Drawing Attention – April 2016

Urban Sketchers News, Events and Workshops

Do you enjoy meeting new people from around the world? Urban Sketchers is looking for volunteers to help the Regional Chapter Coordinator support and communicate with Chapters around the world. Ability to speak another language, familiarity with social media or experience with a basic database would be helpful but not necessary. Commitment of 4-5 hours per month. Please contact markleibowitz810@gmail.com.

Workshop passes are still available for the 7th International Urban Sketchers Symposium in Manchester! Thank you to everyone who registered so far — almost 500 sketchers from all over the world, including instructors, presenters, scholarship winners, volunteers and past hosts. Thanks to vetting by the Education Team, we are able to offer unique and exceptional educational opportunities in addition to a chance to meet people who love sketching as much as you do. We will be sending out the call for hosts for the 2017 Symposium soon. See you in Manchester!

Mike Kowalski is offering a new workshop in Melbourne called “Sketch in the City — Station Series” April 2 and 9.

“Drawing People on Stage,” a workshop by Isabel Carmona, Rolf Schroeter and Swasky, will be held May 27-29 in Brighton, UK.

Jessie Chapman is the new USk Volunteer Coordinator. Jessie will be recruiting potential volunteers throughout the Urban Sketchers community. “With a natural ability to connect people, Jessie will be greatly beneficial to USk,” said USk President Elizabeth Alley.

Visit the western USA this summer at the 4th Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketch Crawl in Tacoma, Washington.

Would you like to see your sketch on the masthead of the Urban Sketchers blog? The masthead (flag) features a new sketch every two weeks. See the submittal guidelines (scroll to the bottom of the page), and send your flag to urbansketchers@gmail.com.

“If you have created a video that captures a USk event or workshop, we would love to include it on our USk Vimeo channel,” said Communications Director Brenda Murray. Please send a note to brenda@urbansketchers.org describing the video details (subject matter, length, date created).

News from Urban Sketchers Communities

Amber Sausen and Daniel Green serve up USk cupcakes to the Twin Cities Urban Sketchers.

The Twin Cities (Minnesota) Urban Sketchers had a sketchcrawl in March at the St. Paul Union Depot to “reboot” interest in the group. Their blog reports that the reboot is off to a good start!

Sketch materials are displayed along with sketches in an exhibit by USk France.

Urban Sketchers France had an exhibition in February as part of the “Urban” festival in Rennes.

Chantal Vincent reports that sketchers in Sydney (Australia) and other sketchers they met at the USk Symposium in Singapore last year just completed a sketch swap. “As a relatively isolated region from other countries, we set out to find a way to grow our connections with overseas groups a little further, sharing our cultures, cityscapes and experiences with others, whilst we further develop our appreciation for theirs,” Chantal said. The response was so enthusiastic that it took three posts on the USk Australia blog to show all the sketches from the exchange. Start here with part 1.

Urban Sketchers Évora

Luís Ançã reports that Urban Sketchers Évora (Portugal) organized their 34th meeting, “Drawing Évora,” in March. The publication Diário do Sul featured an article about the gathering. They also organized an exhibition, “Évora Drawn by Évora Sketchers,” that opened at the event. About 50 people participated.

Urban Sketchers Milan

Although meeting randomly for years, Urban Sketchers Milan has decided to meet monthly this year, according to Riccardo Lovatini. “We enjoy this new habit!” Riccardo said. “We have more and more people joining us and, most of all, the enthusiasm is growing each time we meet and sketch together.” In April the group plans to meet twice, including once for the international World Wide Sketch Crawl Day.

Urban Sketchers Dubai is excited about the group’s first exhibition, which is planned to be an annual event, said Manupriam Seth. The exhibition is in conjunction with Urban Sketch Fest April 8, which will also include workshops and other activities.

The American Society of Landscape Architects and Rutgers University will be sponsoring the second Sketch Out/Loud Event in April to celebrate World Landscape Architecture month through urban sketching. Richard Alomar invites all urban sketchers to participate in the event, which “creates awareness of open space through on-location sketching.” Share sketches online with the hashtag #SKOL2016. For more information, check out the Sketch Out/Loud blog.

Sketchers in Action

USk instructor Suhita Shirodkar was featured in the March 9 San Jose (USA) Mercury News about her series of sketches of local vintage signs. Some of these old signs and landmarks have disappeared even since she has sketched them.

Melanie Reim has a solo show in Santa Domingo.

Melanie Reim (USA) has a solo show through June at Casa Quien in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Another Woman’s Life is a collection of reportage drawings of working women from the Dominican Republic, South Africa, Morocco, Bali and Hong Kong. In addition, the publication Diario Libre featured a short film of Melanie on location documenting a family of Dominican weavers. This film is part of a year-long sabbatical project.

A short clip of a Stefan Marjoram sketching with an iPad will appear on “Digital Generation,” a program about technology, digital culture and entertainment that will broadcast on April 12 on Televisió de Catalunya’s Channel 33 (Spain).

Shout it Out in Drawing Attention! 

Not seeing any news 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!