To raise the artistic, storytelling and educational value of on-location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people around the world who draw on location where they live and travel.
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.
COVER SKETCHES (CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT): JAMES HOBBS, USK POLAND, JEFFREY LEVINE & NORBERTO DORANTES. OPPOSITE PAGE: CHRIS LE CRUSE
This year was challenging and encouraging for Urban Sketchers. Many of you stepped out into your cities and towns and started sketching again alone or in small groups. The posts on Instagram and Facebook showed happy masked faces enjoying the opportunity to show the world one drawing at a time.
This year the community’s enthusiasm and love of sketching was demonstrated during the Sketch Together Event that spanned the globe’s time zones. The #usksketchtogether and #sketchtogether hashtags have thousands of images and drawings from around the world showing an engaged network of sketchers. Our mission is to support activities like these, and to that end The Events Grant Program was developed to help chapters develop regional events.
The Events, Community Workshop, and Reportage grants are all designed to provide the resources for sketchers to organize events, learn alongside instructors and other groups, and express their storytelling abilities. This year all three grants were active and were a major initiative to maintain the organization’s mission through these challenging times.
The membership committee continued its global meetings and saw a rise in groups applying to be USk Chapters. Chapters represent over 120,000 sketchers in over 60 countries and keep the urban sketching movement strong, fresh, and energized.
The website working group spent 6 months developing and designing the organization’s new website with TGW, a website design firm in Rochester, New York. The group was tasked with revitalizing the USk website to clearly demonstrate who we are and what we do. The variety of platforms available today relieve the website from having to be all things to all people, allowing the website to focus on the basics needed to understand our mission. Drawing Attention transitioned from a monthly to quarterly publication and in the coming months will be available on the new website. It will continue to keep us informed and up to date on what happens around the world, sharing information in various languages.
Finally, the Executive Board elected a new President, Vice President, Treasurer and Events Director. The new board will continue to work together to fulfill the organization’s mission and to serve urban sketchers all over the world.
Keep Sketching!
2021 was a world still in the middle of the pandemic. Even though many were living with social distancing, we saw our USK Chapter family grow. 25 new Chapters were added across 11 countries and 5 continents bringing our total to 351 Official Urban Sketchers Chapters Worldwide.
During that time the USK Membership Committee and Chapters worked together to stay connected while apart. A few ways we did that were to hold Global Chapter Admin Zoom meetings, and we created the USk Chapter Ideas to Inspire during Lockdown list.
of inspiration, encouragement, support & giving back to the Urban Sketchers community
President Richard Alomar New York City, USA president@ urbansketchers.org
Vice President Genine Carvalheira Toronto, Canada vicepresident@ urbansketchers.org
Secretary Uma Kelkar San Jose, USA secretary@ urbansketchers.org
Treasurer Gail Wong, Seattle, USA treasurer@ urbansketchers.org
Events Director
Peggy Wong Kuching, Malaysia events@urbansketchers.org
Education Director Rita Sabler Portland, USA education@ urbansketchers.org
Social Media Director Noga Grosman Miami, USA socialmedia@ urbansketchers.org
Sponsorship Director
Mohan Banerji Finchampstead , UK sponsorship@ urbansketchers.org
Elizabeth Alley
Gabi Campanario
Jessie Chapman Suma CM
Jason Das José Louro
Jim Richards
Tia Boon Sim Rob Sketcherman Paul Wang Joel Winstead
Patricia Chow, Drawing Attention Managing Editor
Jane Wingfield, Anne Taylor, Olga Surmacheva, Content Publication Team
Raylie Dunkel, Sponsorship Coordinator
Javier Mas Pinturas, Membership Coordinator
Kris Mordecai, Fundraiser Coordinator
TheCommunity Grant program was established in 2019 to enable enthusiastic USk chapters worldwide to partner with a local community group (not-for-profit, school, art organization, city agency) to develop and implement a workshop that will share and and celebrate the life-changing power of on-location drawing.
COVID’s unpredictable nature meant that the Community Grantees were unable to administer their proposed projects in 2021. Each grantee promised to execute on the outreach programs as soon as local restrictions were lifted. In keeping with the prudent bookkeeping of the organization, funds were not disbursed to the grantees until the local chapters were ready to enable the outreach programs. The community grant program continues to be funded by anonymous donors and matching donations from Urban Sketchers and patrons.
Past community grant reports can be found here .
Asthe world continued to grapple with the restrictions and obstacles posed by the COVID pandemic in 2021, USk Education Committee worked on bringing inspiration and learning opportunities to our global community.
