Thursday 19 July 2012

Urban Sketchers Symposium: I'm Back!



I got back from my travels in Santo Domingo on Wednesday afternoon. Since then, I've spent most my time catching up on emails, but have been bursting to tell you about the symposium



It was a truly fantastic week. Getting together with all my fellow sketch-obsessives, meeting the other Urban Sketchers correspondents, drawing and drawing and drawing, more or less from dawn to dusk, for 5 days solid.


I've made so many new friends too, from all round the world (hello to all my new sketching buddies!). Sketchers are such a lovely bunch of people: we continually inspired one another and shared all our best tips. We sketched each other, we borrowed each other's art equipment and we greedily looked through each other's sketchbooks at every opportunity.


There were 3 hour workshops twice a day which were really well thought out and very interesting, generally aiming to nudge people out of their comfort-zones, getting them to try new techniques or materials. I could only take 2 workshops, because I was teaching for 3 of the slots, but I thoroughly enjoyed all my sessions, whether I was the instructor or the pupil. I'll tell you more about the individual workshops later and share some of what I have learnt.




In the meantime, I must say a HUGE thank you to the lovely Orling Domingues for all her hard work, arranging and coordinating the conference and looking after all her instructors. Poor thing: she has not had time to do a single sketch in about a month! 



She did a great job and it couldn't have gone better: if I'd had a more fun time I think I might actually have exploded.

No comments: