Greetings from Sant Lluc!

SANT LLUC IS DRAWING! and is happy to invite you to take profit of a special deal to all the Urban Sketchers that are in the city.

Come to draw to our place for practice, learning and interchange of artistic ideas in the centre of Barcelona!

Click here! or send an e-mail to

santlluc@santlluc.cat

Hi!!

Hi everybody!

I'm Úrsula, an architecture student from Madrid. I'm already getting ready to go to Barcelone!! I'm looking forward to meeting all of you and drawing by your side! I'll be arriving tomorrow, I think in time for the minisketchcrawl of La Sagrada Familia.

I'm trying to decide if I go minimalist and take only my pilot parallel pen and the waterbrush with me or I take  my hole bag of supplies (Emily calls it the Mary Poppins Bag)... but I think it's too heavy and it's soooo hot I'm not up for it... any thoughts from people that are already in Barcelone??

Well here are some of the drawings I have done lately...

You will notice I really like to do panoramics and I make my own sketchbooks to choose my own formats and papers. That's why you can see the binding in one of the drawings :) Lately I use more and more colours but I also love doing the Black&White drawings

See you tomorrow!!!

Greetings from Rabastens

Hi dear friends,
from Rabastens, a cute village near Toulouse (France) where I live. My name is Vincent Desplanche, I work as an illustrator, mostly for children books, since almost twenty years. I love to go sketching since such a long time, even longer. My favorite subject :  mountains. The Barcelona's symposium starts in a pinch of days, next thursday. I feel really excited to attend to this 4th edition and to see all of you, brilliant sketchers from the whole world, in flesh and bones. I expect also a lot from the workshops and sketchcrawls. So impatient that I won't sleep quietly till this day.
In order to show you the corner of the world I live in, I did the following sketches yesterday, by the sunday torpor. I used color pencils and Neocolor wash on A4 double pages.
See you very soon.

The village houses huddled under the hot july sun

The plane-tree rows cast their shadow on the central allee

It's the siesta time, the narrow streets are empty

Hello, Barcelona! from Stamford, Connecticut, USA

Hi, everyone! My name is Suma CM. I'm excited to visit Barcelona for the first time ever -- and to reconnect with friends old and new from the Lisbon and Santo Domingo symposia. I'm hoping to build on what I learned there and to use some of those techniques in Barcelona.

To answer Suhita's "What's in your sketchbag?" question, here's a look at (some of) what I'm bringing along.


The apron modification was inspired by what Inma was using in Santo Domingo -- thanks for the idea! More details about my trip prep/materials are on my blog.

Here are a few of my sketches from earlier this year.

St. Paul's, London:



Skaters on the Rideau Canal, Ottawa, Canada:



As before, my husband is coming along for the (bike) ride and will be exploring the city on two wheels while we sketch. Here's the blog post on his adventure in Santo Domingo.

See you all very soon!


Blog: http://www.sumacm.com
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumacm

greetings from Italy/Holland

...looking forward to meet everybody & the inspration of Barcelona!

I'm a Dutch artist, my name is Agnes den Hartogh, and I work and live most of the time in Italy (border Tuscany/Umbria) Here, near the Lake Trasimeno, is my studio Tipografia Sperimentale, a playground for al experimental printing techniques; here I work in the most complicated way with different layers of monotype and collage- the opposite of a 5 minute sketch.

a quick sketch:

and an example of a complicated proces:

But: every artwork start with sketches. My favorite subject is architecture. I travelled a lot and everywhere I captured my expressions in quick pen drawings.

The BCN2013-blog and the participants make me feel hungry! Let's share the good things & the inspiration! See you in Barcelona...

greeting from Agnes

see also

http://www.agnesdenhartogh.nl

http://agnesdenhartogh.blogspot.it

http://www.flickr.com/photos/agnestekent

Hello from Switzerland

My name is André Sandmann, I am a graphic designer and I have my own studio in Zurich. I've always been drawing and painting but I have to confess once (when I started art school and had my first Mac) I thought computer-art was everything and hand-drawn was either for the old-fashioned or for kids. But things have changed - even in Graphic Design. The comeback of hand drawn and handwritten elements is impressive! At work I use sketching daily – as a medium for concept visualization and of course illustrations.

