Eduardo Salavisa and Diarios Gráficos

One of the many pleasures of my trip to Portugal was to end up with a copy of the book "Diários de Viagem, desenhos do quotidiano".

In english it would read " Travelling Diaries, everyday drawings" by Portuguese sketcher Eduardo Salavisa. In this book we discover the work of 35 contemporary sketchers. Not only you get amazing double pages of sketches to look at but the book is rich in text about the use of sketchbooks by artists in the past, their history and tradition and how with the internet those diaries have left the private sphere, where they were only seen by people close to the author and have entered the public one through the use of blogs where those sketches are posted.

by Eduardo Salavisa

Eduardo wants everybody to start drawing (my words) and the book has a chapter at the end on how to start drawing and information for teachers on how to encourage and review a sketchbook.

The word the Portuguese use for their sketch books is "Diário Grafico" that would translate into english as a Graphic Diary. For Eduardo and most of the portuguese sketchers I met, the "diário grafico" is normally of small format so that they can easily carry on their pockets and is "a space of freedom, to experiment materials, techniques, ways of sketching (...) a way of storing memory of spaces, people, feelings and moments".

Its not arriving at a beautifully worked page that's their objective but to capture the moments as they're happenning. Instead of looking at each page it is the result of the open book with its double page that is important to them. If you look at their sketches in urbansketchers, you'll notice that they always post a double page with the edges of the book shown.

The relation of one page to the other and the whole book as an object with bad drawing days and good drawing days is also important. ( bad drawing days just make sense in each author's heads for the one that is looking, every single page or double page looks great.)

So if any of you haven't met this portuguese sketcher you can find everything about him, his work at his site even a list of sketchers from the past and present and with english version.

http://www.diariografico.com/

just very tired

Just someone in the train very tired after a bad day, hope everything is better today.
Blue non-permanent ink pen washed with brush.

Sketchcrawl in Lisbon

Lisbon is a beautiful city still full of old neighbourhoods with plenty of things to catch your eye , plenty of dogs poos , as well, but then its not a perfect world.

Started sketching in the morning on my own and managed this two sketches around S. Bento before joining my two girlfriends for lunch.

I had made a call for sketchcrawling in Lisbon and the meeting place was Praça de Camões at 3pm. We were nine people in all.

Ana Pissarra http://anapissarra.blip.tv/

Monica Cid http://monicacid.blogspot.com

we were joined by three urbansketchers

José Louro http://ajaneladealberti.blogspot.com

Pedro Cabral http://bonecosdebolso1.blogspot.com

Richard Camara http://richardcamara.blogspot.com who was visiting ( he is portuguese but lives inSpain).

There were two girls and a young man but they didn't show up later at the meeting point, so I don't know who they were.

Some of the square seats were occupied by sketchers, others by people reading or resting, sun was up and the air chilly. ( freezing for my standarts!)

Richard Camara sketching and a church door in Praça Camões.

Ana had just come to take some photos and see who would show up and ended up buying a sketchbook in an art shop and having plenty of fun , borrowing everybody's pen's and watercolors.

Went to this gallery where a friend of Ana works and we all ended up sketching the show. I chose to draw an image of a screaming child while Monica chose to draw a face on the ritus of orgasm drawn in a bed sheet.

This was the last sketch of the day before meeting up to check our drawings and to have the extreme pleasure of having someone else's sketchbook in our hands.

Ana, Monica and I decided to end the day with a nice dinner and a play. We went to see William Shakespear but it was so dull that Monica and I spent the whole play ... SKETCHING!

nose operation

This post is dedicated to my doctor.

Most of these are people waiting at Hospitals or Health Centers.

I had a minor operation, one of the reasons why I travelled home and I had to have lots of examinations before to make sure everything else was fine and then you have to sign this paper that if anything goes wrong and you die you take responsability.

So I had to do lung x-ray, heart thing (above) and I don't know what else.

The Dr that operated me has a reputation for really loving the "knife", that is for cutting bits off noses, throats and ears. But he is a great expert and a very human person looking up to his patients as people and not numbers and working long hours everyday.

My operation went fine. He put my the inside of my nose back straight and now I can breath again from both nostrils. It had gone sideways years ago when it got hit by my surf board.

I looked quite fine after the operation and my nose is just that little bit swollen. He had to hit the bone as it was twarted as well. those things on the side layed on my nose for a week and were the most uncorfatable part of all but as he popped them out I felt like a new woman, just hope that my smell will became double the strenght of before!!

Good Easter all and hope to see some of you for sketchcrawl Saturday at Largo Camões, Lisbon at 3 pm.

sketchcrawl em Lisboa

Aqui vai uma chamada a todos os sketchers que estejam em Lisboa no sábado, dia 11 de Abril, ponto de encontro Largo de Camões ás 3 da tarde.
Para quem não conhece o sketchcrawl mais informações no http://www.sketchcrawl.com/

To all sketchers who happen to be in Lisbon on saturday, 11th of April, meeting point Largo de Camões at 3pm.
To find out more about sketchcrawl http://www.sketchcrawl.com/