Glasgow has a thriving community of urban sketchers, who draw the city ‘live’ – leaning in doorways or maybe perched on a camping stool at a busy street corner. They are part of a global movement first formed in Seattle in 2007 by journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario, ‘for all sketchers out there who love to draw the cities where they live and visit… always on location, not from photos or memory.’ It’s a practice that by its solitary nature thrived during lockdown, and now a group of Glasgow sketchers are bringing back ‘sketch crawls’, as urban sketching meet-ups are known.
Marking the return of regular sketch crawls across different parts of the city, eleven of Glasgow’s urban sketchers are now staging an exhibition of their work at New Glasgow Society in the city’s west end. While a handful are professional or full-time artists, but others are a physicist, a government researcher, a council street cleaner and a university fellow, as well as a former political cartoonist and romantic fiction author. The new joint exhibition will bring together their work for the first time – all picturing Glasgow and created on location around the city. The show will include original drawings and paintings, prints and postcards for sale by individual artists.
The artists will be leading sketch crawls around Kelvingrove and Finnieston on both days of the exhibition, meeting at New Glasgow Society at 1pm and ending with a ‘throwdown’ to show sketchbook drawings. Visitors will be encouraged to take part and hopefully any novice urban sketchers will enjoy the experience so much that they’ll join in with future gatherings.
The participating artists are Liz Reid (Instagram: @lizreidart), whose work is pictured above, Ben Cavanagh (@benjamin.cavanagh), Fiona Fleming (@fionafleming.artist), Stuart Kerr (@stuartkerr), Allan Richardson (@urbansketcher55), Andrew Siddall (@siddall_drawing), Fiona Gibson (@fiona_gib), Frank Boyle (@boylecartoon), Marion Cromb (@mcromb_art), Susan Reid (@susanreidartist) and Wil Freeborn (@wilfreeborn). See images below.
The event’s hashtag is #SeeGlasgow2024, and the sketch crawl events are posted on the Glasgow Urban Sketchers Facebook group.
The exhibition is supported by DRAW Art Store, an independent retailer of fine stationery and graphic arts supplies from Japan, Europe and America, and Bungo Sign Co., the award-winning Glasgow sign-painting and design studio of (Instagram:) @rachelemillar and @suresigns_glasgow.
New Glasgow Society is a civic society and charity promoting, protecting and raising interest in the City of Glasgow, through campaigning, discussion, projects, talks and exhibitions.
