Drawing Attention October 2019

DRAWING

Attention

The official zine of Urban Sketchers OCTOBER 2019

Drawing Attention Mandate Drawing Attention, the official monthly zine of the Urban Sketchers organization, communicates and promotes official USk workshops, symposiums, sketchcrawls, news and events; shares news about USk chapters; and educates readers about the practice of on-location sketching.

Thanks to this month’s Drawing Attention contributors: Managing Editor: Patricia Chow Editorial Assistant: Pedro Loureiro Mailchimp layout: Jane Wingfield Issuu layout: Anne Taylor Social Media Designer: Carrie Alyson Hirsch Writers: Leslie Akchurin, Mark Alan Anderson, Meagan Burns, Pedro Loureiro, Jane Wingfield.

Proofreaders: Leslie Akchurin, Ann Schwartzwald. Contributors: Parka; Amber Sausen, Mark Leibowitz, Lydia Velarde, Hugo Costa, Maria Regina Tuazon, Judith Dollar, Clara Schuster. cover image: Hugo Costa Subscribe to Drawing Attention. Read the September edition of Drawing Attention.

Circulation: 12k+ Readership: 16k+ Web: urbansketchers.org Urban Sketchers is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the art of on-location drawing. Click here to make your tax-deductible contribution via Paypal. © 2019 Urban Sketchers.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this publication, including accompanying artwork, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Urban Sketchers organization.

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Dear Urban Sketchers, Education is a critical element of Urban Sketchers’ mission.

Since 2011 Education Director Mário Linhares has been in charge of dreaming, strategizing and philosophizing on the ways Urban Sketchers can help educate sketchers around the world.

The Urban Sketchers Symposium workshops, the incredible growth of the USk Workshops program, and the creation of the 10x10 Educational Program to celebrate ten years of Urban Sketchers, have all flourished under Mário’s guidance. His dedication to building a diverse USk Education Committee reflects his commitment to urban sketching’s global impact. On the Executive Board, Mário has been instrumental in shaping the organization’s direction by stressing the importance of

diverse viewpoints, the significance of educational content in USk events and by reminding everyone about the joy of storytelling through sketching.

As Mário’s term as Education Director comes to an end this month, we look forward to his continued contributions to USk, and on behalf of the global USk community. I want to thank Mário for his leadership, vision, kindness and generosity in serving Urban Sketchers, and hope you will join me in saying Thank you, Mário! Feel free to send him an email at education@ urbansketchers.org.

We’re hoping some of you will be interested in continuing the USk commitment to education and storytelling by joining the amazing Education Committee team. Happy Sketching, Amber Sausen, USk President

MANAGING EDITOR’S MESSAGE Greetings, Sketchers!

Welcome to another issue of Drawing Attention! In this issue, we meet USk Vice-President Richard Alomar, visit USk regional chapters in Houston and Bali, and connect with USk instructors Hugo Costa and Farah Irani, and long-time volunteer Mark Leibowitz. We also congratulate the USk Social Media team for reaching 200K followers on Instagram!

There are many opportunities available to volunteer with Urban Sketchers. Whether it’s helping out with your local chapter, or filling one of the volunteer positions at the global organization, I encourage you to check out these opportunities to use your skills to support urban sketching!

If you’d like to share your experience urban sketching, please write to me at drawingattention@urbansketchers.org. Enjoy!

Patricia Chow, Drawing Attention Managing Editor

CONTENTS 4 LETTER TO THE EDITOR

6

14

16

RICHARD ALOMAR

USK BALI

USK HOUSTON

28

32

36

FARAH IRANI

MARK LEIBOWITZ

44

USK SYMPOSIUM NEWS

7

USK NEWS & EVENTS

22

HUGO COSTA

REVIEWS | ENDNOTES

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OCTOBER 2019 3

Letter to the Editor

LETTER TO THE EDITOR It has been several years now since I have partnered with a local community in Brittany called GRAIN de SEL (assograindesel. com), whose mission is to provide a fun and less stressful environment for hospitalized children. I offer them 10% of my revenues from my online courses and workshops.

