I'll play the teacher

From may 7 until july 16 and organized by the Circle Sant Lluc, there will be a course entitled "Drawing the city" in which the teachers/professors/instructors or whatever will be Victor Martínez "Swasky" and yours truly.
For 10 weeks we we'll try to tell our (not so) innocent students the secrets and wonders of urban sketching, sketch crawling, sketchbookism and other bad habits.
And draw, most of all we will draw.

Some results here and here's the flickr group.

I love Paris in the springtime...

...but this drawings were made in an unkind february.
I'd bet Cole Porter was not an urban sketcher.

Leaving on a jet plane

Paris 4 (days), airports 4 (hours), flights 4 (hours). Tie score.

Set decoration warehouse (or so)

Some weeks ago I went with Lapin, Sagar and Pierre Amoudry to visit (and draw of course) one of the most amazing and weird places I've ever seen. Imagine an enormous 3 flat building full –I mean full as a can of sardines– of everything you could ever need for every kind of movie or stage set, from any sort of furnishing or lamp, to ancient maps, army radios, butcher knives, paper dolls, venetian masks, torture tools, musical instruments, chinese umbrellas, hats, stoves, umbrellas, tackles, coffins... absolutely everything!
I still wonder how could they know where any item (let's say) could be when they rented their stuff for films such as Biutiful or Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Capoeira

These are sketches made on the second meeting of Dibujo Barcelona, a new group that tries to join sketching with every kind of performance. In this case the mix was drawing and capoeira.
We've been invited to see a rehearsal of the group "Capoeira Cordão de Ouro" of Barcelona by our fellow sketcher and capoeirista Juan Linares.
Here are a couple of pages:


In the couple of hours the event lasted I made much more sketches, some of them can be leafed here:

The real thing is this:

30th SketchCrawl Barcelona

Drawings made at the last SkC that took place on january 22 in Barcelona.
This time we took a walk on the Paral-lel and El Poble-sec.

SketchCrawl in Vic

(En español en SketchCrawl Barcelona)

Drawings made at the last SkC that took place in november 13th in Vic organized by the Escola d'Art i Superior de Disseny which invited some of the Barcelona SketchCrawl group artists to join them on that day.

Clermont revisited

(En español en De Vuelta con el Cuaderno)

Drawings made at the XI Biennale du Carnet de Voyage that took place on november in Clermont-Ferrand. It was short car trip with my neighbour, urban (and not only) sketcher and friend Lapin to take a look at this huge sketch reunion.
Beeing a visitor has made this second chance much different from my first Biennale in which I was invited to show my work and passed most of the 3 days glued to my stand.
Apart from the usual camels and palm works (many of them really good, I must recognize) there were many new different works. I've appreciated (and welcomed) a more open minded approach this time, not so closed to the romantic, platonic, ancien régime, Discovery-Channeled and Stanley-Livingstoned idea of travel (that I like and follow myself). Works as Laurent Lolmède crowds, Damien Roudeau's homeless and prostitutes or Julien Revenu's authopsies are good samples of a different way to look at "travels" as an experience to be told on a sketchbook, much more interesting for me than the usual turban sketches.
I met also new and old folks and sketched some portraits (and not only). I draw them on a gorgeous sketchbook handmade by Choni Naudin, an amazing bookbinder from Zaragoza. She made this special one for the first meeting De Vuelta con el Cuaderno and since I couldn't assist I filled it at the Biennale.

On these pages Laurent Lolmède, Julien Revenu, Mathieu Sapin, Cécile Quéau, Florent Chavouet, Jean Michel Charpentier, Andrea Longhi, Lapin, Joaquín González Dorao, Frédéric Rudant, Damien Roudeau (which baby sitted Marilou, 4 y.o.  page 3 left, while I visited his stand) and Sanjeev Joshi.

I needed some more pages and I continued sketching on my current pocket sketchbook.
On these pages Roberto Cariani, Laurent Lolmède again, Elsie Herberstein, Damien Chavanat and Delphine Priollaud.

The day after I went with Lapin to draw the cathedral.
It was very cold so I just made a (forced) fast sketch

Barcelona SketchCrawl 29 1/2

(En español en SketchCrawl Barcelona)

Drawings made at the last SkC that took place in Barcelona at Els Encants flea market and Plaça de Les Glòries Catalanes. The market and the flyover will soon disappear: the market moving to another place and the flyover becoming a subway.

I also made some portraits: the first 4 are stallholders, the rest are fellow sketchers.

Caganer

(En español en Urban Sketchers Spain)

For those who don't know about the caganer this can seem a joke, but it's actually a very serious-funny issue over here. In this case, the humongous caganer I drew this afternoon is the Christmas decoration of a shoping mall near the Port of Barcelona.

This video explains something about the assembly and installation.