Urban Sketching is not About Drawing

NOTE: This is adapted from a post to the urbansketchers subreddit.

Urban sketching is not about drawing, any more than movies are about film, paintings are about paint, or books are about paper and ink. Drawing is just the medium. 

Urban sketching is about sharing, and not just sharing what a place looks like, but your point of view. Your perspective. Your feelings. Your goal is to create a wormhole for the viewer that puts them next to you, able as they otherwise wouldn’t be, to get a taste of what it’s like to be where you are. Your sketch travels across time and space. And not just for others. Sketchers often talk about opening up old sketchbooks and remembering exactly what it was like when they did the sketch. I’ve had that feeling. It’s one of the best parts of the activity. (It’s also the best introvert social activity I know of.)

The sketch above is the first one I ever did that accomplished this. It feels like that place. I made it after walking my dog. It was VERY hot. But this place felt magical to me, with the perfect rows of evergreens on either side and patches of light finding their way to the ground. I did this sketch almost ten years ago, and I remember everything about it.

This is not to say that drawing skill is unimportant. The better your skills, the better the output, and the better you will feel about what you did. Paint matters to painting, film matters to movies, paper and ink matter to books. They’re just not why we’re there. We’re there for what those things *do*. You can have the best paints and the best paper, and what you make won’t mean much. You can write a terrible story with the best ink and paper. You can draw things perfectly that have no life in them. The goal is to go there and help us be there with you. To know more of the world. And to know more of each other. In this time of war and conflict, this is not a small thing. We need things like this more than ever. To make sure we all have and maintain our humanity and dignity. We desperately need to see each other as humans. Urban Sketching does that for me. And it may do it for you.