Urban Sketchers

I love this blog I just found!!  It's called Urban Sketchers, and here is how it describes itself:
"Urban Sketchers is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people around the world who draw on location where they live and travel. We aim to show the world, one drawing at a time."

 The two above are by a cab driver in Chicago.  Born in Moscow, he has lived in Chicago since 1978 and has attended many art schools off and on, including Parsons, but he currently works as a cabbie.

By a British illustrator in Cuba - "18 February, 2007 — Houses on the Paseo del Prado. This was once the smartest street in Havana: on each side stand Spanish style buildings from the late 19th century, colourfully plastered and richly detailed. But they haven't been touched since they were built. They are in tragic state of disrepair: plaster is falling off; windows are boarded up or just missing; sometimes entire walls that have fallen away. And then you realise that people are still living in them."

 

"Metro Hunting"

Above and below, sketches by illustrator and animator Ami Plasse, who documents NYC subway riders.

Barcelona


I realized at about age 7 while at the Matisse Museum in Nice that I love sketching while travelling.  It trains your eye to notice detail, and in the same way that you remember things better just by stopping to take a picture of them, sketching seems to create a permanent imprint of a scene onto your brain.

So, needless to say, I think this blog of other people's travel and life sketches is awesome... you get a peak not only into places you've never been, but also into the way that each sketcher sees and thinks, and I love seeing all the different sketching styles.


Urban Sketchers blog here.