Dear readers, My first batch of sketching news after the unofficial end of summer is bittersweet. Cinematic sketches Alex Hillkurtz’s sketches from the Olympics stopped me in my tracks when I spotted them on Instagram.So fresh and spontaneous!Hesaid each Olympic…
Drawing London, one pub at a time There is something special about pubs and sketching. Back in the early 2000s, pub crawls inspired Italian storyboard artist Enrico Casarosa to start World Wide Sketch Crawl, a precursor of Urban Sketchers. Pubs are the subject of…
How do you launch a career as an independent reportage artist or professional urban sketcher? While still working as a graphic designer in Paris in his mid 20s, Lapin honed his drawing skills sketching subway commuters. He also tried to use as much of his vacation time “to go far away, usually alone with a […]
Uganda’s landscape and wildlife in watercolor and pencil “I traveled to Uganda to make one of my dreams a reality: to witness the mountain gorillas.” —Joan León Hot off the press! Barcelona-based sketcher Joan León, the author of Ilustrando Sudamérica*, takes us to a whole new continent in Cuaderno de Uganda ($16.77 on Etsy), a publication he released last […]
Hello readers, Here’s a new bulletin of sketching and reportage news. If you like what you read, please share so others can learn about On the Spot and Sketcher Press. Behind the scenes at a London hospital “Vital Organs” is a newly-released 48-page publication collecting the gripping reportage drawings made by Mereida Fajardo at Chelsea […]
Hello readers, Some housekeeping: On the Spot has a new tagline: the Magazine of Reportage Illustration. This slogan better reflects my original goal for the newsletter: to create a reader-supported publication that pays artists for articles of compelling visual storytelling. In light of the new tagline, “Sketching News Roundups” are now called “Reportage News.” These posts will […]
The guest of my January Live Zoom was Marielle Durand, an artist, author and urban sketcher based in Paris. Durand belongs to a very small group of artists who holds a special pass to draw inside the French Parliament, where she has been documenting political debates since October of 2022. We talked about many things during our […]
Hi readers, It felt good to kick off On the Spot in 2024 with a contributed article by Houston based artist Judith Dollar. Next, I announced this Thursday’s Artist Talk with Marielle Durand (Are you in?). And now it’s time to review some compelling reportage that caught my eye in the past few weeks. Rolf Schroeter’s protest art You may […]
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French artist Marielle Durand has been sketching for more than 20 years, but when she started her career as a professional artist she never imagined the job would open doors like the ones that lead into the French Parliament. Since October 2022, Durand has belonged to a very small group of artists allowed to draw the political […]
Dear subscribers, It was a pleasure to host Irish-American artist and scholar Louis Netter during our December Live Zoom. Netter’s upcoming book, “Reportage Drawing: Vision and Experience” promises to be a must read for any artist and sketcher who wants to harness the full potential of observational drawing. The book is the culmination of the academic research […]