making marks in Lisbon

I’m back in Lisbon again. I came up with a person from Burgau who travels here for work quite often. She lives another person and a lovely dog named Crème whom they took back to the village from Lisbon a few months ago.  

Creme and her peeps

She still takes Crème to see a vet in Lisbon though, and that’s how I got to tag along. Crème has to check in with the vet but while her person does some work things I’m keeping Crème company.

Lots of cool marks are being made all around this city.

It seems that any blank surface is a good place to make a mark here in Lisbon. Walls, columns, windows, doors, telephone boxes, bus stops, all are targets for creativity of all sorts. Some of it has a message, some seems purely for fun. Either way, there's lots to see.

These laughing top-hatted characters seem to be everywhere!

Yesterday Crème and I were wandering around the busy streets and praças when I saw a group of people all carrying sketch pads. Of course I followed them. They made their way to a praça where there is a beautiful building with two big curved entrances. The group seemed to be lead by two men. There were about 20 people listening very attentively to what they were saying. Occasionally one would point toward a building and twenty necks would swivel around to focus 20 pairs of eyes on the object of interest. People were busily scratching away in their sketchbooks. I was eager to see what they were recording, so I managed to slip in among the group unnoticed and peek over the shoulders of a few sketchers who were sitting on some steps. They were so absorbed in their work that they paid no attention to me.

They were drawing the buildings all around them. Some people had sketches of the two men as well. And many people had pages of notes but I couldn’t really read the handwriting from where I was.

Watching all the industrious drawing going on gave me the urge to draw as well. Here’s a quick sketch of the beautiful building I mentioned above. It’s called Estação do Rossio and it’s a train station that was built in 1887.

Estacao do Rossio, pen and watercolour

There's another really impressive building across from it. It has huge columns along the front. It’s the National Theatre. I might try to do a sketch of it later today. But right now Crème and I are off to Praça do Comerçio because I overheard some of the sketchers yesterday talking about going there this afternoon. It turns out that it's an organized event going on with all these sketchers and workshop leaders from all over the world. That’s what I had stumbled onto yesterday. You can read more about it at at the event site or www.urbansketchers.org.

It’s funny, I’ve been on their site looking at the sketches but somehow I’d missed the talk about this big event. I wonder if they would have allowed a dog to attend. Oh well, I’m here now so I’ll just eavesdrop a bit and enjoy the company of other sketchers, even though I’m probably canis non grata.