Reading perspectives: A year of sketching with the Reading Sketchers

I had heard about the urban sketching movement through Koosje Koone's SketchbookSkool klass a few years ago and desperately wanted a local chapter but never managed to find one though I did manage to find one very lovely person to have a coffee with regularly who was also looking through that community.

Thanks to Jelly's wonderful Open for Art Festival in 2017 I finally discovered Reading's urban sketchers. We have had at least one urban sketchcrawl every month come rain, (snow) or shine and last July we celebrated a year of doing these by taking part in the Open for Art Festival 2018 where one of our newest members Nichola wrote about the experience. We applied to become an official chapter but you can still find us listed on this map thanks to another of our members.

Urban sketching gives you a chance to meet others who are sketching the same location at the same time as you, but in their own style. You're alone but together drawing the world. The best thing about this is it gives people the courage to sketch in the open when strangers may speak to you - somehow, saying it's part of the sketchcrawl makes it ok. Secondly, you meet other people who share tips about equipment, books, other artists and of course experiences. In every meet up there's a new convert to pastels, water-soluble (or not) crayons, and Sailor Fude pens or discussing paper/sketchbooks (e.g.concertina & use of tinted or brown paper) and where to purchase them. I like the general buzz after having spent a couple of hours doing something for yourself sharing our experiences and excitement. Sometimes people are reticent in sharing their sketchbooks but they find it is a lovely non-judgemental environment. Our group is on Facebook that you are welcome to request to join but recently we set up on twitter and Instagram (no posts yet!) so that it didn't exclude anyone from finding out about us.

I've included photos that a couple of our regular sketchers (and a new member) were happy to share for this post.

Over the past year, we've been in Reading town centre (St Lawrence, Forbury, the Abbey Quarter, St Mary's Butt, Broad Street, Reading Museum, MERL, Blake's Lock and Bel and the Dragon, by the river), Sonning, Harris Garden and Wokingham

Revisiting these places at different times or going to new ones is always exciting.

Reading perspectives

Sunday 19 August 2018

A year of sketching with the Reading Sketchers

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