shauna lee lange

Urban Sketchers is a loosely knit band of Flickr bravehearts who spend their days sketching urban vistas, landscapes, and city-based reality.  The group recently expanded out to a blog. I’ve attached two recent examples from Atlanta’s Ester Wilson.

Group Administrator Gabi Campanario says, “This is a group for all sketchers out there who love to draw the cities they live in or visit, from the window of their homes, from a cafe, at a park, standing by a street corner… always on location, not from photos or memory.”

Here are the rules:

1. You did the drawing on location, not from photos or memory. Adding color or a few details later is fine. On site doesn’t necessarily mean outdoors, you can draw from a coffee shop, pub or grocery store or any other city building. Just make sure the subject is urban. Computer manipulated images are not acceptable.

2. The subject of the drawing has to be primarily urban. The word urban comes from the latin urbs, which means city. So drawings here must have city elements: streets, buildings, houses, traffic, city parks, shops, stores, churches… you get the idea.

3. Drawings of people are okay as long as they are in an urban setting: walking on a street, at a coffee shop, on the bus, subway or other way of public transportation.

4. You should state in what city you did the drawing. Even better, place the drawing on the map. That would be helpful for other sketchers who may want to draw from the same location when they’re in your city.

Campanario writes: It’s been a while since the group started and I thought it’s time to have an ‘official’ welcome. Thanks to everyone who has joined and contributed so many wonderful city drawings!  As for myself, I live in Seattle but I’m originally from Spain. My first memory of sketching out and about is from 1986, when I was a teenager. If only Flickr had been around then I wouldn’t have lost so much time when I could have been drawing more often. But it’s never too late and in the recent years I have gradually become more confident and now I draw in the city any chance I have.