The last day of the Rendez vous was as fantastic as the other two, with lots of visitors at my stand. I am amazed at the interest people showed in my sketchbooks, many thanks to all who stopped by to chat and flip through my books! I have had so many great conversations during these three days, and made a lot of new acquaintances with likeminded folks. Brought home lots of warm memories to Sweden!

And as the icing on the cake, two of my drawings made it into a spread about the Rendez vous in A/R magazine, a French travelling magazine. I´m especially glad they chose the image of the empty pool of Aspuddsbadet, which was sadly enough demolished in December 2009…

Day two was just as crowded as day one, only less school children, and more adults. My head is spinning from trying to conjugate French verbs all day.

At eleven, there was a debate, or a ’round table meeting’ (no table, though) with the Scandinavians, i.e. me, Ea Ejersbo and Mattias Adolfsson. We were interviewed by a journalist and answered questions from the audience. (To help us with the fascinating French language, there were also two interpreters there. I never spoke through an interpreter before, and I realized afterwards that I probably spoke more to her than the audience…)

I am amazed at how much interest people have here for travel journals and sketchbooks. I have had visitors at my stand all the time, non-stop. People have leafed through my sketchbooks and posed questions about technique, tools and drawing habits, and I have tried to answer as best I can in my horrible French.

The most frequently asked question is whether I have published something, if there is a book one can buy in the Rendezvous bookshop… Darn. I knew I should have made a book.

The dinner in the evening turned into a drawing party. Funny that photographing drawings with the iPhone in bad lighting always seems to produce a green tinge in the middle of the image…

I have been busy busy busy lately, packing my sketchbooks and some paintings, getting ready to head off to Clermont-Ferrand in France for the Rendezvous du Carnet de Voyage! I feel honored to have been invited to the Rendezvous this year, and also to exhibit my paintings in Vic-le-Comte.

Otherwise I always go places with my dear M, but this travelling-on-my-own thing is becoming quite the habit this year – first the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Lisbon, and now this! If you are anywhere near the Rendezvous – come keep me company for a few minutes! I´ll be in the Scandinavian corner! : )

My only drawing from the Lisbon Sketchcrawl, an awesome experience with around 300 people sketching at the same time, in the same spot. I concentrated on people, sketchers have a tendency to sit still for at least a few minutes, which makes them excellent subjects to draw. : )

This event, and the whole Symposium, was covered in the news in Portugal. Check out the video links on this page (in Portuguese, mostly).

21 x 16 cm, Snowman ink pens on Lanaquarelle cold press paper.

I and José Louro gave a workshop called Unfinished business in Lisbon. We wanted our participants to make a narrative about Largo Camões (the square we were assigned for  the workshop) with their drawings, not necessarily finishing every drawing, but rather adding one sketch to the other, collecting bits and pieces from the place on the same spread, until you get an impression of the square.

Our participants certainly got the idea, the results in everybody´s sketchbooks were fantastic. If you participated in the workshop, and blogged your drawings from it, please feel free to add a link to your images in the comments to this post!

(If your comment doesn´t show up immediately, it´s because I may need to approve it first – no need to comment again, it will show up in a while!)

42 x 16,5 cm, Namiki-Falcon pen with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours on Lanaquarelle cold press paper.

I am home again, after attending the 2nd Urban Sketchers Symposium in Lisbon. I gave the “Unfinished business” workshop there, together with José Louro, and both the teaching part and meeting all these sketchers from all over the world was such a great experience! Now I´m all inspired, my head full of ideas and techniques to try out, and flipping through other peoples´ sketchbooks have left me with a brain full of sodapop, keeping me awake at night!

I didn´t get as much time to draw as I would have liked, since I was teaching, and that was frustrating – Lisbon is one of the most inspiring cities I have seen so far. It´s got a jaded beauty that I find completely irresistible, and every street seem to offer endless views for drawing. I must come back again, and make sure I have a lot of time on my hands…

Largo Camões, the square where our workshop was, had a quite unique atmosphere – it was surrounded by four busy streets, full of cars, people and trams, a bustling place, very noisy and alive, but on the square itself, life seemed rather slow. People were mostly just sitting around, having a coffee in the shadow by the ‘Refresco’ kiosk or gossiping with their neighbors, and the contrast to the busy streets around the square was quite striking. The participants in our workshop (quite a bunch – we had three sessions in three days, all in all around 60 participants) made a great job telling the story of this place on their sketchbook pages.

The days in Lisbon were filled with workshops, lectures and and a lot of opportunities to hang out with other sketchers – very inspiring indeed. I tagged along on two other workshops as well, Cityscapes with Marc Taro Holmes and Filipe Leal de Faria, and Lisbon Perspectives with Gérard Michel and Florian Afflerbach. Both were very enriching, and seeing these guys drawing and explaining their techniques really made my day. Plus I got to sketch with the other participants, which is always a great experience.

The three days of the Symposium passed too quickly, of course, and I have had such great fun, learned so much and met so many fantastic people! I could have gone on for a few more days, easily, but during the flight home I discovered that I was actually quite exhausted – I couldn´t keep my eyes open or my head up for one second!

I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who was at the Symposium for making it such a great experience, it was fantastic to finally get to meet you all! And I´d like to kiss the ground in front of the feet of all the people in Lisbon who worked so hard to make this happen – you did an awesome job, I am so grateful for your efforts!

And to you who weren´t there – now you know you have to go next time, right?

‘

All drawings made on 14 x 20,5 cm Plano 270 g drawing paper sketchbook pages, with Snowman waterproof drawing pens (a Japanese brand of pens that I found in Lisbon – never seen them before, but I needed to buy them since the heat/humidity/whatever did something funny with my paper so the Platinum Carbon ink started to creep on it, which never happened before).

The last drawing from our Barcelona trip, drawn in the airport and on the plane home.

32 x 17 cm, UniPin black ink pen on Schoellershammer drawing paper.

One of very few trials to draw a whole  view of a city. I regretted starting it after about two buildings, but decided to finish it after all. Or almost, anyway. My dear M kept me company for about two and a half hours, and we enjoyed both coffee and churros and an early lunch while I drew. Quite a pleasant beginning of a day.

32 x 17 cm, UniPin black ink pen and watercolours, on Schoellershammer drawing paper.

Churros was new to me – nice with a cup of coffee. And tapas, of course, you can never go wrong with tapas. Sooo delicious.

Top: 16 x 10 cm, UniPin ink pen and watercolours, bottom: 16 x 16 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink, both on Schoellershammer drawing paper.

Went drawing inside and outside the Sagrada Familia on two consecutive days. I had to. It is such a humongous building project, and it´s strange kind of organic (on the outside) Star Wars (on the inside) aesthetics draws you in like a magnet.

16 x 18 cm, black UniPin ink pen, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink, watercolours and entrance ticket on Schoellershammer drawing paper.