Meet the Correspondent: Marina Grechanik > Tel-Aviv, Israel$show=/search/label/Marina%20Grechanik


"Sketching is one of my passions. I don't feel comfortable when I leave home without a sketchbook and some pens in my bag. I think that my way to put things in my memory is to draw them. And taking pictures isn't the same thing.

I live in a very dynamic surrounding — Israel is a warm country with warm weather and warm people. Of course, we have seashores, which calm us a little bit. I love to sit in a corner of some Tel-Aviv coffee shop and explore relationships: between people, their environment, between myself. All this unique local mix of cultures, languages and styles is always a great source for inspiration. You need to be fast, because, as I said, everything is very dynamic. But that's why I love it so much.

Sometimes, I look around, and I find some usual items like sugar bags or napkins. I use them in my drawings to show the atmosphere. Sometimes I draw directly on placemats."

• Marina's art on Flickr.
• Marina's website.

Meet the Correspondent: Tina Koyama > Seattle$show=/search/label/tina%20koyama

"The dictionary says that a hobby is “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation.” Although urban sketching certainly provides both pleasure and relaxation, I don’t think of it as my hobby. I think of it more as a way of life – something that has become such a normal part of my everydayness that it shapes how I view the world.

For most of my life I had both the fear of drawing as well as the desire to draw. In 2011, inspired by Gabi Campanario’s Seattle Sketcher column, I finally decided to overcome the fear. His drawings of Seattle – my birthplace and lifelong home – were of sights that I had seen many times, yet had never truly seen. I wanted to learn to see, and therefore experience, those locations (and any new ones that I travel to) more completely. Part 8 of the Urban Sketchers Manifesto, to “show the world, one drawing at a time,” has a flip side: Sketching enables me to see my own world, one drawing at a time.

In the last four years, it is not an exaggeration to say that Urban Sketchers has changed my life. I have met and sketched with many wonderful people around the globe, either at symposiums or during other travel, because the USk network brought us together. I sketch almost weekly with my local group, sharing sketches, art supplies and friendship. Even when I stay home and enjoy sketches online, I am still a part of that rich network, learning with every sketch about other people’s lives.

In May, my husband Greg and I went to France for the first time, and I sketched the Eiffel Tower. Sketching one of the world’s most famous icons felt like a dream come true – the ultimate in urban sketching. But although I can’t resist sketching world-famous icons whenever I’m fortunate enough to see them, for me, urban sketching is much more than that.

Urban sketching is a tree with its middle chopped away to accommodate Seattle’s ubiquitous power lines. It’s about a couple of women chatting over coffee, or about workers roofing the house next door. It’s about an excavator filling a hole where a cherry tree once stood. Or the Tibetan monastery I drive by frequently that I couldn’t resist because it’s bright orange. Urban sketching is a string band performing at a local farmers’ market – or perhaps in Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Celebrating the mundane as well as the famous is what urban sketching is all about. My sketches are not necessarily about “special” moments; they are moments made special because I sketched them."

Tina has been editor of Drawing Attention since 2013 and now serves on the Urban Sketchers editorial board. See more of her sketches on her blog, on Flickr and on Instagram.

Meet the Correspondent: Pete Scully > Davis, Calif.$show=/search/label/Pete%20Scully



"I am from urban north London, but now live in urbane Davis California. I sketch, I write, sometimes do things and go places and my name is Pete.

When not Davis, I sketch Sacramento, San Francisco, London, or anywhere else I happen to be. I tend to erase people and cars from my cities, but I'm starting to get over this.

Davis: calm, old-fashioned, progressive, quirky, very very hot in the summer. I use micron and copic pens, with watercolour."

• Pete's blog.
• Pete's art on Flickr.

Meet the Correspondent: Suhita Shirodkar > San Jose, Calif.$show=/search/label/Suhita%20Shirodkar

"I was born in Mumbai (Bombay) and lived in different parts of India until I moved to San Jose, California, where I now live.

Travel inspires my art, but, traveling or not, I try to view the world around me as a traveller would; so whether I’m capturing a moment of calm on the banks of the Ganges in India, or sketching over coffee at my local coffee shop, I aim to look deeply, and with wonder, at both the everyday and the exotic, the old and the new.

I love color. My sketch kit consists of Extra Fine Sharpies (the fact that they bleed into the paper as soon as they touch it works really well for me—it forces me to work super-quick), a small set of Prismacolor pencils and a little watercolor travel set".
• Blog
• Flickr

Meet the Correspondent: Omar Jaramillo > Berlin$show=/search/label/Omar%20Jaramillo

"I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where I studied architecture. I moved to Kassel (Germany) in 1999 to accomplish a master degree. Although I have always drawn and paint, it was not until I started studying in the Uni-Kassel, that I started keeping a travel sketchbook. I had a teacher there who used to do a lot of sketches when he travelled on university excursions. When he retired, I helped to organize an exhibition of his sketches. He brought a huge box full of sketchbooks he had filled since he was an architecture student. I spent a whole day selecting the most interesting drawings. It was a wonderful experience that opened my eyes to a new world. In the last 10 years I have the feeling of being in a long journey. I like to discover the cities where I live, to understand why a place is the way it is and what makes it different and unique from others. Drawing is for me a way to learn to love a place, to become part of it. I like to draw architecture but I am more attracted to urban scenery, portraying how people live in the city. Since I’m a foreigner, everything that locals find normal and taken-for-granted, for me is exotic. I always carry a small watercolor travel set from Windsor and Newton and my sketchbook in my bag. I always thought that drawing was a solitary experience until I found Urban Sketchers. It was amazing to find so many people doing the same thing. It is a great place to share!" • Omar's blog. • Omar's art on flickr. • Omar's website.

