Drawing with Inma

A couple of weeks ago Inma Serrano came to Barcelona for a little trip.
They were 4 days of intensive drawing and a lot of fun.
Sometimes I feel very grateful to urban sketching for allowing me to know people like her.

This is a panoramic view of Barcelona from the Palau Nacional de Montjuïc.


It got dark while we were drawing the Casa Milà.


Inside the Sagrada Familia...


...and over the Sagrada Familia.


Some of the drawings Inma made on thes days can be seen here.

More from Teruel

Here are some (not so) forgotten pages I made in Teruel (I told something about this trip on a previous post).  When I'll grow up I'll post twice a month. Seems I'm yet unable to do it.

London

Seventeen years after, last august I came back to London.

I loved it so much, as always (and now it's possible to eat!!)

Covent Garden. This drawing took me more or less the time of two shows, a juggler and an acrobat. I finished when a magician was about to start.

I don't know if Norman Foster had in mind a couple of fishes doing synchronized swimming when he designed the Millenium Bridge, but this idea came to my mind at the first sight.

The Royal Courts of Justice is one of those buildings as Neuchswanstein Castle or Milan's Duomo that, apart of their architectural value, seem to be a –fantasy– film set. It's because of this that I love them.

Back from Lisbon

It's hard for me to express my thoughts and feelings about the 2nd Urban Sketchers Symposium that took place in Lisbon on july 21 to 23. Words can hardly give an approximate idea of the experience. Drawing on such a marvelous place as Lisbon, learning from masters as Frank Ching, Melanie Reim, Joao Catarino and many others, knowing new people, meeting for the first time people known on the web or meeting again old friends, made this days absolutely unforgettable.

Here are some of the drawings I made on those days, most on them on the workshops.


On the leftside the Elevador de Santa Justa, my first drawing in Lisbon the day before the party started. On the rightside a drawing made at Largo de Saõ Paulo on the first workshop with Filipe Leal de Faria and Marc Taro Holmes.


Drawing made at Largo Luis de Camões on the workshop of Nina Johansson and José Louro.


This is Largo do Chiado drawn at the workshop by Pedro Cabral and Frank Ching.


A scene taken at Largo do Rossio on the workshop by Melanie Reim and Ângela Luzia. This is the only workshop I was absolutely sure I didn't want to miss when I booked my schedule. I guess I'll work on Melanie's thoughts for months.


Rua da Bica, workshops called "Contrastes" (easy to guess) by Asnee Tasna and João Catarino.

Here are also some portraits of the fellow sketchers I met on those days.

Farewell Lisbon!

De vuelta de Teruel

Back from Teruel where I went for the 3rd course "De Vuelta con el Cuaderno" this time as "professor" (this word reminds me people as Higgins, Moriarty or Xavier, nothing to do with teaching).


In this 3 fantastic days we had the opportunity for drawing the streets of Teruel
(here's the cathedral for example)...


...people here and there (fellow sketcher Javier de Blas on the leftside, 2 actors playing a scene on the street on the rightside)...


...a bus driver from Pakistan that asked me to portrait him (left) and some old houses (right).


We also passed a whole day drawing at Dinópolis.

As always, we had some gorgeous sketchbooks handmade by Choni Naudin.
I filled 2 of them, here are all the pages:

El Monestir de Pedralbes

Some weeks ago I made a visit to the Monastery of Pedralbes, a little gothic jewel inside Barcelona. I liked it so much that I went again a couple of weeks after with Sant Lluc course attendees.


The cloister is not as rich as some others I've seen before (with a different capital for each column and so on) but is really elegant and harmonious.


This is the Queen's Hall, a good example of how proportions and space are Pedralbe's main appeals instead of richness and ornaments.


This a well in the cloister garden seen from the upper gallery. There was a marriage at the church and some few visitors, not so much people for a spring weekend. A very still, quiet and beautiful place to draw. I think I'll come back.

Going hi tech

After many working hours from the design board and huge amounts of money, sweat and talent invested, here is our new long waited WC Holder 2.0.
Someone proposed to call it iHolder but it was decided that such name could be too gorish.


Now seriously. I didn't got satisfied with the WC Holder 1.0 (see this link) and I remained wondering how could I improve it.

