The Cloisters, NYC
– by Jan Wallen –
The Urban Sketching Experience
Last week someone asked me how I started sketching. Good question.
Drawing, painting and sketching have been a part of my life since I was young. I started with classes at the Denver Art Museum, and all through school. It’s always been a part of my life. My father was an architect and my mother was an artist. Both of my brothers worked in pottery and photography. We even went on vacations based around exhibits at art museums in the states where we lived. So I was around art all my life. However, I didn’t start sketching until I started traveling.
I also love music, and at one point when I was young, I heard the song “I’ve Been Everywhere” by Hank Snow. It tells the story of his traveling from city to city to city around the U.S. He’d sing, “I’ve been everywhere”, and then list city names, one after the other. That’s when I decided that this is how I’ll live my life – I’ll go “everywhere”. So I did.
For my career, I decided to take the business route, and was a corporate sales executive, then a selling skills entrepreneur and speaker. I traveled a lot during my career, and wanted to be able to capture the moments I experienced in new cities.
That’s when I started taking sketchbooks, pencils and pens with me – everywhere. I also discovered travel watercolor palettes, so I could do watercolor sketches in the hotel rooms and outside by the pool.
Now sketchbooks and a pencil case go with me everywhere. The world is my studio. That’s perfect for Urban Sketching – sketching on location where you live and travel to. You can find out more about it on the Urban Sketchers website. As I look at my sketchbooks, I’m transported back to the places where I did the sketches. More so than photos. It’s a record of places I’ve been and things I’ve seen. You can do that, too.
There are many easy-to-do, practical things that I’ll be sharing with you about getting started with sketching — growing with it, and enjoying both sketching and looking back at your sketches, going back to the times and places where you made the sketches.
I’ll do separate posts on all of those, with links to resources so you can check them out, too.
