Illustratour, part 1

For the next week I am in Valladolid which is a small town North of Madrid, for Illustratour, an international children's book illustration workshop. I will be teaching 20 Spanish students. I sincerely hope they speak English because my Spanish is "flojo". I am in excellent company; there are illustrators from Spain and France and Argentina and Japan, and last night over dinner, when language failed us, we resorted to pencils and paper napkins and found our common tongue.
So this is my course description:
Foxes, Handkerchiefs and Storm Clouds"
In this workshop we will explore Style and Character and Setting in Children's Books. We'll play games like "Exquisite Corpse" and "Beast, Bird, Fish" and "Foxes, Handkerchiefs and Storm Clouds" and we'll make big drawings together and then cut them up and share the pieces. We'll tell stories and draw pictures from them and share techniques and cake. We'll describe things from our lives and laugh a lot, (hopefully), and draw a lot, (definitely), and be surprised by all sorts of things in ourselves and each other (almost certainly) and at the end we will each make one beautiful, serious painting, and take home the seeds of a hundred more.
I am going to try and document the week because I think it's going to be quite...well...amazing.
Here is my first view of Spain...
and this is my first calamari with aioli and first tinto de verano which is my new favourite drink.

I'll get to drawing soon. And storks! I mustn't forget to tell you about the storks.