Report from the Urban Sketchers Symposium, Chicago 2017

We’re recently back from the USK Chicago Symposium, followed by somewhat of a prolonged after party, which we’ll be talking about in due time.

As usual I’m looking over the sketches we brought home and thinking – what have we learned from the workshop?

I think we learned that Direct Watercolor (no drawing – all brushwork) is hard!

But really worth the exercise.

It’s not that I’m going to give up drawing. This is not a religious conversion. “Burn your pencils!” (not).

You’ll see that I go right back to drawing as soon as the symposium is over. BUT – the thing is, if you try it, for even a few days, your painting instincts can take a big jump forward.

You learn first hand how much you don’t have to draw. How much you can really do with a brush.

So when you do return to the safer world of drawing under a watercolor – maybe you’ll break away from slavish coloring-in. Maybe you’ll have gained some of that freshness we love in watercolor.

We began classes each morning with two examples of Broken Silhouettes. One positive, and one negative shape.

Fortunately, there were plenty of sculptural examples right near the workshop meeting place.

If we look back at my outline for class, I think these first two subjects were easy enough to follow.

Combining line and shape together, in a single pass, using just the pointed round brush to either draw a shape – or to draw around a shape – using the background tone and then going back for interior details.

But after that we took a leap of faith, and had people dive into a classic skyline view of Chicago.

Which I think, on reflection, might have been a big ask :)

Looking north we had the Magnificent Mile in the distance, looking south (my favorite) the park surrounding the Field Museum and some glass towers rising above the train yards.

It shouldn’t matter what you are sketching – even if it’s an intimidating view. Everything can be reduced into a set of silhouette shapes.

A row of skyscrapers is no different than the lone statue. Think of it as a row of bricks.

Especially if you decide you don’t care about architectural rendering, and you’re just going to make a lively sketch. You can still feel the presence of the city, even if you reduce those huge buildings with hundreds of windows into flat shapes.

Just keep thinking about the silhouette edge of the horizon, and make sure there are some tiny elements for scale in the foreground.

I asked people at various times to try either the positive shape approach (as above), or the negative shape approach (below) – where the sky is used to cut out white silhouettes of buildings – which we go back into with shadow shapes.

The very best thing about the symposium is the enthusiasm and excitement everyone brings.

Everyone rose to the challenge of this unreasonable assignment!

Students are here to push themselves. To try new concepts with different artist instructors each day.

For an instructor, the symposium experience is different than any other workshop. These are the most passionate sketchers from their various home towns. The ones crazy enough to fly across the country, or even across the ocean, just to spend a long weekend drawing with 400 other people from sunrise to sunset.

So, I honestly want to thank everyone who took my workshop. I always head home from a USK event with a newfound passion for sketching that I pick up from my students. Thanks to all of you, and I hope we’ll get a chance to sketch together again soon!