By Shari Blaukopf, Montreal, Canada Although spring is definitely here, the early mornings are a little cool and I’m still sketching in my car. That means that the views I have when I go into Old Montreal are just the tops of buildings. But what buildings they are. Each one an important piece of Montreal […]
by Shari Blaukopf in Toronto, Canada This past weekend, on my way to Chicago, I got stuck in Toronto because of a cancelled flight. The earliest flight I could get on was in six hours. Luckily I was at the Toronto Island airport so downtown was only a short hop away. My Chicago plan was […]
The Gran Teatro, Havana’s stunning Old-World opera house, near the Capitolio. Breathtaking. That’s the word that keeps cropping up when I try to describe Havana, after traveling there twice in June. Our first trip was leading the 5-day “Sketch Cuba” tour, and included urban sketchers Veronica Lawlor, Julia Margaret Hurst, Julia Sverchuk, Jason Roberts, Eve […]
Here are three more sketches continuing the theme of drawing in my own back yard, so to speak. I recently mentioned how I only seem to draw on my travels and since I travel so rarely these days, my drawing was bound to suffer. I’ll be posting plenty more Crown Heights and Brooklyn drawings as […]
[Guest Post by Delphine Doreau in Los Angeles] For a long time I was very comfortable with gray. Blue, and especially blue skies, was a luxury in Paris or San Francisco where I lived, something joyful to experience with delight…and rarely sketch. Blue was out of my comfort zone as a sketcher. And then, I […]
did some water colour sketches after a long gap.This is fergussion college campus in india ,pune.Tried to capture the colonial features in essence,rather than detailing the buildings..water colour medium is perfect for such impressionist sketches.Its starting of summer time in India, sun is shining bright in the sky..lovely time to work on light and shadow […]
Por Víctor Alegría C. Hola amigos de Urban sketchers Chile! En este, mi primer post como corresponsal, quisiera mostrar algunos croquis que...
pencil, A 4 pencil, 12 x 19 cm pencil, A 4 pencil, A 4 pencil, A 4 pencil, 12 x 19 cm audience, pencil, 12 x 19 cm audience, pen, A 4 my mother in the cafe Yesterday I enjoyed the guitar music performance at Arki Cafe, Power Vocal building, Sindang-dong, Seoul. 7 guitarists played […]
[By Kiah Kiean in Lisbon] I was invited by Mario Linhares to teach a masterclass and an USk workshop (will have posts under USk Workshop blog) in early March and have the chance to visit and sketch the beautiful city of Lisbon. I manage to do 22 sketches (used 28 quarter imperial watercolour papers and […]
Things are going well with the Give a Little, Get a Sketch fundraiser. So far you have contributed $2507.63! A big thanks to everyone who’s donated! However – We have only 12 days left in this year’s event, and we still need a bit more to reach our $4000 goal. We’d love to hit this […]
By André Sandmann in Zurich Lately, I’ve experimented a lot. The idea of making a drawing in a continuous line is stuck with me. More or less – except for certain details and the hatching – this is an example. How interesting are the lines connecting the elements. For me, this technique also has the […]
It becomes so much fun to flow lines . Trying not to make perfect architectural sketch . The idea is just capturing the atmosphere…. if you are happy in 7 minutes why should you spend much more time that some times ended in unhappiness ?
У нас есть друзья, которые живут в крошечной деревушке в Дербишире под названием Литтл Лонгстоун, примерно в получасе езды от Шеффилда. Их дети будут креститься в следующем месяце в этой чудесной старой часовне, расположенной прямо на холме от их дома. Сегодня утром они попросили меня сделать небольшой набросок для [...]...
It’s been a week since I returned from Barcelona and I am only now finding the time to scan some sketches from my two weeks there. But before I go any further I have to thank the small army of people who made the 4th Urban Sketchers Symposium so wonderful— the local organizing committee, the […]
Since December I have spent about 5 weeks in Seoul, Korea. I always stay at the Grand Hyatt. Love that joint. There is a grand lobby with a beautiful bar overlooking the entire city of Seoul. It sits in front of 30 foot windows. Very impressive. I’m not much of a fancy boy but I […]
Every once in a while I receive an email from a sketcher (or a potential sketcher) somewhere in the world asking what book I would recommend to them as an urban sketcher. My go-to book for anyone n…
I was at the sweetest, happiest wedding reception this weekend. And of course, I took along my sketchbook and watercolors. Trouble is, I forgot to pack a paintbrush. So I finger-painted. Not very elegant, but very good fun. Everything happened so, so quickly, I had to draw super-quick to catch any of the action. Here […]
If you are up for some delightful chaos, you are in the right place!
The summer is almost over and I realize that my sketches are long overdue from the workshop that Marc Holmes and I held in Old Montreal at the beginning of August. We spent most of the week prior worrrying that it might rain on our parade, but fortunately the downpour held off until the very […]
It's impressive how consistent practice over some period of time can improve our skills. This applies to various kinds of things, but today, we'd like to focus on artistic growth. The Reddit community ‘Art Progress Pics’ allows artists to show their work and prove how hard work pays back. The members share the photos of their works and compare how they looked when they were starting, and how they got better after they invested some time and persistently practiced to master their skills.
