Notes from the USk Symposium Manchester 2016

It was a very hot and busy month! Only now I finally starting to put together my impressions and thoughts and finishing to scan my sketches from the Manchester Symposium's trip.
So, after the long period of preparations, planning and expectations it is over!
Manchester was for me the forth time I participated in the USk Symposium, third time as an instructor. No doubt, it felt like an annual reunion, and of course it was different experience - in different place, different time and many new people.

Being Symposium instructor is a big responsibility - people are coming from all over the world to learn and to get an unique experience, with a lot of expectations and some fears. You never know who is coming to your workshop, the level and the background of the participants is different, the outside conditions are unpredictable, and so is the general energy and the atmosphere of  the each workshop.
This year my workshop was different from my usual people-sketching program. It's true, that people is my favorite subject, but his time I wanted to try to understand the whole process. How it works? What differentiates between the exciting and communicative work and the boring one? What attracts us to a particular subject? How we make decisions? How to create works with impact and meaning? Being by myself very spontaneous and expressive sketcher, I tried to freeze every step in my process and to force myself to analyze my decisions, which wasn't easy at all. Finally, I got to my last workshop, named "What and How" and dealing with two one-million-dollar questions: what do I want to say and how can I best say it?
The process of drawing even the tiniest sketch involves making countless decisions - it's impossible to touch all the steps, so I was needed to choose the most essential. Our first exercise was dealing with "what" - idea, message, feeling. By getting the same list of subjects and trying to find them around, the participants learned to observe their surroundings differently, and maybe to understand that there are no boring spots – it is all about the point of view.

Following exercises tried to touch at different "hows" - composition rules and the tools choice.

choosing the format

trying static and dynamic compositions

limiting the use of tools

all we have is lines and shapes

In the last and longest exercise we tried to apply what we learned in the previous exercises, but didn't forget to improvise, to be spontaneous and to enjoy the process!

After all, the secret is probably in keeping balance between the considering the rules and breaking them in order to be spontaneous, and to leave room for chance and "mistakes", because that's the beauty of sketching from observation!

You can download my workshop's flyer here.

I'll be happy to hear from you - please tell me about your experience!

Singapore USk Symposium - part 2

I'm continuing my first post about the amazing experience of Singapore USk Symposium. Teaching our workshop "Face the City!" together with my friend from Denmark Ea Ejersbo was, of course, the main reason for coming there. Ea spent the last winter in Israel, near me, and then born our idea of leading a workshop together again. As our mutual favorite sketching subject is people, the starting point was easy to choose. We even did a rehearsal of our workshop in Jaffa for the local Urban Sketchers group. But, of course, doing it in Singapore, for the international audience, as part of the USk symposium, was a different experience!
Certainly, it's impossible to learn sketching people in three and a half hours, and even in there and a half days. Nothing can't exchange her majesty practice, but still, it's possible to transfer our approach to sketching people, and even maybe to the urban sketching in general. I don't fancy perfect step-by-step recipes of a perfect sketch. For me the way is not less important than the result. Lets's say, the way is what really matters, the final sketch is a nice by-product result. In our workshop the main emphasis was on trying to look better, observing, searching for the stories to tell. First of - what you want to tell, and only after - how. To make it easier, we broke our workshop into three exercises. In first one, called "Capture Emotions", we asked the participants to look around for people with recognizable facial expressions and try to capture them.

In second one, "Capture Action" - to pay attention to the body language, which can tell us a lot without words.

In the final exercise we asked to put our "heroes" in their surrounding and tell us a story, using our ability to capture emotions and feeling through facial expressions and body language.

The results were really wonderful, but most important, we saw the participants overcoming invisible barrier, making step out of their safe zone and really enjoying the process!

I enjoyed it very much! Here are some sketches done on the workshop's spot, checking it before and while doing the demonstration.

I'm grateful for the opportunity of being a part of so great team of Symposium's instructors, also because teaching is the best way to learn!
Here is the link where you can download our workshops' flyer.