One way USk engaged with urban sketchers around the world was through USk Talks – Season 2, a series of interviews aired live on YouTube. Urban Sketchers also supported the efforts to tell stories through drawing with the USk Reportage Grant. The USk Education Committee worked on finding new creative ways to teach and lead our community in these challenging times.
In 2021 the USk Talks Team prepared and broadcast 18 episodes that aired live on the USk YouTube Channel. Each episode averaged about 90 minutes. Some of the topics included “What is Reportage?”, “Sketching Venice with John Ruskin”, “Visual Storytelling: Practical Tips”, “Victorian Women Sketchers”, “Artist as a Reporter”, “How to Sketch a Country”, “Hidden Beauty of Industrial Heritage & Spirit of Mumbai,” and many others.
USkTalks interviewed tool makers, chapter administrators, instructors, and individual sketchers, while the primary focus was on storytelling and reportage. Through this channel, we have elevated new voices, geographic areas, and stories.
USk learned about the disappearing craft of coppersmithing in Pune, India; shuttered independent theaters in New York; how cruise ships are built in Genoa, Italy; how pencils are made in Austria; how sketchers can think of their drawing as film directors. USk talked about the difference between drawing and reportage, how urban sketching can help us preserve and celebrate historic shopfronts and local businesses; what women sketchers saw and drew during the Victorian era; how reportage could be done in a war zone but also in your own living room; how sketchers can be inspired to tell stories of local cataclysmic events, like an explosion in Beirut. Others showed how they can be inspired even by the confines of the lockdown to show what is happening in their neighborhood.
Showing diversity and empowering voices from different corners of the world has been one of big goals for the USk Talks project. By the end of season 2, Urban Sketchers will have interviewed sketchers from:
US UK
Saudi Arabia Ecuador
Argentina Austria
Portugal Italy India Korea
New Zealand Australia
Israel Indonesia
Singapore Hong Kong
Thailand Malaysia
Ireland France
Germany Spain
Netherlands Sweden
China Lebanon Canada
With the return of in-person gatherings, workshops, symposiums, and regional events USk Talks team has decided to pause the production of its weekly shows. Some members had to leave the production for personal reasons, others needed a break from the demands of preparing and airing content on a weekly basis. If USk Talks is to resume in the future we would be looking for a new team of passionate volunteers. Explore USk Talks here .
The home page for the USk Talks program has had more than 35K views since its creation in early April 2020. Our subscriber base on YouTube grew to 12.9K and we currently average about 2.5K views per episode.
Visualstorytelling lies at the heart of the urban sketching movement. Urban Sketchers’ Reportage Grant program highlights stories from around the world that tell a story by capturing an event and showing context, characters, and setting.
These stories highlight an aspect of local culture, a moment in time, an industry or trade, and societal change in drawings and writing. The program is designed to highlight the best examples of drawing reportage in our community and inspire a new generation of artist reporters.
We are happy to present the final projects that were completed during 2021:
Mat’s project brought him face to face with a new vocabulary, medical products, people and experiences that are unknown to most or depicted misleadingly in films and the media. ‘The Room’ was founded in 2016 and gives drug users a safer, supervised space to consume drugs, an activity usually done on the street, “in the shadows.”. Knowing the power of sketching to humanize and break down stigma, the French charity Médecins du Monde (Mdm) asked Mat Let to do a series of sketches at the Drug Consumption Room in the Barbès, Gare du Nord and Porte de la Chapelle neighborhoods in Paris.
Many who come to The Room do not want to leave as this is almost the only place where drug users get respect and care instead of stigmatization and violence. There was a surprising amount of laughter, solidarity, care and respect here, all of which Mat captured in his sketches. He felt privileged to meet the staff and those they help at this unique center. And though his visits were usually challenging on several levels, he says, “Just like my fellow human beings, I feel a little better after each visit.”
as the dressing of holy basil (tulsi) trees, to the everyday lives of hardworking women tailors and lantern sellers, as well as the efforts of one artistic resident to beautify his small balcony.
Here, people live shoulder to shoulder with only small balconies and shared courtyards for breathing space; residents have to leave any hopes of privacy or solitude behind them. They benefit from the togetherness, conversation, laughter and community support of this style of living, but there is the flip side, too: the strain of subsistence living at such close quarters and neighborhood feuds and petty squabbles that are difficult to ignore or block out.
Chawls also have a fascinating social and political history, their raw energy giving rise to political movements and activists, as well as to movie stars and mafia members. Many chawls are now being cleared to make way for new city infrastructure and accommodation, so the Mumbai sketchers knew they were recording a way of life that may be under threat. Many shared time with residents and listened to their stories. Their combined work, coming from multiple perspectives and passions, shows life in all its kaleidoscope color and variety, a fitting tribute indeed to life in the chawl.
