Post Lisbon Symposium Lunch at Gregg's

Gregg invited the Portland Urban Sketchers to his home so the Lisbon Symposium participants could share their experiences and sketchbooks with the rest of us. We were able to peruse the sketchbooks of Alanna, Linda, and Gregg and look over the books and souvenirs that they brought back. They told us what they learned and generously let us pour over their work.

Then Gregg fed us a delicious lunch and we were able to talk and, of course, sketch. It was a lovely afternoon. Thank you, all---and especially Gregg.

Here are some photos (sorry I didn't catch Linda E., Bill, or Jan) and my little sketches from lunch.

Impressions of Lisbon by Linda Engstrom

I spent two weeks in Portugal and took over 500 photographs along with filling my sketchbook! What struck me about Lisbon were the wonderful and varied patterns ....coming from the intricately cobbled streets and sidewalks, to the tiled houses and walls, to the varied patterns of light and shadow on the many narrow winding and hilly streets. The buildings were amazingly intricate, and the grid-lines of trolley wires above many of the streets added another layer of pattern over everything. Our plain concrete sidewalks here in Portland seem very boring now! I even managed to bring home an actual Lisbon cobble stone (from a pile on the sidewalk where they were doing some repairs)

We met the first day in the large yellow-walled courtyard of the art college...

Then, after introductions and meeting with our individual instructors, we fanned out onto the streets of Lisbon for our first 3 hour workshop!

Two of my favorite instructors were Pedro Fernandes and Joao Moreno, both from Portugal.

Following a vertical axis across the narrow cobbled street....with my sandeled foot leading the way! So little time and soooo much to draw!!@!

Sketching went on even during the lunch hour...this small restaurant had the typical blue and white Portuguese tiles covering the walls.

We all gathered for the world-wide sketch crawl until the light faded on the Terreiro do Paco..... (Alanna in Blue shirt)

Just a sampling of a great trip that I hated to see end!

From Lisbon we traveled by bus and train to Sintra,Obidos ,and Belem....then rented a car and drove to the Algarve region on the Southern Coast. That's another story ....to be told later. ( a visual overload!!!!)

Urban Sketching Symposium in Lisbon

Gregg, Linda and I all attended the symposium in Lisbon, Portugal this summer. Gregg is nice enough to host us at his house so that the three of us can share with our fellow sketchers our experiences and a little of what we learned. Please visit our google calendar (link on the left side bar) for details of that gathering.

Sketches of our experience will start to trickle on to this blog sooner than later, I'm sure. Please visit my blog Painted Cats for some of my photo highlights!

Alanna's experience at the symposium, part 2!

...more sketching during the symposium. I realize that I'm not really posting these in chronological order...and you'll have to excuse the photos of sketches with weird lighting... 

it was dark during this lecture, so all I could sketch were silhouettes.

I also drew on the bus each day, as I decided I didn't want to worry about paying for parking while I was so focused on sketching

It was fun to draw the participants who were often drawing as well!

 my schedule for the 3 days and a photo of lapin cut from the PNCA booklet.

We went to Bridgeport on Friday night and, of course, continued the fun of sketching

I attempted to sketch my fellow sketchers

and, of course, more on the bus and waiting for the bus:

I tried to spend a lot of time sketching...including during the welcoming remarks

On the last day, I went sketching with Lapin, to focus on Urban Line

It's a bit wonky, but oh well!

It was fun to sit near Lapin & sketch, especially because I have followed his work online for quite awhile now!

then, I went out with Jason Das to focus on Urban Color. Our first assignment was to draw a scene using a non black line.

Then, we were to go out and draw the same scene twice, but one scene we colored it 'normally' (with colors close to the real colors) and the second one we could color it however we wanted to. I really liked the second one. It was fun!

Our third assignment was to draw something and then give it to your partner to color. I drew this scene from a pet store and it was colored by another:

and I added color to this sketch:

and now some of my favorite photos from the symposium (either taken by me, or found in the flickr pool for the symposium):

sketching on the streetcar

Sharing our work and learning from some pretty incredible artists:

Meeting so many cool people

And the exhibit at the end!

Sadly, the symposium had to come to an end. However, the Portland Urban Sketchers have been coming together to sketch and chat quite frequently this month. AND, we've gotten quite a few new members to join our group! Yay!