Urban Sketching

The moment you draw something, you see it properly for the first time — a façade you've walked past a thousand times.

Leonardo da Vinci left behind around 13,000 pages of sketches — from anatomy to helicopter designs to birds' wings. His notebook was his memory, not his head — he drew almost daily, his whole life long.

Urban Sketching was started in 2007 by illustrator Gabi Campanario in Seattle as an online community — his posts on a photo blog grew into a global movement with groups in more than sixty countries, each with its own local meetups.

Sketching groups often meet regularly in one fixed spot. You just sit down and join.

Urban sketching: sit somewhere for 20 minutes and draw what you see. Perfection doesn't matter.

Hold the pen farther back than you're used to. Loose lines come from the wrist, not the fingers — if you hold too close to the paper, you draw too tight.

Sketch standing, not sitting. On your feet you're more mobile, you switch viewpoints faster, nobody sees you as an obstacle — and you don't give up after ten minutes because your backside hurts.

Two minutes, one pen, and neither of you may look at the paper. The result is always funny and sometimes good.

“What do you draw when nobody's watching — and what do you reliably skip?”