A recipe for grey and some great news

The colour choices I make for a particular painting or sketch are most often intentional, depending on what I am trying to convey. If it’s a very cold and snowy day, I will likely choose cool blues and purples. If I’m painting in a tropical place, I will probably use lots of yellows and bright greens or oranges. But occasionally, the colours I choose are based on some unplanned disaster that happens after refilling my paint wells. In this case, it was from a runny tube of Naples Yellow that I probably should not have used.

It was an old tube of paint — these are usually hardened and need to be trashed — but when I squeezed it, it still seemed to be moist so I optimistically filled my paint well with it. At first glance, I could tell it was too runny but I was hoping it would eventually congeal. You can see from the photo what it looked like at that point. It eventually oozed its way across my palette, infiltrating a good part of neighbouring colours as well as my mixing area.

But enough about the mechanics of it. I needed to use it up so it’s in a good part of this scene that I painted last week in Hudson, Quebec. It was a grey day to begin with, and I was painting at the end of the afternoon. The sky still had hints of brightness so I started by pre-wetting the sky with Naples Yellow and adding some blue/greys on top of that. I used it for the first wash on the house at the left, as well as in pretty much every grey I mixed after that. Since this Winsor & Newton Naples Yellow has some white in it, it will grey down everything you use it with. So the vegetation is grey, the trees are grey and the grey houses — still grey. And now that I’ve used up pretty much all of it, it will be off to the store for me to get some fresh pigment.

And now for the great news…

I am very thrilled and extremely honoured to be part of the lineup for the next Urban Sketchers Symposium in Toronto in August of next year. As a proud Canadian, I did a little happy dance when the location was announced a few months ago. After years of travelling all over the world to these events, it is so exciting to have sketchers visit us here. If you’re thinking of participating, have a look at the full schedule here. Hope to see you in August!

Sketches from the Poznan symposium

Posted: August 30, 2025 | Author: Shari Blaukopf | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Poznan, Stary Rynek, Urban Sketchers Symposium, watercolour sketch | 17 Comments

If you read my previous post, you know I had some trouble sketching in Berlin. Happily, that changed once I arrived in Poznan, Poland, for the Urban Sketchers Symposium.

If you follow the social media accounts of other sketchers who were there (and there were hundreds, both registered for the event or just there to sketch with friends) you would have seen a multitude of sketches from Stary Rynek, the Old Market Square in Poznan. The centrepiece of the square is the Renaissance town hall, but the square is lined with colourfully restored ornate buildings, restaurants, huge umbrellas, and crowded with people at almost any time of day or night.

For my first sketch I chose the fisherman’s houses — narrow buildings decorated with geometric designs and elaborate medallions. I sketched quite early in the day before the crowds arrive, but by noon this part of the square filled up with hundreds of people with necks craned and cameras pointed at the town hall, waiting for the two goats that come out from the tower twice a day to butt heads. Goats are a theme in Poznan. I wish I had added a few to my sketchbook pages, but there wasn’t much time left after teaching.

For my workshop location, I chose the quieter side of the square where I found some shade, a few benches, a water spout and a respite from the crowds. From there, we faced one of the most beautiful facades on the square — the 18th century eagle-topped Działyński Palace, which escaped damage during World War II.

On one afternoon I had a bit of time to sketch on my own before the event started. I found a shady corner to paint the late day crowds on the square.

It’s hard to summarize what it’s like to attend an Urban Sketcher’s symposium. In between teaching, reconnecting with old friends, meeting new people, attending lectures, taking workshops, touring booths at the art market and running between various locations, there’s barely time to breathe. But it’s also the most inspiring and exciting sketching event I have ever attended, and that is true for all 8 I have been to. I don’t have enough adjectives to describe the talent and skill level of sketchers who attend the event or who come on their own as independent sketchers.

Organizing a USk symposium is a gargantuan task, and I send out a huge thank you to the many, many local volunteers who organized all the events, proudly showed us around the city, led us to our locations, stood by while we taught, distributed supplies and fended off curious bystanders. A big thank you also goes out to all of the event sponsors and especially my workshop sponsor — Winsor & Newton — who generously supplied pencils, paper and many tubes of paint!

As always, it takes a long time to come down from the high of an event like this. It was the same way I felt after my first symposium in 2012 and after every one I’ve attended since. I have a drawer full of new supplies to try, a stack of new books to read, a head full of ideas, and many months of winter ahead of me in my studio to practice what I’ve learned in Poznan. If you were one of the lucky people who was there too, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.