Sevilla IN & OUT
Urban Sketches: Explore Your City Within
In this workshop focused on illustration and urban drawing, wll take a journey where each mark and brushstroke uncovers the hidden corners of a city and reveals our inner landscapes. By blending Urban Sketching and urban illustration techniques, we will delve into your artistic style and how to express your vision of the city. We will experiment with various styles and mediums like gouache, watercolor, colored pencils, ink, and collage to capture the shapes and colors that inspire us in our environment. Through both studio sessions and on-location practices, we will explore color, brushwork, rhythm, and composition. Using mixed media textures, we will manipulate space, creating lively compositions, and craft unique color palettes.

Worshshop Outline:
Friday afternoon:
Urban Sketching versus Studio Illustration
Examples and studio practices.
Materials: dry and wet techniques. Pencil, colored pencils, ink, watercolor, gouache, and crayons.
Loosening the hand: emotions, color shapes, strokes.
The textures map.

Saturday morning (outdoors):
Introduction to urban drawing practice.
Micro sketching and reality synthesis.
Limited palette. Practices.
Line and color shape. Sketching mixmedia.
Narrative. The double page composition
Saturday afternoon (indoors):
Series and practices based on morning learnings.
Synthesis and abstraction.
Practices with non-local color and mixed media textures.
Composition and space deformation.
Collage.
Sunday morning (outdoors):
Negative spaces and colored paper.
Working with layers.
Composition practices and double page.
Sunday afternoon (indoors):
Project finalization.
Exhibition.
Portfolio review.

BIO
Maru Godas.
Born in Barcelona in 1966.
Trained as a graphic designer at the IDEP School of Design and the Escola Superior de Disseny Llotja in Barcelona, Maru established her own graphic design studio in Barcelona.
She provided graphic design services to prominent publishers and agencies in Spain such as RBA, Planeta, National Geographic, Salvat, among others.
With a perpetual illustration project on hand, she continued to paint with oils and gouache in her spare time. Eventually, her passion for illustration prevailed, leading her to dedicate herself to it full-time.
Encountering the Urban Sketchers community opened new horizons and languages, offering opportunities to travel, conduct workshops around the world, all while meeting inspiring people.
Maru enjoys exploring various techniques including Chinese ink, oil, watercolor, and colored pencils, although she is particularly recognized for her drawings and workshops involving gouache and acrylic paint.
She has contributed to several illustrated books and magazines and authored works such as Park Güell Journey,; the interactive digital book: Suri y yo and Organic Beauty, translated into five languages.
Maru has undertaken illustration commissions for clients including La Vanguardia, Racc,
La Caixa, Diputació de Barcelona, Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, among others. She served as the director of the illustration festival;Compostela Ilustrada; in Spain from 2019 to 2022. Additionally, she has conducted international urban sketching workshops in various cities such as Chicago, Brighton, Palo Alto, Madrid, Porto, Lisbon, Bern, San Francisco, Málaga, New York, Santiago de Compostela, La Reunion Island, New Zealand, Vietnam etc.
Currently, she is a member of the board of the Centre Artistic de Sant Lluc, a century-old art institution in Barcelona. Maru now manages a dynamic balance between professional illustration commissions, authorship projects for books, and teaching activities, including illustration and urban sketching workshops around the world.