A worldwide movement. With a folding stool.
How a shared sketchbook became a global community—and why “urban sketching” sounds like an invitation to get involved.
Read & try it ↗The journal
A place to keep looking.
Essays, field notes and practical studies. Follow a question, then take it outside.
The street is already a studio.
A notebook, something that makes a mark, and a place to pause. You can begin before you feel ready.
Read & try it ↗Move your feet before the pen.
Composition is easier to change while it is still a choice of where to sit.
Read & try it ↗
Perspective without the panic.
Eye level, a corner and a few honest comparisons. The street need not pass an architecture exam.
Read & try it ↗
A line does not have to explain everything.
Contour, overlap and a few useful silences. Give the pen a job beyond outlining the world.
Read & try it ↗
People who won’t stand still.
A gesture, a direction and a place to put their feet. No one owes your sketchbook a pose.
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Colour with a job to do.
Three washes can say more about a street than twenty carefully painted windows.
Read & try it ↗One corner. Twenty minutes.
A short outing with a beginning, a middle and a sensible place to stop.
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The weather is part of the drawing.
Shelter, changing light and a page that remembers what the day felt like.
Read & try it ↗
Before the tea goes cold.
Tables, chairs and the small architecture of an ordinary interior.
Read & try it ↗A bag you will actually carry.
The useful kit is the one that lets you leave the house.
Read & try it ↗
One place, three ways of looking.
Keep the location. Change the question. Discover what your first drawing missed.
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The city between the landmarks.
Delivery doors, waiting places and the streets that do not expect to be drawn.
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Sargent: the building is a pattern of light.
A close look at Abriès, and a lesson in deciding which edges deserve the brush.
Read & try it ↗
Morisot: an interior is a place too.
Sewing near the Window makes attention, light and everyday work a serious subject.
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Cotman: a building before the brickwork.
Farm Building by a Pond and the strength of a few joined shapes.
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Posada: the street has something to say.
The Skeleton of the Buses puts people, transport and printed words on the same crowded page.
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Velasco: look beyond the next building.
A view of the Valley of Mexico asks how a place sits within a larger landscape.
Read & try it ↗Liz Steel: looking is the work.
A contemporary sketcher’s encouragement to begin, and a small exercise in paying attention.
Read & try it ↗Teoh Yi Chie: give a busy scene a structure.
Learning from a generous public teaching practice, then trying the problem in your own street.
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A sketchbook is a record, not an audition.
Dates, corrections and the value of keeping a page that did not go to plan.
Read & try it ↗The throwdown is not an exam.
Putting sketchbooks together without putting yourself through the wringer.
Read & try it ↗A bad page is still a page.
What to keep when the perspective has wandered off and the wash has followed it.
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The street will not wait for you.
A small visual record of places that are being repaired, altered or quietly replaced.
Read & try it ↗One page. One good question.
A more useful sketchbook habit than waiting for inspiration to clear its diary.
Read & try it ↗Three values. No committee meeting.
Sort a complicated street into light, middle and dark before the palette gets involved.
Read & try it ↗The gap is doing half the work.
Use the spaces between things to check shapes without an architectural survey.
Read & try it ↗
A pencil can measure. Loosely.
Comparing proportions with the tool already in your hand.
Read & try it ↗One street. One vanishing point.
A straightforward way into the view down a road or corridor.
Read & try it ↗The window department is closed.
Suggest a façade’s rhythm without individually interviewing sixty-four windows.
Read & try it ↗Your coffee is not a pointed oval.
Drawing rims, bowls and tabletops with a little more confidence.
Read & try it ↗The shadow knows where everything sits.
Use connected darks to give a street structure and weight.
Read & try it ↗Let the wash do the weather.
Soft edges, damp paper and knowing when to leave the brush alone.
Read & try it ↗A second wash, with a reason.
Build depth through dry layers without stirring the entire painting back to life.
Read & try it ↗Green is not one colour.
Make trees and planting belong to the same light as the buildings.
Read & try it ↗You do not owe the wall every brick.
Use texture selectively so the building remains a building.
Read & try it ↗The water has not brought tracing paper.
Observe broken reflections without mechanically copying the skyline upside down.
Read & try it ↗Park the car on the page.
A roof, a body and a shadow before you worry about the badge.
Read & try it ↗A bicycle is mostly air.
Draw the relationships between wheels, frame and empty space.
Read & try it ↗Give the tree somewhere to stand.
A canopy, a trunk and the few branches that explain how the whole thing holds together.
Read & try it ↗A crowd needs a ground plane.
Keep people in the same space without making everyone the same size.
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The sign can say less and still speak.
Lettering, shopfronts and the decision to leave some words implied.
Read & try it ↗Bring another tool. Give it a job.
Pen, pencil, paint and opaque marks can share a page without holding a meeting.
Read & try it ↗Your first sketchwalk. No entrance exam.
Find the meeting, bring a small kit and make the first page manageable.
Read & try it ↗Mind the gap. Draw the waiting.
A station study built around structure, repetition and people between journeys.
Read & try it ↗The market will not hold a pose.
A canopy, a cluster of people and the rhythm of things changing hands.
Read & try it ↗After dark, the windows do the talking.
A night study that begins with the lights you intend to leave alone.
Read & try it ↗Cold hands. Smaller plans.
A short winter outing that does not confuse endurance with artistic commitment.
Read & try it ↗Three stops beat twelve intentions.
Plan a small route with enough time to actually make the drawings.
Read & try it ↗A museum is a place, too.
Draw the rooms, visitors and viewing arrangements as well as the objects.
Read & try it ↗When someone peers over your shoulder.
A friendly answer, a comfortable boundary and permission to keep working.
Read & try it ↗The window seat counts.
A useful location study for days when staying inside is the sensible plan.
Read & try it ↗The holiday is not a drawing quota.
Build a record of a place while leaving enough time to experience it.
Read & try it ↗Gabriel Campanario: the drawing reports.
A founder’s work offers a useful question: what does the page tell us about this place?
Read & try it ↗Shari Blaukopf: colour has structure.
Look at the whole arrangement before getting distracted by a lovely bit of paint.
Read & try it ↗Suhita Shirodkar: people doing things.
A figure becomes more informative when it has a relationship with the place.
Read & try it ↗Stephanie Bower: space before detail.
Perspective becomes useful when it explains a place you actually want to draw.
Read & try it ↗Marc Taro Holmes: let the brush begin.
Explore direct watercolour as a different set of decisions, rather than a shortcut around drawing.
Read & try it ↗Maru Godàs: colour gets some room.
A reminder that an observed place can support more than one visual language.
Read & try it ↗Lapin: the page can wander.
Follow a subject across a sketchbook without forcing everything into one polite rectangle.
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Winslow Homer: let the paper be light.
Fishing Boats, Key West offers a lesson in white shapes that have something to do.
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Thomas Girtin: small figures, big place.
A castle, a cliff and a few people who quietly explain the scale.
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Turner: give the distance some air.
The Lake of Zug and a useful question about how much information a distant shape needs.
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Sargent: sketching the sketchers.
In the Generalife shows people, place and the act of looking sharing one page.
Read & try it ↗No matches this time.
Try a different word, or clear the filters to see the whole collection.
Your turn
A page of your own. A story to add.
Show your sketch, ask a question or tell us what you noticed. There’s room for the wonky windows too.
Pass it on
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