Drawing Attention April 2021

SKETCHING IN Brazil • Canada • Germany India • Indonesia • Italy Malaysia • Poland • Portugal South Africa • South Korea United Kingdom USA

DRAWING

Attention

The official zine of Urban Sketchers APRIL 2021

Drawing Attention Mandate Drawing Attention, the official monthly zine of the Urban Sketchers organization, communicates and promotes official USk workshops, symposiums, sketchcrawls, news and events; shares news about USk chapters; and educates readers about the practice of on-location sketching.

Thanks to this month’s Drawing Attention contributors: Managing Editor: Patricia Chow Mailchimp layout: Jane Wingfield Issuu layout: Anne Taylor Writers: Mark Anderson, Jim Chapman, Monique Chiam, Jane Wingfield French copy editor: Sophie Navas Spanish copy editor: Rosario Muñoz Gajardo Proofreader: Leslie Akchurin Contributors: Parka, Richard Alomar, Dora Pindur Cover image: Yap Yeen Yee (YY) Subscribe to Drawing Attention. Read the March edition of Drawing Attention.

Circulation: 13k+ Readership: 16k+ Web: urbansketchers.org Urban Sketchers is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the art of on-location drawing. Click here to make your tax-deductible contribution via Paypal. © 2021 Urban Sketchers.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this publication, including accompanying artwork, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Urban Sketchers organization.

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Dear USk Community, We hope you all are well and finding time to sketch. It may be April but the Board is already planning for 2022! Stay up to date on what’s planned for this year through social media, the website and the USk Youtube channel. We are looking forward to the reopening of cities and towns around the globe and the ability to once again travel, sketch and make new friends. If you have any ideas for activities, programs, events or projects, let us know!

We wanted to reiterate that this year we are reenvisioning USk’s on-line presence.

The goal is to create a hub where the USk global community can easily access information related to education, events, membership, news and connect to social media- a place where you can find all the information you need in a few clicks. If you or someone you know would be interested in providing web design/build services to improve USk’s online presence, please contact president@urbansketchers.org for more information and the Request for Proposals..

Please stay safe, engaged and sketching!

Sketching together (one way or another), Richard Alomar, USk President

MANAGING EDITOR’S MESSAGE Greetings, Sketchers!

In this month’s issue we meet Malaysian sketcher YY Yap, longtime London sketcher James Hobbs, and the talented Mark Anderson, one of our very own Drawing Attention writers. We also catch up with USk Poland and travel to 12 cities around the world, following sketchers who took up the Map your Sketches Challenge from Episode 4 of Season 2 of USk Talks.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to our hardworking and persevering

team of Drawing Attention writers, translators, designers and support staff whose combined effort make this zine happen every month.

Last but not least, don’t forget to apply for the Reportage Grant by May 1!

Please enjoy our latest issue!

Patricia Chow Managing Editor Drawing Attention

4 NEWS 8 USK POLAND

CONTENTS 32 YY 18 MAP YOUR SKETCHES

40 MARK ANDERSON

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HOW TO READ DRAWING ATTENTION AS AN E-ZINE FOR EASIER READING ON ISSUU.COM SELECT FULL SCREEN.

JAMES HOBBS

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD ISSUU APP FOR IOS DEVICES CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD ISSUU APP FOR ANDROID

57 REVIEW

USk news & events

USK REPORTAGE GRANT PROGRAM NEW GRANT PROGRAM

WHAT IS REPORTAGE?

Urban Sketchers is excited to announce a new USk Reportage Grant Program open to individual sketchers, chapters, and creative collaborators from around the world. Visual storytelling lies at the heart of the USk movement. The program is designed to highlight the best examples of these efforts and to inspire new visual storytellers in our community.

Reportage is a visual account of a cultural phenomenon, event, current history, etc., based on drawings completed from direct observation while on location. The drawings tell a story by capturing an event and showing context, characters, and setting. Sketches are accompanied by short pieces of narrative writing presented directly on the drawings or added separately. The narrative is informed by firsthand accounts, research, and interviews. A successful visual reportage gives viewers a feeling for the setting and the people.

