MURRAY DEWHURST

PROFESSIONAL AUTHOR / ILLUSTRATOR EMMA FITZGERALD HAS SOME GREAT IDEAS THAT COULD BE JUST AS USEFUL FOR AMATEUR BOOK CREATIVES. BY JANE WINGFIELD

Emma FitzGerald started city sketching early in life. When she was a teenager, her family moved from Vancouver BC to the Irish countryside, and she would head into Dublin on the weekends to “walk around and sketch the city as a way to get to know it.”

She continued sketching as she traveled and studied, but rarely drew where she was living until she moved to Halifax in 2004. She began with house portraiture, then started sketching every day in her neighborhood. People stopped and talked, telling her stories about what she was drawing. She pitched the idea of making “an adult picture book” at a Word on the Streets, a national book and magazine festival in Canada. An interested publisher worked with her to produce Hand Drawn Halifax, published in 2015. The success of that book led to Hand Drawn Vancouver in 2020, a children’s book, City Streets for City People in 2022, and Hand Drawn Victoria ,scheduled for release in 2024. Emma starts by sketching and taking notes, maybe plotting out neighborhoods, but not attaching herself to preconceived places or a particular plan. As she sketches, ideas evolve. Often people talk to her, telling her stories about what she’s drawing or about their lives. Those stories can be integrated into the text or can lead to another location to sketch. “It’s like an invitation to be open when you go out there and sketch. Your preconceived idea is only half of the process.” It all evolves depending on what happens on the street, she says.

Once the sketches are done, “I gather all the images and text together, like collecting little recipe cards,” then she starts determining the progression and design of the book. She advises sketchers to be very sensitive to what they are sketching. Sometimes you need to ask permission of someone or have someone introduce or guide you, especially in a culturally unfamiliar situation.

JANE WINGFIELD SHARES SOME MORE OF HER FAVOURITE CITY SKETCH BOOKS...

SPAIN’S ONLINE ‘FANZINE’ This book is what first got me interested in urban sketching ‘city books’. USk Spain published five online zines from 2013 to 2016, each featuring a city in Spain – Malaga, Barcelona, Zapagoza, Galacia and Madrid. The city articles include sketches by several Spanish urban sketchers and give a rich overview of each city.

ONLINE PLATFORMS USk Spain shows you don’t have to prnt copies of your book to reach an appeciative audience. If you don’t have access to design software, you could use a platform such as mixbook.com.

If you can get to the designed PDF stage and want to bypass printing, check out issuu.com, which is the online libtary used by USk Spain – and Drawing Attention!

SEVILLE FROM TOP TO BOTTOM BY INMA SERRANO I love this book. Inma’s energetic style and the loose-yet-controlled, expressive images seem to embody the vibrancy of her chosen city. The book turns upside down in the middle, as she says in the introduction, “There are two sides to Seville, one for tourists and one where people live.” She brings them both together in this feast of color, line and story.

TAKING THE ‘ROAD LESS TRAVELLED’ HAS BECOME SECOND NATURE FOR MURRAY DEWHURST. THE FORMER USK SYMPOSIUM, BLOG CORRESPONDENT AND EDITOR TELLS MARK ALAN ANDERSON HOW HE COMBINES SKETCHING WITH EPIC CYCLE TOURS ACROSS NEW ZEALAND.

Like many Urban Sketchers, carrying a sketchbook is part of daily life for Murray. But he has found a way to push sketching beyond the simple everyday by combining two things he loves: sketching and bicycling. “Sketching has become a recording of my life, my neighborhood, the things I like to do. Travel and bicycle sketching is kind of a classic example of that. I’ll take a sketchbook and record the trip.” A graphic designer by profession, Murray has been interested in sketching for many years, especially after the field became more and more reliant on computers. “I got the urge to draw in the late 80’s, while living a few years in London. It was actually urban sketching, though I felt quite exposed standing on the street sketching and the sketches were terrible.”

ABOVE: START OF DAY 1 – CAPE EGMONT

“I did a cycle tour around Europe in ‘91 with my girlfriend at the time and I was trying to sketch then but I was a little bit unsuccessful, and I’d never seen anyone else do it.”

These days, sketching has become a way of life for him. He records his neighborhood and home city of Auckland prolifically. Perhaps that early bicycle tour was a proof of concept, because Murray now combines sketching with bike packing. “Bike packing,” for the uninitiated, often involves touring offroad, predominantly in the form of gravel and single-track mountain biking. It is a self-sufficient form of travel which requires one to think in a minimalist fashion. A sketcher can’t take an entire studio along on a bicycle. Dewhurst carries a Moleskin A6 concertina sketchbook, a black pen, a small plastic watercolor kit, and a water brush: “I quite like that,” says Murray. Murray participated in one such event on the Kōpiko Aotearoa cycle trail, where groups of cyclists begin on the east coast of New Zealand and others start on the west coast, passing each other on the route across. He’d often stop to draw some of the other cyclists he’d encounter. He had no preconceived notion of what to draw, accepting whatever opportunity presented: other cyclists, a bit of scenery, a bit of writing, old buildings, food for lunch, road signage and so on. “And before you know it you’ve captured quite a trip,” he exclaims.

Bike sketching seems to be defined by moments: meeting others along the way, stopping and asking if they’d mind if he drew them, he says. “I’ll have a conversation with them and go on a bit, then say to myself oh wow, I better get this down! It’s a really quick sketch, but people are waiting for you as well. So I have to sketch quicker. It busts me out of trying to do a perfect job, so it’s really loose. It captures a moment and it’s stuck in your memory, I think. I’d sketch while I was still straddling the bike, just pull the sketchbook out of my

ABOVE: HAAMI, WAHAROA, EAST COAST

pocket and quickly draw. I might stick a bit of color on later, after setting the tent up at camp.”

I’m curious to know whether Murray considers his sketches to be more narrative, journalistic, or commentary. “All of the above,” he laughs. “I do like creating a narrative. Sketching on a bike is an example of that. The trip I did last year was a ride across the country, about 1200 km, and you just start with a sketch, and as you go a story unfolds in a linear fashion. I find that really fascinating. There’s no big picture, there’s no clever idea. It’s just a recording of the things you’re doing and the things you’re seeing. And you finish with a story.”

The Kōpiko Aotearoa cycle trail is one of New Zealand’s 22 ‘Great rides’. It traverses the widest point of the North Island, and riders have the option of traveling over 1000 kilometres through rural Aotearoa New Zealand, climbing over 17,000 metres along the way – almost the equivalent of climbing Mt Everest, twice!

“I DO LIKE CREATING A NARRATIVE.

SKETCHING ON A BIKE IS AN EXAMPLE

OF THAT...” – MURRAY DEWHURST

ABOVE: THE PAKIHI TRAIL,ON THE KŌPIKO

A6 IS A CONVENIENT SIZE FOR BIKE SKETCHING THAT FITS PERFECTLY INTO A SIDE POCKET ON CYCLING SHORTS. THE MOLESKINE BOOK (BELOW) IS SMOOTH AND SLIDES IN AND OUT EASILY.

LEFT: MURRAY’S CYCLE TRAIL KIT. BELOW: LOOKING BACK TO KENNEDY BAY, COROMANDEL

ABOVE: NEAR PORT JACKSON. PHOTO: ANTOINE PETHERS BELOW: MARAEHAKO BEACH, ON THE KŌPIKO

Quick sketches and slow pedalling across Te Ika a Maui

Murray Dewhurst is the author of Kōpiko Aotearoa Sketchbook – Quick sketches and slow pedalling across Te Ika a Māui. Message him on Instagram for your copy (NZ$25 plus postage).