Urban Sketchers

[Grizabella]

Is anyone here involved with the Urban Sketchers? I was looking around awhile back on youtube and found some videos of a movement called the urban sketcher and it intrigued me. I've worked a lot with oil paints but not with watercolor. I thought this would be something really neat and fun and actually within my skill level to join into. Then I found out that not only do I live in Tacoma now, the original Urban Sketcher movement began some years ago right here in Tacoma, Washington! What a coincidence.

For those who might not know, urban sketching is drawing and/or painting whatever is around you. Urban being within your surroundings within a town or city. There's a lot of wonderful old architecture here in Tacoma and there's Point Defiance park where I went to do my first urban sketching. There's also a zoo here called the Port Defiance Zoo that I'm going to go to as soon as the weather is better. I love the primates---gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, chimps, macaques and all that so I want to go there and take some photos to paint from.

Watercolors are cleaner, lighter and quicker to work with than oils. Since I'm in that category of "elderly" now and I use a walker because I fall a lot, watercolors are a better choice than oils for me. Also, I'm living with my daughter and her significant other now and they don't want me to do anything except entertain myself, which means I've got time for art work and beadwork and whatever else I want to keep busy with. Leave it to me to pick the hardest of painting mediums to occupy myself with. I'm determined to keep working on my watercolor skills exclusively though---what the heck? I don't have anything but time to fill. I finally managed to create a reasonably good picture of a barn owl under a full moon to give to hang in my latest great-grandchild's nursery.

I drank coffee with caffeine today so now I'm wide-eyed and bushy tailed at almost 2am. I'll keep busy with writing on my memoir if I run out of things to do online till I can get some sleep.

[BrightEye]

Do you have any work you want to share with us?

[Grizabella]

Not yet. I haven't photographed any of my work so I can post it but I'm new to watercolors so nothing I produce is very good. In urban sketching, the goal isn't to produce spectacular art works, it's just to portray what's going on around you. I think it's very useful for actually seeing and appreciating things instead of just taking everything for granted.

I'm going to be paInting the building I can see out the window here one of these days. Maybe I'll post that when it's done. It's a beautiful building that I think used to be a school but now there are just a few rooms lit up and some of the lower windows are boarded over, but it has a wonderful cenelated tower on one end that I want to paint.

I'm not a very prolific painter and I don't go to the official gatherings and outings of the Tacoma group because of my physical limitations but I don't let that stop me.

It's a worldwide thing now, so there are groups everywhere. The actual formal Urban Sketchers has, like so many things, been formalized into an organization with rules and regulations and all that stuff, but I'm independent of it. I found out about it one day when I was watching art shows on youtube and then adapted it to my own use. Sometimes I put on a picture of something on the TV and paint from that.