USk Symposium 2026

The wait is over! Next stop: Toulouse. The video is at this link.

Repost from 2013

On 21 July, 2013, also the last day in Madrid, before I packed all the travelling sketches in the suitcase, I displayed them on the bed. The sketches were of various formats on watercolour papers, muji sketchbooks, moleskine and others. The orginal post was at this link.

USk News all on Symposium 2023

Old Photos

Facebook memories! Look at these old photos. We were so young then in 2013, Barcelona. I was one of the instructors and now some of these participants are masters, veterans in USk. Thanks Béliza Mendes for the photo.

After this USk were at Paraty (5th) then Singapore (6th)! 

Hope to get back to USk global community again! 

On second photo from right: Simone Ridyard, Josu Maroto Peñagaricano, Víctor Swasky and Chris Haldane. Don't recognize the lady after Chris though.

Next USk Symposium will be in Auckland, New Zealand!

Memories - Annaul Report 2011

9th USK Symposium will be in Porto, Portugal in 2018

8th Urban Sketchers Symposium in Chicago

This bring back fond memories as Gabi mentioned about my email to him in 2008 at 25:08 to be a USK sketch correspondent reporting from Singapore. I remember I had to upload all my old sketches on the Flickr for Gabi to see as we need to 'show the world one drawing at a time'.

Manchester Symposium

Just came back to the office after a fantastic 7th International Urban Sketchers Symposium held in Manchester from 27 to 30 July 2016. Will be posting my sketches soon. Here are two group photos taken on the last day on 30 July at All Sanits Park just outside the Symposium venue, Manchester School of Art. Sadly I was not in the photo because I was still sketching on the 7th storey of the building capturing the skyline of Manchester.

July Sketchwalk and Symposium at SMU Open Green

Video on Symposium

Have you signed up?

Have you signed up for the 6th International Urban Sketchers Symposium?
#USkSingapore2015

Programming

Workshops and activities (including demos and lectures) are listed below, along with the instructors’ names. Instructor bios and descriptions of the workshops and activities will be linked below, so check back for more information.

The Schedule, which will be published April 10, will have more information about several Sketchwalks being offered as part of the programming.


Workshops:

Workshop A: Playing with Light and Shadow – Behzad Bagheri, Iran
Workshop B: Extending and Expanding: Combining Multiple Sheets of Paper to Capture Large Scenes – Ch’ng Kiah Kiean, Malaysia
Workshop C: Architectural Sketching: Composition and Perspective – Frank Ching, USA
Workshop D: Exploration in Expressive Watercolor through Shape and Value – Gail Wong, USA
Workshop E: Thin Line, Bold Sketch – Inma Serrano and Miguel Herranz, Spain
Workshop F: Capturing Singapore’s Lively Urban Spaces – James Richards, USA
Workshop G: All You Can See: 180° Sketching – Lapin, Spain
Workshop H: Pointless Perspective and Coloured Shapes: A Practical Approach to Creating Three Dimensional Architectural Form – Liz Steel, Australia
Workshop I: Sketching the Sketchers – Marc Holmes, Canada
Workshop J: The Structure of Light in Watercolor – Matthew Brehm, USA
Workshop K: Face the City! Portraits of the City through its Inhabitants – Marina Grechanik and Ea Ejersbo, Israel and Denmark
Workshop L: Found In Translation: The Influence of Calligraphy in the Figure and Environment – Melanie Reim, USA
Workshop M: Light in the Spaces Between: A Watercolor Workshop – Nina Johansson, Sweden
Workshop N: From Thumbnail to Big Picture: Using Little Strokes to Compose your Sketches – Norberto Dorantes, Argentina
Workshop O: Sketchpedition – Sanjeev Joshi, India
Workshop P: Big Brush Colour: Capturing that First Impression – Shari Blaukopf, Canada
Workshop Q: A Collective Reportage: Religions and Popular Devotion in Multicultural Singapore – Simo Capecchi, Italy
Workshop R: Capturing Chaos: Drawing a Crowd – Suhita Shirodkar, USA
Workshop S: The Urban Sketchers Cookbook – Veronica Lawlor, USA
Workshop T: Light and Dark with a Punch of Color – Virginia Hein, USA

Activities, Demos, and Lectures:

Activity 1: Street Food Sketching – Anita Ryanto, Singapore
Activity 2: Less is More: Black, Brown and White! – Delphine Priollaud, France
Activity 3: Visit to Bynd Artisan and Book Binding – Patrick Ng, Singapore
Activity 4: Wet and Wild with Textures – Paul Wang, Singapore
Activity 5: The Singapore Diaries: Your Story of the Symposium – Richard Alomar, USA
Activity 6: Diving into Digital Sketching – Rob Sketcherman, Hong Kong
Activity 7: Putting the ‘Urban’ in Urban Sketching – Suma CM, USA
Activity 8: Sketching the Colourful Cultural Activities – Tia Boon Sim, Singapore
Activity 9: The Big Crit – Various Instructors
Demo 1: Guan Gong Dao: How to Make and Sketch with a Folded Pen – Ignatius Yeo, Singapore
Demo 2: Inky Fingers: Pen, Brush, Inks, Line and Lettering – Jane Blundell, Australia
Demo 3: Understanding Color – Jane Blundell, Australia
Demo 4: Seasoning the Shadows with Primary Colors – Kumi Matsukawa, Japan
Demo 5: Atmospheric Expressions in Watercolor – Khoo Cheang Jin, Malaysia
Demo 6: Capturing Mood in Watercolor Sketches – Zhu Hong, Singapore
Lecture 1: Drawing for Publication: The Triumphs and Tribulations of a Newspaper Sketch-Columnist – Gabi Campanario, USA
Lecture 2: Sketching as a Tool for Field Study – Luisa Hung WanLu, Malaysia
Lecture 3: How to Run a Successful Local Urban Sketchers Group – Mark Leibowitz, USA
Lecture 4: Animating my Life – Nino Puriando, Indonesia
Lecture 5: The Sketchbook: From Explorer to Guide – Richard Alomar, USA
Lecture 6: Good Bones: An Interactive Lecture – Stephanie Bower, USA

Urban Sketchers: 2015 Symposium Dates Announced!

