Urban Sketchers Symposium: Friends

As always, while we were away, I found myself as much attracted to the people as to our surroundings. I drew lots of locals but, like many of my fellow sketchers, I also drew us.

I'm so glad I captured so many of my sketch-buddies and new friends, as I remember them so fondly - Santo Domingo was fantastic, but it was the electricity we created between us that for me was the true magic of the symposium.

We were gathered together in groups at lunchtime and in the evening, and that's when most of these happened. When I'm sketching someone, I don't set out to draw a portrait as such - there's nothing as boring or as stressful as worrying about capturing a likeness. 

Sometimes I capture people nevertheless, which is great, but my main aim is to achieve an interesting drawing with the flavour of the person. 

From the top Liz Steel, Lapin, Gabi Campanario, Shiho Nakaza, Alanna Randall, Elizabeth Alley, Chris Ruiz-Velasco.

Wish You Were There..?

John took this took this pic of me while we were in Italy, sketching the Centro Storico (old town), perched high on the cliffs above the bay.


I originally had the chair half in the water, so the sea lapped my feet (lovely...) but the chair legs sunk deeper in the sand with each wave, putting it at such a rakish angle that I nearly fell out into the water!

Sun, Sea, Sand and a Sketchbook

More drawings from my holiday in Italy, the ones I couldn't fit onto the main blog about the trip:

Because I had a few days in one place on the island of Procida, I was able to do more sketching during the day, mostly sitting on the beach (jealous?).

The sea's a bit hard to do much with, so I mostly sketched the cliffs, although I had a go at the waves on the one below, and was really pleased with how it turned out:

The 90's film Il Postino was filmed on Procida and the two sketches above are in the bay that features in it.

Sorry - my funny feet, yet again. I always love to paddle, whatever time of year. The sand was gritty and very dark.

The one below was on the sister island, Ischia. The beach was divided in two by a rope: one half you had to pay for, with fancy loungers etc, the more scabby end was free. Being cheapskates, you can guess where we sat...

Oh, and here's one that escaped earlier, from the 'walking between mountain villages' part of the holiday:

Thanks for taking the time to look in!

More Old Men

Here are a few more sketches from the first half of the holiday in Italy:


I didn't draw as often as I would have liked: the weather was a bit chilly and wet for sitting too long in one place, and we were walking most of the day anyway, and needed to get to our destination. No time for lounging about with a sketchbook!


As you can see though, I did capture quite a few old men, mostly either in bars or, more often playing cards in the evening.


I showed the sketches around when I'd finished, as I think it's a fun way of making contact with local people when you don't share their language. When they recognised their friends, there was much nodding, laughing and pointing.


The man's balcony was immediately above the two in the previous picture. I tried out my pen again, for a change:

If you want to hear more about how I draw, take a look at one of my short videos, or take a peek inside some of my other sketchbooks, such as those from my travels, to countries like China, Namibia, Vietnam, Australia and various other places all over Europe.

Ice Sculptures

Here are some ice sculpture photos I took at the Festival of Angels in York at the weekend:

The sculptures were a complete surprise, and so even more of a delight to discover.

They made the first batch for Saturday lunchtime, but their features had melted by the end of the day, so they brought out new ones on Sunday.

Costa Rica

I promised to show you some more pictures from Costa Rica. Sorry it's taken so long, but I've hardly been home since I got back to England.

Most of the paintings are on the main blog (see I'm Back!), but there are still a few left to show, including this one. This was my first watercolour attempt in Costa Rica, and the first page of my brand new moleskin, so rather daunting all round. I painted it sitting on a big, flat rock, beside a river. It had taken me ages to choose a subject, as the forest is so intense that I was struggling to isolate a detail from the tangled mass of green stuff!

I also took my A6 sketchbook for pencil sketches. As you can see, the beaches were horrible:


The drawing below, also done on the beach, was one of those spur-of-the-moment ones, where I only had a few minutes to spare:


This next one was even more so. We were in a minibus, travelling down from the mountains, when the traffic was suddenly stopped: high winds had blow large trees onto the road and men with chain-saws were busy clearing the way.


On a whim, I jumped out of the bus and ran as close as I could get away with. I only just managed to get it done, as they were incredibly efficient and cleared the way in under 10 minutes.

