Leaving Monday for Bogotá, where I will be attending the International Seminar of Architecture hosted by the Universidad Piloto de Colombia and leading a couple of workshops on representation. I’m excited about experiencing Bogotá, working with the students, and doing some sketching myself.

In the meantime, here are a couple of sketches I did the last time I was in Colombia, in 2010, attending a conference on methods for teaching beginning design students held at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the beautiful hilltown of Manizales. The first is of Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepción, which fronts on Parque Caldas, with the statue of Francisco José de Caldas in the foreground. Caldas was a naturalist and geographer who was executed by the Spanish when Colombia (New Granada) was struggling for independence.

The second sketch is a fragment of a 50-ton bronze sculpture situated above Manizales in the neighborhood of Chipre. The monument pays homage to those who settled the region and founded Manizales. I tried to capture the struggle of the settlers, captured so eloquently by Luis Guillermo Arias, with a simple line drawing.

Upon returning to the comfortable temperatures of Seattle from the heat and humidity of Santo Domingo, I am still warmed by the passion and openness with which fellow urban sketchers recorded the life and sights of Santo Domingo’s colonial zone, especially those who attended Liz Steel’s and my workshops.

I did this sketch of Calle El Conde while waiting for La Cafetera (The Coffee Pot) to open. This is where I enjoyed my morning coffee each day of the symposium. You can see the outline of my shadow cast by the early morning sun at my back. Outside on the wall to the right, there is a plaque that reads: “To the Spanish refugee intellectuals and artists of 1939 and to the Dominican ones who welcomed them…” And just inside the entrance is a magazine rack with writings on the Trujillo era. This narrow space remains a meeting place for workers and intellectuals (and tourists) to discuss subjects of the day while enjoying the best coffee in the colonial zone.

Off to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic for the Third International Urban Sketching Symposium <http://sdq2012.urbansketchers.org/>, where I will be teaching with Liz Steel of Australia. Looking forward to the sun, walking the colonial zone, and meeting and drawing with fellow urban sketchers from around the world.

Will post some of my work when I return in a week. In the meantime, here is a sketch that I had posted on my facebook page after the symposium last year in Lisbon. In the afternoon of the first day, I drew this view, trying to convey the flow of people, trams, cars and trucks swirling around the statue of poet António Ribeiro, the “Chiado”.