Interludes and Airports

I'm still depositing sketches from my trip while I'm catching up on other things at home, my neglected painting course and a little spring cleaning included...

We had to leave the Zambezi River a little earlier than the rest of our group so I could catch my flight to Paris and Lisbon. We first spent a night in Lusaka in the Ridgeway hotel which is managed by an old friend.

 He kindly arranged for his driver to take us into town for the afternoon so we could look for some colourful local chitenge cloth to take to our daughter in France. Patrick waited patiently while I scribbled down a sketch of a little street scene, and then again at the curio village - after having been persuaded to buy some of their wares - a group of women who bead and sew and hope against hope that someone will come along to shop.

 Early the next morning we caught our flight back to Johannesburg, where I had a swop of suitcases and a long wait for my flight to Paris.

Nothing like sketching to while away the time, I started on a long line of people sitting and waiting for our flight to be called, and came upon a woman who was... sketching me!! I thought she had to be going to the same symposium that I was, and when I finished, went over to ask her, but no, she was just passing the time.

One last airport scene in transit in Paris before the adventure in Lisbon began.

Before Lisbon... Zambia

In complete contrast and as a gorgeous relaxed prelude to the busyness of the week in Lisbon, my husband and I were lucky enough to join my two sisters, their spouses and a group of friends, on an idyllic holiday on the Zambezi River in Zambia. I didn't do a lot of sketching - my few attempts at drawing the abundance of wildlife - lions, hippos galore, elephant and crocodiles, buffalo, impala and kudu were quickly abandoned as either they or the vehicle moved, or I was too entranced to take my eyes off them to reach for my sketchbook and brushes. These were some of the quiet moments I did manage to get down on paper...

A view from a pool deck at the lodge down the river.

Hippos grazed and grunted contentedly near the tented rooms - I sat on one of the patios and sketched them and a group of baboons picking at seeds on the mud flats - ready to run inside if they came any closer!

Boats took us to some watery by-ways, where scores of varieties of birds nested and fed, as well as some huge crocs and the ubiquitous hippos, the 'pigeons of the Zambezi'. I was grateful for the expert knowledge of the guides as to where to get out and stretch our legs! This was my husband, brother-in-law and his brother fishing for barbel. On another occasion, one of them had caught a fish from the boat and was reeling it in, when a croc shot up and took it, Matt finding himself with this huge toothy beast on the end of his line, a metre away - which fortunately turned and broke it before diving back into the deep.

Vincent, the fishing guide on this trip (my sketch doesn't look much like him, another moving target!), worked hard, baiting all the hooks and advising where to cast - he was extremely knowledgeable about the birds, trees, in fact all the flora and fauna, as were all the guides - getting a little time to fish himself in between work.

The bar hangs over the water and underneath a magnificent sausage tree, adorned with enormous sausage-shaped seedpods. It was a bit chilly in the evenings to make use of this beautiful sundowner area in July, two outdoor fireplaces inviting us to gather around and share every day's wealth of experiences.

The white fronted bee-eater, as my sister Vivienne noted, was the bird of the trip, there seemed to be one around or ahead of us, wherever any of us went, by foot or landrover. One of the guides said they try to lead people, or baboons to bee-hives, so that as you take the honey, they get the bees, wiping the stings out first on a rock - clever little creatures!

...and a jacana digging for food in the mud puddles.

On my last blissful day in the bush, we could choose to go down the river by boat cruise - which I did, having an unforgettable encounter with elephants along the way (photos below) - land vehicle, or canoe, all meeting at a spot on the river bank where a delicious picnic lunch had been prepared for us. I sketched the staff having a well-earned break before clearing up and getting us back via boat cruise or game drive for one last, perfect evening on the Zambezi.

After the Symposium

With all the tantalising glimpses of everyone's sketchbooks and the huge array of styles from other fascinating sounding workshops milling around in my head - and my husband and son having joined me as the symposium drew to a close - we caught a train a little way down the coast to Estoril. We had no idea what to expect, just that it was close enough to Lisbon to go back and wander around some more if we liked (which we did). It turned out to be a very popular beach resort, as we started to suspect on the train ride with all the beach bags, umbrellas and brightly dressed co-passengers travelling with us.