Urban Sketchers: 2015 Symposium Dates Announced!
By the Symposium Team

Singapore to host 6th International Urban Sketchers Symposium
Mark your calendars for July 22-25, 2015

Earlier this month we announced that the 6th International Urban Sketchers Symposium will take place in Singapore. Now you can mark your calendars for July 22 - 25, 2015!

The Symposium team, consisting of the Local Organizers from Urban Sketchers Singapore (Tia Boon Sim, Paul Wang, and Patrick NG) and the International Symposium Committee (Elizabeth Alley, Jason Das, Orling Dominguez, Fernanda Vaz de Campos) have started planning the event, which will be co-hosted by Temasek Polytechnic.

To receive updates about the 2015 Symposium and to be notified when registration opens, subscribe to the 2015 Symposium Mailing List.

Final Mass Sketchwalk

I was still doing this piece and Orling called me to go over for the group picture. The group picture will bring fond memories in time to come. Can you spot moi?

Day 4 - sketching KK's demo session

Ch'ng Kiah Kiean from Penang whose demonstration sessions were so popular at the Symposium was having a session in the morning on the fourth day, also the last day. I was too tired to walk around so I sketched the group of Brazilian sketchers attending his session. We also met Teoh Wenqi in the group; a young Malaysian lady doing her internship teaching in another city about few hundred kilometres from Paraty. She was teachng English at an international school there. Rare to see Asians in Paraty and everywhere we went, we were mistaken by the locals as Japanese tourists.

Day 3 at Pereque-Acu River - Corsario

The open sketchwalk on Day 3 was at Rio Pereque Acu just next to a prominent curvilinear bridge accessible to cars and pedestrians overlooking an old church. I did not know when I was sketching it that this was the back of First Church of Our Lady of the Remedies in Paraty. My hotel was directly facing the front of the church! I totally lost my sense of scale and direction in Paraty. Blame it on the cobblestones that I could not walk straight and see what's was directly in front of me.

There were so many sketchers sketching alongside with me. I wish I had more time to speak to them. I was with Kumi from Japan and KK from Penang. Thais Lima Machado Canavezes, a young Brazilian sketcher was sitting next to me and I gave her some tips when she asked. I told her to squint both eyes to read the tonal values and added horizontal darker tones for the row of houses along the river. I also advised her to add some colours here and there especially the sky. She was very pleased with the result.

Day 2 of Symposium - Beautiful Cais Paraty

These are schooner boats turned leisure boats for hire at Paraty Pier. They are in candy colours - pink, purple, sky blue, turquoise, lime etc.

The Pier or Cais Paraty is next to Santa Rita church. This old church dates back to 1722 and stands beautifully against the backdrop of the lush, green hills. It was drizzling and I had my poncho while Liz Steel and the participants in her workshop next to the church were looking for corners to hide from the cold wind and rain drops while sketching the church surroundings. While I was sketching, I witnessed how cars and people trying to avoid the flood water that was just in front of me. People just took out their shoes while not many cars drove through the flood waters. Drivers reversed their cars before making a U-turn and disappeared very quickly in front of me. HA!

Day 1 of Symposium in Paraty, Brazil

This is Igreja de Nossa Senhora das Dores, The Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, also the first loose ink and watercolour piece I did upon arrival at Paraty after a 5-hour journey on the road from Sao Paulo. This church was erected in 1800s on the initiative of the ladies of the aristocracy of the city. The church was abandoned around 1901, when the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Sorrows, composed exclusively of women, retired.
It is now known as "Chapel of Sorrows" or just "Chapel." There was only one tower now but originally it was designed to have two towers.

Similar to all Brazilian colonial towns, Paraty’s churches were built according to social status and race. There are four churches in the town, Santa Rita was for the ‘freed coloured men’, The Church of Our Lady of the Rosary and St. Benedict was for the blacks and two other churches for the whites.

Paraty is a beautiful colonial city paved with cobblestones which were left behind by the Portuguese who replaced them with heavy golds to ship back home in their huge vessels. Walking on these pavements was challenging although there were no cars at all. The small town was founded in 1667 around the Church of "Nossa Senhora dos Remedios", the patron saint. Paraty is famous for its sugar cane mills and the name "paraty" synonym of a very good sugar cane rum. I saw small bottles labeling "Cachaca" at local lifestyle stores catering for its large numbers of tourists and did not know it was a kind of distilled spirit made from sugarcane juice.


size : 680mm x 240mm

Travelling Sketchbook on Brazil

I am back from Brazil!

I am not very good at scanning, gave up on that, took photos instead. Here is the cover of A5 Moleskine Japanese Album that I brought for my trip to Brazil. I will update all my sketches later.