Monday, August 30, 2010

Spreading the word at the Portland Zine Symposium

I had a table at the Portland Zine Symposium this year, and besides my various other projects, put a stack of urban sketches at the corner of the table with some Portland Urban Sketchers cards. When folks showed interest in the drawings I talked with them about our group.

(Previously I mentioned having a "Drawing Portland" zine, but unfortunately ran out of time to finish that one. It'll come out for next year's Stumptown Comics Fest instead.)

While in general attendance at the event seemed low this year, there were several folks that seemed genuinely interested in meeting up with us to draw in the future, and many others who at least took cards. I really hope some of these new folks will take the big step of coming out that first time, it's always the hardest when you haven't met people yet.

If any of you folks are here reading this because you picked up a card at my table - thanks for visiting this website, and I hope to see you at a sketchcrawl in the near future! (I won't be at the one on 9/25. You should go anyway - the other participants are super friendly, don't worry about not knowing anyone there. But also see the calendar below for info on what some of us will be doing this Saturday. And I recommend joining the google group linked in the sidebar to the left, to get acquainted with the others & help decide where to go in the future!)

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Portland Sketchers Crawl Around Union Station

 August 22
Symposium sparked increased membership in Portland - Lots of local talent


Here we are Sunday morning on a break at Laughing Planet.  We were up on the Foot Bridge to the right of the station for a couple hours.  After lunch some of us continued sketching around Union Station and met back near the entrance to share sketch books. Here's a couple of my images from the day.>>>>




Sunday, August 22, 2010

Urban People and Today's sketchcrawl

Earlier this month, I sketched some of Portland's UrbanSketchers:

And today, I met up with some folks and we sketched around the train station:

Alanna's experience at the symposium, part 2!


...more sketching during the symposium. I realize that I'm not really posting these in chronological order...and you'll have to excuse the photos of sketches with weird lighting... 
it was dark during this lecture, so all I could sketch were silhouettes.
I also drew on the bus each day, as I decided I didn't want to worry about paying for parking while I was so focused on sketching
It was fun to draw the participants who were often drawing as well!
 my schedule for the 3 days and a photo of lapin cut from the PNCA booklet.
We went to Bridgeport on Friday night and, of course, continued the fun of sketching
I attempted to sketch my fellow sketchers

and, of course, more on the bus and waiting for the bus:
I tried to spend a lot of time sketching...including during the welcoming remarks
On the last day, I went sketching with Lapin, to focus on Urban Line
It's a bit wonky, but oh well!
It was fun to sit near Lapin & sketch, especially because I have followed his work online for quite awhile now!

then, I went out with Jason Das to focus on Urban Color. Our first assignment was to draw a scene using a non black line.
Then, we were to go out and draw the same scene twice, but one scene we colored it 'normally' (with colors close to the real colors) and the second one we could color it however we wanted to. I really liked the second one. It was fun!
Our third assignment was to draw something and then give it to your partner to color. I drew this scene from a pet store and it was colored by another:
and I added color to this sketch:

and now some of my favorite photos from the symposium (either taken by me, or found in the flickr pool for the symposium):
sketching on the streetcar

Sharing our work and learning from some pretty incredible artists:

Meeting so many cool people

And the exhibit at the end!

Sadly, the symposium had to come to an end. However, the Portland Urban Sketchers have been coming together to sketch and chat quite frequently this month. AND, we've gotten quite a few new members to join our group! Yay!

Alanna's experience at the Symposium!

Hi All, the original post is on my Painted Cats blog.
I've finally decided that now is the time to blog about my experience at the Urban Sketchers Symposium that was held here in Portland July 29-31.

We were given lots of goodies. I started in on my Moleskine, accordian style, sketchbook. I doodled during the lectures.

Lapin's presentation was interesting and talked about his experience drawing a city in 10 days.


I resonated with Gabi's remark that there are three types of people out sketching: architects, artists and journalists. I think I fall in to the journalist, or "storyteller" category.

Veronica's presentation was super emotional. During 9/11 she drew as she was witnessing the twin towers falling in NYC.

Sorry, Simo, this is an awful doodle of you, but I definitely liked your presentation and the energy you put in to collaborative projects!
Matt Brehm's lecture on Sketching as a social activity really resonated with me. As someone who has actively organized a group of sketchcrawlers, I recognize the importance in my life and find it interesting that it's not necessarily a new idea.

the lectures were spread out over three days and during the three days, we had field sketching sessions. I first went out with Veronica Lawlor to work on Urban People. As it was Thursday morning & streets were deserted, we had to find the people, so we headed to Powell's. I started sketching my usual ways, despite Veronica's tip to use thumbnails.

so i stubbornly continued randomly placing sketches on the page

until I decided I better listen to the tip, as it might help.

and I think I did get a little bit better!



I went out with Simo to explore urban architecture.

but i of course got bored with buildings and went in search of some people to draw instead.


but I did try again to focus on the architecture around me.


in between field sketching sessions, I found lots of opportunities to keep sketching!



...even on the streetcar as urban sketchers crowded in!



I went with Gabi to Pioneer Square to focus on urban composition. Thinking about the story I wanted to tell.


So I sat and sketched the set up for Flicks on the Bricks, which would happen later that evening.

and since Pioneer Square is known as Portland's Living Room, I couldn't help but capture this guy:

I also went out with Frank Ching to focus on architecture some more, as I know that's were I need a lot of practice!
I approached the scene as normal (for some reason I can't get it to orient the correct way)
And Frank came to give me some tips on how to approach the scene. Following his advice, Here's what I managed:


From his advice I got some tips for future sketching, which I think will improve my sketches.
....more in next post!