Symposium 2017: Opening Day

[by Wes Douglas, Symposium Correspondent in Chicago, USA]

For the visiting Urban Sketchers to Chicago this week, there is apparently an unwritten rule that upon arriving you must sketch or paint Cloud Gate (or “The Bean,” a name at which sculptor/artist Amish Kapoor would cringe). After a morning walking tour of the Museum Campus, Buckingham Fountain and Maggie Daly Park, I treated my fellow sketch correspondents Beliza Mendes and Vincent Desplanche to the more than popular Cloud Gate.

Our team of correspondents then returned to the Goodman Center to capture the activities during the Registration portion of the Symposium. Here is a sketch of the flurry of participants interested in the products and techniques offered by our impressive parade of sponsors.

By mid-afternoon, those who were interested were invited to join in on the first sketch crawl of the Symposium at the north and south gardens of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Once the sketch walkers returned from their excursion to the Art Institute, attendees were treated to the dance moves of the Foy School of Irish Dancers. One of the experiments I wanted to try was in response to the question “How do you capture motion from moving subjects such as dancers?” Here are my visual responses:

 

And the highlight of the night was the Opening Ceremonies, with an introduction from USK President Amber Sausen and the keynote by USK Founder Gabriel Campanario. All of the activities were live streamed on YouTube by Rob Sketcherman, Andrew Banks and other volunteers.

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