USK MUMBAIThe epic diversity of Mumbai ‘chawls’ – humble inner city tenement dwellings once designed to house migrant workers but now supporting generations of families – called for a collaborative approach. Four members of USK Mumbai joined forces to sketch the many faces, architectures and experiences of these locations – from light and colour-filled celebrations such
Farah Irani had been sketching her neighborhood in the city of Pune for some time, on a road full of historic buildings built during the colonial British era. For this project, she concentrated on a unique historic market, to understand how the local people have reclaimed and repurposed it, and how the British and Indian influences have evolved during the pandemic. According to laws put in place by the British, vendors can only sell what they are licensed to at the centuryold Mandai market – but they find ways to adapt their wares to the ever changing festivals and customer demands: “For Diwali it’s brooms, for the Ganesh Festival it’s creative pedestals for the installation of the idol, for Dussehra, there are mountains of marigolds,” says Farah. One memorable day, Farah drew the broom vendor at right, who was perched high on a pile of his wares: “It looked like he had attained nirvana there, as he took his calls and handled his thronging customers in a peaceful manner.... he even tried to see that I had a cup of hot tea, organized a chair for me to sit on despite my protests, and ensured his men directed the chaotic traffic around me just so that I could sketch.”
The market stalls mirror India’s many festivals, and the broom vendor was catering to the tradition of sweeping away poverty in the home. This happens on the day before the traditional financial year ends, when Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, visits around midnight and tries to find the cleanest house. “Through this type of storytelling I have learned to dive in deep to look for those untold stories, to spend time with the subject to appreciate and highlight the need for conservation of an aging structure,” says Farah.
Rolf Schroeter got to know one street in his neighborhood intimately – Kantstraße, which connects the Berlin Fair and International Congress Center with the Beitscheidtplatz in the center of the Berlin district of Charlottenburg. A hub for restaurants, bars, theatre and “overall intense nightlife”, he’d walked through it countless times but only started exploring it in great detail with this project.
He started at an uneasy point continuing through periods of greater restrictions. As he is by no means an extrovert, tackling portraits was a challenge: “My method is to quite openly start a drawing of a situation, always containing a capture of some person in a habitat. So I already catch a bit of context and at the same time sometimes attract attention that can be a starting point for a conversation. Sometimes this leads to a portrait sitting (right away or scheduled on another date); other times I only collect some info, thoughts and views from a conversation.”
Is it a right, a privilege, a reward, or a necessity to have a safe, dry home? Homelessness has become interwoven with the Seattle streetscape; over 11,000 people are experiencing this destabilizing way of life, and thousands of businesses have closed in the wake of COVID-19. For those few, like Daniel Winterbottom, who do not walk by with eyes fixed on some other place, there are stories to be heard, heartbreak to be witnessed or imagined, and myriad unexpected details that jolt our perceptions and prejudices – like people’s efforts to keep their campsites clean without running water or storage materials, some placing bouquets of wildflowers at their entrances to make them more homely.
Daniel says his year-long project began “as an unintentional act of art therapy – a response to the pandemic’s containment and alienation.” He felt it was important to learn about homelessness from the people impacted by it, and to provide “evidence that it is real, and that we as a society have, in part, turning away allowed it to happen.” One silver lining
was that he found a renewed passion for sketching “as an act of observation, documentation, and expression.” Each sketch of a dwelling, shelter, or abandoned piece of furniture is so detailed and sensitive that it makes us wonder about the individuals and families linked to it. The sketches seem to ask us to see the human impact, the wasted potential, and the obligation to do more than just turn away.
Even as COVID presented challenges for gathering and learning in person we were happy to see the return of some of our beloved workshops in 2021. We are hoping that as the situation improves more and more workshop proposals will be pouring in.
Dueto the pandemic, the world was in lockdown for almost two years with various levels of travel restrictions globally. As such, the USk Symposium was put on hold even after a host city was appointed. The USk Executive Board and the USk Symposium Team have been reviewing the situation and have decided on a new date with the next USk Symposium Host City for 2023.
While the world was reopening to gathering again at the end of 2021, the global community of urban sketchers gathered for Sketch Together, sketching on-location and connecting online on 17 October for a 24-hour global sketch crawl with live broadcasts from four time zones and 20 locations. This event was supported by Derwent as the exclusive event sponsor.
To build capacity within our USk Chapters to host more events globally and to decentralize the joy of symposiums, we started the USk Regional Grant program.
• 17 applications were received from our enthusiastic community.
• 5 chapters were selected to receive a cash grant of $2,000 USD each.
• All five regional events are scheduled to be delivered in 2022.
