Urban Sketchers Symposium 2018 in Porto I Part 1

In July took place in Porto, Portugal the 9th Symposium of Urban sketchers. I was lucky enough to be there and enjoy the beauty of the city and the kindness of the locals ! The city offers many angles to sketch, it's very colorfull, light and shades are very contrasted due to the sun but also because of the narrow small streets. It always takes time for me to figure out what techniques to use to describe and be truthfull towards what I have in front of my eyes… Here are my sketches, trying different approaches in my Moleskine sketchbook.

Lamy fountain pen ink and watercolor

Lamy fountain pen ink and watercolor

Lamy fountain pen ink and watercolor

Watercolor and watercolor pencils

Watercolor and watercolor pencils

Here is a funny story… I did this following drawing from the window of my guesthouse the first day I arrived. The building on the other side of the street was a ruin and the roof full of holes. The windows were broken but still, but you could still see the beauty of the windows… 

Watercolor and watercolor pencils

… Workers started to come the next morning and demolish the roof… 5 days later, I did another drawing:  the roof totally disappeared and I could discover the iron work of the staircase inside. 

Does this building still exist today ?

Lamy fountain pen ink and watercolor

I tryed here to work in direct watercolor, which is not my habit…

Watercolor

Watercolor

Watercolor

And to finish this post, I want to show you a playfull attempt with ink and collage, stealing my son's (used) origami papers to evokes the azulejos of Porto, the colorful ceramics on the buildings…

Pentel brush pen and collage

Japanese brush pen and collage

Collage with origami paper

I guess that you will wonder where is the huge amount of people I could meet in Porto… In a next post, I will show the sketches I did of the funny faces of tourists, sketchers and locals I drew in the LEUCHTTURM1917 sketchbook offered by the sponsor during the symposium !

Jaffa Old city

How nice when your mobile phone rings and a friend offers you to have a drink & draw meeting ! I try lately to deal with strong and complementary colors using ink and watercolor pencils, maybe a call for summer to be back soon ! I went mostly in the Old city of Jaffa which is nearby my house. How great to live in such a beautiful place that you can find all kind of inspiration 5 minutes walking from your place…

Tempest outside, only possible to draw inside. On the left, my friend Réjane, french artist visiting Israel.

Basma Café, in front of Ilana Goor Museum, Jaffa Old city

Basma Café, in front of Ilana Goor Museum, Jaffa Old city

The sculptor and paintor Matanya Abramson Studio, Jaffa Old city

Trying some new tool in Cafe Susana, Neve Tzedek

Noga, Jaffa

My turn to post my drawings from the last meeting in Café Casino San Remo, in Noga, Jaffa. More than a month I didn't draw… well, I could definitely feel it ! I struggled all day and had to keep on drawing until the end of the afternoon as a (wonderfull) punishment for having been busy elsewhere !

Marina Grechanik on the right

From left to right : Tania, Aviva and Marina

Ksenia and Ea, our dear visitor from Danemark

We kept on drawing in the flea market of Jaffa, in café Gibberish, with Ksenia

Charles Clore in good company

As Marina explained it very well in her last post, we've been lucky to sketch in good company last friday… I followed the "german team" in their last week end in Israel and enjoyed very much observing their enthusiasm and their talent !
From my side, I focused most of this time on portraiting…

Annika and Pey, German studients from Felix Scheinberger group

Annika and Pey (I loved her tee shirt !)

Sasha, Tatyana Pautov and Tatiana Papousheva, the russian delegation from Israel !

Our leaders ! Felix Scheinberger and Marina Grechanik !

It's been a long time I wanted to draw this horse called Ahouva. She is leaving in Yafo and I often see her following her owner, trotting after his bicycle to go to work in Charles Clore park…

While I was drawing the previous image, this boy, Mohamad, came to me and ask for his portrait…

… You understood that all the children had to get their own portrait after that!

Back to Charles Clore, I found my german friends again and kept on drawing with them ! 

The German team !

Saturday morning, back to work with a first drawing in the new train station

We walked through Tel Aviv and stoped in Rothschild Boulevard…

Château de Biron - France

When I was visiting the South-West of France in July, we went to visit a big castle named Château de Biron, in Périgord (Dordogne). On the top of a hill, this impressive building from the XIIth century gives an amazing view on the countryside all around until the pyrenees mountains…

From down in the village

From down in the village

From the castle

"Escalier à vis" going up in the tower

From the tower

Trying to feel like a princess !

44e sketchcrawl in Paris

As I am in Paris this summer, I went to join the Urban sketchers Paris 44th sketchcrawl in the area of the Eiffel Tour and Quai Branly's museum this last saturday… This was my first sketch meeting with the parisian group, which is funny because I come back quite regularly in my home town.

To draw the Eiffel Tour is according to me one of the most tricky exercice I could imagine, as you can see in the following pictures I cheated as much as I could, drawing only part of it ! As a matter of fact, this tour is so well know in its proportions than any small mistake makes it looks like ridiculus. My goal was not to draw all the details which is impossible because this architecture is very sophisticated, but try to find ways to evocate more the general form of it…

The line to go up the Eiffel Tour - Driftwood and japoneese black ink

This father was doing a selfie with his son in front of the Tour, I just had to add them to my drawing but I didn't plan it in the first place ! After the father and the son realised that I was observing them and came to me very surprised that I catched their moment of intimicy !

To draw parisian architecture, the "Haussmannien style" is also very intimidateing for me, I know it so well, it's so full of details, I never know from where to start, same feeling than to draw the portrait of someone you know very well…

Here are some pictures taken by Kim Marohn, who organizes the UsK Paris sketchcrawls

One of the sketchers that was drawing with us

The meeting was very long:  starting at 10:30, then the lunch together and a last meeting at 18:00… Then I decided after the lunch time to see a bit this Museum of Quai Branly with a very interesting architecture

After this drawing I had to leave, but as I was walking to my bus station, I couldn't resist to sketch some funny scene…

Don't think we still have carriages in Paris to circulate… But because I love horses, I was happy to see one respecting the traffic lights !

Waiting for my bus I had the time to sketch this young man. He was enjoying so much the first sun after a long week of rain, eyes closed, that he didn't see at all that I catched this moment !