personalidade inanimada

I’ve been experimenting on this visit, trying to help buildings reveal their personality. I’m not a big fan of graffiti on historic buildings, so I tried to give this wonderful structure in Lisboa’s Rua Carlos Testa some decency and pride, without disguising its age or condition.

roygbiv

liberdade em Lisboa

On my visit to Portugal it has been a pleasure to meet Filipa Antunes as I follow her sketching online with great admiration. In particular her posts have inspired me to try applying a loose watercolour outline then some finer pen work later. It’s a great technique to loosen up—especially when straight lines are in your genes!

roygbiv

Parabéns Porto, parabéns Portugal

It’s great news that Porto has been chosen to host the 2018 USk International Symposium. I love sketching in Porto as it is the urban sketcher’s dream city. Compact in size yet rich in inspiration, I’m sure the meeting will be a great success. Até logo!

roygbiv

Palacete Leite Pereira, Porto

At Rua das Taipas, 74, is this wonderful old residence started in the 17th century (but with later additions and changes) of Viscondes de Alcobaça. It is a rare example of a house of nobility within Porto’s city walls, and was apparently used for a time early in the 20th century as the English Club.

I had a parked car as my worktable and nobody seemed to object. There was lots of noisy banter between neighbours as my soundtrack on upper floors but very few tourists passed by at ground level.

 roygbiv

10 x 10 Porto

I’ve been fortunate to catch two of the 10 x 10 sessions in Portugal—with Pedro Loureiro in Lisboa (Mercado de Campo de Ourique) and with Tiago Cruz on 15 July in the Praça do Leões (which I discovered is called Praça de Gomes Teixeira on all the maps!).

Tiago’s theme was ‘composition’ and our first exercise was to use an object in the foreground (light pole, power box, parked car) to firstly give a reference point for an object in the background, and secondly to give an indication of relative depth to our sketch. Fifteen 2-minute sketches was our aim (I got to about 8 or 10 in the allotted time).

I’ve been fortunate to sketch alongside many of my favourite sketchers in Portugal on this visit, including Filipa Antunes, Mário Linhares, Pedro Alves, Pedro Loureiro, and Tiago Cruz. After the 10 x 10 session I asked Tiago if he would sign my copy of Liz Steel’s great new book Five-Minute Sketching: Architecture (to which he contributed some guest sketches). I felt like a middle-aged groupie asking Sting to sign a concert programme.

roygbiv

Jardim da Estrela, Lisboa

Estrela is one of my favourite gardens in Lisboa. Not only does it have great historic significance, its social value is clearly evident in the way it is used and appreciated by local people.

I sketched here is 2014, capturing the charming ‘Biblioteca Jardim’ (surely the world’s smallest library), and this visit turned my attention to the fantastic bandstand. Architects have a fondness for straight lines but lately I’ve been trying to overcome this problem and give more personality to the subject—buildings included.

roygbiv

Porto

Aviso

The area near the Cathedral in Porto is an extraordinary example of historic urbanism with people and places combining in harmony. For much longer I wonder, as tourism spreads. (But am I not also a tourist?)

roygbiv