Meet the Correspondent: Luis Ruiz > Malaga, Spain$show=/search/label/Luis%20Ruiz

Education Committee


EDUCATION DIRECTOR

RITA SABLER (Portland, OR USA) has taught Urban Sketching courses at the Pacific Northwest College of Art since 2016. She has presented numerous lectures and workshops on drawing inspiring diverse audiences to cultivate a lifelong passion for urban sketching. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions around Portland and beyond.
Drawing is Rita’s therapy, her passion, and her refuge. It is her way of understanding and communicating with the world around her. Rita’s main areas of interest are Reportage Illustration, Travel Sketching, and Visual Storytelling are, and she is often seen on street corners capturing busy markets, festivals, protestors, musicians, and regular citizens living their life in both ordinary and extraordinary ways.

Rita holds a B.A. degree in Psychology and Art, an M.A. in Linguistics, and a Masters in Interface Design from The Elisava School of Design in Barcelona. When not sketching or teaching she is a busy designer, parent, and a tango pianist.
Rita Sabler is the USk Education Director since  late 2019.


COMMITTEE MEMBERS

JANE BLUNDELL is an Australian artist and teacher who’s been sketching, drawing and painting since she was a child. She holds a BA Visual Arts majoring in etching and a Grad. Dip. Art Ed. and has taught for almost 30 years. She has had four solo exhibitions, participated in a number of group shows and won a number of awards. She works in a range of media, but her favorite is watercolor. In urban sketching she particularly loves to find the beauty in the rusty and decrepit details. She teaches regular classes in Sydney and on-line and loves to travel and give demonstrations and workshops all over the world.



VIRGINIA HEIN was born in LA, California, and the landscape of the city has always been her favorite subject. She has worked as a concept and character designer for toys and entertainment, and as art director, illustrator and fine artist. Currently she teaches drawing at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, as well as sketching workshops. She posts regularly as a correspondent on Urban Sketchers, and has contributed her work to a number of books about sketching on location. Her book “5 Minute Sketching: Landscape” was published in Sept., 2017. Her work on location can also be seen on flickr and her blog.






NINA JOHANSSON (Stockholm, Sweden) grew up in Umeå in Northern Sweden, lives and works in Stockholm since 1996. Graduated from University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm 2002, and teaches arts, design and computer graphics. She also paints, mainly watercolours, and does some illustration work. Drawing has always been an important part of her life, and urban life is what makes her tick artistically. Stockholm is a constant source of inspiration for her sketchbooks. Blog




ROB SKETCHERMAN (Hong Kong) Self-taught and crediting comic books for teaching him how to draw Rob only learned about the practice of recording and sharing one’s life through urban sketching a few years ago. Compelled to simplify and downsize in his cosy Hong Kong home, and inspired by David Hockney’s embrace of the iPad as a medium, he decided to go completely digital at the beginning of 2014, embracing the speed and versatility of working with what he often refers to as his Ultimate Mobile Digital Studio. Using the app Procreate with his iPad Pro and Apple Pencil has allowed him to work quickly and mess-free from any location in seconds.

Rob now loves the immediacy of responding to sights, smells, sounds and snippets of stories of as they unfold before him. His work has since taken him around the world on commissions and workshops, where he leads people of all stripes to use iPads on their own journeys of recording their lives and making art on the street.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robsketcherman/
Website: www.sketcherman.com

SWASKY is a Catalan-Spanish artist and art teacher from Barcelona. He holds degrees in Fine Arts and Audiovisual Communication from Barcelona universities and also attended Nottingham Trent University in England. A trained photographer and videographer, Swasky shifted his interest to drawing as a way to show the world after joining the Urban Sketchers online community. Swasky’s first book, “Voltant per Sants" ("Going around Sants"), was just published in January of 2012. Blog | Flickr



SHARI BLAUKOPF  is a Montreal-based teacher, painter and sketch blogger who loves to travel and share her love of sketching. She’s the author of The Urban Sketching Handbook: Working with Color, and you can find her online courses Sketching Landscapes in Pen, Ink and Watercolor and Sketching the City in Pen, Ink and Watercolor on Bluprint.com. She’s been part of the Urban Sketchers community since 2012, is a co-founder of Urban Sketchers Montreal, and has given many workshops at USk symposia and through the Urban Sketchers Workshop Program. Her watercolors are in corporate, government and private collections in North America and abroad, and she’s a signature member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour.

Blog: www.shariblaukopf.com
Website: www.blaukopfwatercolours.com
Instagram @sharisketcher



PETER RICHARDS (South-East Queensland, Australia) is a practicing architect and urban designer in Australia. He is a champion of collaborative design and is well known for his drawing skills to inform and reveal design thinking through design workshops. He regularly teaches design thinking and drawing at university in architecture and broader professional development programs. He has sketched on location for more than 30 years and has been an active member of Urban Sketchers Brisbane since 2017. He was one of the initiators and organizers of the successful Brisbane Sketchfest in October 2019.

Web : designthinkingdrawing.com
Instagram pr_designthinkingdrawings


ED HARKER (Bath, UK) is a Nursery/Kindergarten teacher by training, and until recently the head-teacher of an Infant school in Bath, UK. He started daily drawing from life in 2011 and began urban sketching after reading Nina’s blog while researching portable paint palettes! He introduced drawing from life as a part of his school’s curriculum soon after, and has been sharing his sketching progress through a blog since 2012.

He is an avid explorer of sketching materials, resources and techniques, and most weekends can be found sketching around Bath or with the lovely local Bristol USk group. Ed has joined sketch-crawls in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Girona and Cordoba, and sketched in Japan, Italy, Turkey, Austria, France, Portugal, and Romania; the welcoming worldwide USk community is a beautiful thing!
Blog: mostlydrawing.com

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