Bangalore: Urban sketching. The term itself sounds rigid, a little too formal, belying its quite opposite nature. An art form that lets you capture your city and its everyday quirks, urban sketching is for anyone and everyone who would like to spend a couple of hours immortalising their city in drawings. And all you need is a paper and a pencil and you're ready to go. You could be at a local cafe, or on a busy street or outside your favourite museum or church, or at the park next door - your city is your creative playground.
Taking this art form a step forward, Spanish-born illustrator and journalist Gabriel Campanario, in 2007, started the worldwide Urban Sketchers movement, that first found its home on Flickr. In 2009 Campanario established Urban Sketchers as a nonprofit organisation, an independent website that hosts urban sketches from across the globe. And in a short period of time, the Urban Sketchers blog and the Flickr group have become popular online outlets for people to share their location drawings. Thousands visit daily for inspiration or to travel vicariously through the visual dispatches from hundreds of contributors. "Drawing a city isn't just capturing it on paper, it's really about getting to know it, to feel it, to make it your own," says Nina Johansson, one of the site's correspondents from Stockholm.
City Express spoke to three urban sketchers from Bangalore to find out more.
Seeking the unusual
"Most of my work was conceptual and imaginative until a former student invited me to join a sketch club which met every Sunday at different parts of the city," says Priya Sebastian, a self-employed illustrator.
Priya likes to pick out unusual sights within the city that pique her interest. "Everything depends on the shapes that the place has to offer such as the shape of an unusual tree at Lalbagh, a sleeping cat or rotund men huddled together drinking tea at Shiv Sagar. I carry a small sketchbook with me everywhere. Sometimes there is enough time to finish the sketch. At other times a quick drawing in my sketchbook translates itself into something conceptual at my desk," she explains.
Priya was drawn to urban sketching because of her desire to capture old colonial bungalows. She used to live at Cooke Town and says, "Around that area and near Richard’s park are some incredibly beautiful old colonial bungalows which don’t belong to this world anymore. They are these strange places in the urban landscape where time has managed to stand still. Their shapes and structures are extraordinary. I could re-discover them in my sketchbook in a hundred different ways."
In love with nature
It was in the summer of 2009 that Prabha Narayanan, a graphic designer, caught the urban sketching bug. "I read an article in the newspaper about the Worldwide Sketchcrawl event at Cubbon Park. The experience of drawing with other sketchers was something else. I was instantly hooked," she says.
Prabha likes to pick out her sketch spots either by their historical importance or popularity. It also depends on other factors like the climate, cultural significance of the place and its uniqueness. That being said, her favourite spot has always been Lalbagh. "The botanical garden has a variety of shapes, forms, colours, fragrances and textures. It's quite the artists' paradise," she says.
Prabha loves urban sketching as, "it is an immediate response to the environment which is visceral and honest. One notices things which have always been there but are never seen."
For her, to draw is to know. "Especially to make sense of collective chaos which is typical of Indian cities," she adds.
For the rustic charm
Somesh Kumar used to draw cityscapes during his college days but he started doing it a lot more when he took his first job in Delhi. “After shifting back to Bangalore, I continued the habit of sketching cityscapes. One weekend during my four to five months’ stay in Delhi, my friend Samia Singh and I decided to take the Delhi heat head on. We packed our bags and took an auto to Majnu ka Tila, a Tibetan colony in Delhi. We had decided to participate in Sketchcrawl, an online forum where people around the world sketch on a specific day and share their sketches with each other. We roamed around and sketched a Tibetan temple and a Gurudwara,” he narrates.
Somesh has an affinity for old and vintage places. “I like to document old buildings, monuments, crowded markets and old cafes. The common thread is that these places are rustic and worn out like the people who cram such joints. The people and the place have a history and an everyday charm which is not something purposely instilled, but a self-evolved essence,” he says.
While he does not have a specific place that he loves to sketch, he finds himself going back to Koshy’s once he’s done sketching. “If I am alone and there’s enough time, I sketch a few people sitting close to my table,” he says.
Somesh is a graphic designer and works with his friend, Hazel Karkaria. The duo also do their bit for animal rescue. “We have our design studio called By Two Design. We also run a self initiated project called Perch Project. We are two visual communication designers and this is our humble attempt at animal rescue. It is meant to help anyone who’d like to do their bit, but don’t know how. We found that information on urban wildlife isn’t always readily available or easily accessible. If it is, it’s seldom fits the Indian context. With the Perch Project, we’re attempting to put together information we find from various sources and make it accessible to those who would like to use it,” he says.
Urban Sketchers' Manifesto
We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation.
Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel.
Our drawings are a record of time and place.
We are truthful to the scenes we witness.
We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles.
We support each other and draw together.
We share our drawings online.
We show the world, one drawing at a time.