USA), Fernanda Vaz de Campo (Brazil), and once more Paul Heaston (USA). Behind us were several more who I did not sketch. We had tried in vain to get dinner but it was late – late night dinner is less of a thing in Porto, this isn’t Madrid – but we found one place willing to serve us cheese pizza. The waitresses were for some reason very interested in my sketchbook. It was a fun evening, and I can’t wait to see evertyone again in Amsterdam! (Though I did see both Liz and Genine (unseen, at the table behind) in Lisbon a couple of days later).

Oh yes, Amsterdam – I didn’t mention, but that is the location of the next Urban Sketching Symposium. Far fewer hilly streets there than Porto! I really hope to go to that one. Next time, I will actually tell people I am going, make connections ahead of time, and I’d also like to spend a bit of time in Belgium first, catching up with old places, meeting sketching friends, before the craziness of the Symposium.

Oh, and one last thing – this is Super Bock. It’s one of two beers you see everywhere in Portugal (the other being Sagres). This is one of the most Portuguese things to sketch. I hope you have enjoyed this trip through Porto with me, I hope I have managed to show some of my enjoyment of this city, but I didn’t see it all and would love to come back some day. I know some friends in England who would love it there. Adeus, Porto!

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porto practicum

August 17, 2018August 17, 20181 Comment

The second and final workshop I took was with Simonetta (Simo) Capecchi, from Naples. I met Simo at the 2010 Portland symposium, and took one of her workshops there (actually at that one I think I may have wandered off and lost track of time, if I recall), oops. I was super excited to take this one though, as I love Simo’s work and her ideas, and this workshop was called “One Page Says It All: A Reportage on Porto Wine”. Simo does a lot of reportage sketching for a travel magazine called “Dove” (it’s in Italian), so she has a lot of experience in commissions for travel reportages. The point of this workshop was to create a page about Porto wine – think of an angle, map out your page, and think up a catchy title. There wasn’t a lot of time to do a ton of research, so it was mostly looking through windows, mooching around the wineries (or their info stands and gift shops) at quick pace, browsing leaflets in the tourist office. Most of the time is spent sketching, but the text had to be important. I sketched Simo above, before we took the little ferryboat over the Douro to our location in Vila Nova de Gaia. I liked the phrase “drawing and writing together don’t make two, they make three.” It’s so true.

Here, Simo shows us some of her own reportage work, offering advice on how we can construct our pages. Some of the results of the various sketchers were very good, some highly detailed and well thought out, others a little more carefree, I think I fell into the latter a little. My page is below. It’s drawn in the Clairefontaine sketchbook that came in our symposium goody bags. I focused on the old English names of all the Port wineries – many of them were founded by English vintners several hundred years ago (and Anglo-Portuguese relations do go back many centuries, to their alliance back in the middle ages, the longest standing alliance between nations). I rushed the title though, quickly adding it in just before the show and tell: “A Glass of Old England” (I then added “In Old Porto” and immediately regretted it). I didn’t like the title though. I should have called it “Going Out For An English” in reference to that classic Goodness Gracious Me sketch. I really enjoyed this workshop, Simo is a very interesting storyteller and has always been an inspiration to me, and going over the river and thinking about Porto wine was a very pleasant way to spend a morning.

Below, sketched on the ferryboat back over the river, is my friend Rita Sabler, who was one of the official correspondents for the Porto symposium. She had been sketching and reporting on our workshop. You can read her daily reports, along with those of the other two correspondents Paulo Mendes and Marina Grechanik, on the Urban Sketchers website.

And finally, here is the sketch of Sandeman’s without all the writing and stuff around it. Those cable-cars above are part of the Teleferico de Gaia. I did not ride these but would have liked to, if I’d given myself the time.

Sandeman Porto

All this reportaging, you would have thought I’d have topped it off with a nice glass of tawny. Instead, I got myself something unusual: a gelato made from Port wine. It was actually delicious.