As I wanted to do something myself instead of just giving them money, I offered to give sketching workshops, which I did in August. I went to the Perharidy hospital each Tuesday afternoon to sketch with the kids.

I spent a lot of time preparing a big program as it was my first time doing something with people in a hospital and with kids. I also made twenty A3 zines for each of the kids to fill during the workshop and keep. The organization provided colored pencils and bic pens; I provided the paper and zines.

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On the first Tuesday afternoon I had eight kids and teenagers. They did everything I told them to do...but I felt something was wrong. At the end, I asked them which exercises they preferred. Their answer was, “we don’t like to draw.” Oops!

I went back home with a strange feeling and thinking that this is not worth doing. Imagine, you find yourself stuck in a horrible place where there is nothing to do. There is only a small cinema room that

shows a mega stupid movie, but you go watch it because there is nothing else to do… That was what I felt I was doing with these kids...

Then I understood something: these children and teenagers only came to have fun, not like my students who pay for a workshop to learn something, so I had to change my attitude and also my program.

On the second Tuesday I did fun drawing exercises, like drawing the

Letter to the Editor

person in front of them without looking at what they are drawing (blind drawing) or drawing what was in the room with a continuous line. I also made them do some drawings together. I got it – they were smiling the whole time and having fun!

I can tell anybody now that the experience was rich, and each Tuesday when I left home to go to the hospital, I felt very happy. I left my worries at home and went to spend an afternoon with them, thinking about the present moment, about doing fun things with them, and nothing else. This feeling was just great!

Renata Lahalle Brittany, France

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USk Symposium News

These past months after #USkAmsterdam2019, many were reliving Amsterdam’s sketching high, carrying on with their next destinations, settling back at home, or writing proposals for next year’s big adventure!

With a shorter time frame for the Symposium in Hong Kong, hats off to everyone who wrote and submitted proposals for next year’s programming!

Thank you very much for your interest and participation to be part of the faculty. We received a lot of proposals and are excited about what’s in store.

Our Education Committee is doing its best to evaluate each of them. It is always a hard task with the amount of brilliant proposals that we get each year. Stay tuned for the registration and programming information, which will be announced in November 2019.

The official hashtag for the Hong Kong Symposium is #USkHK2020.

Subscribe to our social media channels to have the latest Symposium updates. Happy sketching!

USK BLOG

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USK SYMPOSIUM 2019 ON INSTA

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USk News & Events

10X10 WORKSHOPS USk 10x10 Workshops are an excellent opportunity to learn new sketching skills from a top USk instructor and to meet a new community of sketchers in a location near you. To see the list of 10x10 classes around the world click here. To add your chapter to the list, contact education@urbansketchers.org.

SUBSCRIBE TO DRAWING ATTENTION – IT’S FREE

The Urban Sketchers YouTube Channel would like to feature individual urban sketchers or chapters sharing their answer to What have you learned from Urban Sketching? We are requesting answers submitted in video format for our YouTube Channel. These do not have to be professional videos and can be videos taken with your phone!

Guidelines: Please submit anytime during the month of October 2019.

We prefer very short videos (2-3 minutes for a group). By submitting your video you give permission to have it edited and/or combined with other submissions if necessary. MPEG4 or .mp4 file extension, steady camera, clear, intelligible voice, little to no background noise, no advertisements. To submit your video for consideration, please send via wetransfer.com to Lydia Velarde at video@urbansketchers.org. I am looking forward to viewing and sharing your answers on the Urban Sketchers YouTube Channel!

FOLLOW USK ON TWITTER

SUBSCRIBE TO THE USK YOUTUBE CHANNEL

USk News & Events

SKETCH BY RIONA KUTHE

#USK200K: USK REACHES 200,000 FOLLOWER MILESTONE

BY PEDRO LOUREIRO

Meg Baker started urban sketching around the same time as the Orlando chapter was founded. She didn’t realize then that she would become a key player in the largest boost in the history of the Urban Sketchers Instagram (IG) account, which recently reached over 200K followers!

