The 10th International Urban Sketching Symposium, Amsterdam, July 24th-27th 2019

The 10th International USk Symposium has just wrapped up. It took place in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. The 9th USk Symposium was held in Porto, Portugal, in July 2018. One of the organisers, Nelson Paciencia, stood up to say a few words about the experience during the introduction one morning. “The Symposium is not about…

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A Watercolour Sketching Workshop in Haarlem, 19th-21st July 2019

I was in Porto, Portugal, last year when this year’s Urban Sketching Symposium location was announced. It would take place in Amsterdam. “You should consider staying in Haarlem,” said Anne Rose Oosterbaan, one of the many Dutch sketchers in Porto. “It’s very pretty, cheaper than Amsterdam – and only twenty minutes away by train.” That…

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Capturing the Summer

It’s cold these days. Cold for June. For the first time in a long while, Irish people keep expecting a heatwave to arrive, like we’ve had in the last couple of years. And we’re unimpressed that it hasn’t happened yet: friends sit around and grouch about the cold. “We’re spoiled,” says my friend Lorraine, “this…

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Sketching the Best Boys

Sometimes sketchers visit other towns and look up the local sketchers. We meet for a drink or something to eat and do a bit of sketching together. Today Hélio Boto from Portugal visited Galway with his girlfriend Marlena, and it happened to coincide with a visit from Arizona sketcher Marylin French St. George. We were…

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