I sketched this from our hotel window, with a mind on Melanie's workshop, not putting in all the details of the surroundings, but the simple story of a couple, on holiday at this seaside town where an old castle overlooks the bay

The next day we joined the throngs on the beach and I tried out my 'unschooled' version of Richard Camara's 'Lining over Colour' workshop. I think I overdid the random blobs of colour underpainting trying to portray the masses of bright umbrellas!

Then an interesting mixed media sketch - inadvertently including sunscreen and sand with the watercolour...

 We caught the train back to Lisbon to do some more sight-seeing and tram-riding. Walking, trying to see as much as possible didn't leave much time for sketching, apart from a quickie of this brilliant green tiled building in the Rua do Secula, where we took a short break in the shade. The beautifully tiled buildings in Lisbon have to be seen to be believed - my daughter later asked if these tiles are really that colour... yes, as far as I can match it with paint, they are!

We came across a few stray symposium sketchers still scattered around the streets of Lisbon, working away at their sketchbooks and easels, including Marc Holmes. I had the chance to look over his shoulder at the wonderfully loose pencil linework he does before applying watercolour washes to his buildings - which inspired me to do this one when we were back on the beach the following day. I was really pleased and felt - just as it was time to move on - that I'd just begun to get into my sketching stride.

Stories of the Square and the 32nd Sketchcrawl

On the second day I had the afternoon off, and could go to Melanie Reim's 'Stories of the Square' workshop. In this sketch I obeyed instructions, making the main characters large, and setting them in the Rossio square...(this one was sold at the 'silent auction' held to raise funds for next year's symposium)

....in this one I lost the plot and got distracted from my story by the pigeons.

These below were done at the 32nd Worldwide Sketchcrawl, when all the symposium participants, instructors and lecturers, as well as any Lisbonites who cared to join us, gathered in the Terreiro Do Paco, an enormous square on the final afternoon of the wonderful symposium. Truly amazing to be part of such a huge group, all sketching together.





two musicians, who moved on too quickly, so I turned to my fellow sketchers



A busker and his diabolo



I had to at least attempt some of the magnificent buildings and statues, but I could have done with some help from instructors such as Gerard Michel and Marc Holmes - wish I could have done every single one of the workshops!

The Urban Portraits workshops

The beautiful Miradoura de S. Pedro de Alcântara where our workshop was based

Every morning and afternoon, each group gathered at the Faculty of Arts before walking to our designated sketching areas. Isabel and I had the one very furthest away from the school, up long hills on narrow pavements - talk about sketchercise! Our miradoura (viewing point) was magnificent, but tricky for our chosen theme of Urban Portraits - you could not ignore that view - so we asked our students to place their figures in Lisbon, by finding a way to simply indicate the surroundings, contrasting the bulk of the figures with the light and intricacy of the rooftops and details, and to experiment with a different method from their usual - if they always sketched in line, to use brush and wash alone, and if that was their normal medium, to try linework in as many people sketches as possible - showing a folder of sketches by well-known artists of the simple ways these could be used to indicate shape, form, movement and character.

Line drawings by Picasso and Feliks Topolski

Simple shapes describing form and movement by Degas and van Gogh

My introduction was rather bumbling on the first afternoon, a little more confident on the second day and by the third and last, I felt I almost knew what I was doing. Isabel joined in where necessary, adding and embellishing so I think the students had an idea of what we were after. Then off we went in different directions to find our subject matter, Isabel and I doing very quick sketches so we could get round to everyone and talk about what they were doing and any problems they were having. I really enjoyed this one-on-one interaction, and was where the many years of drawing, sketching, art classes, reading etc. finally came fairly effortlessly into action. As Isabel had predicted, the words came, I could see how to help, and hopefully did, for at least a few of the students. With a wide range of levels, from beginners to experts, there were many there that I would like to have taken lessons from!