“I started volunteering with Urban Sketchers in May 2018. At the time, there was only one person running Instagram, and our followers numbered just over 100k,” Meg recalls. At first, her duties on the USk IG account were to do reposts, post workshop announcements, and help with Symposium sponsor posts, but shortly after, she realized that she could do more with 8 DRAWING ATTENTION

more people, explaining that “if it were just one person reposting, representation on the site could become homogenous based on the location and time zone of the person reposting and their aesthetic.”

Being in the same city as the Social Media Coordinator, Noga Grosman, the two Florida sketchers developed a strategy to improve the USk IG account’s role and performance by bringing onto the team Eric Ngan from Auckland, New Zealand, Dominique Eichi

from San Diego, USA, and Riona Kuthe from Stuttgart, Germany – all very active members of their own local chapters. With four volunteers spread across different time zones, the USk IG account stood a better chance of reflecting the true nature of the Urban Sketchers community.

“Our sketcher community is global and diverse in styles and techniques, and our Instagram reposts needed to reflect that diversity,’’ Meg further explains. Thanks to her team, the IG account now shares 12 to 18 posts a day, four or five workshops a

USk News & Events

definitely going to help with future partnerships.

See two celebratory presentations from five continents and dozens of cities, featuring sketches tagged with #USk200k: PART ONE

THE SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM IN AMSTERDAM, JULY 2019

week, and one or two references to Drawing Attention each week.

Meg also started making use of the Instastory function on IG, adding live direct links to workshop details, registration pages, and even to Drawing Attention, to make the account more engaging. “Over time, I’ve changed the profile to be more concise,” Meg says, adding a Linktr. ee index of links, and organizing information through highlights.

Over the past few months, Noga and the social media team have been pushing for an audience increase, and finally, on August 20, 2019, the USk IG account reached the impressive 200k followers milestone!

IG Manager Meg humbly shares

the laurels with her team: “I am so grateful and proud of the Instagram team. It was Dominique and Riona that created the graphics to celebrate the moment. Eric came up with the idea to highlight our sketchers from around the world and put together the slideshow video celebrating our global community.” The team’s effort is best described by Noga: “It is the volunteers of all layers of the organization who are giving their best and who are making Urban Sketchers a phenomenal story.”

Noga also sees beyond the milestone achievement and considers what the massive following can do for the community. “Sponsors found the USk IG to be a powerhouse!,” she exclaims. The 200k followers are

PART TWO

Connect with the USk IG team, on Instagram, of course!

CONNECT WITH MEG

CONNECT WITH ERIC

CONNECT WITH DOMINIQUE

CONNECT WITH RIONA

CONNECT WITH USK OCTOBER 2019 9

USk News & Events

THE CLIMATE IS CHANGING, WHY AREN’T YOU? USK RHEIN-MAIN SKETCHES THE CLIMATE STRIKE

SKETCH BY NADINE HANSEN IN INGELHEIM

BY CLARA SCHUSTER

It was amazing that so many people joined in the global climate strike on the 20th of September to strike for the urgency to change the climate policy now. Our chapter didn’t organize a meeting, but we ended up with six people sketching in four cities in our region: Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Mainz and Ingelheim.

Three of us sketched in Frankfurt with 20,000 other people striking for an immediate and effective change in the climate policy. Many students from Fridays for Future were very creative in writing and designing individual slogans and banners. We had a lot of fun sketching all the great posters.

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Even if everyone can help to protect the climate by themselves, it is still extremely important to stand together and show the politicians and big companies that they have to act now.

It was great to see all the sketches on instagram made by our team. So there were even far more people striking all over the region and of course all over the world. Who went to this demonstration as well?

