Sketch Hunt 1

Like Eduardo down here, I am getting to prepare my Sketch Hunt workshop for the 3º Symposium. I believe that life between buildings is, sometimes, more interesting then the building itself. The participants in this “sketching hunt” workshop are invited to draw "unseen" aspects of a particular site, indoors or outdoors, by doing a collection, series or sequence of drawings exploring particular themes that are introduced by a sketching ideas list. Each sketching idea comes in the form of key words.

For this drawings, made in separate days, the key word was refexion.

Sketchjazz!

Hi,
Yesterday I went to a jazz session to sketch a little.
As I am getting prepared to my workshop "Straight to Colors" in Santo Domingo, I worked with markers.
In the second sketch you can see a little of the process, as I preserved some parts of the first layers.
If you haven't seen our symposium blog, take a look! We've been sharing some interesting thoughts over there...

Parkhurst Protest

I've done very little urban sketching lately, for various reasons - one being that I just haven't been getting out much. But yesterday I heard there was a peaceful protest at a suburban village nearby. People are incensed that the city council has unilaterally decided to introduce huge parking fees - at great commercial benefit to the company that was awarded the contract - with roaming attendants that pounce on you the second you park your car in many of our small independant shopping areas, where shops struggle at it is to attract customers away from the large malls. In Parkhurst, shop owners, some loyal customers, and a local radio station took over the pavements and parking bays with bright green astro-turf, some of their wares and their calm selves, to object to the high-handed and greedy actions of the municipality. I ordered a cuppacino from the coffee shop where I did this sketch below last year (I don't think I've posted it before) and got my rusty sketching skills back into first gear...

Passageiros

Mais desenhos feitos no metrô de São Paulo, não consigo largar essa mania. Mas é claro que nenhum destes desenhos foi feito no horário de pico do metrô quando é impossível se mover dentro do vagão abarrotado.

Sotherby's Auction

On Wednesday May 9th, I had the chance to do something out of the ordinary. I attended the art auction at Sotherby’s where Roy Lichtenstein’s painting, Sleeping Girl” sold for 44.9 million dollars. It was the night after “The Scream” sold for 120 million dollars. To say I was out of place is an understatement. I was asked to go at the last second and said yes. There was no way I was dressed properly but my friend didn’t care. Wearing a beat up old Carhardt jacket, which was all frayed and faded with plenty of holes, jeans and my work boots, I stood out from the pack. I think most people there, thought I was an electrician on standby in case the lights went out. It was very exciting though. I’ve been to plenty of horse races but this was much better. You could feel the tension as the bids rose higher and bidders would drop out when the price got too high and then only the 2 final bidders would play a game of chicken to see who would blink first. I know one thing is for sure, my work will never generate this kind of frenzy. All you have to do is go to my Etsy store. Click purchase. Pay the 35 bucks and I send you a print. No one even slams a gavel at the end. You bid against yourself, you win and the print is yours.

Making Of - Part 02

sketches around Gwanghwamun, center of Seoul

pen, charcoal, A 4

Gwanghwamun is the center of Seoul. Not far from there locate the presidential residence, Gyungbok palace, leading newspaper buildings such as Dong A Ilbo, Chosun Ilbo and many governmental office buildings, After the central tree-lined divider was changed into big plaza for people, the Taepyung-ro became the famous place for tourists and citizen to visit. 

Today on the way coming home from Gwanghwamun post office I saw the colorful sunlit lanterns hung for celebrating the Buddha's birthday on May 28 (April 8th in Lunar calender). The lanterns are lit by electricity at night. They look beautiful too.  While walking the square I saw a monk was drumming to inspire people that cultivating conscience for society is patriotism. 

Symposium Sponsor Profile: Canson

Urban Sketchers is so pleased to be working with Canson again for the 3rd International Urban Sketching Symposium in Santo Domingo. This year Canson is participating as a Gold sponsor, and will provide a special edition sketchbook for Symposium participants that will be waiting for you in Santo Domingo.

In addition to the fine art papers Canson has been producing since 1557, we especially love working with them because of their commitment to artists. Their new site artistrendezvous.cansonstudio.com is a place for artists to exhibit work online and to participate in a community of artists through member profiles, forums, and groups based on your artistic interests. They also work with artists, such as our own Veronica Lawlor, to create art for their drawing pads and sketchbooks.

Visit www.cansonstudio.com, like them on Facebook facebook.com/canson, follow them on Twitter twitter.com/cansonpaper, and sign up for the 3rd International Urban Sketching Symposium in Santo Domingo.

For Symposium sponsorship opportunities contact Elizabeth Alley at elizabeth@urbansketchers.org.

Patriots Huddle

In 1895, on the rocky ledge of a tiny hill in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a local farmer named John Lannon found a British sword when moving a boulder. He also found a flattened musket ball. The ledge, overlooking the road that Paul Revere rode, (and a short distance from where he was arrested), is now known as the site of “Parker’s Revenge.”

John Parker certainly wanted revenge and so did his cohorts. Parker was the Captain of the Lexington Militia and it was his men who confronted the British at dawn on their town’s green in what became known as the Battle of Lexington. Eight colonists were killed and ten were wounded that morning before the British marched off to Concord.