I had a bit longer for this one. We were waiting to be picked up, near a little aerodrome on the south coast. There happened to be a little plane on the tarmac:

By chance, this turned out to be the very same plane we flew out on a few days later. On that second occasion, I decided to sketch the ticket office, as it was so wonderfully laid back, compared to New York, where we'd come through:

It was lovely too, spending only about 45 minutes hanging around, compared to the hours you get stuck in a regular airport. This one was done waiting for our flight out, at Manchester Airport:

We had a 4 hour delay, on top of the 3 hour check-in, which is why John is looking so cheesed off here:

I didn't get to draw the animals in Costa Rica, though we saw loads of monkeys, sloths, turtles, crocodiles - all sorts. But they were all too fleeting. So, here is a photo of me holding an iguana, rescued from under a car outside our hotel in La Fortuna. I have no idea why I'm looking so anxious - I love iguanas!

Archive 5: Czech in Colour!

I also took my coloured pencils and A3 drawing pad to Czechoslovakia.

I mainly used them in a rather elegant town called Bardajov, where many of the buildings where painted in lovely colours, and some were also prettily decorated.

The day I visited was bright, sunny and hot, which provided perfect contrasts and shadows.

It is such a long time since I have done this style of drawing, but I imagine each of the sketches would have taken perhaps 30 -40 minutes.

One of the reasons I prefer to work smaller these days, is that simply standing and supporting an A3 pad on your arm for that long is hard.

Doing it in bright sun only makes it more exhausting and I do remember getting rather tetchy doing the one on the right.

I know a lot of Urban Sketchers use travelling stools to get over this problem, and I did toy with one once, but you already have so much to carry, what with the tin of pencils, the pad and all your normal day-trip stuff, that I found carrying a stool too was just a thing too far!

This last is from another small, historic town in the same area, called Tabor. I seem to recall only having a couple of hours there, so only managed the single drawing. That's the one drawback to sketching - it sucks up all your time and if you're not careful, you don't get to do much else!!

Archive 4: Czechoslovakia in Black & White

I travelled in what was then Czechoslovakia, immediately before Poland (see Archive 3). I like to get off the main tourist routes if possible. It was sometimes tricky: neither my friend nor I could drive, so it was all done on trains and buses.

That in itself can be an experience though. This sketch was done on a bus between villages. Many older woman still wore traditional dress.

Liptovska Teplicka, where the bus was headed, turned out to fabulous for drawing. It was a little, farming community, set amongst pine-clad hills, and apparently uncontaminated by the uglier side of modern life.





The buildings were traditional and mainly wooden. Big white ducks waddled the streets and yards were stacked with woodpiles and farming paraphernalia.

I spent a couple of very happy hours wandering about with my friend, sketching this and that. There were not all that many people around, but those we bumped into seemed surprisingly unsurprised to see us, although I felt as though we stood out almost like time travellers.

Another, even tinier village I'll never forget, is Sumiac. There was nobody about, so my frined and I were standing sketching outside a really interesting old wooden house. I had nearly finished, when I spotted the owner in the doorway. He was an old man. Although I worried he might be upset at us, he just smiled and sat on the porch to watch.

When we had finished, we showed him our drawings and we got into one of those peculiar, mainly mimed conversations. We told him we were from England, and he told us that he was born in the year 1900.

He had such a brilliant face, I asked if I could draw him. While I was drawing this portrait, another very old man came shuffling down the hill, dressed in what I thought was a much-faded military uniform, but turned out to be his old tram-drivers uniform.

In part mime, part Czech, he was obviously telling us we shouldn't bother with the first man and his grotty old house, we should be drawing his place instead! He then grabbed my arm and dragged me up the hill. He made us wait while he set up wooden stools in the dirt road, then 'told' us to get on with it!

I am very sad that I can't show you the drawing, as he was obviously desperate to keep it, so I had to give it up. One funny thing - he had a 'page 3' pin-up in his front window. I tactfully left it out, but he would not accept the drawing until I had drawn it in!!