As an urban sketcher I appreciate the community a lot, the exchange and the inspiration that pushes me forward. I've attended the symposium in Lisbon and I was very impressed. Last year I initiated USK Switzerland and it's a pleasure to see it grow and how it helps building up a network of sketchers, connecting the cities and even building a bridge between german and french speaking artists. We had our first national Sketchcrawl in the capital this year and another one is planned in autumn.

I love to work with ink and watercolors and on rather bigger formats. But I use small books when I sketch people on my bus ride to work (my daily exercise). And I love to play with perspective. I've chosen these examples as they might represent some kind of sketched Swissness.
More work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andresandmann/ or http://www.sandmann.ch

Lenk/Simmenthal

Zurich

Engelberg

I am looking forward to join you in BCN and happy sketching!

Greetings from Stockholm, Sweden

Hi everyone! My name is Nina Johansson, I live in Stockholm, Sweden, where I work as an arts, photography and design teacher. This is my third USk symposium. I gave workshops in both Lisbon 2011 and Santo Domingo in 2012, this year I am going as a participant, to enjoy learning from so many skilled sketchers in workshops and demos and whatnot - and of course to enjoy Barcelona, my fav city in Europe!
I have been to Bcn three times before, the last time was in August last year, when I had the opportunity to draw for ten days around the Sagrada Família for a book. I really can´t get enough of this beautiful and inspiring city, and I am looking so much forward to meeting both old and new friends, and spending a whole week sketching there together with you all!

My trip prep has not been too rigorous until now, I have been preparing for an exhibition, and delivered the paintings to the gallery this thursday. Now I can finally get into Barcelona mode, and start packing!

As for art materials, I am bringing my usual pen case with some fountain pens and waterbrushes, and a tiny bijoux box of watercolours. Nothing new there, really. I´ll take my big palette too, that I use for bigger formats and big brushes. But the really exciting thing this year for me (colour nerds - ahoy!!) is a new, limited, five-colour palette that I just started experimenting with.

I read about it a few weeks ago somewhere online, and decided to try it out: cadmium yellow (I never used cadmium colours before), permanent alizarin crimson, burnt sienna, ultramarine and viridian. I´ve been doing some mixing charts with it, to see what I can do with it, and I must say I´m pretty impressed of the range of colours I am getting out of these few!

Anyhoo, I´ll just keep packing then, and see you in a bit! :D

Greetings from Ourense/Spain

So many of you are traveling to Barcelona at the moment or have already arrived. But before leaving myself I wanted to say hello to you all and leave a quick introduction. My name is Isabell and I live in Ourense/Galicia in north western Spain. I contribute to the spanish USk-blog and I´m a member of the spanish admin group. I attended the symposium in Lisbon two years ago and have enjoyed sketching in company of like-minded people ever since. Besides teaching german at Vigo´s University I do some illustration work and have led creative workshops for some time. My favorite medium is watercolor and lately colour pencils. Last weekend many of us spanish and some portuguese sketchers, too, had the opportunity to "warm up" at the fifth "De vuelta con el cuaderno" dedicated to "sketchbooks and cinema".  This is part of my leporello from Huesca:

I also made some watercolors strolling through the city.

In BCN I´ll lend a hand in the bookbinding workshop by Choni Naudín . I say workshop because all of you who have registered for the "demo" will be busy sewing your own sketchbooks. At the moment we´re finishing preparations to make the whole process of a coptic binding fit in a 1.5h frame. =)

I´m so excited to meet you all in person in BCN, sketch and talk and learn a lot!
A warm hug from Ourense!
--
http://isabell-seidel.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/isa-sketches/

My first Zine!

Inspired by Omar's posting from a while ago, I started making an 8 page Zine to give away while in Barcelona.
It was a whole lot of fun and I made about 60 - hope it's not too little or too much.
Now I have to get packing to fly out on Tuesday.

See you all next week!

Greetings from Minneapolis

Hello from Minnesota, USA!

We are Amber Sausen and Daniel Green, sketchers from Minneapolis.  This will be our third USk symposium and second visit to Barcelona in recent years.  We attended the last two symposiums and have enjoyed getting to know the faces behind the amazing work each year.  We look forward to meeting new sketchers from around the world and catching up with friends from Lisbon and Santo Domingo.  

