Welcome to my Travel Sketching gallery, featuring Urban Sketching!

This is your website for books, information, tools, and resources for all kinds of travel sketching. You will find new ideas and tips to create urban sketches. Find out about pens, paints, markers and sketch pads. Learn how to find and join groups of fellow urban sketchers for sketchcrawls and urban sketching outings.

What is Urban Sketching?

Urban sketching on location is making a comeback among the artists community. While many artists enjoy drawing and painting landscapes, gardens, or nature scenes, urban sketchers get out there in the nitty gritty of cities, towns, and villages in many locations around the world. It's a new social movement in art!

Tools for Sketching
See Materials

Urban sketchers on location need tools that are compact, packable, and easy to use. Aside from that, urban sketching is done with a wide variety of materials. Believe it or not, this is just a partial list.
  • Graphite pencils: wooden artists pencils, ebony design pencils, mechanical pencils with 2B leads, lead holders, plain graphite
  • Erasers: white plastic or nylon, gray kneaded erasers
  • Colored pencils: wooden, in vary-colored assortments
  • Water soluble pencils: both colored and graphite
  • Pen and ink: (usually not dip pens) permanent artists ink pens such as microns, water-soluble fine-tipped pens, and even fountain pens
  • Markers: Thick and thin point, permanent or water-soluble, black, shades of gray, or even colors
  • Watercolor paints: travel kits with dry paint, brushes, water source, rags.
  • What else might you use? Add to the list.

Here's my small urban sketching kit:
Read More about tools for urban sketching.

Composition for Sketching Landscapes

From the survey below, it seems that many artists would like to learn more about composition. How do you pull together the elements you see on location to make a good drawing? I'm looking forward to addressing this topic here at Urban Sketching.com. To start, here is a handout that I give to students at my landscape painting classes. 
Picture
Composition Basics All artists use basically the same composition rules to make great artwork. Learn about some of these composition basics and watch your artwork improve dramatically.
Free!   Download this sweet article on composition.   Free!
Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing. — Jay-Z 

Get creative! Read more inspirational quotes in this list of 10 Brilliant Quotes for Artists

Are you looking for Urban Sketchers' groups? Want to get more involved?

Why not go to the UrbanSketchers.org website to find out more about this exciting organization and wonderful group of people!
Note that UrbanSketching.com is a separate and independent website for resources, tutorials, and links about urban sketching.
Karla Beatty photograph of the artist/writer of the Urban Sketching website.
Hello, my name is Karla Beatty. I AM an artist and writer who loves to travel and visit cities around the world. 

Urban sketching is my latest craze and I enjoy helping other people take part. I hope to see you at a SketchCrawl or other urban sketching event!

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