the sketch journalist

Sketching in museums

2012-01-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

Too cold to draw outdoors? Museums are a great place to indulge in urban sketching during the winter season. I recently sketched at Seattle's Museum of History and Industry for my newspaper column. On the photo, you can see a sketch in progress of the locally famous "toe towing truck."

But as fun as sketching inside a museum is, you may encounter some obstacles. For reasons I can't really understand, some museums have strict rules about sketching, going as far as banning wet media such as watercolors. Are they afraid we'll vandalize their art collections? If that was the intention, a car key could do more damage. I think museums should be more friendly to artists. We are their number one customers!

"The Art of Urban Sketching" hits Singapore bookstores

2011-12-29T00:26:00.000-08:00

"The Art of Urban Sketching" isn't officially out until February, but in Singapore, the city where it's being printed, some sketchers have already gotten their hands on it!

Photo from Urban Sketchers Singapore Facebook Group.

Teoh Yi Chie (pictured left) says in his blog that he got the last copy on the shelf at Basheer bookstore. According to comments on the USK Singapore Facebook group, the bookstore sold out all the 85 copies they had and will refill the shelves as soon as they can.

Teoh Yi Chie is an sketcher and art blogger who reviews art and design books on his site, Parka Blogs. I was thrilled to read his positive review of The Art of Urban Sketching. He also posted this cool video where you can get a feel for those 320-pages of sketching goodness.

From Parka's flickr photostream.

Dibuja Caracas

2011-12-18T02:57:00.000-08:00

Sketch time at the barbershop

2011-11-21T13:58:00.001-08:00

I can finally check the barbershop off my list. Ever since I saw João Catarino's barbershop sketch on the Urban Sketchers blog more than three years ago, I've wanted to sketch while getting my haircut. But I never seemed to muster up the courage to do it. Not being that good at the art of small talk -- a handy skill to have in these situations, I've always feared an avalanche of questions from the hair stylist if I started drawing. But this last time, my itch to break a new pocket Moleskine was bigger than my desire to sit quietly and watch 15 or 20 minutes of potential sketching time go to waste.

"You go right ahead," said the hair stylist when I told her that I'd occupy myself sketching while she trimmed away my hair. She respected that. Didn't give me any strange looks. Didn't ask further questions. She didn't even seemed surprised that I wasn't interested in the football match on TV -- every haircutting station at this "Sports Clips" barbershop is equipped with a giant flat screen tuned to ESPN or whatever sports channel you may want.

At the end, I was happy with my haircut, and with my sketch. I'm pretty sure I'll be coming to "Sports Clips" again.

Turkey time

2011-11-20T11:04:00.000-08:00

Photo by Lisa Sheffield

The things we do to get a sketch! I recently spend some time drawing turkeys for my Seattle Times column. It was pretty scary. I kept having to fight them off with my Niji waterbrushes so they'd stop pecking at my sketchbook. One of them almost grabbed my brush off my hands!

On Facebook, I invited readers to send captions for this photo:

—‎"Hey, back off! He's working on a masterpiece -- ME!" (by Melissa Gong)
—"And why are you not sketching???" (by Nina Khashchina)

Leave your caption as a comment and I'll add you to the list! For more photos from my turkey sketching time you can also visit this flickr set.

And to those celebrating next Thursday's holiday, Happy Thanksgiving!

How to draw horses

2011-11-12T20:40:00.001-08:00

Knowing I would be sketching horses for this week's column, I took a little time to learn about the animals' anatomy beforehand. A Google search on how to draw horses led me to this useful page at elfwood.com, a SciFi/Fantasy art and fiction website.

The article, written and illustrated by Suzanne Jessup, included just what I was looking for: simple diagrams of a horse skeleton and muscles.

Jessup also writes that she's "of the school of thought that you can not draw anything well unless you know how it is put together."

That seems to contradict another rule I also follow: Draw what you see, not what you know. But I think she's still right.

When it comes to drawing live creatures, an understanding of anatomy really pays off. And the same could be said about sketching buildings. Even a basic knowledge of architecture can make a big difference.

Illustration Age

2011-11-09T23:20:00.001-08:00

What a nice surprise to discover my work featured on Illustration Age, a website with a motto I fully support: "Long Live Illustration."