In Minneapolis we have a few older buildings (by Daniel)

...and the Mighty Mississippi River (by Daniel)

We are both in the field of architecture and came to sketching through our educations.  As professionals, we find respite and pleasure in the analog process of sketching and have used sketching to discover new cities and to get to know Minnesota.  In Minneapolis and St. Paul, Amber is a correspondent with Urban Sketchers Twin Cities and we sketch with Metro Sketchers .

We get snow once and a while... (by Amber)

...but that doesn't stop us from bicycling! (by Amber)

Thanks again to Gabi and the fine team in Spain and around the world who have once again prepared a wonderful event in such a fantastic city.

We will be arriving a few days before the symposium and staying a few days after.  Please reach out to us via Flickr, Facebook or Twitter to meet up and enjoy some grilled octopus!

Amber on Flickr and twitter @ambersausen.
Daniel on Flickr and twitter @DanielJVerde.

See you soon.

Greetings from Portland!

Hello from Portland, Oregon...my name in Linda Engstrom and I attended the first symposium here, as well as the one in Lisbon. I live about 20 miles from the city on rural property, so don't always get to the sketch crawls, but enjoy sketching the buildings and bridges when I do go in! I work mainly in pen and ink as well as watercolor, and have taught landscape illustration at the Community College in Portland for over 25 years. My favorite subjects are trees!

I'm traveling to Barcelona with my husband and looking forward to reconnecting with some of the wonderful sketchers who I met a few years ago, and who I have continued to follow over the Internet. I  think that there are five of us Urban Sketchers coming from Portland! I have never been to Spain and am excited to finally get to explore Barcelona. We will be spending the following week in Mallorca....with more sketching! This week in Portland we are having a heat wave with temps in the high 90 degrees F .... perhaps preparing us! Can't wait to learn more, and be around so many talented people....see you all in a week!!

A few of Portland's many bridges

Pen and inks

the Portland library and a home on San Juan Island in Washington state

A pencil sketch of a walnut tree in our garden

My website is www.gardenaesthetics.com

Greetings from Madrid!

Hello, my name is Esperanza, I live in Madrid although I was born and raised in Valencia (Spain). I´m for a year in the Urban Sketchers group so it will be the first time I attend a Symposium and I'm very excited. I've always liked to draw, my favourite subject was the portrait but since I'm in the group I do increasingly urban landscape. With the Madrid group I’m drawing the different sites in this city 


Also in Valencia I like to draw its monuments.

 

 I am a biologist, and as a student I loved taking notes of animals or plants. Now I work in a Neuroscience laboratory and sometimes I draw neurons as Santiago Ramon y Cajal , a great Spanish scientist, used to do.

 

I  really want to meet you all and enjoy the classes and the exchange with artists from around the world. Here you have a picture of the Casa Batlló, one of the mansions designed by Gaudi, hoping to draw it again in your company. See you in Barcelona!!

 

Greetings from Memphis

Hello all! I'm coming to Barcelona from Memphis, TN, where I've been working on sponsorships for the Symposium. This will be my third Symposium, and the second one I've been involved in planning. I attended Portland, OR in 2010, and attended and worked on the one in Santo Domingo last year.

I am a life-long sketchbook-keeper. Finding Urban Sketchers and having people to share this interest with has made the practice of sketching more fulfilling. Sketching more seriously and learning from all of you has improved my artwork. I'm an artist - I paint mostly oil on canvas and on paper - and sketching helps so much to inform my studio practice.

I'm really looking forward to meeting each and every one of you - seeing old friends and meeting new ones. I also can't wait to see and sketch Barcelona, and to finally meet so many members of the Symposium committee in person :)

Here's my blog of sketches and my website of paintings.

See you soon!

sketching in London

 with my paintings

Greetings from Montreal

Hi. My name is Shari Blaukopf and I'm an Urban Sketcher and correspondant from Montreal, Canada. Last year I attended the Symposium in Santo Domingo and this year I am honoured to be teaching a workshop called "Triad Symphony". My symposium experience last year was incredible. Five workshops in three days was exhausting and exhilarating, and what I learned there kept me going all winter. I can't wait to see and sketch Barcelona, meet up again with friends I made last year, and meet new people. Last week I was in Rockport, Massachusetts, practicing with my limited palette. See you all soon!