Using a Sketchbook: Drawing in Vietnam

It can be nerve-racking, plucking up the courage to whip out your sketchbook for the first time in a public place. It's best to just get it over with: once you've started, it's fine. Here's what I was sketching in the photo above:

Any attention you get is generally very positive. Remember: most people don't draw at all, so however worried you are about your efforts, most on-lookers are likely to be impressed.

And you do get used to being observed. I now really enjoy the opportunity to share the moment with strangers, particularly if we don't share language, so wouldn't otherwise 'meet'.

These photos were all taken in Vietnam. The first time I found the nerve to draw people close-up, the lady above came and watched, with a huge grin. When I'd finished, she seemed to be asking me to draw her, so I did, then I broke my usual rule and gave the drawing to her.

Here, I'm sketching some roadside poultry traders: the baskets on the backs of the scooters were full of live chickens. Some hung from their feet from pushbikes, like panniers. Women crouched on the floor, weighing tethered chickens with hand-held, metal scales. I started on the periphery, but quickly got drawn in by people’s attention. There was much giggling about those I had drawn.

I sat beside a river in Hoi An, to draw some squatting women working on a jetty (eclipsed here by my onlookers). It must have been the school’s lunch hour, as I quickly attracted a handful of little boys in uniform, who talked animatedly to one another, obviously about me. I wished I could understand and talk to them.

This photo was taken a couple of minutes later...

I showed them the rest of my sketches, then tried to draw one boy, although he seemed to have no idea that he should keep still!

This last is in the Mekong Delta. I'm the one in the conical hat. I'm looking through the dark opening bottom right. More than fifty people were sitting in the shade of a palm-thatched roof, surrounded by flat, woven trays. These were 2-3 feet across and contained round things, the size of marbles, which they were shelling with paring knives.


I soon had an audience, as you can see, peering over each others' shoulders to watch me draw. Somebody indicated that the marbles were ‘longan' (he wrote this carefully in the corner of my sketch) and gave me one to taste. It looked like a tiny, discoloured lychee, with less flesh but a more concentrated flavour.

To see more of the sketches I was doing, and more photos, see Illustrator Eaten by Python!!! or go to the Vietnam sketchbook on my website.


If you fancy having a go, there is a post on my main blog, with loads of 'hot tips' about drawing people in public places.

If you want to hear more about how I draw, take a look at one of my short videos, or take a peek inside some of my other sketchbooks, such as those from my travels, to countries like China, Namibia, Australia and various other places all over Europe.

Drawings of Poland: Sketchbook from 1991

These drawings are once again from the period when I used to carry a big A3, spiral-bound pad and a huge tray of coloured pencils around with me. These days I prefer a much smaller book and content myself with a selection of 7 or 8 colours held in an elastic band, usually watercolour pencils instead.

This top drawing was a cobbled street in the beautiful city of Gdansk. Gdansk was such a surprise to me: those who were around in the early 1980s like me, probably still associate Gdansk with the TV images of the austere, concrete shipyards (and huge moustaches) from the Solidarnosc uprising. But the city itself is full of old, very ornate buildings that reminded me of Amsterdam.

Just after I finished this drawing in the tiny village of Wodzitki, a stork arrived and circled the spire of the lovely wooden church. I think he was eyeing it up as a possible nesting spot: we spotted several massive nests, always perched precariously atop tiny pinnacles.

I don't remember fully appreciating it at the time, but I was in Poland during a very interesting period - immediately after the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, in the summer of 1991. I was travelling around by train and do recall noticing many people on the move.

I stood in the street in Krakow to sketch this - fortunately devoid of traffic. I was drawn to all the subtle colours in the shadows and the over-stuffed notice board.

I also took my A6 sketchbook for quicker work. This is also Krakow: one of the flower sellers under her market awning in the main square.
I particularly enjoyed getting off the beaten track too, taking local buses out into some of the villages, where time seemed to have largely stood still:

I was also struck by the number of massive churches, even in fairly small towns.


One place that sticks in my mind is Prezmysl, where there were so many huge churches on top of one another, it was astonishing that they still required loudspeakers outside, to relay services to those who couldn't fit inside!


By the way: the name Prezmysl is pronounced something like 'P-shemish'. No wonder locals looks non-plussed when I was asking for the right platform for trains to 'Prez-mizzle'!

You can see all my sketchbooks, past and present, here on my website.