CONNECT WITH USK RHEIN-MAIN

SKETCH BY BEATE KLITSCH IN FRANKFURT

SKETCH BY KATHARINA MUELLER IN FRANKFURT

SKETCH BY ANNE NILGES IN MAINZ

USk News & Events

OCTOBER 2019 11

USk News & Events

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SKETCH BY JOHANNA KRIMMEL IN DARMSTADT

USk News & Events

SKETCH BY CLARA SCHUSTER IN FRANKFURT

OCTOBER 2019 13

Sketcher Spotlight

Matsukawa and Urban Sketchers Japan. He attended the USk Symposium in Santo Domingo, and has attended every symposium since.

Richard became involved as a member of the USk Advisory Board, and spoke with other Board members and instructors about how the organization worked administratively. Those conversations, as well as a belief in the importance of Urban Sketchers as a global organization, led Richard to volunteer on the Executive Board.

MEET USK VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD ALOMAR

BY MEAGAN BURNS As part of our continuing series on the USk Executive Board, this month we’ll get to know our current vice president, New York City urban sketcher Richard Alomar.

Richard is a landscape architect by training, and is currently the Associate Director of Urban Extension and Engagement, as well as an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Richard has taught workshops and given lectures at five symposiums, and has always been interested in the organization’s mission and structure. He attended his first “real” Urban Sketchers event in 2011 with Kumi 14 DRAWING ATTENTION

Now as vice president, working under Amber Sausen’s leadership, Richard and the other members of the Advisory Board have set short-and long-term goals for the organization, with a clear sense of how to support the global community.

The vice president assists the president in organizing and following through on Board work, and oversees the approval of official USk Regional Chapters. Within this charge, there is flexibility to focus on tasks and projects that are important to the organization, but outside the direct responsibility of officers or directors.

For example, Richard has worked on the Matching Fund Campaign and the Community Grant Program, which was created to provide free USk workshops to people who have not yet experienced urban sketching.

These two initiatives were led by the vice president, the education director, the events director, and the social media team.

“I would encourage everyone to engage and volunteer in USk in whatever capacity they are able. Sketching

Richard Alomar

on location and sharing our stories is the heart of what we do, but it’s the volunteers that keep that heart strong.�

CONNECT WITH RICHARD

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OCTOBER 2019 15

USk Bali: Totally SketchGENIC

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USk Bali

LOOKING FOR YOUR NEXT DESTINATION SKETCH EVENT? LOOK NO FURTHER. BALI IS CELEBRATING SEVEN YEARS NEXT MONTH AND USK BALI WELCOMES SKETCHERS TO COME VISIT!....

BY JANE WINGFIELD

OCTOBER 2019 17

Featured Chapter

W

ith ornate temples and lush landscapes, there’s no shortage of sketchable scenes.

The island’s temples are emblematic places where you can really see and feel Balinese culture. And each one is different. Krishna Adithya, the admin for the USK Bali regional chapter explains, “some temples are carved in stone, and to reach it, you have to walk for miles through forest and river stream; some are majestic and a center of all major ceremonies of Balinese sacred celebrations; some are surrounded by waters; also every Balinese has one at their front yard (one that you might just sketch while you’re sipping over your coffee in the terrace).”

Bali has been an active group since 2012. Founder and drawing teacher, Rudy AO was temporarily living in Singapore when he met Tia Boon Sim and the Singapore Urban Sketchers. When AO returned to Bali in November 2012, he started the Balinese group with 12 sketchers.

When Paul Wang visited Bali, he expanded Singapore’s ripple effect and inspired the younger generation to join.

The group now has about 80 sketchers from various backgrounds, mostly sketching with analog materials not many iPads.

“Most of us are not Balinese, but we live on this island,” Krishna tells me. For regular meet-ups, they often get together casually and sketch at coffee galleries, beach

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clubs, hotels, villas, local markets, and local festivals.

“Even for Indonesians, Bali is beautiful, unique, and its culture is intense.”

If you love to sketch buildings, Balinese architecture is challenging, with curves and asymmetrical design.

“And if you love to sketch people – Bali offers unlimited cultural events with people in traditional clothes.”

USk Bali has several events planned for the upcoming year. Check out their social media channels and plan your next visit. “As a Number One tourist destination, Bali island is totally sketchGENIC. You need to bring several sketchbooks before landing here!”

