Education Committee
EDUCATION DIRECTOR
ANNETTE MORRIS (France) has been teaching Travel Sketching and Urban Sketching workshops since 2017. She has given numerous presentations about drawing on location to inspire people to cultivate a lifelong passion for urban sketching. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions, magazines and art events in France and beyond.
Annette is originally from the UK, but has found the process of on-location drawing has given her a much stronger connection with her adopted homeland and the people that she meets on her travels. Exploring life with a sketchbook helps her uncover the beauty and history of her surroundings. As a Visual Storyteller, she finds that sketching from observation brings a deeper appreciation of the every day and understanding of local culture, all celebrated through lines, shapes and colour.
Life in rural France is a constant source of inspiration for her creativity and wellbeing. Drawing scenes of daily life and painting with watercolour has become Annette’s passion and her joy.
Annette is a highly active member of the USk community and founder of the USk Languedoc-Roussillon Chapter. She is regularly seen sketching towns and villages of the area, but when not out sketching or teaching she is busy painting in her studio or walking in local vineyards with her dog.
Annette Morris is the USk Education Director since December 2023.
EDUCATION COORDINATOR
LUDWINE VAN CRAENENBROECK – “Ludi” (Belgium) is a multifaceted creative. With a Master’s degree in art history and studies in globalization, Ludi offers a unique perspective and deep appreciation for art and cultural diversity. During her extensive travels abroad, Ludi discovered the power of sketching as a tool to connect with the world, fostering meaningful interactions. Her commitment to promoting the art of urban sketching and facilitating meaningful artistic experiences shines through her dedicated efforts as the USK Workshop Coordinator. Since 2019, she has been involved with the workshops program, the reportage grant, USK Talks and in her local chapter.
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.
www.janeblundellart.blogspot.com
VIRGINIA HEIN Virginia Hein is an artist, author, and art instructor from Los Angeles, California.
She counts herself lucky to have worked as an artist in one form or another throughout her life, as a concept and character designer for toys and entertainment, art director, illustrator, and teacher. She taught drawing at Otis College of Art and Design for 13 years, and now focuses on teaching sketching workshops locally and internationally.
She has been an active member of Urban Sketchers since 2009, and has been honored to teach workshops at five international Urban Sketchers Symposiums.
She has contributed her work to a number of books about location sketching. Her book “5 Minute Sketching Landscapes”, was published by RotoVision, in 2017, and she co-authored “The Urban Sketching Handbook Spotlight on Nature”, Quarry Books, 2022, with Gail L. Wong. Virginia considers drawing to be her first language, and continues to find drawing a path of discovery and joy.
Instagram: @virginiahein
Website: vheinstudio.com
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
SHARI BLAUKOPF is a Montreal-based workshop instructor, watercolor 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 many online sketching courses at Learn.shariblaukopf.com. She’s been part of the Urban Sketchers community since 2012, is the co-founder of USk Montreal, and has given many watercolor workshops both on her own and
internationally 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. You can follow her sketches on her blog at shariblaukopf.com or on 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
