Drawing Attention – September 2015

Urban Sketchers Events and Workshops

Even if you didn’t attend the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Singapore, you can still share in the learning. These Symposium instructors have generously offered handouts from their workshops for free download!

Richard Alomar

Behzad Bagheri

Shari Blaukopf

Matthew Brehm

Simo Capecchi

Marina Grechanik and Ea Ejersbo

Virginia Hein

Miguel Herranz and Inma Serrano

Marc Holmes

Nina Johansson

Sanjeev Joshi

Ch’ng Kiah Kiean

Lapin

Jim Richards

Liz Steel

Suhita Shirodkar

Be inspired by these Urban Sketchers workshops scheduled for October:

Suhita Shirodkar is offering Capturing Chaos: Drawing a Crowd, Oct. 10, in San Francisco.

Painting in Ischia Island around Aragonese Castle, Oct. 8 – 11, will be offered in Naples, Italy, by Simo Capecchi, Caroline Peyron and Kelly Medford.

Reportage sketching of the “Farm to Plate” process in Chatham County, North Carolina, is the subject of a workshop with Stacye Leanza Oct. 22 – 25.

More than a hundred sketchers gathered in San Diego for the third annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketch Crawl. Shown here, Balboa Park was the site of the all-day Saturday sketch crawl.

The third annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketch Crawl in San Diego was a huge success, according to Jim Bumgarner. “We had a total of 108 sketchers who enjoyed beautiful skies and perfect temps at all three events: Friday’s ‘Meet N Greet,’ Saturday’s all-day sketch crawl in Balboa Park and Sunday’s sketching in Old Town,” Jim said. “Lydia Velarde and her local team of planners put together a spectacular event.”

News from Urban Sketchers Communities

Sketchers of all ages took part in a sketch crawl and workshop with USk Switzerland.

Urban Sketchers Switzerland took part in a sketch crawl and led sketching workshops at Foundation Beyeler in August. Andre Sandmann said that the family-focused event attracted many kids to participate.

Urban Sketchers Texas exhibited their sketchbooks at the Montgomery County Library-South County branch in August. According to Judith Dollar’s blog post, the display also included popular books about urban sketching.

Sao Paolo USk is high on sketching — from the rooftop of the Museum Catavento.

USk São Paulo was invited to sketch from the rooftop of the Museum Catavento in downtown São Paulo, an area normally closed to the public, according to Ronaldo Kurita. Reproductions of the sketches were displayed at the museum in July and August. In addition, Carlos Medeiros and Ronaldo held weekly 30-minute workshops for children to learn about urban sketching last month.

Omar Jaramillo reports that Urban Sketchers Germany will meet for the first time Sept. 4 – 6 in Darmstadt. “This Art Deco city in the center of Germany will host around 60 sketchers from Germany, Switzerland, Austria and other neighboring countries,” Omar said. An exhibition of sketchbooks will take place after the sketch crawl.

USk Ukraine sketching in Chernihiv

Urban Sketchers Ukraine ventured out for its first sketch outing to another part of the country in August — to the ancient city of Chernihiv in the north. “Chernihiv is abundant with history, religion, and most hospitable people,” said Natalia Litvinenko. “With churches seen everywhere peeping out of the enveloping greenery, it was a pleasure to walk and sketch while still hiding in the shade from the summer heat.”

After USk San Diego went on a trolley-sketching tour in April, Plein Air magazine’s online edition, Outdoor Painter, asked Lydia Velarde to contribute an article about the group’s event. The article talks about how the sketchers faced all the usual on-location challenges of plein air work compounded by a more unusual one: sketching each trolley only while it was stopped at each station for 10 minutes!

Swasky and Rolf Schroeter are offering a free workshop and drawing meeting in Mallorca as part of the Festival Còmic Nostrum Oct. 10 – 11. For details, see the Facebook event.

Beliza Mendes is excited to announce that Urban Sketchers Luxembourg has just started up! The new blog will be up soon. See the group’s Flickr pool.

Sketchers in Action

Mark Payton exhibited his sketches from riding the bus in Rochester, NY.

Mark Payton’s first solo art exhibition was at the Rochester, NY, Transit Center last month. Called “Snap Shots by Hand,” the exhibit consisted of five years’ worth of sketches Mark made while riding the bus.

Ken and Roberta Avidor of St. Paul (USA) bicycled a hundred miles from Bemidji to Brainerd and sketched their adventures along the way.

Dan Peterson of Cardiff, Wales, posted his excellent sketch reportage of a rescue mission of more than 900 migrants in the Mediterranean.

Liz Steel of Urban Sketchers Sydney (Australia) is offering a new online sketch course called Edges beginning Sept. 2. The four-week course will explain how to discern different types of edges, to represent them in different media and to incorporate this understanding into our work.

Montreal (Canada) urban sketcher Marc Taro Holmes has a new Craftsy class: “Travel Sketching in Mixed Media.” The seven-part video lesson covers drawing in pen and ink and tinting with watercolor as well as sketching directly with watercolor. Urban sketchers visiting Marc’s blog will receive a $20 discount. Marc’s first Craftsy course, “People in Motion,” is currently discounted, too.

Shout it Out in Drawing Attention! 

Not seeing anything about you or your Urban Sketchers group in Drawing Attention? Then we want to hear from you! Please send your urban sketching news items with links and images to: drawingattention@urbansketchers.org. Or tag me, Tina Koyama, on news you post on the Urban Sketchers Facebook page. Subscribe by e-mail. Happy sketching!