Cháchara dibujera

En los últimos tiempos, a cuenta de la organización del simposium de USk,  en Barcelona han proliferado los encuentros en los que se hablaba mucho de dibujeo pero de dibujeo casi nada. Aun así, en alguno de ellos, pocos, logré sacar el cuaderno y garabatear algo.



Sketch talk
On the last times, and because of the organization of the USk symposium, meetings about  drawing on which almost no drawing was made have proliferated in Barcelona. Even so, in some of them, not so many, I managed to take out the sketchbook and scribble something.

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!

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.

Someone made me an interview

Some days ago Salvo Catalano wrote an article about Urban Sketchers on mag|zine, the magazine online of the School of Journalism at the Università Catolica di Milano. On that article he included 3 audio interviews: with Gabi Campanario, founder of Urban Sketchers, with USk Naples correspondant Simo Capecchi, and with yours faithfully.

It was the first time I heard my voice talking italian and I must say I didn't like it, I didn't knew I have such a terrible accent.

Drawing guests

Last week I had 3 guests that came to Bologna for the Children's Book Fair.
I made som sketches of all them:

Anah, wich I knew last november in Clermont Ferrand at the Biennale du Carnet de Voyage.

I made her portrait at a trattoria in Ferrara where we made a little scape.

Lapin (my second guest) took this opportunity to make this gorgeous sketches.

I knew him in Clermont too. We use to meet on line at Urban Sketchers of which we both are members. By the way, I made his sketch while he was drawing another urban sketcher: Simo Capecchi.

My third guest was Andrea Joseph (yes!!!!!!!). As many of you know she was one of the artists selected by the Book Fair for the exhibition of this year.

Andrea is one of the first artist I knew about when I started blogging a couple years ago. I've followed her work from then on and we have a common project running with some other pals (I still can't believe they all say yes to that, they were my dream team).
After all this time of comments and emails, even if we both met for the first time only last week, I could proudly say we're old friends.

Bus sketching

I work at home so I don't take the bus everyday, but when it happens it's one of my favorite places to sketch. It's not easy because the shaking, but it's funny to take aim while the bus runs and shoot strokes madly fast in the few seconds it remains stopped .


This beautiful lady was sleeping when I got the bus, and still she was sleeping when I got off about 35 minutes after. She wore very elegant clothes and seemed to be a tired businesswoman, except because it's not usual to see businessmen and mainly businesswomen on the bus in Bologna.


This little old white haired woman wore a pair of big odd old fashioned glasses. She moved her head jerkily with her lively eyes behind the jumbo glasses fixing everything like a chihuahua.


A couple of quickies I made in may diary (no sketch gear with me that day, it's not usual) with some watercolor washes put afterwards at home.

Bologna, Sala Borsa Library

La Sala Borsa (literally Stock Exchange Room) is a fantastic library with a huge ammount of batches, specially on the children and teenage section. But it's also an outstanding building which entrance is situaded about 20 meters far from the famous Fontana del Nettuno. As you can guess from the name, it has not always been a library: from 1870s (in which it was built) to the World War II it was Bologna's stock exchange room . Afterwards it became a sports arena till 2001 in which the library was inaugurated. But the most amazing thing about this places is that, under the transparent floor, it's still possible to see some remains of Felsina, the name that the etruscans gave to the city when thsy founded it on the 6th century BC.

Bologna, Piazza Minghetti

This was one of our stops on the last SketchCrawl (october 25).
Piazza Minghetti is not one of my favorite places in Bologna: it's the center of the financial, posh and snooty Bologna, anyway (as the whole Bologna) it has some elegant, romantic and decadent charm.


This first sketch shows a fat man that said rude nonsenses to everyone that passed near him, seemed not to be in his right mind. The following one is a detail of the huge plane tree in the center of the square. It always take my attention much more than the buidings.

Brush drawing has its own grammar and its own rhetoric, the hand holds the brush but it immediately takes the floor (I'd better say it takes the paper) and tells most of the message.

Street concert in Cremona

A couple of months ago I've been in Cremona with family and some friends. Cremona is the hometown of Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati... let's say it's the hometown of the violin. Music, mainly string music is everywhere. In other towns the signs in the street corners lead you to monuments, churches, museums... in Cremona signs lead you to the different luthiers' workshops. There are many of them, from many countries. Some of them keep the doors open so you can enter the workshop, see them at work and take some photos. Musicians from all over the world come here to commission their instruments.
At some moment we obviously came across with a bandstand in which a little group of young musicians played (really fine) Haendel's "Lascia ch'io pianga"...

Urban Sketchers

Urban Sketchers is a colective blog recently created by my pal Gabi Campanario in wich artists from all over the world post sketches of the life in their respective cities. Gabi was kind enough to invite me to join he group and here is mi first contribution.

It's rainy in Bologna so my first contribution for Urban Sketchers has been made comfortably drawing with the sketchbook leaning over the kitchen table. I tried to catch a little piece of blue sky between the clouds that put some strange colors on the nearby houses. I had already taken this view here, but then I looked straight from the window over the hills, this is about 45º to the left and much less bucolic. The center of the image is an strange military property, somekind of Area 51 alla bolognese. I've lived in this house for 3 years and I've seen just a couple of big trucks entering or leaving it. It's forbidden to park or even stop near and when somebody does it a soldier materializes as teletransported, throws you out and disappear. That's all the human life you can see around. You can't film or take photos but there are bills that advice you that they film and take photos of the surroundings. I imagine everyting is located underground because all you can see is a couple of little huts between some lonely trees.