A very civilized way to spend a Sunday

About 20 people braved Sunday's heat and humidity to sketch images of Coconut Grove during the  Miami Urban Sketchers event. Created by Lisa Nance in September, the group has been meeting monthly in various locals around the county to spread out and capture what they see using pens, paper and even doing it digitally. Here, Pat Oblak,  Director of Sales and Art Reach at Jerry's Artarama, who is one of the founders with Lisa, addresses the crowd in front of CocoWalk at 1 pm, before the artists spread out around the village to create.  Federico Giraldo is the third founder/administrator of the Urban Sketchers Miami group

Lisa welcomes the artists before the event, this is one of many monthly events, in the past the group has met at Lincoln Road and Wynwood and they may sketch at the Perez Museum of Art Miami (PAMM) next month.

Daniel Dulitzky had a nice table and shady spot at Masa Taquerita.

Sebastian (just Sebastian) and Stuart Taft had a great space on Main Highway where they created their work.

Nadia Desjardins, a regular contributor at KROMA Gallery got into the spirit, she found a green space on Main Highway across from Lulu.

And next to Nadia were Maurizio Passariello and Sheri Friedman.

Abdon J. Romero and Katyuska Moran drew from a table at Starbucks.

Al Carro used an Ipad Pro and went digital and Elena Montijo used pad and pen. Al and I compared our Surface Pro and Ipad Pro and techniques as I use a Surface Pro 3 and a Wacom Cintiq.

Elena drawing CocoWalk.

Sheri met a busload of students from Italy, some artists who shared their work with Sheri.

The Urban Sketchers draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what they see from direct observation; their drawings tell the story of their surroundings. 

Pat at Virginia and Grand.

At the end of the day, the artists spread their work out and discuss what they saw and drew and they explain their technique.

It's a totally  upbeat, charming event which we could use a lot more of around here.

To see some of the work from Sunday, their facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/miamiurbansketchers where they are sharing their works.
They are @uskmiami on instagram