USk: Sketching Kits

It's Friday and there is so much going on in Ottawa this weekend: New Art Festival in the Glebe, Ottawa Jazz Festival, and Glowfair (etc) so I thought I would share a picture of my urban sketching (USk) kit that travels with me wherever I go.

A sketchbook, a pencil, an eraser, a sharpie, a compact set of watercolours, and a Pentel or Koi water brush is my basic urban sketching kit.

My minimal sketch kit today at Jazz Fest

If you "google" the phrase "urban sketching kit" you will see a wide assortment of kits ranging from the minimalist sketching kit (like mine) all the way to a full backpack loaded with a variety of materials.

Results from a google search for "Urban Sketching Kit"

I am a huge James Gurney fan and thought I would post him talking about his favourite urban sketching materials.

Watercolor Materials for Urban Sketching with James Gurney

Hope to post some of my sketches at the end of the weekend. Happy sketching.

Urban Sketching Links 

• Urban Sketching: 20 Dos and Don’ts when Getting Out There By Róisín Curé
• Urban Sketching boards and Urban Sketcher boards on Pinterest

Urban Sketcher Tools 

• Nina Johansson: Drawing Tools  
• Citizen Sketcher: Sketching Gear 
• Urban Sketcher Lapin’s secret material 
• Larry D. Marshall: Urban Sketcher's Kit 

Let's Do Some Summer Urban Sketching

There is a world wide community devoted to urban sketching . You can find urban sketchers on flickr and facebook and Twitter.

There are world wide sketchcrawl days and even an urban sketchers manifesto!

Urban Sketchers (USk) History

From the website:

"Urban Sketchers is the brainchild of Spanish-born illustrator and journalist Gabriel Campanario, a staff artist and blogger at The Seattle Times. After seeing an increasing number of people sharing their location drawings in the blogosphere, Campanario started a flickr group in November 2007 as a showcase of urban sketches. A year later, he decided to expand the flickr initiative with a by-invitation group blog where correspondents would commit to posting on a regular basis and also sharing the stories behind the sketches."

Gabriel Campanario,
the founder of Urban Sketchers and
author of The Art of Urban Sketching,

"In a short period of time, the Urban Sketchers blog and sister flickr group have become popular online outlets for people to share their location drawings. Thousands visit daily for inspiration or to travel vicariously through the visual dispatches from hundreds of contributors on six continents."

Nina Johansson is USK correspondent
and lives and works in Stockholm .

"Drawing a city isn't just capturing it on paper, it's really about getting to know it, to feel it, to make it your own," says Nina Johansson, a correspondent in Stockholm."

"To better serve this rapidly growing community, Campanario and other blog correspondents established Urban Sketchers as a nonprofit organization on December 6, 2009. The nonprofit aims to organize educational workshops and raise funds for artists' grants and scholarships."

Check out the urban sketchers FAQ here: http://www.urbansketchers.org/p/faq.html

Ottawa Urban Sketchers?

About one in every twelve Ontario artists resides in the City of Ottawa (4,600, or 8%). Those numbers represent folks who make their living from creating.

We know that EVERYONE is an artist. There are many more artists working at other jobs and finding time to do some art in between. With so many artists in Ottawa, wouldn't it be great if there was a community of urban sketchers?

There are Urban sketcher chapters in  Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Wouldn't it be great to build a community here in Ottawa!

Sign Up for the
48th World Wide SketchCrawl 

If you live in the Ottawa area and love to sketch, consider signing up for the 48th World Wide SketchCrawl - July 25, 2015 - Ottawa