The all-female media producers EVA are showing the life and work of a few Portuguese Urban Sketchers, in the short Youtube-based webseries Urban Sketchers Journals. Each short episode shows a sketcher in their element, speaking their mind about materials, attitudes and subjects of choic

Oh boy, I feel like a kid about to tell someone else about his favorite toy! Where to start? Maybe by saying Hahnemühle‘s Watercolor Book (HWB) is one of my favorite sketchbooks ever!

The Capitolino, a citadel hill heavily connected to the myths that populate the origins of Rome, was the building ground to several temples, including a major temple to Jupiter. Nowadays, the post-medieval palazzi dominate the hill, with the overwhelming Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio in center stage.

The plan of the villa evolved as did Hadrian himself. Many of the places were named and built after Greek and Egyptian deities and influences Hadrian interested himself with, and the several additions to the villa reflected the eclectic life, love and travels of the emperor.

Nós e os Cadernos 2, an event in 2017 about sketchbooks organized by Tiago Cruz, was set in the beautiful surroundings of the Parque Natural do Litoral Norte, a natural reserve around the mouth of the Cávado river.

In the summer of 2017, Tiago Cruz, researcher at CIAC, invited ten sketchbook lovers to Esposende, for a weekend of talks and sketchwalks in the Minho shores, in an event titled Nós e os Cadernos 2.

Today, I’m flying off to the north of Europe. The final destination is Riga, in Latvia, where I’ll lead two sketching workshops with fellow sketcher Pedro Alves, in the Urban Sketching Winter School Riga 2019. But the journey starts further north, in Helsinki and Tallinn.

A teacher once told me there are two cities in the world that an architect needs to visit in his lifetime: New York and Rome. I had visited neither by the time I became an architect. Only when I wasn’t an architect anymore, did I get the chance to visit both.

All amenities aside, what won us over was the splendid book and magazine collection the apartment featured. All ranging from books on Russian orthodox art, to photojournalism magazines. There was something there for each of us. What captured my eye was a collection of erotic and psychedelic Italian comic books from the 70’s, and especially the character Valentina, penned by Guido Crepax

Terni, in Umbria, was stage to a massive bombardment by the Allied forces in WW2. Here lay a heavy chunk of the Italian wartime steel works, a strategic target for Allied bombers. By the end of the war, not much was left of the city, and it had to be rebuilt. Maybe as a result of that, a few buildings, monuments and infrastructure look heavily influenced by the modernist and post-modernist architecture movements, at least around the train station.

Samantha and Matteo, the soon-to-be-wed couple, came back from Milan, to their Umbrian family in Casteldilago, to celebrate their big day. The wedding troupe skipped between the church of Saint Valentine, at the very top of the hill, to the village museum, from the public garden to the local osteria.

High upon a rocky hill, the narrow streets of the village of Casteldilago, sheltered us from the harsh sun, yet, punished us with its steepness. The streets intertwined in organic patios, tunnels, and even backyards of residents.

Vila Berta, in Graça, became a phenomenon, a few years back, by bringing to the festivities an audience that wasn’t used to partake in them, and by becoming one of the most known hubs of the fest in the city.

Carina was lucky to book her time in Lisboa during the Santos, the city festivities. That usually means sketching drunk among heaps of people, ending the night smelling like sweat and grilled sardines – It was a blast of course!

More than a year has passed since these sketches were done. They’re a month apart and are the records of a great year to be a sketcher in Lisboa. In a partnership with the Lisboa, Capital Ibero-americana da Cultura program and the Fundação Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva, the Urban Sketchers Portugal was able to bring to the city several sketchers from Portugal, Spain and Latin America for a season of lectures and workshops.

António taught everyone how to distort buildings and streets, and I had the easy job of showing how you can do it with people too!

After the trials of a full-day workshop in Portimão, a brief respite is always on the order of the day, for participants and instructors alike. Beer, some relaxed, non-constrained sketching, new acquaintances, new sketching materials, and beer.

I took the challenge made by urban sketchers Marc Taro Holmes and Liz Steel, to sketch one hundred people in a week, and tweaked it a bit, to suit the suggestions made by fellow sketchers last year, and also my own R&D necessities. I wanted to practice hands for a long time now, since they are kind of my Achilles’ kneel of the human figure sketching.

With our workshop (Pedro Alves and I) coming up in a few weeks, I start to get excited about this night sketching business! It’s really easy, and at the same time really challenging to sketch after hours. The easy aspect of it, and the most pedagogic part about it, is that your palette gets reduced to a couple, three at most, colors.