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CONNECT WITH USK BALI

USk Bali

OCTOBER 2019 19

Featured Chapter

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USk Bali

OCTOBER 2019 21

Featured Chapter

SKETCH BY PETER NORRIS

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USk Houston

USK HOUSTON VISITS NASA SPACE CENTER

BY JUDITH DOLLAR

U

rban Sketchers Houston was able to sketch at an outof-this-world location recently, NASA Johnson Space Center’s Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. One of our members, a NASA employee, was able to get special access for our group to go onto the floor of the facility for our July sketch outing. Everyone was thrilled to have such a unique opportunity. The visit started with a brief walk-through, and then with limited time available, everyone got sketching.

The iconic space suits were a popular subject, as were the landing capsules and the robot-nauts. I learned that one reason the robo-nauts have human-like hands is so the tools used on the space station can be shared between humans and robots without having to develop and transport two sets of tools.

The massive building houses full-size Space Station modules, rover prototypes, Orion training and testing, and NASA’s next generation of humanoid robo-nauts. All NASA astronauts have trained here, and it is NASA’s lead for International Space Station operations and missions.

It is also the problem-solving location for issues that arise on the International Space Station (ISS); the solution is worked out in the replica on earth and transmitted to the ISS. OCTOBER 2019 23

Featured Chapter

I think everyone who was able to attend would jump at the chance to return for more sketching at this fascinating place. We are very grateful to NASA for their hospitality.

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CONNECT WITH USK HOUSTON

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SKETCH BY JENN WINGO

USk Houston

SKETCH BY MELANIE MARKHAM

SKETCH OF ROBO-NAUT BY JUDITH DOLLAR

OCTOBER 2019 25

Featured Chapter

SKETCH BY JOEL WALKER 26 DRAWING ATTENTION

USk Houston

SKETCH BY ROBERT JAMES OCTOBER 2019 27

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ADVOCATE OF AUDACIOUS COLOR:

Farah Irani

BY LESLIE AKCHURIN

F

arah Irani’s warmth is one of the first things you are likely to notice about her. She speaks with enthusiasm and affection about all things Urban Sketchers – the artists who’ve inspired her, the local chapter in Pune, India and the things they’ve accomplished, and her own workshop plans – making clear how much the organization has enriched her life in a relatively short time. It was only a few years ago that she found herself fascinated by a USk exhibition in Pune and subsequently joined her local chapter.

Now, she is so grateful for the “sense of community and connection with urban sketchers wherever I go.”

Farah notes that the Pune chapter is very active and well organized, with approximately 40 members showing up at typical sketch events. There are a number of universities in Pune, and while she estimates

about 80% of local sketchers have some association with architecture, “there are also deans, professors, professionals… all kinds of disciplines. I am so proud of our group!” While serving on the nine-member committee that administers the Pune chapter, Farah has helped to develop “USP Dialogues,” whereby three or four times a year, public presentations are given by invited speakers – an art paper manufacturer, for instance, or an author of a book about sketching. And chapter members have travelled internationally together, as when they journeyed to Bhutan in 2017 and then to the 2018 USk Symposium in Porto. After the Bhutan trip, the Pune chapter held a special exhibition entitled “Bhutan Diaries,” while Farah and two friends put together a book version to share with members.

OCTOBER 2019 29

“EXPERIMENT AND EXPLORE NEW WAYS TO EXPRESS YOURSELF. WE SHOULD STRIVE TO BE TOTALLY UNAFRAID IN OUR EXPRESSION, EVEN WHILE TRYING TO REACH OUR IDEAL OUTCOMES” – FARAH IRANI

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Farah Irani

Farah’s own background is in graphic design, including theatre set design.

Her love of drama and color drew her to sketcher and instructor Pat Southern Pearce, who often uses darker shades of background paper to create the medium tone on which she applies lighter and darker colors that “really pop.” Farah says, “she completely changed my idea of what can be done with line and color.”

