This is a twofer, so scroll down. Gotta run and grab my pad and pencil. 😀

By Shannon Sims

Feb. 4, 2025 - NY Times

Some travelers are picking up a creative pastime, sketching, in order to slow down and fully appreciate their destinations.

Some people prioritize food when they travel, others focus on the local music scene. But for a certain group of visitors, there is nothing more absorbing than settling down in front of a striking scene and putting pen or paintbrush to paper.

“I’ve always been fascinated by travel journals and watercolor, but I never thought I’d be able to do it myself,” said Clara B. Martin, a 44-year-old content creator and mother of two. While locked down at home in Madrid during the pandemic, she enrolled in online watercolor classes. Her daughters joined in, and once restrictions were ended, the family started bringing sketchbooks along on their travels.

“It’s a fantastic way to remember a place as you focus all your attention on your surroundings,” said Ms. Martin, who with her family has sketched in Amsterdam, Portugal and other spots. “This is a way to really disconnect during an hour or so. We all sit down and concentrate on the sketch.”

How can you get started sketching yourself? We asked professional sketchers and dove into sketching blogs to find out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/travel/sketching-watercolors-vacation-hobby.html

And there are local chapters of Urban Sketchers in San Francisco and the North Bay

See the world one sketch at a time.

Urban Sketchers is a global community of sketchers dedicated to the practice of on-location drawing. We share our love for the places where we live and travel—one drawing at a time.

Urban Sketchers, or USk, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in the state of Washington, USA, supporting and representing a grassroots community of sketchers.

In 2007, a global community of urban sketchers began to form when Seattle-based journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario created an online forum “for all sketchers out there who love to draw the cities where they live and visit, from the window of their homes, from a cafe, at a park, standing by a street corner… always on location, not from photos or memory.”

A year later, Campanario invited a group of sketchers to share their drawings and storytelling in a blog, Urban Sketchers, where readers could “See the World, One Drawing at a Time.” The blog helped the community gain visibility and inspired drawing enthusiasts from all over to sketch in the spirit of our manifesto.

https://urbansketchers.org/

Greg