Urban Sketchers about simplicity – Creative Mornings Vienna

From “Grätzl” scribbles to travel journals – Urban Sketchers, or USk, is a worldwide network of artists who draw the cities they live in and travel to. Their mission is “to show the world, drawing by drawing”. We’re excited to ask Sandra and Bettina from Urban Sketchers Vienna our 5 Questions this month about how Simplicity invites us to imagine.

#1 What is Urban Sketching?

Urban Sketching is all about drawing on location, involving our senses, feelings and the given circumstances. It is just about you spending more time in a place or situation than just a click of a photo but to feel the place, whether it be a busy city or a quiet forest. All the details that you observe make your sketch special and personal. Not one sketch resembles the other, it is amazing how sketchers look at and sketch places differently.

#2 What is Simplicity for you? Why is it important?

Time plays an important part in Urban Sketching. You need to stay flexible, because things are changing while you are sketching. Especially if you draw people, you always have to face the fact that they move and even leave. So you apply some kind of personal „short ways“ to capture the essential in a short amount of time. Therefore some kind of simplicity in your sketch is essential. Rather than wasting time on snapping all the tiny details, it is more about experiencing a place’s atmosphere.

#3 How do you balance the details of a cityscape with the desire to convey simplicity in your sketches?

It is about your personal choice. We focus on the thing/object/people that seems most important to us at that very moment. Sometimes a cityscape just serves as a background and therefore we just give some hint of place, giving the overall sketch a certain atmosphere. Whether it is urban or rural, changes the whole setting.
And even if you decide to sketch humongous houses with hundreds of windows: it’s your decision how many you will add to your sketch. Nobody will count them afterwards. And no one will count the leaves you added on your trees.

#4 How do viewers usually react to your drawings?

Most viewers react in a very positive way, they are surprised about us documenting our city, our everyday life, our travels. They love when they recognise some places and yes, it happens that some of the viewers get inspired and start sketching themselves.

#5 To what extent can Simplicity support feelings or a message in certain situations?

implicity in our sketches makes the drawings easier and faster to read. They communicate our personal view, our focus, our feelings.

To know what to show and what to leave out demands experience - it is always a nice challenge what to choose in a place and how to show it in the least strokes possible.
Although it might be stressful for beginners, as you have gained more experience it removes a lot of pressure from the drawing process. You know from the start that you will only have a certain amount of time to finish your sketch, no time to make major improvements. And most probably it will look far from the perfect image you already created in your head. With every new sketch, you learn to accept the sketch you ended up with and be proud of it - whether it turned out how you imagined it or not.