BCN.UK.2013: Symposium Day 2

August 14, 2013 | Leave your thoughts

Opening sketch today is a monster from Inma’s workshop!

      

I started the day with a very quick warmup sketch rather than getting to the panel. When surrounded by people all day – and so many people, I like to have these little solo escapes with my sketchbook. Helps keep my hand eye coordination in reflex mode and gives me some processing time.
 

My sketches from Norberto Dorantes’s great workshop Dynamic Ink using water soluble ink. Link to original workshop description



So  much fun, amazing location, inspiring instructor and other participants and lots of great tips that I have already been using! These include using less ink lines than I am used to and wetting the ink, waiting for it to try before adding watercolour.

Thanks Norberto!

Also a very fun lunch afterwards – I couldn’t understand them if they spoke Spanish and they couldn’t understand me if I spoke English. Special thanks also to Rita Sabler who translated not only during the workshop but also during lunch (my Australian to English !!!)

Obviously too much excitement and fun… I was off again in between lunch and the afternoon workshop doing a quick solo sketch. Amazing that the women who sat on the bench next to me on Sunday walked past and saw me and said hello! Small world when you have been sketching on the streets – no matter what part of the world you are in!

Sketches from Inma Serrano’s amazing workshop  “Rhythm in the City” the afternoon – so much fun!!!! thanks!! Link to workshop description

The first part was “The people are alive” – trying to capturing the gesture of the person with a blob of watercolour and then add the features using watercolour pencil. As I am Left handed this page was done from right to left. I was having a HEAP of fun but wasn’t actually doing the exercise the right way… the first few on the left (so the last ones I did) were more to the point.

An aside I am really loving the larger sketchbook size and drawing people at this scale was very satisfying (I often try drawing them too small and go through too many pages in my sketchbook) Being able to do one big spread like this was great!

 Part 2 : The buildings are alive – draw buildings as if they are monsters. Inma did a quick demonstration of how she draws buildings. It was impossible not to be totally blown away by watching the spontaneous way in which Inma explores the building in front of her, grabs various tools as she goes(all spread out in front of her) and is totally free from any concern for accuracy or perspective.

It was really really great to see her work – although she is doing crazy distortions as she feels her way around the building she really knows what she is looking at – she knows exactly the right edges to draw to make her monster convincing!

I have been exploring some non-perspective approaches to drawing buildings in recent months and seeing her in action really clicked with my own ideas. I don’t always worry myself about achieving perspective but this workshop certainly flicked to off switch of the perspective guilt-tripping that happens from time to time (an architect has an inbuilt perspective voice in their head which is really hard to ignore!)

Here is the other monster full size!

Part 3: The Colour is alive- different ways to use colour to tie together a sketch. Sadly… not sketch to show for this part!

Thanks also to Miguel who translated (from English to English at times!?! – that was just a small funny part of this great workshop) and also prevented me from doing the last exercise on colour! Will have to do some homework for that!

Finished the day with an amazing dinner. We had had a great dinner at this great vegetarian restaurant a few nights before. Ea’s husband Reza, who does an incredible job of looking after us (like at Lisbon) booked a table for 25. Not sure what the final number was but it was sure a fun dinner…and as it was someone’s birthday – I had to sketch it. Totally incredible food… but it is little hard to take black rice after 11pm and being asked what one wants for dessert after 12 midnight. These Spanish people…. (did I mention that sleep deprivation was a big factor of my fortnight in BCN… I wonder why!)

A collection of photos taken on my iphone as it did the rounds of the table!

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