Urban Sketchers Symposium, Chicago

I'm delighted to be one of the 36 instructors on the teaching faculty at the 8th International Urban Sketchers Symposium in Chicago in July this year. I'm guessing there will be over 500 participants - it's an amazing experience having that size sketching 'flashmob' come to town :-)

It will be my third symposium. I loved demonstrating in Singapore in 2015, then teaching about colour in Manchester in 2016.

The workshop schedule for Chicago is here (http://www.urbansketchers.org/p/usk-symposium-programming.html) Choose your workshops and demonstrations before you register.

Registration is from the 11th February - get all set up in advance as it can be very busy on the day.

I'll be teaching a workshop called Drawing Out the Details.

I often like to draw small sections of a scene rather than the whole view, like this series of sections of the QVB in Sydney. It's a way to tell more about a place than you can in a single view.

 This is a series of sketches from a market in Montreal.

 And this series of sketches are in New York - in the Met and outside the Public Library.

I choose materials to sketch with that will be most suitable for the subject - sometimes a water-soluble pencil to show a softer subject, sometimes a pen, sometimes black ink, sometimes grey or brown. During the workshop I'll be sharing sketching tips and techniques while exploring a range of sketching tools to build a montage of a scene by drawing the details.

Here's a sketch of  some of my favourite sketching tools. I'll have a number with me for participants to try - it's always best to try things out before you buy them and add them to your kit :-) For full information about all these tools see my in blog post.

I'll also be doing a demonstration about how to choose a great sketching palette. More details of the demonstrations are here - all participants can choose one. Workshop participants choose four workshops as well. So much fun! See you in Chicago :-)