Gathering many of his men, including some of the injured, Captain Parker re-engaged the British later that day as they battled their way back to Boston in retreat. This time, the minutemen didn’t face their enemy in line-formation as they did earlier. Instead, they ambushed them from the rocky ledge located at a bend in the road. One shot knocked the British Colonel Smith off his horse with a hit to the thigh. The columns of Redcoats were stopped in their tracks, allowing the Lexington Militia to continue to fire from close range.

Eventually, the British drove the patriots away, but the delay in their forward progress allowed for another ambush just a few hundred yards down the road.

Walking the Battle Road on the weekend of Patriots Day, I too, came across a nervous band of patriots and not far from “Parker’s Revenge.” Turns out, it was the modern version of the Lexington Minute Men. I sat on a stone wall and sketched as the leader of the group prepared his men for a reenactment of the famous skirmish scheduled in a short hour’s time.

The commander showed impatience with his rag tag group. He was concerned the coordination of musket fire was sloppy. Over and over they practiced how the two rows of men should fire and reload. He was insistent they get it right before engaging in battle. Captain Parker would be proud.


You follow along with Fred's drawing project at Paul Revere's Ride Revisited.

Making of - Part 01

Making of the short film about my work - part 01.
(Sketching an alley off Sunset Drive).

Patrizia Torres in Berlin

I meet Patrizia at the Lisbon Symposium last year. I love her work. Her portraits are very accurate and she always add some text, highlights from the conversation she is having with the characters.
I always said to myself I have to include more text in my sketches, so this is one of the reasons I admire Patrizias sketches, if you want to see  the other reasons take a look at her posts in Urban Sketchers Spain or her photostream in Flickr

After walking all day we sat to eat in this Restaurant. I was more interesting in catching the light than the resemblance.

There is this Cafe on the River with a view to the Oberbaumbrücke. I draw last time when Marina Grechanik was here. So this time I changed the view.

We visited later the exhibition from Berlin Correspondent Catalina Somolinos in Cafe Colectivo.

So people if you come to Berlin don't forget to contact me to go and sketch together! I am becoming a great sketcher guide with perfects spots to sketch with all kinds of weather! 

Hard To Say....

What I love more..Shoe shopping or drawing the other ladies that do. 'Tis the shoe sale season.

dance dance davis!

Recently I was invited to sketch a large community dance project called "Dance Dance Davis". It was being organized by Shelly Gilbride's group Public Dance Acts in collaboration with the UC Davis Theater & Dance dept, and, with community performance projects in my own background, I was delighted to be involved. The main event was to be in the form of a flashmob, and several free public rehearsals were organized by Shelly in which the moves of the dance were taught, learnt, owned by the dancers, many of whom had never danced publicly before. I was drawn to how effortlessly inclusive and accessible the whole project was, something I'm a big promoter of when it comes to the arts. For my part, it was a chance to draw something fun, and be quick about it!

I first went to a rehearsal at the Davis Art Center, at which there were around 30 people. All in all 200 people signed up, and all came to the final rehearsal at the Mondavi Center, which I sketched at the top of this post. Shelly explained that every single move in the dance routine was 'crowdsourced', that is, invented by members of the Davis public. She would go around town, and ask people to come up with a move, a pose, an everyday gesture, perhaps one that said "Davis". All were incorporated into the dance, and along with some upbeat music, the dancers got to work learning it. I didn't dance, but my pens did, quickly bouncing all over the page capturing as much of the movement as possible. I am used to drawing things that stay in one place, like fire hydrants, so this was very liberating. (I did go home and draw little cartoons of dancing fire hydrants though).

Music was provided by local 50s-style rockabilly group Jenny Lynn and her Real Gone Daddies, who played live at the final rehearsal. They were scheduled to play at the weekly Picnic in the Park, by the Wednesday Davis Farmer's Market in Central Park, and so that was where the flashmob was to be scheduled. I pulled up early to get a drawing of the band as they played before an ever growing crowd of people (not seen here!) in the park. At 6:15pm the singer Jenny Lynn announced, "Are you ready to Dance Dance Davis?" at which point those two hundred dancers, dotted around the park, fell on their backs and mimed riding a bike upside down, before the song began.

It was tricky drawing a crowd of 200 flashmobbing dancers plus many more bewildered-ish spectators moving and grooving in the space of three minutes, but I gave it a go. It was a hot hot Davis evening too, so fair play to the participants. When it was all done, the dancers dispersed, the music carried on, the community felt uplifted. Here is a nice video of the event by I See Davis called "Surprise for Davis"; see if you can spot me sketching. I can't wait to sketch something else like this!

 

By Pete Scully

Public Gardens

...two very different scenes...
I visited Huntington Gardens this week in San Marino, California, and was startled to see the upended roots of the giant oak that's long greeted visitors near the entrance. Apparently it wasn't doing well and our windstorm in December weakened it badly. Surprising too to see this "behind the scenes" operation in full view on the normally peaceful lawn of the garden...

  

I visited another favorite local public garden,
Descanso Gardens in La Canada,
on a busy Mother's Day with lots of families...

Shibuya, Tokyo

What a sight: sitting in Starbucks (you have to compromise when you're on holiday) watching the phenomenon that is the Shibuya Crossing. Mass migration of Tokyoites every 5 minutes

Shibuya Crossing in the rain