Some people prioritize food when traveling, others focus on the local music scene. But for a particular group of visitors, there is nothing more absorbent than installing in front of an impressive scene and putting the pen or brush on paper.
“I have always been fascinated by travel magazines and watercolors, but I never thought I could do it myself,” said Clara B. Martin, a 44 -year -old content creator and mother two. While locked at home in Madrid during the pandemic, he enrolled in online watercolor lessons. Her daughters joined and as soon as they ended restrictions, the family began bringing sketchbooks together on their travels.
“It’s a fantastic way to remember a place as you focus all your attention on your environment,” said Martin, who with her family has outlined in Amsterdam, Portugal and other points. “This is a way to truly disconnect during about an hour. Everyone is sitting and focusing on the sketch.”
How can you start yourself? We asked professional sketchers and rotated to outline blogs to find out.
A form of ‘slow travel’
In recent years, many travelers deliberately slow down during their trips, throwing full routes to completely sink into a destination. It is a practice that some travel experts call a slow journey.
“Many tourists arrive at the same place. They take dozens of photos with their mobile phone and continue to run on another point of the map,” said Alicia Aradilla, a Spain illustrator who has outlined around the world from Washington to Mount Fuji in Japan.
The sketch “is one of the few art fields where we experience our first -hand issues,” he said. “Genuine is in demand.”
Mrs Aradilla, Mr Scheinberger and others offer sketch lessons in everything, from the arrest of light to the past faces to get the best kind of brush. Mr Scheinberger said that while teaching technical aspects of the sketch, the push of his workshops is in the “art of seeing”.
Some classes are offered on the internet, while others are in person in places around the world, so that a team learns together as they sketch a scene. Prices vary, but Mr. Scheinberger’s weekend’s workshops in Berlin, for example, cost between 300 and 400 euros ($ 314 to $ 419) and participants should only bring one Fineliner pen (this popular option costs 12 $ for a package of six) and a sketch (some sketches recommend this $ 16 Moleskine).
One popular way to get started is to join Urban Sketchers, a non -profit organization based in the Washington state, which has been acting as a grass root hub for Sketchers since 2009. Urban Sketchers has local funds in 499 international cities and measures 1,200 people as members. Participation is free and simply includes integration into a local capital. The chapters organize group trips and plan opportunities and encourage the sense of community. Urban Sketchers maintain the “Global Sketchbook”, a blog that offers tips and inspiration and has the sketches of members around the world.
If you want to start on your own, the first step is to go out there. “To get our own experiences, we have to get out of the door,” Mr Scheinberger said. “It’s good to take a sketchbook together.”
A pencil and a paper is all it needs. Most people pack a Sketchbook, but even this is not necessary: ​​an urban sketch, Julio Brenes, uses disposable coffee cups as a canvas.
“Urban sketching has completely changed the way I travel around the world,” Ms Aradilla said. “It allows me to travel slower and appreciate more clearly what a city’s daily life is: to perceive its light, its sounds, its routines.”
