Sketchbook Workshops - What to Choose?

Yahoo! The flights and hotel are all booked for my big treat to myself this summer: Drawn to Lisbon, the Urban Sketchers Symposium. I can't wait. But there are so many different practical workshop sessions to choose from, I just can't make up my mind and keep chopping and changing. 

I get to do five over the 3 days. It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have gone for an Urban Portraits session, with Cathy Gatland and Isabel Fiadeiro (this is one of Cathy's drawings above). I've also chosen a sesson called Sketch Mix, which will look at different ways of combining drawings together on the same page - sounds interesting, eh?

I couldn't resisit Manuel San Payo's workshop on Waterscapes. Apart from the inspiration of his wonderfully loose and colourful sketches...

...we get to spend 3 hours in the late afternoon and early evening, sitting on the hill overlooking Lisbon's Tagus River and harbour. Hard to resist.

At the moment I am booked into Unfinished Business, looking at how quick, gestural suggestions can say more than finished drawings, like the delicate immediacy of these sketches by workshop presenter Jose Louro: 

But I still keep vascillating. There's one I could do instead, called Movement, based on capturing the hustle and bustle of the city centre, which sound challenging, but very difficult (and a little scary!!) Or Urban Ethnography, which in some ways sounds quite similar, but with more emphasis on the people. It's presented by Manuel Joao Ramos, who did this drawing:

On the first morning, I was booked into Asnee Tasna and Joao Catarino's Contrasts because I really like their gorgeous work, but I also like the sound of Richard Camara's one too, because his session is about playing around with putting down colour before line - something that would inevitably alter my style and force me to experiment, which I figure is always a good thing. And let's be honest, his work is pretty lovely too:

So I have just swapped over again. If only I could do them all!