While Pat tends to use earth shades of paper, Farah has branched out into to really bright colors, which imbue her work with mood and drama. She says that using such colors frees her creative response to her environment and makes every sketch an adventure. “Very often, I go out sketching with a plan, but that plan is turned topsy turvy when I see the location. The feeling of the moment makes me reach for an unexpected color and media accordingly. It’s like freezing my mood in the sketch.”

While Farah initially had some difficulty locating in Pune some of the materials Pat uses, after experimenting with many local products, she has found card stock that works well with watercolor, as well as with pen or chalk. In several weeks, she’ll be sharing this knowledge along with her artistic insights in two local entitled “Wearing Colored Lenses.” She hopes to teach participants “how to use a variety of media to create dramatic harmonies on strongly colored paper. Using color helps us to see the world differently, to let our own imaginative stories affect it.”

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CONNECT WITH FARAH OCTOBER 2019 31

USK VOLUNTEER PROFILE: MARK LEIBOWITZ A CONVERSATION WITH LONGTIME NEW YORK CITY URBAN SKETCHERS ADMINISTRATOR AND USK VOLUNTEER MARK LEIBOWITZ TENDS TO BE PHILOSOPHICAL AND THOUGHTFUL, WITH RELEVANT ANECDOTES RANGING FAR AND WIDE.

BY MARK ALAN ANDERSON

H

is USk journey began a decade ago during a life drawing class chat with a sketcher drawing next to him.

Leibowitz, pleased with his drawing, was taken aback when the man – a courtroom artist – asked “where” is your model? “Well, right there on the page,” Leibowitz replied in surprise. The artist suggested the figure might have more meaning if a sense of place was included in the sketch. And thus began the start of an internet journey researching drawings that had backgrounds, eventually leading Leibowitz to the Urban Sketchers website. “Of all the sources I discovered, the richest, most interesting source

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was the Urban Sketchers blog.

[The sketches] were interesting, constantly refreshed …and they all had backgrounds!”

Keenly studying the Urban Sketchers drawings, he began to feel as though he “knew” many of the people who made them. This sense of connection initially attracted Leibowitz to the Lisbon Symposium – an event he eventually talked himself out of attending, but which he followed every day. Around the same time, he began to search for a New York City group. It seemed to him they all knew each other, but he couldn’t figure out where they were meeting… which is how he

found himself in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.

In this place, far from New York, he met everyone. He immediately realized he shouldn’t have hesitated to attend the earlier symposium. He also discovered there was no chapter in his city – yet! A conversation with Richard Alomar resulted in a weekly drawing group collaboration, an inauspicious gathering that started small but eventually grew. The New York City chapter currently meets to sketch together at least twice each week.

“The friendships I formed with the other sketchers went very deep

OCTOBER 2019 33

Volunteer Profile

because I had some fundamental things in common with them.

The thing that was most interesting to me was what was most interesting to them. The conversations I got into when I went out sketching were THE most interesting I had all week.” During the next symposium, Leibowitz made it known that he wanted to give back and was recruited into Membership. He became an evangelist for the cause, sharing great enthusiasm for a mission of capturing the world one drawing at a time.

“The society we live in increasingly values handmade objects. In a sense, Urban Sketchers is doing pioneering work by exploring how human beings can fulfill themselves outside of strict work channels.”

Currently, Mark Leibowitz is “an unorthodox drawing instructor” at Pratt.

CONNECT WITH MARK

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CONNECT WITH USK NYC

Mark Leibowitz

OCTOBER 2019 35

MEET HUGO COSTA

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PORTO

Hugo Costa

HUGO COSTA, ORIGINALLY FROM PORTO, PORTUGAL, TELLS US ABOUT HIS LIFE AND WORK IN SPAIN AND AROUND THE WORLD....

OCTOBER 2019 37

Sketcher Spotlight

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work at the Architecture School in Valencia, Spain, where I teach, do research, and publish on subjects related to architecture, drawing and graphic expression. As an architect I use hand drawing constantly, from the conceptual drawings to the final presentations.

