In such a fast-paced world of instant gratification, it’s refreshing to see a global movement of more than 120,000 urban sketchers who capture the world one drawing at a time.
Canberra has almost 1,000 members on its Urban Sketchers Facebook page, some of whom meet on the second Sunday of each month to sit and draw our city’s urban environment.
Last Sunday, I spotted some urban sketchers at the Old Bus Depot Markets, drawing unsuspecting shoppers and creating beautiful watercolours worthy of an art gallery.
These artists are mostly amateurs and their manifesto ensures that their drawings are truthful to the scenes they witness. Member Michelle Collier, an IT manager from Duffy, says her work is an artistic record of time and place.
“If the weather’s good we go to some of the national institutions with the nice old architecture, but if the weather’s cold we go inside – we were at Belconnen Mall recently and we had a look at the old staircases and the glass elevators,” Michelle says.
“That’s the thing, you look at stuff that you walk past every day, somebody spent a whole lot of hours dressing a shopfront or architecturally designing the buildings.”
Urban Sketchers are dedicated to the practice of on-location drawing and they come armed with sketchpads, pens and portable watercolour palettes.
These urban artists are found in more than 60 countries (and 394 cities) and meet up for various symposiums (Buenos Aires in 2024) and urban “safaris” (Oslo in 2025).
Michelle has had no artistic training and says she joined urban sketchers for something to do when she had young children. Her sketchbook is a chronicle of artistry, journalling and maps.
“I’ve been working on a project, drawing the Duffy shops refurbishment,” she says. “I started sketching 18 months ago before they started building and captured the old playground and the earthworks. I’m now at the tail-end to capture the finish. It’s really fun, you wouldn’t think the local suburban shops are interesting, but things change so much. I love doing it and you meet all sorts of people.”
The Urban Sketchers Manifesto sums it up perfectly, “our drawing tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel”.
Urban Sketchers Canberra is on Facebook.
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