Urban Sketching

The past month I have been slightly obsessed with the Urban Sketching movement. The concept is to sketch on location to capture the world around us. It's suppose to be of ordinary everyday type stuff and done quickly to capture the essence of the scene.  I have been going out occasionally on my lunch break with some other architects and sketching  downtown Portland scenes I add watercolor later when I get home, but hopefully I will get a set up to do the painting on location too. This is a nice break from doing traditional studio watercolor painting.

My main inspiration has come from these Urban sketchers check them out their work is awesome

Gabi Camanario
Marc Taro Holmes
Stephanie Bower

I recently purchased a new "Moleskine" watercolor sketchbook book (see the Cathedral Bridge sketch below) and a Stillman and Birn Alpha series  both are great to draw in but I have yet to use watercolor in the Stillman and Birn both sketchbooks are highly recommended by other sketchers so I will see which one I like the best. All the sketched below with the exception of the bridge are done in the my old sketchbook  made by "Bees" paper its a good all around sketchbook and quite a bit cheaper but the paper is a little thin for watercolor.

This is the Alley by Voodoo donuts in old town Portland

 

South waterfront marina

 North Park blocks Elephant sculpture

 Library

 Cathedral Bridge St Johns