In 2009, a friend, Humberto Marum (@maun_marum) sent me the link to the Urban Sketchers webpage. I remember coming across Lapin’s sketches and freaking out! Then I thought, “I wanna do this.” A couple of months later, I started sketching every day. In 2011, I was accepted to be an official Urban Sketchers blog member, which made me so happy and proud!

I was a lonely sketcher for a while; it was only at the USk Symposium in Chicago in 2017 that I personally met members of the “Urban Sketchers community.” It was awesome to meet so many sketchers in just a couple of days. It was funny because I had to travel all the way 38 DRAWING ATTENTION

to the US to finally meet the sketchers from Lisbon.

One of my most unforgettable experiences was sketching a couple of Citroen DS cars at 2am with a bunch of sketchers on the last day of the Amsterdam Symposium.

It was amazing to see all the different interpretations of the same subject. But my stool broke and I almost fell into the canal!

I love bicycles and cycling, but even here drawing is usually present. I published a book based on four months of daily bicycle journeys in NYC. I am now reading Goethe’s “Italian Journey,” which I want to sketch one day, just as I sketched architect Louis Kahn’s trip to Italy, which will hopefully be my next published book.

My instagram followers often ask me “what is my trick?”

I often disappoint them, saying there is no trick, just hard work: practice a lot and study the work of other sketchers.

I have no special skills or artistic background. I just sketch a lot. It is hard to sketch every day, I have to organize my

Title

SAO BENTO RAILWAY STATION

OCTOBER 2019 39

Sketcher Spotlight

day very well to do it. It used to be easy when I did fast sketches, but nowadays I usually take between 1-2 hours to finish a sketch, sometimes much more. I always have a list in mind of potential spots to draw. I sketch in my car and on my Vespa, while waiting at traffic lights. I never leave home without my little Moleskine, not even to go to the bakery downstairs – one day there was a big queue for bread and I sketched until it was my turn - those 20 minutes flew fast!

VALENCIA

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I think digital and physical sketching are not so different. Mario Carpo, a teacher at the Bartlett in London, compared digital and physical sketching to changing from a hard to a soft pencil - it is just another tool, the general concepts are basically the same. That is why my best hand-drawing students are usually also the best when using digital tools. Of course, it is always great to be able to

Hugo Costa

use the “undo” button in the digital sketches! But what I realized is that in sunny countries it is harder to use digital devices because of the strong light reflection on the screen.

I am always traveling because of drawing. I do workshops and exhibitions in the US, Europe and Asia, so my friends say that I am always on vacation! I can’t complain: I love my life, and all the doors that “drawing” opened for me. So, maybe my work (and life) is all about drawing.

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CONNECT WITH HUGO

LA VIE OCTOBER 2019 41

Sketcher Spotlight

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GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NYC

Hugo Costa

STATEN ISLAND

OCTOBER 2019 43

Reviews | Endnotes

NEW USK CHAPTERS

USK RIBBLE A warm welcome to these new chapters: USk Lleida; USk Valencia USk Ribble (UK) USk Bonn USk Réunion USk Houston USk Guam USk East Texas

USK REUNION 44 DRAWING ATTENTION

USK GUAM

Reviews | Endnotes

PARKA REVIEWS

BY TEOH YI CHIE

Teoh Yi Chie is an infographics journalist who joined Urban Sketchers Singapore in 2009. He’s probably better known as Parka from Parkablogs.com, a website that reviews art books and art products.

This month Parka video reviews

Cretacolor Marino Watercolor Pencils.

Check it out!

BRING A WORKSHOP TO YOUR CHAPTER Urban Sketchers organizes workshops taught by our top instructors in collaboration with USk chapters around the world. If you would like to bring an official USk workshop to your chapter, start the conversation with our Education Director, Mário Linhares at education@urbansketchers.org.

OCTOBER 2019 45

Our Manifesto • We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation • Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel • Our drawings are a record of time and place • We are truthful to the scenes we witness • We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles • We support each other and draw together • We share our drawings online • We show the world, one drawing at a time.

© 2019 Urban Sketchers www.urbansketchers.org