One of the highlights of my time in Porto was the 9.30-11.30pm sketching session which we had inside Livraria Lello – a beautiful bookstore which is famous for inspiring JK Rowling. Since 2015 the bookstore has charged for admission and normally there are 200-300 people inside at the one time. Whoa! way too crowded. We had the place to ourselves! By ‘we’ I mean less than fifty USK Instructors/Board members.

The interior of the bookstore is gorgeous with lots of elaborate Gothic-revival timber details but it’s the staircase which is the main highlight.

As I arrived at the store early, I did a simple line drawing of the facade – at the same time chatting to two USKers who walked past – hi Dina and Agnes!

Once inside I decided to do the ground floor view of the staircase first. I did this quickly without any set out lines.

Oh ah! this stair is tricky!

Then I went upstairs and tried to find the view that best described the flow of the stairs. This did it for me, however I ran off the page, so didn’t quite capture the whole.

I had a lot of fun doing this and chatting non-stop to my great friend Matt Brehm at the same time. You can see his version here – which is more accurate than mine. Thankfully for him, he did all the pencil work before I arrived to distract him!

I was getting tired – sketching past 10pm at the end of a big day, but I wanted to do one more.

Oh! this stair is so amazing.

And one more view of it with sketchers scattered around  – sorry it’s such a bad photo.

A huge thanks to the local USK committee for organising this. It was such an amazing experience. Thank you!!!