In order to qualify for a grant, sketchers are invited to send us their proposals with five examples of their drawings.

A successful proposal will highlight an aspect of local culture, an event, a moment in time, an industry/trade, and/or a societal change, in drawings and writing.

Proposals must be received by May 1, 2021. Authors of winning proposals will develop their projects between June 1 and December 15, 2021.

The winning proposals will be awarded a grant ranging from US$300-500 to cover expenses related to project preparation.

Click HERE for more information and to apply.

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WHO CAN PARTICIPATE? Sketchers of all abilities and styles are encouraged to apply.

You can submit a proposal as an individual sketcher or form a creative collaboration with someone else or engage your whole chapter in this project.

HOW CAN I GET INSPIRED? If you haven’t yet checked out USk Talks, a weekly show dedicated to all things Urban Sketchers, visit the official USk YouTube channel. This season we are taking an in-depth look into the practice of visual reportage and storytelling by inviting artists, sketchers, and the winners of the Reportage Call for Proposals to share their work and knowledge with the community.

USk news & events

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USk news & events

SHARE YOUR CHAPTER’S NEWS WITH OUR READERS Contact us to share your chapter’s news, special events, joint meetups, and exhibitions with our readers. You don’t need to write the story yourself. We will assign a Drawing Attention writer to cover your story! Contact us at: drawingattention@urbansketchers.org.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE USK YOUTUBE CHANNEL 6 drawing attention

USK BLOG

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SUBSCRIBE TO DRAWING ATTENTION – IT’S FREE

USk news & events

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IG: @ackermanpens 4 • 2021 7

featured chapter

WINTER at home THE END OF THE YEAR WASN’T AN EASY TIME IN POLAND – ANOTHER WAVE OF COVID INFECTIONS, MORE RESTRICTIONS, ANOTHER LOCKDOWN. THE WEATHER WAS WET AND COLD AND ALL THE SKETCHER-FRIENDLY PLACES LIKE CAFES, RESTAURANTS AND MUSEUMS WERE CLOSED. BUT FORTUNATELY WE STILL HAD OUR INTERNET CONNECTION....

BY DORA PINDUR

‘ARTISTIC CHAOS’ BY DOROTA PAWELCZAK 8 drawing attention

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Sk Poland believes in the therapeutic power of drawing so we decided to act and keep our group running. Inspired by the USk Admins meeting in November, Justyna Wojnowska and I decided to find sponsors and suggest weekly topics in our Facebook group, with a small prize for the most active sketcher each week.

We received a very positive response from distributors and producers of art supplies, and during the months of December and January, we proposed nine topics for our urban sketchers to draw inside and outside (if possible).

The group responded with lots of interesting drawings (tagged #grudniownik & #styczniownik) and even more interesting comments and discussions. We were also meeting on Zoom every two weeks just to see our faces and chat and draw - together from the distance - and as we are the USk chapter for the whole country, it was (and still is, because the meetings continue) a great opportunity to meet sketchers from different cities and create new connections for the future. Again, it turned out that the community is what makes Urban Sketchers so special.

‘EVERYDAY LIFE’ BY ALINA PISKORZ 10 drawing attention

USk Poland

‘THE LIGHT AND ITS SOURCES’ BY KAJA BORKOWSKA 4 • 2021 11

featured chapter Title

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USk Poland

FROM FAR LEFT: ‘PREPARATIONS’ BY JAKUB JOZWIAK | ‘THE BATHROOM’ BY JULIA WOJCIECHOWSKA | ‘FUN’ BY EDYTA PRZYSTUPA 4 • 2021 13

featured chapter

‘WARMTH’ BY ADAM MICHEN 14 drawing attention

USk Poland

HERE ARE THE NINE WINNERS OF OUR WEEKLY CHALLENGES:

‘WARMTH’ BY ADAM MICHEN

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Week 1: Kaja Borkowska - Topic: “The light and its sources” Week 2: Alina Piskorz - Topic: “Everyday life” Week 3: Jakub Jozwiak - Topic: “Preparations” Week 4: Adam Michen - Topic: “Warmth” Week 5: Edyta Przystupa - Topic: “Fun” Week 6: Anka Zietkiewicz - Topic: “Doors and Windows” Week 7: Agnieszka Szwed - Topic: “Contrast” Week 8: Julia Feliksa Wojciechowska - Topic: “The Bathroom” Week 9: Dorota Pawelczak - Topic: “Artistic Chaos.”