Then one day I saw a set of methacrylate photo holders as these:


I bought the entire set (about 10 euros in a Carrefour hypermarket) and took the smallest one...


...glued a couple of fridge magnets on it...


...and that's all. No more steps.

The palette of the WC box is also a new version (see the old one on this link). Now I'm using just the 3 basic but unsaturated colors: indigo instead of blue, burnt sienna instead of red and yellow ochre (more exactly quinacridone gold) instead of yellow, all them from Winsor & Newton.

The comparison between the version 1.0 in cardboard and 2.0 in methacrylate needs no further explanations.

For the device at work here are a couple of pictures made by Víctor Martínez "Swasky".

Teaching (and learning)

Drawings made while teaching the course "Drawing the City" about which I blogged some weeks ago. Every lesson consists of about half an our in the classroom and 2 and a half hours of drawing from life. I always make the same exercises I propose to the the students.

In this case, identifying simple volumes...


...before drawing architecture (this is a crossroads in Poblenou 100 meters far from my house).


Here we went again to see a rehearsal of the Castellers de Sants for drawing people.


For the next drawings we went to the Parc de la Ciutadella and the idea was to draw without lines, just color stains were allowed.


Drawings from other people at the course can be seen on this flickr group.

Profe otra vez

No daba clases desde hace años y de repente 2 cursos a la vez.
Del 1 al 3 de julio voy a ser uno de los profesores del III Curso De Vuelta cone el Cuaderno que organiza la Escuela Superior de Diseño de Aragón, esta vez en Teruel. El curso estará centrado en los cuadernos de campo y naturaleza (veré cómo me las apaño porque no estoy yo muy cerca de ese centro). Pasaremos también un día en Dinopolis dibujando dinosaurios, me pregunto si en vivo. El resto del equipo de profesores es como para quitar el hipo. Se siente uno halagado de estar metido en el mismo saco con Mauricio Antón, Severino Pallaruelo, Emily Nudd-Mitchell y Pedro Fernandes.
Esta vez lo he puesto en cristiano..., por si alguno quiere picar. Yo fui el año pasado como alumno y fue estupendo. Tenía pensado ir éste también pero va a resultar un poco incompatible.

For the second time this year I'll play the teacher (hope this will not become a bad habit). From july 1st to 3rd and organized by the Escuela Superior de Diseño de Aragón I'll be one of the teachers of the 3rd edition of the course De Vuelta cone el Cuaderno that will take 'lace in Teruel. This time the course will be centered mainly in nature (and dinosaurs, we will pass one day at Dinopolis). I'm really flattered for beeing part of a team of teachers such as Mauricio Antón, Severino Pallaruelo, Emily Nudd-Mitchell and Pedro Fernandes.

Home landscapes

The last summer we left Italy. On the months before I felt the almost compulsive need of drawing our home in Casalecchio, near Bologna. It was somehow a way for fixing it in my mind. Of course I took some photos and made a video, but you know... when you draw, you look and stop and live and –maybe– see the scene. When I take photos I feel I can't see all I want because the camera is between my eye and the scene. It's the camera that works but just taking data.

El Palau de la Musica Catalana

Some weeks ago the Circle Artistic Sant Lluc organized a visit to the Palau de la Musica Catalana in which we were allowed to walk freely on every part of it. This means we could go on stage or near the organ tubes and some other points usually not so accessible.
This auditorium is a masterpiece of Catalan Modernisme by Domènech i Montaner, it seems more a cathedral than a concert hall. Every little corner is full of symbols about music and musicians throughout times and places. While I was drawing I've heard the explanations of the guides for the visitor groups for 6 times (2 in spanish, in 2 catalan, in 2 english). I liked very much that, since Domènech was ideologically quite liberal, there are no private boxes.

I started with a general view which I colored using a tiny watercolor box with just sepia, gold ochre and indigo.

Since I had no room for the gorgeous stained-glass skylight I made a drawing apart for it (and added some liquid watercolor at home).

The next drawings are the 18 muses that decorate the back of the stage.
The color of the background mosaic is always sepia as in the first drawing, but I thought is was boring to make all the 3 drawings on the same color so I used the 3 colors of the palette.