I have to thank one of the new Illustration Age editors, Mark Kaufman, for the shout out to my "sketchpad journalism" —I love the sound of those two words together. Mark is a fellow Seattle-based illustrator and the creator of one of my favorite alternative comic strips out there, American Affairs Desk.

More of Paul Madonna's "All Over Coffee," in print

2011-11-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

Browsing newspapers from other cities at the Seattle Central Library, I looked up Paul Madonna's drawn feature, a "comic strip without the comic," as he calls it, inside The San Francisco Chronicle. It runs inside the "Datebook" section.

The art of Paul Madonna

2011-11-04T23:36:00.000-07:00

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 of the things that inspired me to pitch Seattle Sketcher to my art editors at The Seattle Times in late 2008 — my work in the newsroom at the time focused mainly on infographics and illustration.

Seeing Paul's work, you'll understand why I think newspapers should publish more drawings and illustrated journalism. His work is not only artistically stunning, it also brings a wonderful sense of place to the pages of the Chronicle. I bet readers love it.

Paul's pen and ink compositions aren't quick or sketchy, but carefully rendered and colored. You won't see people in the scenes he draws, yet the atmosphere he manages to create has a life of its own.

A couple of years ago, I had a brief conversation with Paul for this article about illustrators as storytellers. He told me that "All Over Coffee" grew out of hours sketching at cafés, that pastime enjoyed by many an urban sketcher.

Paul is also the only sketcher I now who has his own iPad app.

Cemeteries are great urban sketching locations

2011-10-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Sketching at a cemetery may sound creepy, but it's actually a great way to reflect as you draw. See my drawings over at my Seattle Times blog.

And over on the Urban Sketchers blog there are also great entries for cemeteries.

Sylvia Plath, urban sketcher

2011-10-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

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 through Dec. 16.

The slideshow of Plath's sketches posted by the british newspaper shows the type of everyday scenes urban sketchers are fond of capturing: people sitting at a cafe, a street kiosk and a mismatch of objects laying on the back of a house, to name a few.

The drawings appear methodically rendered, with great attention given to contrast and detail. They are terrific. If only blogs had existed back in her days, we could just go back and pull the writings she may have posted to accompany her sketches. Plath, who took her life in 1963 after a long battle with depression, would have turned 79 today.

Out of this world!

2011-10-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

There are two stories merging on this sketchbook spread. On the left page, my son is striking a pose while we browse Halloween costumes and other scary gadgets at the Party Supply Store.

"Why would I smile?" He quipped when I told him to do so for my sketch. "I have a knife stuck in my head!"

He was right, that smart boy.

The right page also shows my son, among other kids, but in a serious environment: school. That day I was the parent volunteer in the classroom, a job that usually entails stapling sheets of paper, grading tests or other simple tasks. With that kind of help from parents, teachers can spend more time actually teaching.

After completing my task, I couldn't resist doing a few sketches of the kids while they wrote on their journals. And the most fun was grading myself with the cool rubber-stamps I found inside a drawer: "Amazing!" "A Home Run!" "Out of this world!"

That made me feel really good about these sketches. I wonder where I can buy some of those stamps now!

Drawn to strangers

2011-10-22T22:24:00.000-07:00

Photo by Jessilyn Carver

A side benefit of urban sketching is meeting total strangers who stop by to look and chat while you draw around your city. While sketching this old Victorian house, a man went by and asked me if I was "the guy from the newspaper," and then he gave me a thumbs up. I also talked to several Seattle City Light employees who were replacing an old electricity pole across the street. The next door neighbor also wondered what I was doing as she headed out the door with a friend on their way to lunch. "Do you go around drawing houses?"

I always enjoy the brief encounters. They are an opportunity to meet people as they go about their days. When do you ever get to do that? Sometimes the situation also yields a photo-op. In this case, I'm standing in between the person who restored the house and is the subject of my story, Greg Ahmann, and a visitor from California. Her friend Jessilyn inmortalized the occasion and later emailed the photo.

Strangers who care enough to talk to an urban sketcher always turn out to be the nicest people. That's been my experience so far.

61 ways to put your life into a Moleskine

2011-10-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

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 urban sketching. You can whip them out of your pocket at any given moment to draw a commuter on the subway or a scene at the park during your lunch break. After you're done, that elastic band helps keep your precious sketches together until the next sketch opportunity.

Yoko Nakamuta, who knows how much some urban sketchers love their Moleskines, invited me to write about Urban Sketchers for his book, "61 ways to put your life into a Moleskine," which was just published last month in Japan by Diamond Publishing (avaible on Amazon Japan.)

