A year ago today, the Urban Sketchers super-blog was born, the brainchild of Spanish-born Seattle artist and journalist Gabi Campanario. Happy Birthday USk! We have grown into one of the increasingly popular destinations for those rediscovering their own artistic nature, a message that if you are disposed to record the world as little pictures in little books (as I am), you are 
certainly not alone. There are hundreds, thousands, maybe one day millions of us. As one of the founding members (my San Francisco sketchbook was the first banner) I’ve been very proud and humbled to appear among some of the real luminaries of the sketching world, from whom I continue to learn every day. As the USk correspondent for Davis, California, today I posted my 100th post! A nice milestone to reach.
You can follow USk on Twitter, on Facebook and of course at the Flickr group. Here is the Birthday Press Release.
But Urban Sketchers is not resting. The next step is becoming a non-profit organization, “dedicated to promoting the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing“, and raising money to award scholarships to help artists. This is very exciting. There may be a book. There may be annual international meet-ups of urban sketching artists – I had better start saving!
So now seems the perfect time to spread my message, inspired last night by Eddie Argos of Art Brut telling everyone to go home right now and form a band (and don’t play Rock Band and Guitar Hero) , I am telling you all to get a pen (or pencil), get a sketchbook (or any paper), go outside (or inside) and just DRAW. Draw anything, anything you want. Look out of your window, draw that. It doesn’t matter if it’s any good, it comes from you and that’s the important thing. I tried to draw at the gig last night and my sketches were rubbish, no really they were bad, but I’ll always think of where I was when I did them. It’s a record of where and who you are. One day, you might forget.
So just go out and DRAW! It really is brilliant fun.
petescully 
So true. Hooray for sketching!
Pete — great stuff. I am really excited about your Luke’s shoes series. This will be such a treasure for him and you later, but even more than that: think about how his GRANDCHILDREN will feel about it. The serial portrait of an era.
Thanks! Yes, I’m happy to be doing the shoes project, i think he’ll like it when he is older. I just hope I can keep it up over the years!
Right on, Pete. Brilliant fun. I’ve followed your sketches all year, and enjoyed them, along with your entertaining posts. Sketch on.
nicely done post Pete, I wish I had 5 percent of your writing talent to say what you just said. that’s a historic photo right there by the way, I’m going to save it to my desktop! sketch on, as Rob says above, and I hope we’ll meet in person in the not too distant future