"Sketching Barcelona", the exhibition.

"From 10 July to 27 September, the Sala Ciutat (C/Ciutat, 2, Barcelona) is holding the exhibition Sketching Barcelona, a collection of city sketches based on the visual creations of various sketchers who participated in the successful Carnets de voyage collection produced by Barcelona City Council.

Under the slogan ‘Barcelona Inspires’, it offers over 200 scenes from the everyday life of 15 neighbourhoods. They are based on the sketchbooks of these contemporary chroniclers who offer a journey through Barcelona based on several personal representation techniques.

The exhibition invites visitors to go round the most characteristic parts of the city's neighbourhoods through the pencil, ink, ballpoint and watercolour annotations and handwritten commentaries from each of the 15 artists.

For each neighbourhood the Sala Ciutat has put on display between 12 and 15 reproductions of double-page spreads from books in the collection. The graphics and typography used in Sketching Barcelona reflects the sketcher's world and the handwriting that characterises it. The sketches are accompanied by annotations taken from the books, which provide commentaries on the sketches.

Prize-winning collection

The travel sketchbook Voltant per Sants, by the Barcelona illustrator Víctor Martínez “Swasky”, received the International Award at the XIII Rendez-vous du carnets de voyage de Clermont-Ferrand in France. This award, from Europe's most prestigious travel book literature and publishers' event, was in recognition of the creativity and innovation found in the Sants neighbourhood volume of the collection published by Barcelona City Council.

The City Council collection had two more nominations at the rendez-vous, one for "Un dia al Born" and the other for "Passejant per Horta".

The Quaderns de viatge collection, which consists of 9 books, has sold 11,572 copies in all. It began in 2009 with ‘Un dia al Born’, which has sold nearly 3,000 copies in three editions. Others that have been very well received are ‘Tombs pel Barri Gòtic’ (2011) with 2,030 copies sold, and ‘Redescobrint l’Eixample’, with 1,149 copies sold. The latest book in the collection is ‘Una mirada a Sarrià’.

The authors, by neighbourhood, are Juliet Pomés (El Born), Stephane Carteron (El Gòtic), Swasky (Sants), Manel Andreu (Poble Sec – Montjuïc), Pep Monserrat (Gràcia), Òscar Julve (Horta), Sagar (Eixample), Imapla (Barceloneta), Santi Sallés (Sant Gervasi), Mireia Zantop (Sarrià), Juliet Pomés (Les Corts), Eduardo Vicente (El Putxet), Lluïsot (El Raval), Miguel Herranz (Nou Barris) and Bernat Cormand

The Sala Ciutat exhibition is the highlight to a year in which the sketcher phenomenon has featured prominently in the city, including workshops on urban sketching with BCN Dibuixa, a programme with numerous public activities to encourage awareness of urban illustration."

Extract from the City Council of Barcelona Press Release