Friday Art & History - Urban Sketching

Urban Sketch by Shari Blaukopf

I'm starting on an interesting art journey and I'm inviting you along. What is it, you wonder? It is an art practice called Urban Sketching.

Definition: Wikipedia defines Urban Sketchers as "a global community of artists that practice drawing on location in cities, towns and villages they live in or travel to. It was a movement started on Flickr by a journalist Gabriel Campanario. Urban Sketchers is now a nonprofit organization and its manifesto has been translated into multiple languages.

It's mottos is: "We show the world, one drawing at a time!"

There are also now a number of vritual urban sketching events and groups, where the sketchers "travel" and sketch places through photos and Google Images.

Why did I get interested?
I have always been a watercolor artist, and have recently come back to it. However, over the past couple of years, I also started painting and drawing using other art mediums, such as oils, pastels and watercolor pencils. My goal for the next months is to improve my drawing skills. I'm also fascinated with graphite and pen drawing. Urban sketchers usually use a mix of all of these medium, especially pens, pencils, watercolor pencils, ink and watercolors. I also love history and architecture, something which, again, figures heavily in urban sketching.

Taken from Urban Sketchers blog

What do you sketch? 
Everything you see. Architecture, people, animals, what you see out of your window, by your job or on your travels anywhere.

Books on Urban Sketching: 

 The Urban Sketchers: Techniques for Seeing and Drawing on Location

 The Art of Urban Sketching: Drawing On Location Around the World

 Urban Sketching: The Complete Guide to Techniques

The Urban Sketching Handbook: Architecture and Cityscapes: Tips and Techniques for Drawing on Location

Urban Sketchking kit by Gabi Campanario

Resources:

Urban Sketchers Org  

Urban Sketchers Flickr Photo Sharing

Urban Sketchers Facebook Group

Virtual Sketchwalk Facebook Group

Urban Sketchers on Pinterest

Alena Kudriashova – Sketch travel Journal

 I'll be posting my sketches as I progress and learn. I would love to see yours, as well.

Friday Art & History Feature - The Art of Alexandra Miron + Interview

Give Me Wings to Fly. Pencil. By Alexandra Miron

 As you know, I'm always on the lookout for artists that awe and inspire me. In the past year, I have joined many art FB groups and forums, and had the pleasure of meeting many incredible artists. One of these is a remarkable young lady, Alexandra Miron. It is such a pleasure to have Alexandra on the blog today! I will let her answer a few questions and then I hope you enjoy some of her work. She primarily draws in pencil and pen. Enjoy!

When did you start drawing?
I started when I was 10 or 11, I was spending the summer holidays at my grandparents and I was drawing from some history books. But I stopped drawing for a while and 3 years ago when I joined deviantart, I started to dedicate more time to drawing.

Did you have instruction somewhere and did you learn on your own?
When I was 11-12 I went to some drawing classes, then at 22 I was thinking to study art in the university (I studied first foreign languages: Portuguese and Greek, in 2007 I earned my degree) so I took 3 or 4 classes, but then I took a study scholarship in Greece, so again I gave up on drawing. And in 2010 I ended up in Cyprus. Since then I am working in a 4 star hotel as a receptionist and I draw in the mornings, before I go to work (most of the time I work from 15 to 23 hours, late shift) and I work 6 days a week, so not too much time for drawing. 

Autoportrait. Pencil

What is your inspiration?
My inspiration...I study on my own history of art...I admire all the artists, and I admit I am not too much into modern art...I mean, I love romantic, Gothic, renaissance, baroque, romantique, neoclassicist, impressionist and symbolic art...but the 1900's art...not a huge fan, although there are a few like Tamara de Lempicka or Dali that I like... 

What are the media that you draw/paint with?
I draw in pencil, using between 2 and 8B, and lately, I am trying to master the ballpoint pen.

What advice would you give to aspiring artists?
My advice to aspiring artists would be: hard work and don't give up on your dreams.  

Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. Pencil

Lucrezia Borgia from the show The Borgias. Pencil.

The Crown

Daenerys from the show The Game of Thrones. Pencil

Edward Scissorhand. Pencil

The Trapped series in ballpoint pen.

Madonna. Pencil

A pencil study after Michelangelo.

 

Friday Art & History Feature - Nadya Rusheva

Apollo and Daphne by Nadya Rusheva

 
When I was a young girl in Kiev, Ukraine, I remember my older cousin, an artist, leaving me a book of drawings by Nadya Rusheva when she immigrated. I remember being very moved by the drawings, especially because some of them were of scenes from my favorite book, Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov, but moved even more, and saddened, by Nadya's biography. I was about twelve or thirteen when I encountered this amazing artist - and she made an especially strong impact on me because she was only 17 when she passed away.

Nadya Rusheva

Nadya was born in 1952 in Ulan Bator, where her parents were staying at the time of her birth, although they soon moved back to Russia. She began drawing when she was five, and by the age of seven, her family realized that she had an amazing talent. She once painted 36 illustrations to "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", written by Alexander Pushkin, in one night, as her father was reading the story to her.

Nadya always drew without preparation, and almost never erased. She often worked with a pen to make the drawings. The simplicity of her drawings, the purity of the lines, make a strong impression and endear to the viewer. When Bulgakov's widow, Yelena Bulgakova, saw the drawings of Master and Margarita by Nadya (when the young artist passed away), she said "I wish I knew this amazing and subtle creature."

Nadya died of a brain hemorrhage because of congenital defect. She died in March of 1969 in Moscow. She created 10,000 artworks in the span of her short, but stunning, life.

Asteroid 3516 Rusheva is named after Nadya.

Here's a collection of some of my favorite drawings by this remarkable young woman.

Master and Margarita meeting for the first time, by Nadya Rusheva

Margarita, by Nadya Rusheva

Centaurs by Nadya Rusheva

Women, by Nadya Rusheva

Pushkin (a classical Russian writer and poet) and his wife, by Nadya Rushina

Goncharova, Pushkin's wife, by Nadya Rusheva

Ballerina, by Nadya Rusheva

Little Prince (by Antoine de Saint-Exupery) by Nadya Rusheva