[Guest post by André Wee in New York City] Scribbling and dotting into a sketchbook, while trying not to make a scene, has become an almost daily activity for me while commuting between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Over the past 2 months, I have started turning my train ride into my own ‘private’ drawing playground. […]
There is beauty to be had in every aspect of our life and surroundings; this is a fact that every artist knows, enjoys, exploits and also uses to create his or her own version of art. Many people can wax poetic about the breathtaking vistas of nature and this is indeed easy to do as the beauty there is unusual and untouched. This is also true of the past where there were buildings and structures that really used a person’s ingenuity and imagination to come up with the most fantastic structures. This becomes really obvious when you look at the beautiful castles around the world, where fantasies seems to have come true.
Ce 17 janvier, j'avais rendez-vous avec Bénédicte Klène et Fleur pour dessiner à la Ruche, un ensemble d'atelier d'artistes, un endroit franchement étonnant, à voir ici. Vraiment merci Benedicte de nous avoir fait entrer dans ce lieu incroyable. Des murs, des toits, des cheminées, des petites fenêtres bizarres, j'adore!
We are all the stars of our own story and one illustrator is showing people what they would look like if their story was on the pages of a comic book. Indonesian artist Rudi, has pulled in 37.5k followers on his Instagram page @rudi10297 and 10k on his @rudi1097 page with his impressive black and white drawings of people re-imagined as anime-style cartoon characters.
We are all the stars of our own story and one illustrator is showing people what they would look like if their story was on the pages of a comic book. Indonesian artist Rudi, has pulled in 37.5k followers on his Instagram page @rudi10297 and 10k on his @rudi1097 page with his impressive black and white drawings of people re-imagined as anime-style cartoon characters.
After the Barcelona symposium, my wife Patti and I spent a delightful day exploring the coastal town of Sitges, about 35 kilometers southwest of Barcelona. The town is sometimes called the Saint-Tropez of Spain, and it definitely feels you’ve arrived at the western rim of the Mediterranean Riviera. Narrow streets between sun-drenched stone architecture lead […]
We hold monthly sketchcrawls here in Davis, California (called “Let’s Draw Davis!”), and this month’s one, held a week before the worldwide ‘crawl, was held on a lovely spring Saturday along historic G Street. There were about fourteen of us out sketching, and I chatted with locals passing by while drawing the intersection of 2nd […]
Por Víctor Alegría Hoy quiero mostrarles unos sketchs que hice en uno de los barrios tradicionales de Santiago poniente de mayor variedad ...
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We are all the stars of our own story and one illustrator is showing people what they would look like if their story was on the pages of a comic book. Indonesian artist Rudi, has pulled in 37.5k followers on his Instagram page @rudi10297 and 10k on his @rudi1097 page with his impressive black and white drawings of people re-imagined as anime-style cartoon characters.
Sometimes I sketch a street, a building, something from the urban landscape around me. And it just doesn’t look right. Usually what I missing is the people. People passing by, crowds, the lone person making their way down an alley- they are all such an integral part of the urban landscape. And drawing them is […]
I made a visit to an old town in Germany, just across the border from where I live in the Netherlands. It’s located just south of Aachen, in the steep hills of the Eiffel region. The old part of the town is hidden in a tiny valley, and a huge medieval castle is looming over […]
TUESDAY TIPS & TRICKS Urban sketching is a crazy collection of whatever skills you can bring to the table. There are those who sketch with paints/watercolors, colored pencils, pen and ink, graphite, markers and even dry erase markers. It's all good. As they say in the south, "dance with the date you brought." I am one of a number of urban sketchers who has found comfort in the use of markers. Our styles range from a tighter, realistic style to a loose energetic style and everything in between. For example, check out the range of styles between Lisa Flahive http://flahive.fineartstudioonline.com/collections/48778, and Donald Owen Colley http://buttnekkiddoodles.com. Both have styles I greatly admire. By the way, much like picking out paint brushes, there is a large variety of marker tip sizes and shapes available, from very fine pens, brush tips to chisel and calligraphy tips (also known as nibs in some places). The advantages of using markers is that they are fast-drying, blendable with other colors, and come in an assortment of colors and kits. For example, you can pick up a set of cool greys, warm greys, basic colors, earthy colors and pastel colors. These are great if you can identify in which color palette your sketches normally reside. Of course, you can always mix and match to create your own customized marker set. I will cover the many popular brands of markers available in my “Part II of Urban Sketching with Markers.” Many people have asked me about my secrets to using markers. Here are a few tips that I like to use which may be of interest to you. (Click on the image below to enlarge it for better viewing and detail). Step 1: I like to sketch out my scene in pencil or fine point pen. Step 2: Using the Push Fade and Pull Fade techniques, I will add color. You can notice that, by lifting the marker during the stroke, you can achieve some nice graduation in color. Step 3: Now I can go back over the original color strokes and overlap them with secondary strokes to add more color or more dimension. Often I will add pastel colors and pick up the sky tones, skin tones and reflections to add energy to the sketch.
