Sketch outdoors with Urban Sketchers Montreal!
Founded in 2012, Urban Sketchers Montréal is a chapter of Urban Sketchers, a grassroots global community of sketchers with more than 300 local chapters over five continents. The idea is that people who love to draw get together regularly to sketch outdoors on location, sharing each other’s work and company and knowledge and supporting each other. Their shared motto is “See the world one drawing at a time.”
USK Montréal was founded in 2012 and is still going strong. The group gets together the fourth Sunday of every month to sketch somewhere in Montreal.
Would you like to participate? You don’t need to register or RSVP, and you don’t need to have any artistic experience. All levels of skill are welcome! Just show up with some drawing materials, usually pencil, ink, or watercolor. If you like, bring a folding chair. “There’s no official instruction at Sunday Sketching,” explains the website, “but we are always sharing tips and tricks, talking about new art materials, and showing our drawings.”
On a typical outing, the group meets at 10:00 am, at an announced location. One member will greet everybody, explain the site, suggest some topics to sketch, recap the day’s schedule, and provide other relevant details (toilets, where to go in case of rain, small restaurants in the neighborhood). Then you draw for a while. For lunch, invite a nearby sketcher to join you at a café and make a friend!
Return to your sketchbook, then at 3:00, make your way back to the meeting spot. There the sketchers share their work in a “throwdown.” Everyone is encouraged to show what they drew that day, near a wall or on a picnic table. It’s like a small exhibit on the grass. There’s no critique, just a sociable show-and-tell. “In Urban Sketchers, we don’t feel the results are as important as the fact we went out and had fun drawing together,” says the website.
Outings are always free, although some of the locations they go to might ask for an entry fee, e.g., a museum. In case of bad weather, the group goes to a sheltered location nearby. In the winter, they mainly meet indoors. “We use drawing and painting to record our daily life in the Greater Montreal area,” says the group’s website. “We always work on location capturing what we see from direct observation.”
If you’d like to join, sign up for notifications, or check the group’s website or Facebook page.
The manifesto of the global Urban Sketchers network:
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.
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