USk Chicago Partners with Premier Sponsors for July Sketch Seminar

Product donations © Andrew Banks

The 2015 Chicago Sketch Seminar would not have been the successful weekend it was without the support and generosity of our amazing sponsors.  From a venue for the seminar's home base, to a wide variety of premier quality art supplies and raffle prizes, to delicious local food and drinks, our sponsors helped take our event to the next level.

Opening its doors to us for the second year in a row, PALETTE AND CHISEL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS provided the perfect, central, artist-friendly setting and home base for the weekend. 

While workshops took place within walking distance from the gallery in the picturesque Gold Coast neighborhood, our planning team and participants took over the first floor gallery spaces for check in/registration, mingling, meeting and networking with other sketchers, and to get some much needed shade and rest from the sketching and instruction filled weekend.  The seminar capped off with a reception and display of everyone’s work in the main gallery space.  Palette and Chisel was even gracious enough to provide coupons for free studio sessions.  If you are looking to connect and learn with some of Chicago’s best, make sure to check out all of the classes and opportunities the Palette and Chisel Academy has to offer here. (Photo: © Andrew Banks)

Let’s be honest, half the fun of Urban Sketching is getting to try different types of art materials.  Our sponsors made this easy to do with all of their incredible product donations.  From top-of-the-line sketchbooks, markers, pencils, inks, and even some newer products like watercolor markers and sticks, to notebook cases, everyone walked away from the weekend with a great new stash of sketching tools.  Here is a rundown of what was in this year’s seminar SWAG (stuff we all get) bags:

STILLMAN & BIRN – If you have ever had the chance to sketch in a Stillman & Birn Sketchbook, you know what I mean when I say that it is hard not to feel inspired to sketch in these incredible sketchbooks.  Every participant was thrilled to receive one of these.  From their unique packaging featuring different artist’s work, to the high quality and variety of paper types for all different media, these sketchbooks were a huge hit for a second year in a row and got put to use right away by many over the weekend.  (Photo: © Adam Cleaveland)

WINSOR & NEWTON – USk Chicago was honored to have Winsor & Newton along as the sole watercolor sponsor for this year’s event.  Winsor & Newton is a staple paint supplier for many in the Urban Sketching community and this year they were excited to share some of their newest products for us to test including their Watercolor Markers and Watercolor Sticks.  The Watercolor markers were a great addition to Wes Douglas’s “Urban Sketching with Markers” workshop. (Photo: © Adam Cleaveland)

FABER-CASTELL – Another returning sponsor was Faber-Castell.  Faber Castell showcased their range of sketching and art supplies with their popular PITT pens, and variety of pencils, including the Jumbo 9000 2B.  Participants were inspired in Donald Colley’s workshop “Creating a Rich Drawing” where Don’s work exemplifies the versatility and usefulness of Faber-Castell’s products in Urban Sketching. (Photo: © Wes Douglas)
       

HAHNEMUHLE – We were excited to introduce this German-based paper company to our Chicago community this year.  Hahnemuhle is renowned for its assortment of high quality art papers and provided each participant with a two pack of their Sketch & Note pocket sizes sketchbooks.  These conveniently sized sketchbooks are perfect for the urban sketching hobby and lifestyle as you can easily keep one with you throughout the day in your back pocket, purse or backpack.  Perfect for quick note taking, sketchers recorded all of their newly learned skills in these great notebooks at the Seminar.
(Photo: © Alex Zonis)

BLICK ART MATERIALS – We were incredibly thankful for the opportunity to partner with Blick Art Materials and especially grateful to their Chicago based for their contributions to the Seminar and USk Chicago group as a whole.  At the Seminar each participant received a SWAG bag with a mechanical pencil, colored pencils and a coupon to Blick stores.  Additionally, Blick Art provided monetary donations to help provide materials for workshops and activities including Jodie McGovern’s "Make yYour Own Watercolor Sketchbook: activity.  We are also looking forward to this August’s monthly sketch event, which will be hosted by Blick at their Evanston location.  We value the support from such well established businesses, and especially look forward to continue collaborating with their local Chicago branches in the coming years. (Photos left and below: © Alex Zonis)

SAKURA OF AMERICA – Some of the most popular pens in the Urban Sketching community are the Pigma Micron pens.  Coming in a range of sizes these pens allow for precise and consistent drawing techniques that were taught in Andrew Bank’s workshop “Perspective, Proportion and Value for the Urban Sketcher.”  Each participant in Andrew’s workshop received three black Pigma Micron pens, which they used to add value to their drawings through mark making and cross hatching techniques. (Photo: © Wes Douglas)
GENERAL PENCIL, a New Jersey based art and craft pencil company which proudly manufactures it's products here in the USA, provided ample sketching pencils in a variety of softness's as well as their really fun Sketch and Wash pencils.  Thank-you for your generosity!

