Brazil Trip: Early morning sketching gang Friday and Saturday

September 22, 2014 | 1 Comment


I just realised that I have omitted to shared the early morning sketch outings on the Friday and Saturday mornings of symposium…and perhaps this will be a slightly shorter blog post than the others have been lately – they have all been a bit epic I know!


Friday morning:
A stunning morning and we had a few join our group – Behzad Bagheri and Lynne Chapman. The intention was to sketch the boats from the bridge – something that was high on my ‘to sketch’ list. However, the view from the bridge caught my attention and I ended up sitting next to Lynne and chatting non stop. Did I say something about how nice it was to have a focused sketching time…hmm, didn’t quite happen on Friday morning! Both Lynne and I are somewhat chatty! Although I had been in groups with Lynne for the last few days I hadn’t had a chance to catch up. So much happens in our lives in between our real life get togethers – so much to talk about!

Anyway – I do train so that I am able to sketch and talk at the same time and this was one such occasion. In between the chatter I was thinking about how to apply what I had picked up from Behzad’s workshop the day before – using shapes and lots of pigment on the page. The original intention was to work with paint and ink but somehow the distraction of talking made me stop with the paint – I am glad that I did.


We were having such a good conversation that I decided to stay put for my second sketch and just swing around and sketch the view opposite. It was not a view I would normally choose but often these random compositions turn out more interesting than the obvious choices. This time I did play with paint and line.


Numerous sketchers walked past telling us that perhaps it was time to go (we didn’t get a group photo this day) including Juliana Rosso – one of the Urban Sketchers correspondents from Sao Paulo Brazil, whose work I have followed for a long time!


Saturday morning:
The goal was the colourful houses along the river…. but on the way there we ran into a man roaming the streets drinking tea in a curious gourd with a pipe like straw and carrying a flask in his other hand.


It was Paulo, an USKer …so of course I asked him if I could sketch his tea – Chimarra or Mate Needless to say this little tea incident made my morning…


Meanwhile the others were starting – what a beautiful spot to spend an hour sketching in the morning hey?


I decided to do a very loose and spontaneous version of the colourful houses on the other side of the river – there is so much colour everywhere in Paraty! Playing with line and colour and without a clue what I would do next.
I figured that if ever there was a time when I was ‘in the groove’ and able to take risks now was the time (in fact nearly every time I sketch I do take risks but sometimes I am more in the mood for it at the start) This was a LOT of fun.


Group photo from the morning – what a lovely group. No Lynne this morning (no comment as to why she wasn’t up early!) but we had Stephane Bower join us. Stephanie is another sketcher whose work I have admired for ages and was so great to spend time hanging out with her in Paraty….and Rio too briefly. I really adore her loose work with the ‘good bones’ of perfect perspective

Oh I loved hanging out with this gang every morning…


So while on the subject of tea…(hadn’t we moved on from that subject? No never!)….

It wouldn’t be a Liz-trip unless I came home with some more tea in my collection. This trip they were all gifts. Oh ah! how special! Wee Tea from Scotland from Esther, tea from local FB friend Sueli AND… I was so blown away by this… from Paulo…my own Chimarra kit – the gourd, the straw and a bag of mate tea …and a pink tea from Paraty!!

I did this crazy sketch during my stay in Rio when I was confined to my hotel room and not feeling great. I am planning on doing more controlled sketches of these gifts soon.

Ok – next post will be about my workshops – I promise!

1 Comment

Leave a Reply