It has been an incredibly busy year for the USk Social Media team, a group of enthusiastic volunteers who have joined the Urban Sketchers grassroots movement, contributing their time and skills to benefit the greater USk community.
Bridging over different time zones, languages, and cultures, the USk Social Media team extends its arms, reaching out to our community from their home desks, aiming to promote selected USk enrichment programs, demonstrate inclusivity and comradeship, and keep our worldwide members and affiliates engaged and active.
From the Far East, Singapore and India, through the UK, Ireland, and Norway, to Brazil, South America, Ohio, Florida, and San Diego in the USA, the Social Media team of volunteers is a collaborative USk force sharing messages and updates concerning:
• USkTalks
• USk Sketch Together
• Regional Events Grant
• USk Education & Workshops
• Reportage Grants
• 2021 USk Fundraiser
• USk Drawing Attention Zine
• USk Chapters Highlights
• Sketchers’ storytelling art
• USk New Website.
In 2021 Urban Sketchers continued to operate remotely and to support local activities of our chapter network.
• A BRAND-NEW WEBSITE : Our primary financial investment for the year was a full redesign of urbansketchers. org to better meet the needs of the communities we serve. Our beautiful new website was launched in early 2022.
• EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS, including USk’s Reportage Grant program, continued in 2021, with grants given to sketchers in France, India, Germany, and the United States.
• YEAR END FUNDRAISER: This year’s end-of-year fundraiser brought in over $4,400 in generous donations from our members, and as always we are profoundly grateful to all of our sponsors who have continued to generously support Urban Sketchers during a year when large gatherings were not possible.
• DRAWING ATTENTION continued to provide a platform to share news about our chapters and highlight urban sketching across the globe.
2021 was a challenging yet immensely rewarding year for everyone. With no symposiums or face-to-face sketch events possible, the Sponsorship Team had to think outside the box, be more creative, and find new ways to get sponsors involved with Urban Sketchers globally. Working with Education, Events, Social Media, and Membership, the Sponsorship Team was able to successfully trial a number of new opportunities, in addition to tried and tested initiatives.
Season 2 of USk Talks kicked off in January 2021, with Royal Talens, Brevillier Cretacolor, Golden, Ackerman Pens, and Derwent showing their support by joining in through the season. This was a hugely successful initiative, with sponsors sharing clips with their distribution partners internationally.
If you missed these interviews, watch them on our channel.
Derwent sponsored USk’s global 24 hour Sketch Together event and Drawing Attention content. Drawing Attention also carried articles, competitions, and advertisements from Darsie Beck, Dick Blick, and others. Interestingly, Derwent received requests for copies of their article from their Asian
colleagues, who posted it on their social media channels. The power of advertising in Drawing Attention!
Ackerman Pens
Blick Art Materials
Brevillier Urban & Sachs Bruynzeel
Darsie Beck Da Vinci Derwent
Dick Blick Ecoline
Golden Artist Colors, Inc. Royal Talens
Seawhite of Brighton Ltd. Strathmore
Van Gogh
Suzanne Aboushakra
Idalis Alamina Pierre-Jean Alet
American Society of Landscape Architects, Nebraska/ Dakotas
Anne-Marie Armstrong
Rebeka Asztaian Mohan Banerji Alison Banfield
Bruce Barnes
Elisabeth H. Berge Eileen Bernasconi
Stephanie Bower
Marie-Hélène Brohan Delhaye J Butterworth Gabi Campanario Mollie Carter Carol Chapel Teoh Yi Chie Suma CM
Colegio de Arquitectos y Arquitectos Paisajistas de Puerto Rico Mike Daikubara Philip Dobson facebook donations
Delphine Doreau Carol Eddy Douglas Elliott Lin Grosman
Ingrid Hajek Alison Hall
James Hobbs
Charles James Karen John
Gayle Lalich Marcia Langan Chris Lee Jimmy Lu
Alexandra S. MacLeod
Margaret Maguire
Mike Maher Gordana Markovic
Linda Martino Linda Matson Michael McEnroe
Linda Moore Kris Mordecai Joel Morris Network for Good Leslie Nielson Elizabeth NorLund
Deborah McMahon Osterholtz Charles Piper Glenda Playle Constance Rettew Deana Reynolds YB de Ridder
Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero Carol Rosenberg-Fox Sonal S. Amber Sausen and Daniel Green Marion Schatz
Richard Sheppard Suhita Shirodkar
Keesung Song
Mai Lynn Strickland Shambhavi Taylor Urban Sketchers Orlando
Gary Varner Christina Wald MM Cirfi Walton
Liz Watkins Neil Whitehead Alvin Wong Gail Wong