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featured chapter

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USk Poland

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LEFT: ‘CONTRAST’ BY AGNIESZKA SZWED | ABOVE: ‘DOORS AND WINDOWS’ BY ANKA ZIETKIEWICZ

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The Map Your Sketches Challenge

BY MONIQUE CHIAM

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fter a year of lockdowns, the end of this marathon of a pandemic may still seem far away, but one way we can cope is to make plans for the future. So why not start dreaming about travel and what places we’ll sketch?

Here we present some of the cities that were highlighted in the Map Your Sketches Challenge from USK Talks Season 2, Episode 4.

Are you itching to travel yet? Perhaps these maps will bring up places you’ve never thought of visiting before, and hopefully make you want to go check them out someday! Thanks to all our lovely contributors for showing us their cities and for strengthening our positive outlook on the future.

EXETER, UNITED KINGDOM

BY OLIVIA PALMER (@OLIVIADRAWSANDPAINTS): “I love Exeter because of the variety of interesting architecture, especially the beautiful Cathedral.”

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The Map Your Sketches Challenge

MOGI DAS CRUZES, BRAZIL

BY MARILIA C L VARELLA (@BAIA_INK): “I usually draw maps or my itinerary when I travel but it is the first time I map my sketches of Mogi das Cruzes (where I live). It was hard – a real challenge!

But also very funny.”

KEMANG, SOUTH JAKARTA, INDONESIA

BY GLADYS TEO-SIMPSON (@GLADSIMPSON_ART): “I’ve sketched in a car, boat, train, plane, mountain top, too. Looking for the next interesting place to sketch from!”

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The Map Your Sketches Challenge

WALLDORF, GERMANY BY BRIGITTE KARIN BECKER (@BRIGITTE.K.BECKER): “I like to travel on merchant ships and wrote a book about it. I also write short detective stories.”

GROPELLO CAIROLI, ITALY BY GIACOMO SARDELLI (@DRAWNBYJACK): “I’m an Italian VFX Compositor for commercials, which means that I spend most of my day behind a screen, working with digital video. In 2018 I started sketching because I needed a hobby that required physical, tangible objects like paper, brushes and watercolors. I’ve been enjoying it since, and urban sketching balances my indoor job with a dose of outdoor activity!”

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WATERLOO REGION, ONTARIO, CANADA BY DEB FLYNN (@DEBFLYNNART): “I am a retired graphic designer and the volunteer media team leader for Skate Canada at national and international events. I started out as a textile stylist, was an art director at an agency, and has freelanced as a graphic designer, journalist and 24 drawing attention photographer, and magazine layout/designer.”

The Map Your Sketches Challenge

LOULE, PORTUGAL BY MARTA CASTRO (@MARTA_M_CASTRO): “Loulé is a small and beautiful city located in the Algarve, in the south of Portugal. Its historic center that is rich in places to visit, the friendliness of its inhabitants, the proximity to the beach and mountains, and obviously its delicious gastronomy are factors that are very much appreciated. I am an art teacher for young people. I like to draw on location because I feel it is a way to better understand the world around me.

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PUNE, INDIA BY PRIYA KRISHNAN DAS (@PURPLESOULART): “I love that Pune has a rich history and is culturally and traditionally very vibrant.”

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KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

BY RIA BAILEY (@WHATRIASEES): “I love living in Kuala Lumpur because it is a complete mishmash of people, cultures, architecture, history, languages and food, which means there is always something interesting to sketch! You can do everything in Malaysia, and from KL it doesn’t take long to get to the beach, the jungle or another city.

Food brings people together here, and everybody has an opinion about where to eat the best (whatever delicious morsel).”

