The guards at the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville forbid me to sit down and paint. Annoyed, I put my watercolors in my bag and take a look in my first aid kit. A nail file, some pencil shavings and two pens: a black cartridge ink brush and a blue marker. Well, why not. If I stand up, I will do short poses only. If the guardians come back, I will say that I am taking notes with shapes instead of words.

The rooms on the ground floor are distributed around an old cloister in the Mudejar style. You find here art works intended to decorate churches during the Middle Ages and the Spanish Renaissance. The spotlights of the museum project frank shadows on the sculptures. I sketch first the shadows in blue, then the details in black ink. No subtlety, no nuances. Raw.

The guards of the Seville museum pushed me towards an exercise that answers one of my most recurring questions: how to bring energy into the gesture?