 The self-imposed pressure to produce 'good' sketches as examples, was slightly daunting, and I was definitely shaky, but everyone else was relaxed and didn't seem to expect masterpieces from me, luckily.

I was most happy with this one of a couple recovering from a night out, probably in Biarro Alto where the revelry carries on all night - they posed like this for a good long while!

...and Home Again

I hardly know where to start telling you about the Symposium - from flying into Lisbon, metres above the terracotta rooftops, to the final farewell party in the by then familiar square of the Faculdade de Belas Artes -three and a half days of amazing, pinch me experiences. 

Tia gave me an A++ for my sketch of her lecture
'From sketching together to a Group Exhibition'!

The first sighting of the legendary Tia and her husband Albert at the luggage carousel; being greeted by the enthusiastic waves and warm smiles of the Lisbon team come to meet us and take us to the Hotel Borges in the heart of old, historic, colourful, vibrant, bustling Lisbon... whoever would have thought mere sketches would have brought me to such a place and time, with so many people with a shared passion, so excited to meet each other?



The entrance to the Faculdade de Bel Artes of the University of Lisbon, the base of the Symposium

Photos I've seen around the internet - Asnee, Ea, Nina, Simonetta, Marc... more and more surreally familiar faces came into three-dimensional, animated life and the reality of this dream started to dawn.

I soon met my workshop partner and fellow African Urban Sketchers correspondent, Isabel Fiadeiro, who took me under her competent wing, explaining, encouraging, translating, calming my jitters about teaching for the first time, "when the time comes, the words will come, you will know what to say" - and so it proved to be.

And Gabi Campanario, the originator and powerhouse of it all, dealing graciously with every question and situation that arose, and the team of Portuguese hosts and volunteers, who must have worked themselves to a standstill to plan and organise the mammoth production of displays, lectures, workshop venues, every little detail thought of and taken care of for this enormous event, with unending good humour and hospitality.

Listening to Matt Brehm's lecture - one Liz Steel - at last we've
met for real!

I, like many of the instructors, didn't have time to do as many sketches as you'd think, as our focus was on guiding and teaching, which turned out be a richly rewarding experience. As Matthew Brehm said in one of the excellent lectures that were delivered every day after lunch, "teaching is a very aggressive form of learning", as I discovered both in the preparations leading up to the trip, and during the one-on-one sessions with the participants, of which more later.

These watercolour sketches were done on the first morning at the 'Waterscapes' workshop - more about it on the Symposium website - as my first teaching session was in the afternoon, a pleasant and relaxing way to lead into the packed days ahead.

Leaving on a jetplane...

Random sketches while getting visas, vaccinations, hairdo's, shopping, etc.

My poor blog feels so neglected, it's run by a scatterbrain who can hardly walk and chew gum at the same time and who has had to plan, shop, clean, sew, prepare, pack, co-ordinate, think... oh all way beyond her capabilities. But with time, and help from my nearest and dearest, I am almost, almost ready to depart on Sunday for this long awaited trip. First a much needed and welcome break in the bush with beloved family, and then... a week later... the chance to meet and talk and sketch and teach and learn and interact with an enormous gathering of excited and exciting sketchers from all over the world - at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Lisbon - I can't believe it's here at last after six months of anticipation. I don't have an iPad or laptop or Blackberry to report back as I go, but I'll be doing more sketching than ever before in my life... and will post as many as I can as soon as I can  - we are spending a few more days in Portugal, looking around, and then visiting our daughter in France, so will be back in early August. Until then, adeus, tchau, até logo...

Just before I go... some sketches from last Saturday's Joburg Sketchers outing to the Bryanston Organic Market - first at one of the outdoor cafés, then the musicians at another. I bought some embroidery (which I scanned and added to my sketch) from Happy at her stall 'Out of Alex' - Alexandra being a large township nearby. I went back to the market a few days later, for some other things, and asked if I could sketch her, which she 'happily' agreed to. She insisted I put her stall number 22 in the sketch so that if any of you make your way to the Bryanston market, you be sure to go and say hello.