Yoko, the administrator of Moleskinerie Japan, authored the book with fellow Moleskine fans Masatake Hori and Hiroki Takaya. Yoko wrote that "Our book tells not only how to use notebooks and customize them, but also how users enjoy and think their lives with their notebooks. We hope that our readers will find out their own curiosity, charm points, happiness, fun of working and wonder of the world through a black notebook."

I got my copy in the mail a couple of weeks ago. Even if I don't understand a word of Japanese, it's been really fun browsing through it.

The book features 61 Moleskine users and the different ways they use the notebooks. It's divided in six chapters: Moleskine & Notetaking, Moleskine & Daily Life, Moleskine & Travel, Moleskine & Me, Moleskine & Art and Moleskine & Life.

The spread on Urban Sketchers is at the end of the Moleskine & Art chapter, where you can see other examples of the creativity that flourishes inside these notebooks. This spread by and @8hcolor can serve as an example:

Translation
Here's the unedited text I sent to Yoko for the book back in May. I have no idea how much made it into the spread you can see at the top of this post, but I thought you may like to read it in English:

What brings you to launch the Urban Sketchers blog in 2008?
I started sharing my drawings on the web in 2006. Having my own blog not only motivated me to draw more frequently, it helped me to meet other artists around the world who were also blogging sketches of the cities where they lived. In November of 2007 I started Urban Sketchers as a group on flickr, the image sharing website, and a year later I decided to start the Urban Sketchers blog as a showcase of sketches from cities around the world. With the blog, my idea was to bring together a selected group of artists as talented and as diverse as possible with the goal of showing the world, one drawing at a time. Since then, the blog has inspired many more people to start drawing life in their cities. They all can share their sketches in our flickr group and Facebook page. The blog still remains a platform just by invitation. It’s like a media outlet in a way, with correspondents all over the world visually reporting with their sketches what they see in their cities and other places where they travel to.

Please describe your procedure of sketching.
My sketching method is always evolving. Sometimes I draw in sketchbooks, like Moleskine, but other times I draw on bigger spiral-bound sketchbooks. It depends on the situation. Most of the time I draw directly in ink, but sometimes I may use a light pencil to block out some areas first, especially when the perspective and composition are particularly complex. Lately I’m using a Lamy Safari fountain pen and also a Uniball signo. I sketch with waterproof ink so I can add watercolor washes.

What are your favorite writing tools for sketching on Moleskine?
Lately I’ve been enjoying to draw with pencil on cardboard-cover pocket moleskine cahiers. I like the small format for quick sketches while I’m taking public transportation for example.

What do you think about the greatness of sketching? Or what have you discovered through sketching?
Sketching allows you to pay attention to your surroundings. I always have my eyes peeled looking for things to draw. When you’ve lived in a city for a while, it’s also easy to overlook interesting scenes. If you are a sketcher, on the contrary, even the most mundane situation can become interesting to draw. Sketching can also turn a moment of boredom into a creative pastime.

About the NPO (non-profit organization) Urban Sketchers: What is the latest news of the movement? Are some events which we can join held in the close future?
Last year we held our 1st Urban Sketching Symposium in Portland, with people from more than 10 countries attending. The 2nd Symposium will take place in Lisbon in July of 2011, with even more participants and instructors, coming from every continent. It’s one of our goals as a nonprofit to promote drawing on location and to help sketchers connect with each other. We hope to be able to do these events every year. Perhaps soon in Japan!

How spread the movement after Urban Sketchers turned into NPO?
Becoming a nonprofit allows us to organize events and ask for donations. Urban Sketchers started as a blog, but as a nonprofit we can do more to serve the artists who practice location drawings. I want to be able to raise money so we can fund sketching projects around the world.

Do you have any message to the future supporters in Japan?
Help us spread the word about urban sketching. It’s a wonderful way to experience the world and learn to appreciate your own city as you sketch in the street. Urban Sketchers is a supportive community, not competitive, open to everyone, no matter their skill level. Start sharing your sketches online and show us Japan and its beautiful culture and everyday life, one drawing at a time!

Time is on the sketcher's side

2011-10-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for my kids' school bus with 15 minutes to spare. Those are often the best times to sketch. You don't worry about the result and, because of that, you surprise yourself with a drawing you really like. Time for line art: 8 minutes. Time for coloring as soon as I got home: 5 minutes. Lamy Safari, Noodlers ink and watercolor on Stillman and Birn 4" x 6" Gamma Series hardbound sketchbook.

