Urban Sketching Symposium in Santo Domingo! July 12-14, 2012

Calle Duarte from Capilla

I've attended all three of the Urban Sketching Symposium: Portland, Lisbon, and, this July, Santo Domingo. It's hard to encapsulate the experience; it was just SO expansive. I know from previous years, the Symposium--the things learned and the other artist met--keep expanding and feeding into my ongoing practice of drawing--long after the 3-day event. I'll just give you a peek.

On the left is one of my sketches from  Brazilian artist/architect Eduardo Bajzek's workshop Straight to Colors where I used artist markers for the first time (!) to develop a drawing through areas of color mass and tone, de-emphasizing line. A multi-media enthusiast, I couldn't keep my hand out of my colored pencil pouch to finish this one up.

My husband and I arrived a day before the start of the Symposium. I was able to register, start meeting the early arriving other artists, pick up my treasure-trove goody-bag of artist materials (including the Laloran watercolor sketchbook used below), and start sketching this vibrant, foreign city of Santo Domingo.

Plaza Espana Palms at Dusk

Trying new things, being taken out of ones comfort zone is a goal of the Symposium workshops. And that is what happened for me (see below) with my very first workshop Improvising with line and color: the Urban Sketcher as Storyteller, under the exuberant guidance of Spanish artist Inma Serrano and Dominican artist  Orling Dominguez. Create a drawing that incorporates a smattering of images and impressions to tell a story of place and time. Use words.

Queen of the Plaza
(the candy seller and her colorful cart and the mongrel dog that befriended me in Parque Colon)

It's always exciting at the conclusion of a workshop for all to lay out what they had done. Here's the collective result of Canadian artist Marc Holmes's watercolor workshop Tea, Milk and Honey  at the Ruinas de San Francisco. 

My only regret was that a total of 5 days in Santo Domingo--a day on either side of the 3 day conference was not nearly enough for me to begin to capture the drawings I wanted to do in my usual Neocolor II wax pastels. But I did get this one in on my last full day:

Meson de Bari

More workshops, more amazing inspiration from workshop leaders and other Symposium participants alike. If you want to see more, here's my flickr set of photos and all other drawings I did relating to the Symposium. And if you'd like to see more of everyone's results go to Symposium flickr group or the Symposium blog.

Shiho and her rapt admirers

On a final note, I can't resist sharing with you this one photo of Urban Sketcher Correspondent Shiho Nakaza from Santa Monica, California at the Saturday Sketchcrawl in the Parque Colon on the last day of the Symposium. For me it captures, the amazing joy and sharing that happens when we get out on the street and sketch.

Gotta go. Hope you enjoyed my glimpses from the Symposium. I'm now more excited to draw on sight then ever!!  I've got a slew of drawings that are mine to draw of Cedar Falls, Iowa and who knows where else.