Sketch made with General Pencil Sketch and Wash pencils © Jane Ostergaard

As if the SWAG bags were not enough, many participants were lucky enough to win some of this year’s wonderful raffle prizes.  

NOCK CO. a Georgia based company that makes pen storage cases sent us some of their streamlined, highly functional and durable Maryapple notebook cases, along with their enjoyable Dotdash notebooks.  Make sure to check out their line of pen and pencil cases here. (Photo:  © Andrew Banks)

DEATRAMENTIS, a German-based fountain pen ink manufacturer provided an entire set of beautiful inks.  Susan Hanley created this sketch with the Violet ink she won.

© Susan Hanley

JET PENS provided enough supplies for two sets of prizes each including a variety of pens, pencils and different types of pocket sized sketchbooks.  

© Alex Zonis

MONKEY PENCIL SCREEN PRINTING came through for a second year in a row printing our T-shirts.  Thank-you to William McGhie for his great work on these.  They turned out great!

© Alex Zonis

© Wes Douglas

© Alex Zonis

Last but not least, after a packed weekend of sketching, everyone was ready for some good food and the generous people at LETTUCE ENTERTAIN YOU and local favorite, the CAFE-BA-BA-REEBA restaurant, teamed up to provide us with a delicious snack of Spanish style tapas.  Each person also walked away with a $25 gift card toward their next meal.

On behalf of the entire USk Chicago community, we would like to extend a huge thank-you to our amazing sponsors who made the 2015 Sketch Seminar a huge success.  We are honored to share your products with our community and look forward to collaborating with you again in the future!

Do Your Seminar Notes Look Like These?

A Recap of The Chicago Sketch Seminar 2015

Let's think about the typical seminar experience. Fancy hotel room, business attire, sign-ins with nametags, free coffee, Continental breakfast, and conversations with strangers. Let us not forget the tiny notepad, cheap ballpoint pen and a stack of copies from the day’s worth of presentations.

Now let's contrast this with an Urban Sketchers Chicago Sketch Seminar experience. You arrive at the Palette & Chisel, one of the oldest art schools in Chicago in a period architecture building on north Dearborn Avenue. Instead of stocking up on supplies from OfficeMax, your backpack or shoulder bag is filled with supplies easily found at Blick Art Supplies. Nowhere are the skimpy hotel notepads and cheap ballpoint pens. Rather there is a goodie bag filled with exciting samples from Faber-Castell, Winsor & Newton, JetPens.com, Sakura Art Supplies, Nock Co. and Hahnemuhle--samples that are not only useful but premium quality samples...and coupons so that you can add to your collections.

Workshops at this seminar are filled with instruction from experts in their field, discussions, shared stories, and hands-on participation. Sometimes there is experimentation with new supplies and other times the few supplies that you have amassed on your own are plenty useful with the techniques that are covered.

Judging from the comments and reviews of participants, the top comments received as feedback were the personal attention of the instructors, the ability to practice the techniques that were demonstrated and the lively conversations with other like-minded artists in an otherwise solitary activity. Many people expressed how inspired they were by seeing everyone's sketchbooks and to be able to talk about discoveries and accidents that resulted in interesting, cool effects. One of the more talked about products was the Winsor & Newton's newest product, the watercolor markers. The idea that markers could be colored onto a page and then blended with water brushes grabbed the attention and chatter amongst the Chicago Sketch Seminar participants.

