Gather up your art supplies and join a casual sketching event

In a few paragraphs, I’m going to invite you to grab your sketchbook and head to a park in downtown Providence, where we’ll spend the afternoon drawing together. I think you’ll like it. But before I drag you out of the house on a lazy weekend afternoon, I’ll tell you a little about Urban Sketchers.

A decade ago, I noticed some women in a café. They sat silently at tables, sketching landscapes into heavyweight paper.

Pens jotted. Brushes dabbed paint. Stroke by stroke, storefronts and sidewalks emerged.

My eyes drifted from their work to the street, and I quickly spotted what each was looking at. Someone had picked a lamppost to sketch, another a fire hydrant. Trees rose up around signs and windows. These women were drawing exactly what they saw.

This was my first encounter with Urban Sketchers, a nonprofit organization with chapters all over the world. Founded by Seattle-based illustrator Gabriel Campanario in 2007, Urban Sketchers invites amateur artists to hang out in a public space and sketch the landscape around them. These locations could be anywhere, but the point is to gather folks together and connect with the environment.

Only a small fraction of participants are trained artists, and many participants draw little more than stick figures. Members can submit their drawings to the Urban Sketchers website, urbansketchers.org, which maintains a massive gallery of plein air artwork.

For me, Urban Sketchers was love at first sight. How simple! How pure! What could be better than sitting outside with a group of people and actively connecting with the world around you?

I have drawn and painted all my life, but always for my pleasure, in the half-serious way of a hobbyist. Studio art is a ritual, a meditation and an exercise in mindfulness. Now, it could be social, too. I had needed just this kind of loose federation of artists and never even realized it!

So, on July 16, I’ll be hosting a little drawing session at the Roger Williams National Memorial, in Providence. This park was one of the first places I ever visited in Rhode Island, a quiet green rectangle wedged between the East Side and Downcity.

The city blocks around the monument are an architectural buffet, and the park itself is crisscrossed with trees and walkways.

This event is free and no-fuss: Bring any art materials you have, even if it’s just a ballpoint pen and a legal pad. This is not an official Urban Sketchers event – a bone fide Rhode Island chapter was recently founded, much to my surprise and delight – but it should be a nice, casual way to see if you enjoy creating art with others outdoors.

If you like what you sketch, feel free to send me a photo of your work at risenberg@jewishallianceri.org. No problem if you can’t join us; just find something to draw outside and send it to me anyway, and we’ll still be delighted to consider it for our social media pages.

Hope to see you there!

ROBERT ISENBERG (risenberg@jewishallianceri.org) is the multimedia producer for the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and a writer for Jewish Rhode Island.