We've Come a Long, Long Way!

Time to take a look at the humble beginnings of my ''urban sketching'', a movement started in 2007 by Gabriel Campanario, who grounded Urban Sketchers. The idea basically is visual journalism; recording daily life from life, not from photos. You take your sketchbook with you, drag it out wherever you happen to be and get sketching. Personally, I only became acquainted with the movement much later, I started back sketching for myself in about 2006 having previously only drawn for teaching demos, design and illustration. Let’s take a peek at what I was up to in 2007 and boy, have me and my sketching come a long, long way! 

This was a Moleskine notebook which I chose because it was hardbacked (no necessity to sit at a table or drag around a drawing board), the paper was nice and thick and it had an elastic band to keep it closed. The downside was the paper surface was treated and didn’t take watercolour paint very well. Nowadays, Moleskine have a range of proper sketchbooks, which I must admit I haven’t tried. 

My only equipment was two pencils and my paintbox which I still use. Here we were on a day trip in Barbados with the local bus (more about that in a future post), I was desperate to draw but mortified about putting pencil to paper in front of others, so I crept off while the others were swimming and started sketching. You can see the very tentative results here. Top left, the salty stains of a big wave that splashed onto me while furtively drawing and trying to look like I was enjoying the view. It was a far cry from the confident strokes of today but a start. 

In this sketch I'd got up enough courage to sit at a café in the Careenage in Bridgetown (the capital of Barbados). The Careenage is the port area where ships docked, unloaded supplies and were repaired. The view was across the water and looking at the parliament buildings, incidentally you can see how the watercolour just sits here on the surface of the paper without soaking in. Keeping my head down and sipping slowly on a coffee (I took donks then!) I slowly struggled with perspective, heat, people walking past and the waiter who really wanted to peek at what I was doing. Far from relaxed, the relief as I finished was palpable but it was a start. 

From then on every holiday, or trip involved packing a sketchbook and some drawing stuff and I can’t imagine not drawing when I’m away or out and about. Airports, Doctors waiting rooms, you name it, I've sketched there! 

What’s great about it, it’s relaxing, fun, free (apart from the basics, you don't have to go for the best art supplies) and you can do it everywhere. For artists there is ''Freedom of panorama'', what you can see from the public road, you can draw, (there are a few exceptions, I wouldn’t recommend drawing military installations for example and if you’re in a museum they sometimes have rules, so check them out). 

Urban sketching is something for everyone, there are groups of Urban Sketchers everywhere, so if you like getting together with like minded people, why not give it the go, you don’t have to be Picasso and to be honest, I much prefer looking at my holiday sketches than at my photos. My drawings conjure up sights, sounds and smells of the places I've been and are like taking a mini-break.