If you are interested in learning more about the kind of seminars that Urban Sketchers Chicago produces, the art supplies we use and our monthly Sketch Crawls, send us a quick note to Urban Sketchers Chicago at urbansketcherschicago@gmail.com or check out Urban Sketchers Chicago Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/UrbanSketchersChicago/

We All Have A Sketch To Tell

A Recap of The Chicago Sketch Seminar 2015

The recent Urban Sketchers Chicago Sketch Seminar, held July 11th and 12th at the Palette & Chisel and surrounding neighborhoods was a fascinating collection of art instruction, collaboration, conversations and the sharing of art supplies. But most importantly, the act of so many people coming together to the north side of Chicago is to create memories and stories.

Each time that an urban sketcher puts pencil, pen or brush to paper, they are creating memories about a scene. A scene which they have spent a few minutes choosing carefully as the one they are going to invest as much as a half hour or more sketching and painting. This takes time, a lot more than a quick snap of a camera to record, and with each stroke there is plenty of brain activity taking place into the selection and mixing of color, brush type, pen selection and considerations for composition. After a personal investment of time and talent upwards of an hour, very few of these sketchers will ever say, "Well, that was a colossal waste of time." It would be akin to delivering your first baby and say "That was interesting, now where were we?"

There were other stories that were more about the human spirit than in paper and paint brush. Deb Donnelly was leading her Sunday morning workshop on "Mingling Watercolor with Words" when a young woman from Korea happened upon her group. As Deb tells the story, this young woman was in her final hours of her visit to America and she was trying to capture as many of the artifacts that she could get her hands on to take back home to Korea with her before she had to leave. 

She was attracted to all of the wonderful art supplies laid out by the workshop participants, even wanted to purchase a few of them until she spotted the Chicago Sketch Seminar t-shirt (printed by Monkey Pencil Screenprinting) worn by one of the participants. That participant, Miguel Retana, was so moved by this Korean woman's need to buy this shirt from him that it led Miguel to taking the shirt off his back and gifting the shirt to her. It would be a memory that would not soon be forgotten by this young woman, Miguel, or any of the urban sketchers who were there to experience this wonderfully warm gesture.

If you are interested in learning more about the kind of seminars that Urban Sketchers Chicago produces, the art supplies we use, our monthly Sketch Crawls, and the warm humans who make up our group, send us a quick note to Urban Sketchers Chicago 
at urbansketcherschicago@gmail.com or check out the Facebook group's page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Urban Sketchers Chicago/

You're Invited To Join Our Book Club

For years I was always jealous of how my wife enjoyed a festive get-together with her book club. The thing is, I am not that fast of a reader and one sure-fire way to get me to fall asleep is to put a book in my hand that does not have any pictures in it. Does that happen to you too? Therefore, I have always kept at arm's distance from book clubs, but count me in on the drinks and snacks.

When I joined Urban Sketchers Chicago, I had already been carrying various spiral-bound sketchbooks of varying sizes and quality with the sole intention of keeping various doodles, notes, ticket stubs, receipts and vacation photos. I guess you call my sketchbooks journals or scrapbooks, not sketchbooks. After a few months of being part of urban sketchers, I soon began to adopt a new mentality of making sketches that told the stories of my surroundings and recorded the events of my life. Now whenever people look at my sketchbooks and point to a sketch and ask "what was happening in this sketch?" I launch into the story behind it.

In Urban Sketchers, there are hundreds and hundreds of stories behind each sketch. Sometimes you can deduct the story by just looking at the sketch and other times the story behind the sketch really needs to be delivered by the artist who captured that moment. And these are stories that come from the unique perspective of one particular artist and the sketchbook (or as we like to call them, our storybooks) have a very short print run of "one."

If you have always wanted to be part of a book club and have a strength in "communicating through your visual literacy" (as professional artist Don Colley would say), you should check out our book club to learn more about the Urban Sketchers Chicago Sketch Seminars, the art supplies we use, and our monthly Sketch Crawls. Send us a quick note to Urban Sketchers Chicago at urbansketcherschicago@gmail.com or check out Urban Sketchers Chicago's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/UrbanSketchersChicago/.

If you want the best sketchbooks for your sketch novel, check out Blick Art Supplies, Stillman and Birn and Hahnemuhle USA. Thanks for checking us out. 

Wes Douglas

Top photo: © 2015 Wes Douglas
Middle photo: © 2015 Alex Zonis
Bottom photo: ©2015 Andrew Banks