Gabi Campanario

http://facebook.com/seattlesketcher

Evolve or die

2011-10-16T19:53:00.001-07:00

Today I'm taking that old adage as an excuse to repurpose this blog one more time. Yes, the fourth time in five years! You can read about previous incarnations of my blogspot here. (I will continue to post my sketches of Seattle on my Seattle Times blog.)

Let's see where this new phase takes me. As "the sketch journalist," my goal is to share random notes on urban sketching, art, illustration, journalism and all things drawn. I wrote all that under the blog header so I don't forget. Feel free to poke me if I steer away from my objective.

I'm typing this on my e-mail. When I hit "send," the message should materialize into a blog post. I hope it works. I'm banking on this blogging method to post more frequently.

Sketching on a stack of hay

2011-10-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

This week I sketched at a farm for my newspaper column. The story and sketches are posted on my Seattle Times blog.

Looking at my iPhone photo now, I realize that I should really clean my watercolors pans more often, but, I have to say, those dry stains sometimes save you the time of mixing new colors.

Cuaderno de Jaca

2011-10-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

It's never too late to scan a sketchbook. I filled this one, a fine accordion-style, custom-built sketchbook by Choni Naudín, at "De Vuelta Con el Cuaderno," a fabulous workshop held in Jaca, Spain, in 2009. Organizer Clara Marta is working with Editorial Prames to produce a book with work by participants and speakers from the three editions of the workshop held so far. It will be a must have for sketchbook enthusiasts!

The Art of Urban Sketching is off to press

2011-09-30T17:58:00.001-07:00

It's been about a year since I signed the contract to produce this book, so imagine how it feels to see it go off to press! Thanks to all the urban sketchers around the world who contributed, trusting me with with their words and pictures, and to my publisher, Quarry Books, for making this inspiring volume a reality.

The Art of Urban Sketching, featuring more than 500 sketches from 55 cities around the world, will start arriving at a bookstore near you in February. For a guaranteed discounted price, you may pre-order it now on Amazon.

Above is the book jacket, which, just like the prototypes my kids drew, features great drawings, great typography and a classy design by British design firm studioink. Click on the image to get a closer look.

Espaços e Casas

2011-08-18T23:26:00.000-07:00

Ha! Look at that face! During the Lisbon Symposium Eduardo Salavisa and I were interviewed for Espaços e Casas, a Portuguese TV broadcast about real estate, architecture, interior design and public spaces. In case you are wondering, I really look like a human when the video plays out.

Gas Works Park

2011-08-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

Happy colors back at play

Meet OrcaMan

2011-07-04T21:18:00.001-07:00

The man beneath the fin

The squirrel draws Seattle

2011-06-13T23:07:00.000-07:00

I remember the first time I saw Tommy Kane's drawings online several years ago. This guy is insane, I thought. No urban scene intimidates him. Tommy can draw anything on the spot with an incredible amount of detail. And he infuses his brilliant artwork and provocative writing with that unique personality that every artist aspires to. Once you see his blog, you know you'll be coming back.

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet Tommy and his lovely wife Yun in person in Seattle. What a trip. We got together a couple of times to draw, one with the Seattle Urban Sketchers —we are always excited to welcome sketchers from out of town— and later with my kids in Gas Works Park.

Tommy's creativity is inspiring. Seattle's Space Needle is the hardest thing to draw, but not for Tommy, he comes here and nails it right off the bat. The same with this church or any other drawings he did while in the Pacific Northwest. His talent also goes beyond his sketchbook. You've seen the cool video clips he creates out of his urban sketching escapades around the world. I'm hooked. I better brush up with iMovie now. Thanks for the inspiration Tommy.

Inspired by Tommy Kane from Gabriel Campanario on Vimeo.

Live from Little League

2011-05-23T18:41:00.000-07:00

Posting via email. Let's see if it works.

Little sketches from Little League

2011-04-24T15:30:00.001-07:00

That's my son ready to bat at a recent Little League game. While he practices his favorite sport, I practice mine. Sketching the players is like going to the "sketching gym," for me. As I try to jot down the moves, my eye-hand coordination gets quite a workout!

Here are more quick sketches in pen and pencil from different games: