Wow! Urban sketching – I love it! Being out in the town, with minimal equipment, recording the contemporary urban scene before me – street furniture and waste bins – as well as the architecture.
With so many people now interested in Urban Sketching, Sketchbooking and Journaling, in April 2025, I decided to start running sketching workshops, to help bring sketching to a wider audience – with whom I could pass on some of my skills and passion, for this art form.
My range of Sketching workshops can be seen here, and I have a dedicated Facebook page here.
The Urban Sketching movement is huge, with ‘chapters’ in virtually every city around the globe – I belong to the Urban Sketchers Bournemouth & Poole chapter. On a sketching your of South Wales in February 2025, I was invited to join the Urban Sketchers Abergavenny and Hay-on-Wye, groups. Thanks guys 😉
Urban sketching meets are very welcoming, to all abilities and are a great place for rubbing shoulders with other sketchy types and socialising over a coffee, afterwards.
The concept behind urban sketching, is to get out there and only ever sketch the scene ‘live’ and in the field (well, town). Travelling light, with minimal kit, we aim to record the scene as it is – traffic lights, graffiti, road signs – a true reflection of all the ugliness of the real world.
There are thousands of Urban Sketchers groups around the world and the principle, is to capture a series of pics to portray the sketch within the live scene and to also show a flat pic of the sketch ,as well as a pic of the scene itself. Aiming to demonstrate one’s faithfulness to the Urban Sketching principle – as well as to the scene itself.
These days, I never leave home without at least an A6 sketchbook, 2B pencil and an ink pen. 🙂
