Reading Goya’s biography by Robert Hughes, I came across this exceptional black chalk drawing by the Spanish painter. Goya made the drawing not long before he died in 1828 at age 82. That’s an unusual longevity for its time, which…
Fellow urban sketcher James Hobbs asked me a few questions for an article he published in the summer issue of Artists & Illustrators magazine. Mainly, he wanted to know what was my original aim creating Urban Sketchers and whether I’ve been suprised by the…
Last week, a group of Seattle urban sketchers and I visited the jail where these women are incarcerated, the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor. About 30 inmates participated in our workshop and we shared a lot of laughs…
Santo Domingo’s Colonial Zone, home to the oldest European settlement in the Americas, reminded me a lot of my native country of Spain. First you have the churches from the 1500s and whitewashed facades. It’s as if you were strolling…
The title of this post comes from the subject line of an e-mail I received yesterday from my sketcher friend Teresa Lawson in Port Townsend, WA. Her excitement about The Art of Urban Sketching makes me realize that it was all worth…
I never thought the practice of on-location drawing, especially as a group, could have a social purpose, but a recent experience in Caracas proved me wrong. I had the opportunity to visit the capital of Venezuela earlier this month as…
San Francisco-based artist Paul Madonna is the author of “All Over Coffee,” a drawn feature that runs every Sunday in the San Francisco Chronicle. His beautiful drawings of San Francisco’s cityscapes, which he makes on location, sitting on a fold-up stool, were one…
I’m not familiar with Sylvia Plath‘s writing, but I just learned that the acclaimed American poet was also an urban sketcher. The Telegraph announces that a selection of her drawings will be exhibited for the first time at The Mayor Gallery in London, Nov. 2…
People use Moleskine notebooks for all sorts of things. They take notes, doodle, glue receipts and even create three-dimensional paper sculptures out of their pages. Many artists and sketchers also swear by their Moleskines. Their format and portability makes them ideal for…
During the 2nd Urban Sketching Symposium in Lisbon in 2011, I was interviewed for Espaços e Casas, a Portuguese TV broadcast about real estate, architecture, interior design and public spaces.
During our monthly sketchcrawls in Seattle, Frank Ching is just another drawing enthusiast, passing his sketchbook around, giving feedback, asking questions and sharing the jovial atmosphere. But when you see his work, you realize that Frank is no accidental sketcher. Over 35…