travel

Right now, I'm in Granada. Tomorrow I'm visiting the Alhambra. Visiting very old places always gives me a sense of wonder. I always imagine what it's like for those people who built those places, and how they lived at that time. The sketch was drawn from Calle San Nicolas, a beautiful place with houses built in undulating manner on a small hill.

Sagrada Familia is amazing. It reminded me so much of those old school Final Fantasy castles or those from Demon Souls. There are so many winding stairs, corridors and hidden passage ways. Of course, the design is heavily influenced by religion. While I was touring the place, I kept wondering how amazing the architecture is. How on earth did they build the ceiling? How did they know the building will stand, especially with this out of the world design. Fascinating.

The main hall of Sagrada Familia is huge! The ceiling is amazing, exquisite.

My sketching strategy for this trip is to draw the lines outdoors and then colour them when I'm back at the room. But it seems that when I'm back at the room, I'm too tired to colour them. Looks like I'll have to have the lines and colours finished together.

I'll be flying off from Singapore to Spain in a few hours time.

There won't be any new reviews for the next two weeks, but I'll be posting some French translated ones instead during the time.

I'll be attending the sketchcrawl from 10-12 July at Barcelona so see you around if you're there.

If you're there for the Barcelona Urban Sketching Symposium, get connected on the Facebook page and Flick page.

For the next few days, I'll be posting sketches and updates while I'm there.

I'll be in Barcelona from 9-13 July 2013. It's going to be another sketchwalk holiday — the best type of holiday!

It happens that the Urban Sketchers Barcelona Symposium 2013 is also happening around that time from 11-13 July. There are going to be a lot of sketchers in the city during those three days. I'm not attending the symposium though. I'll just be sketching around Barcelona and then joining my sketch buddies for an extended trip to Madrid after that weekend.

I know there are many Gaudi buildings there. I wonder if I can visit them all. I'm so inspired after seeing Nina Johansson's sketchbook Drawing Around Sagrada Familia, and all the watercolour travel sketchbooks by Fabrice Moireau.

What should I look out for? Or what should I not miss when I'm there?

If you guys want to hang out and sketch, I'm all for it too.

This is terribly exciting! First time in Europe!

Another epic sketchwalk awaits in Bangkok, Thailand.

I'll be traveling overseas on Thursday to join more than a hundred like-minded people for this sketchwalk. The last count was 118 people. There will be sketchers from Thailand (of course), Taiwan, Singapore, Penang, KL, Indonesia and Australia.

I'm terribly excited to meet all my friends, especially those whom I met during the Penang sketchwalk last year.

If you have not watched the Penang sketchwalk video, you should.

Unlike the Penang sketchwalk, this time I'll not be bringing my iPad along, which means I'll not be blogging about the event daily. It was too much work so this time I shall just relax and post the photos and videos when I come back on Monday.

Here are the drawing materials I'm bringing:

• Winsor Newton heavyweight watercolor box
• Pilot Tecpoint V5 and V7 filled with Rotring ink
• Hero fountain pen
• Size 6 Da Vinci Maestro travel brush
• Technical pencil
• Eraser
• Daler Rowney Calli ink
• Daler Rowney The Langton watercolour paper
• Small hand-book sketchbook

The Pilot Tecpoints are amazing with Rotring ink. I've tried many type of ink in that pen and the Rotring ink is the best. The ink flow is smooth and it doesn't clog.

I'm not bring any waterbrush because they are just not easy to use for mixing colours. One size 6 Da Vinci Maestro travel brush should suffice.

All these will be squeeze into my Manhanttan Portage Europa bag, the perfect sketching bag for those who use 12 by 9 inch watercolour paper. I really need to review the bag soon because I Iove it.

Can't wait.