More from the Urban Sketching Symposium (in Barcelona back in July)....

Veronica Lawlor's 'Designing Barcelona' workshop

The workshop was held at L'Illa de la Discordia (Block of Discord), which is a section of Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district. It is famous because of the contrasting and crazy architectural styles of four buildings that were designed in the early 1900's by four of Barcelonas leading modernist architects - Lluis Domenechi Montaner, Antoni Gaudi, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Enric Sagnier.

Veronica encouraged us to experiment with different materials and using different techniques like using lines, marks, colour. We started doing small quick thumbnails...

and finished by doing one larger drawing of the block. The area was very busy, people everywhere, shopping, in cafes, tourists taking photos and cars racing by.

'Life Between Buildings: Capturing the Energy' workshop with James Richard

Capturing the energy in Placa de Catalunya. A large square where the old city meets the more modern 19th century Eixample district and also where two of Barcelona's main streets (La Rambla and Passeig de Gràcia) begin. This square is always busy, lot of people and pigeons.

This is a very simple run down of the process we followed...we started by drawing people of various sizes to create depth, with a main character in the foreground, added other details such as trees, cars, street lights, signs, etc then buildings. Adding darks/blacks to create contrast and finishing off with colour.