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ULSAN, SOUTH KOREA BY SUNNY JO (@SUNNYJEONG_128): “Ulsan is an industrial city. In the past, it suffered from severe pollution, but now it has become an eco-friendly and beautiful city due to efforts by its citizens.”

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NEW YORK CITY, U.S.A BY NOBUKO KOBAYASHI (@NOBUKONYC): “I think having multiple cultural backgrounds gives me a unique perspective.” Nobuko is originally from Japan and has lived in New York City for a long time. She loves the New York art scene - galleries, museums, pop-ups, trade shows, public art and exhibitions.

The Map Your Sketches Challenge

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The Map Your Sketches Challenge

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA BY JANIE SIEBERT (@JANIE_PEREIRASIEBERT): “I studied graphic design and illustration in the precomputer days of the late 70’s (Letraset pages & Rotring pens were the ultimate technology then! ), so the foundation of drawing by hand is my beloved baseline. Natural & botanical details are my go-to anchors, which are abundant in Cape Town. I love the vast diversity and immediacy of sketching settings in our Cape Peninsula and surrounds.”

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sketcher spotlight

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SKETCHER SPOTLIGHT

Painting the World with a broad brush LOOKING AT @YYYAP ON INSTAGRAM, YOU CAN FEEL THE ENERGY AND THE VITALITY OF SOUTHEAST ASIA.

BY JANE WINGFILED

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Kuala Lumpur, where she lives. “It’s old and has lots of places to sketch.” Ipoh, a smaller city midway between Penang and Kuala Lumpur, and Melaka in the south are also among her favorites. They all offer complex and fascinating collections of architecture and people.

I met with Yap Yeen Yee, (her friends call her YY) over Zoom in late February. She is a self-taught artist, urban sketcher, and the Interior Design Director at Luna Solutions in Kuala Lumpur, a design firm owned by her and her husband, Teoh Kim Seah. It was their marble supplier that first asked them if they’d heard of Urban Sketchers. “After 20 years of being designers, we found urban sketching.”

Looking at @yyyap on Instagram you might not realize that her sketches are actually quite large. She also uses wide painter’s brushes to swatch the area with color before laying in her ink drawings. Using an energetic line, she’s able to finish a sketch in a very short time.

She can actually finish several sketches in what might take someone else the whole time allotted for a meet-up session. “When you go outside the feeling is different.

You feel very excited. It’s fun.“

sketcher spotlight

he bustling vendors, markets packed to the gills with mundane and mysterious, outdoor cafes, and jam-packed buildings. Yap Yeen Yee’s broad strokes of color, her tangled lines, and the energetic composition characterize her surroundings: the crowded, but lovely, streets, markets, and cafes of Malaysia and beyond.

“I hadn’t done any sketching in 20 years. We were always working.” Being a designer, she knew she had the background for sketching. They met up with the local urban sketchers and soon she and her husband were on a sketching spree. They were caught up in the excitement of the new activity. “We joined every sketch event we could find.” Their meal breaks became sketch breaks.

They would sketch at breakfast, lunch, and dinner – anytime they could. YY created a What’s App group for anyone who wanted to sketch. Even now a few years later, you can find both of them sketching somewhere on the streets of any of the highly sketchable places in Malaysia.

I asked YY for recommendations on where to go to sketch in Malaysia. She said without hesitation, “First stop, Penang. Because Penang has culture – Chinese temples, old buildings. It also has great food.” She also recommend34 drawing attention

This past year she has done more testing of her tools and materials, trying out different materials, papers, brush angles. She never uses pencil to make her initial drawing.

“My vision of the overall picture is very clear in my mind when I start.” As she speaks, she waves her arms outlining the imaginary picture. “When I look at the scene, I can sketch without doing a drawing.”

YY is really grateful to Urban Sketchers. “It’s given me a second life.” She used to think about what she would do after retirement - what hobbies and interests she might take up. She never thought about sketching. Now she wants to travel the world and sketch, meeting with urban sketchers all over the world. And because her husband has the same interest, they can both travel, sketch, shop, sketch, eat, sketch, travel… using that broad brush to see the world one sketch at a time.

YY

“My vision of the overall picture is very clear in my mind when I start.”

