Greetings from Canada

John Wright here. Greetings from Ottawa, Canada !  Wow, the symposium is sneaking up quickly! I was in Santo Domingo last summer and was one of the first in line to be sure I got a space this year in Barcelona.

I've had a great deal of fun sketching since being inspired by discovering USk two years ago.  I started my blog as a sort of public commitment to practice and have been filling sketchbooks every since.  Last summer I arrived at the symposium the night before, tired and disorganized, so it took a day to get in the rhythm.  This year I am deliberately arriving a few days early to adjust to the time change and warm up my hand before the actual symposium starts.  It sounds like there will be a gang there early, so I'm really hoping to find some of you to sketch with pre-event.

I draw a lot of urban landscapes, but lately have been including more people, largely as a result of a couple of the sessions I attended last year with Melanie Rheim and Ronnie Lawlor.  This  illustrator's approach of 'telling a story' really grabbed me, and I've been working that into the selection of my subjects.

Oh, and while I am up on the soapbox, I'll do a plug for Laloran sketchbooks.  They gave us sketchbooks last year and are sending some again this year to Barcelona.  I really like the paper and the binding is excellent.  I just filled two more last month. They open flat for two pagers and don't fall apart after lots of handling and being squashed on the scanner.  I'm going to order some, which they will bring to the conference without charging for shipping.  Rah Laloran!

The "Elvis Bar" in a small town along the Camino - northern Spain - May 2013

this is typical of my urban landscape sketch subjects 

I did this a week after last years symposium - in New Orleans

I am fascinated with construction and have been following a couple of projects