Porto Day 8

On the Monday after the symposium ended I was on my own to explore. The sketchers I had been spending time with all moved on to other locations or home. There were still a lot of sketchers in Porto and I stopped and chatted with some throughout the day. My destination that morning was the location where Ian Fennely had done his demo. I had paid attention to where he was taking us so I was able to find the general area, and after walking around a bit I found the same spot he had taken us to. I wonder what the lady who owned the house thought of all the many people who had sketched her house throughout the days of the symposium. It was a great spot...don't you think?

Just down the walkway to the right in the sketch I did I saw this view and couldn't resist it.

I continued walking downhill and found restaurant called Barrote Encarnado. I sat upstairs and ordered pulpo (octopus) which took a while to grill. Meanwhile I had a 1/2 liter of wine and my sketchbooks to keep me company. By the time I finished my lunch and my wine I needed a bit of a rest back at the apartment.

Later that afternoon I went up to the Sao' Bento Train Station. It was time to bite the bullet and do the tiles inside! I mentally reviewed Rosin Cure's tile method. There was another sketcher from Florida doing a beautiful double page sketch of the inside of the station. I focused on the ticket office and part of the tile wall nearby.

I was really pleased with how well the method worked!

Porto Day 5

On Friday I had my two workshops. In the morning I had Charlene Moreau and the title of her workshop was "Beyond the Trees." It was held at the Vititudes Park and the route she took was stairs almost straight up. My poor legs!!!

Charlene's method is to do an ink thumbnail complete with shading for lights, midtowns, and darks. Then we redrew the scene on watercolor paper in pencil using the pencil to shade the areas having midtowns or darks. Then indigo in various tones was used to shade the drawing.

Here you can see her pencil drawing and the beginning of her shading.

She continued with the midtowns and darks, slowly adding color. She works in a limited palette of sap green, indigo, purple, and a yellow. The only color she doesn't use indigo underneath is the yellow because it will become muddy.

Here is her finished painting.

Here is my thumbnail sketch done in ink.

Here is my finished sketch using Charlene Moreau's method. I loved the way this came out with the indigo shadows. This was one of my favorite sketches I did in Porto.

After lunch I met Roisin Cure' of Galway, Ireland, for my next workshop called "A Page of Porto Petiscos." Rosin showed us her secret to doing lettering after which we were sent out in Largo de S Domingos square to find a sign to do as well as something that caught our attentions. This was the square that my apartment overlooked so I wanted to do the Largo de S Domingos sign. All around Porto artists have decorated the utility boxes on the streets. This one was so festive looking and the store beside it used it to display some of the wares from the shop.

Rosin also showed us a fairly easy way to do the wonderful tiles that adorn so many of the buildings in Porto. She demonstrated by putting down a light wash of blue. When that was totally dry she did a bit of an abstracted version of the design using a slightly darker version of the same blue. Lastly she used  waterproof blue ink to highlight the darkest parts of the design.

Then it was my turn. She also asked us at the beginning of the workshop to listen to the people around us and record something that we overheard while we were sketching. A man had come over to me and asked me if he could take a photo of me, then he thanked me for visiting Porto.

The day was topped off with another wonderful dinner shared with some of my NYC friends plus Lin from Paris and Ana from Poland. It was a fun night!