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YY

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YY

“It’s given me a second life” – YY on urban sketching SUBSCRIBE TO DRAWING ATTENTION – IT’S FREE 4 • 2021 39

In Beautiful Ordinary Moments

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SKETCHER SPOTLIGHT

WHILE SOME SKETCHERS TRY TO HERD THEIR WORK TOWARD A SPECIFIC LOOK OR OUTCOME, OTHER SKETCHERS, SUCH AS ARTIST/EDUCATOR/WRITER MARK ANDERSON, PREFER NOT KNOWING EXACTLY WHERE A SKETCH MIGHT GO, OR HOW IT WILL ARRIVE THERE.

BY JIM CHAPMAN

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sketcher spotlight

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Mark Anderson

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t’s not that Mark doesn’t want a good sketch. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. But he realizes from years of experience that the unexpected streak of zest he seeks in his work requires taking risks – otherwise he is left with an adequate but predictable sketch.

“When I try to predetermine my outcome, the work becomes stiff,” he explained. Instead, he encourages happy accidents with pen and watercolor, and watches the dance of elements on paper as a delighted spectator.

“I like the bleedy-black lines with ink pooling around them,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to come out of my pen. Marks have an energy to them that intrigues me. Even doodling is important to me, and I interpret loosely sketched marks as a sort of fresh shorthand for bigger, broader narratives. A gestural mark communicates more through simplicity than can often be told by great detail.”

A seasoned illustrator and designer turned educator, Mark stays connected with the spark that got him into drawing and painting in the first place, and it is this he hopes to share with his students.

Today, he heads a public school system arts department in the midwestern United States, and is responsible for developing curriculum for 22,000 K-12 children. To that

end, he leads 50 art teachers who teach within the system.

His goal for his students is the same as the goal he sets for himself: ”We’re opening people’s eyes – as opposed to teaching them how to draw,’ he said. “It’s about telling a story, being in and of that moment.”

After decades of working with clients in his creative agency, an unexpected event changed his life: September 11, 2001. Mark and his wife, a professional midwife, had just moved to Alaska for her job, and Mark was working on illustrations and designs for clients remotely.

However, after 9/11, Mark’s clientele dwindled as businesses, organizations and agencies stalled across the U.S. Mark took it as a time to reinvent himself and transitioned into teaching. “My wife delivered babies and I started doing art workshops and teaching,” he said. Then Mark found Urban Sketchers and got involved. Mark, Liz Vargas and Peggy Wilson founded the USk Kansas City chapter, and he also served as USk Regional Administrator for the Midwest. Mark was a correspondent for the USk Symposium in Amsterdam, and has also been a longtime writer for Drawing Attention. He encourages others to get involved in urban sketching with the happy mantra that “anybody can do this; everybody is welcome.”

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Mark Anderson

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n a sense, we’re all making marks, most of which are scrawled upon the world and the people around us.

I treasure those marks, those small moments and interactions, the everyday, ordinary, and the overlooked. I choose to pause for a moment to observe these encounters in search of the story fragment that is there if we but watch for it.

I think ‘the ordinary’ is often one of the most beautiful of moments.” – Mark Anderson

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Mark Anderson

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AUTHOR, LIBRARIAN, AND URBAN SKETCHER JAMES HOBBS LEFT ART SCHOOL IN THE 80’S, BOUGHT A CAMPER VAN AND SET OFF ON A JOURNEY DRIVING AROUND ENGLAND WITH A STACK OF HOMEMADE SKETCHBOOKS. “AND, WELL, I JUST FILLED THEM ALL UP. IT WASN’T A DRAWING A DAY, IT WAS MORE LIKE TEN DRAWINGS A DAY.” HE’S BEEN FILLING SKETCHBOOKS EVER SINCE....

SKETCHER SPOTLIGHT

BY MARK ALAN ANDERSON

CONNECTING with James Hobbs

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aking pleasure in this practice in many ways anticipated the Urban Sketchers movement, and James muses on this nomadic early lifestyle of recording his locale and experiencing life as it was encountered: “Connecting with your locality is just a good thing to do. When you’re a visitor, you look at things differently than if you have a local knowledge of a place. You use a different kind of eye.”