Sketch-trip to Lisbon - part 3

Finally I'm writing the last post about my Lisbon adventure, here are part 1 and part 2 of the trip.
Freedom Revolution Workshop, the workshop I was invited to give, was planed to the last day of my stay. Our meeting point was at the charming Largo do Carmo - small beautiful square, which I had a chance to sketch a day before. The weather wasn't perfect - cloudy and rainy. But of course it couldn't stop our group of enthusiastic sketchers to gather and to enjoy the day.

After the short acquaintance round, when each one introduced himself and told in a few words why he loves sketching, we dived into our people-sketching-without-fear workshop. The first exercise called "Capture Emotion!", and its purpose was to learn to look around us, find characters with interesting facial expressions, and capture emotions in expressive and fearless way. Some sketchers started to swim immediately, as fishes in the sea, others were needed some time to warm up, but all of them had fun and were very brave!

I did some fast portraits, just to feel the exercise ;)

Here are some great results of capturing emotions, although we tried to focus on the process:

Rain become stronger, and we moved to the covered Rossio Train Station and started with our second exercise - "Capture Action!". As you can guess, this time we focused on body language and on capturing action. Drawing people in motion is one of the most difficult missions for the sketcher. There are no tricks or magic tools to get this skill, except practice and training our visual memory and our eye-hand coordination. All you need is to be brave, to start and not to afraid to do a lot of "bad" drawings. Flower vendors were selling  everywhere red carnations - the symbol of the Portuguese Revolution, which was celebrated at this day. Our group probably got some of revolutionary spirit and sketched fearlessly people in action.

I couldn't help not to sketch the carnation selling woman:

Here are some great sketches of people in action:

After a 3-hour sketching session we had a lunch break (which included some sketching again ;)), and arrived to the our final sketching point - Praça do Comércio, well-burned in my memory since the final Sketchcrawl of the Lisbon USk Symposium took place there. Now, when we were warmed up, and had practiced sketching people in action and describing their emotions through their expressions and body language, we were ready to put them in their surroundings. So, in the final exercise sketchers asked to put their "heroes" into the scene. Everybody spread out looking for the interesting stories.

Here are the stories from the square, every sketch tells different narrative, from different point of view and with different mood, and that's all the story about urban sketching for me!

our amazing group!

It was wonderful experience with amazing, enthusiastic and talented group of sketchers, I enjoyed a lot and also absorbed a lot - no doubt that teaching is the best way to learn! I want to thank again my Portuguese hosts -  Mário Linhares, José Louro and Ketta Linhares, for inviting me. I have to say that I felt a bit envy of Lisbon USk branch - they have a wonderful group of so many talented sketchers and educators, leading the huge group of sketch-lovers from Lisbon and not only. It was a pleasure to meet in person! Here are posts by some of the participants: by Mário Linhares part 1 and part 2,  by Pedro Loureiro, by Paula Cabral.

It was a wonderful sketch-trip, Lisbon will be always in my heart (and in my sketchbook ;)).
Now, when the Lisbon trip is over, I'm looking forward to the Singapore USk Symposium, where I'll be teaching together with my friend and fellow sketcher Ea Ejersbo this workshop in a bit different format. See you there!!!

Sketch-trip to Lisbon - part1

One week already passed since I came back from Lisbon. It was 6-days trip only (and two of them were flights), but I think I had enough experiences for a  month - I really had everything in this small journey!
I was very excited toward masterclass and workshop I was invited to give. Teaching isn't my main activity, I do it from time to time on special occasions, and every time it's a new adventure.
The masterclass were supposed to be the final meeting for the series of workshops given by MárioLinhares, José Louro and KettaLinhares, called Lisbon Alphabet. I was asked to share with the group of sketchers my philosophy and approaches behind urban sketching. The preparation to the presentation forced me to answer to many unasked questions - there are so many things we do unconsciously when we sketch! Thanks to that I learned some stuff about myself or at least put it in a words form. I hope I succeed to share my approach to sketching with the group, after all, we, sketchers, all use to speak about the same things, feeling and reasons. I enjoyed to talk with the group a lot, showed them my sketchbooks and tools, and after that we went outside for some practical sketching!

We ended by dinner together and some more sketching, of course!

It was a great beginning for my trip!
I'll continue telling about my Lisbon adventure in the next post.
Meanwhile, more photos are here.