Porto Day 9

On Tuesday after the symposium I went up by the Pont Luis I Bridge to sketch. That was the bridge we walked over when we went to the monastery to watch the sunset. The views looking down and across from the bridge were great! Here are a few photos from there.

I sketched the view looking down from the edge of the bridge...not the easiest perspective to figure out. I like crumbling architecture so this with the pieces of roofing and walls missing was something I enjoyed doing. This was done standing up in direct sun with no shade anywhere nearby.

I was really hot so I left the bridge to seek some shelter. I was adding a little more color to the sketch above when I heard someone say, "You can't stop sketching either." It turned out to be Anne Rose Oosterbann who oddly enough is a friend of my friend Kitty from the Netherlands. Anne Rose is a wonderful artist and has been & will be a big part of the 2019 Symposium in Amsterdam. She designed the logo for the Amsterdam Symposium. We talked for a while and she left to go across the bridge. I took a break and had some lunch at the restaurant where we had dinner the other night. Sadly they were out of octopus, so I had to settle for their wonderful shrimp instead. I did a sketch of the shrimp which completed my Porto food page in my sketchbook.

I headed back to the area where I sketched yesterday. I wanted to capture this shrine that was build into the wall of the street.

In the late afternoon I headed down by the Douro River. Even without all the sketchers it was pretty crowded. I sat with my back to the river and sketched the buildings, umbrellas, etc along the walkway.

 

My final sketch of the night was looking toward the end of the promenade along the river with the sky changing color.

One of my blog readers had a few questions after my post yesterday so I am posting my answer to Nelvia's questions here too. 

"I think most of the people were happy to see us there. It was great for their tourist industry for sure and since so many people traveled to other places like Lisbon & Madrid it helped there too. I checked out the main tourist locations before I left, but as you met people you found out other places people had sketched and locations that the workshop instructors picked. Every night there was a "drink & draw" along the river by the bridge. While the symposium was going on there were 2 sketchcrawls each day with set destinations so you knew those would be good. I found a lot of spots just on my own. Long before the symposium started we were given suggestions for places to stay, but most of the people I knew found apartments or hotels on their own once we found what part of the city we should look at. I never felt unsafe at all even when I was on my own."