His journey was foundational to a sketching approach that has manifested a very real sense of the tactile in his work. “There’s a lot of ‘handwriting’ in my drawings.

Impatience. I don’t want to hang around too long, so I work in a small sketchbook. And I do move. I move with my elbow when I’m working… I like standing up when

I’m drawing. It’s an active thing for me. I’ve always been keen on drawing as a sort of expressive, messy, ‘go for it’ kind of thing.”

Hobbs earnestly describes how sketching can be about connectivity and meaning, recalling a time when his father was recuperating from a fall. “He was in the bed in the next room, and I was worried. And I just sat there waiting, being with him, and I drew what was out the window. The reason I’m so fond of that image now is that it has something to do with my dad. It has nothing to do with what type of tree, or what time of year it was.”

He learned of Urban Sketchers almost purely through happenstance. “I heard of it through this old-fashioned 4 • 2021 49

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thing called conversation.” Hobbs pauses to compose his thoughts, then continues, “when you’re drawing on your own you tend not to see others, but the realization that there’s this whole group of people (sketching together) and sharing it… well, it’s like I’ve found my people! I’ve come home!”

The opportunity to join others during sketch outings is important to Hobbs. “I’ve met fantastic people. And you know I don’t always do my best drawings (at sketch outs) either, maybe two rather substandard sketches – but that’s almost not the most important thing… it’s a sense of connection, which I rather like.”

“What really drew me to urban sketching is the storytelling side. I like that thing, I want to know why people are doing it – I’m not so much interested in how somebody did something, I’m interested in why they did it. It’s really good to see the storytelling side coming up again.”

Over time, Hobbs’ drawings have followed a natural path of stylistic evolution, but he is very comfortable with his

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current, rather humble kit of working materials, a black Posca pen and a sketchbook. “I’ve got the simplest needs like that… partly it’s the simplicity I really like: a black pen with a black sketchbook with white paper, and I’m away. I think everybody’s got to go and explore and find whatever works for them, and I feel like I’ve still got mileage working the way I do. I never really think of it as sketching, I call it drawing. There’s something solid and black and strong and unerasable about it. That’s kind of where I am at the moment. It’s that connection that I’ve enjoyed in the last six months since I’ve been getting out more again. A connection with London in the time of Covid, because it’s been such an extraordinary and horrific time.”

James Hobbs is the author of three books, Sketch Your World, Pen and Ink, and Dream Draw Design My Garden. In celebration of its 30th anniversary, Hobbs has been posting chapters, photos and drawings from his unpublished book about the van journey around England.

...the realization that there’s this whole group of people (sketching together) and sharing it… well, it’s like I’ve found my people!

I’ve come home!”

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James Hobbs

GOOGLE HQ CONSTRUCTION SITE, LONDON 4 • 2021 51

sketcher spotlight

BREXIT DEMONSTRATORS OUTSIDE THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, LONDON 52 drawing attention

James Hobbs

THREADNEEDLE STREET, WITH 22 BROADGATE AND THE CHEESEGRATER, LONDON 4 • 2021 53

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VIEW FROM THE WINDOW AS DAD LIES ILL IN BED 54 drawing attention

James Hobbs

TYNE BRIDGE, GATESHEAD, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE 4 • 2021 55

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ABOVE: LOWER EAST SIDE, NEW YORK CITY 56 drawing attention

RIGHT: FROM RUA FERREIRA BORGES, PORTO

James Hobbs

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Endnotes

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Review

PARKA REVIEWS

BY TEOH YI CHIE

Teoh Yi Chie is an infographics journalist who joined Urban Sketchers Singapore in 2009. He’s probably better known as Parka from Parkablogs.com, a website that reviews art books and art products.

This month Parka video reviews the Pentel Brush Sign Pen Pigment. Check them out!

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Our Manifesto • We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation • Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel • Our drawings are a record of time and place • We are truthful to the scenes we witness • We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles • We support each other and draw together • We share our drawings online • We show the world, one drawing at a time.

© 2021 Urban Sketchers www.urbansketchers.org