About 6 months ago, I saw an advertisement for an Urban Sketchers workshop in Chicago. On the opening day of registration, however, I was going to be at a conference. So Courtney went online to register for both of us. Within 10 minutes, the workshop was almost totally sold out, but luckily Courtney managed to get both of us signed up for the weekend.
On the first night, we all met at Palette & Chisel, an art studio in the Gold Coast area of Chicago. The Gold Coast is an extremely upscale neighborhood with some very interesting architecture. I've been shopping on Michigan Ave a million times, but Rush Street is where the really pricey stores are located - Prada, Christian Dior, Versace, Barney's.
Our first activity was a neighborhood sketchwalk. Courtney and I walked over to Mariano park, also known as the Viagra triangle because so many older men taken their trophy (younger) dates out to the restaurants and bars surrounding the park. Since it was beautiful weather, there were a million people out. I stuck to simple pen and ink sketches of restaurant signs, doorways, and people.
On Saturday morning, our first class was "Sketch Now, Think Later" taught by Mike Daikubara. Mike looks like he's sitting on the ground, but he's actually sitting on the world's smallest stool I've ever seen.
We were on a street corner across from Holy Name Cathedral - the seat of one of the largest Catholic dioceses in the country. Our task was to try to paint the whole church (a huge Gothic Revival structure) plus some of the downtown buildings behind it (all in 3 hours!). As I was painting, I noticed that people kept coming by and staring at the building's corner. It turns out that there are some bullet holes in the stone left by Al Capone's gangsters.
Mike's expertise is watercolor, but it was almost impossible to hear what he was saying, because the Chicago Public Works picked that particular morning to grind up the street for resurfacing. The funny thing was, they didn't block off the street or put down any orange cones. Cars, buses, pedestrians, and bikes were still using the street right alongside the construction trucks just like it was a regular day (only in Chicago, right?).
During our lunch break, Courtney and I ran over to Velvet Taco for lunch. OMG, were those tacos delicious. This isn't your typical ground beef, lettuce, and cheese taco. It's like comfort food in a tortilla. I had a shrimp & grits taco and a picnic chicken taco (the "picnic" chicken taco had potato salad in it). Courtney had the rotisserie chicken taco and a pulled pork taco. They were so good, we actually went back two days in a row.
In the afternoon, Courtney and I had different classes. I went to Don Colley's "Create a Rich Drawing" near Chicago's Water Tower. In this class, Don gave us 2 brush markers (a warm gray and a cool gray), and we were tasked with trying to draw people. Now I think people are some of the hardest subjects to draw, but when you've only got 2 colors which are practically the same shade, it's next to impossible to get anything recognizable. But Don showed us a fascinating technique for drawing a line and immediately rubbing it with our fingers to create some shading. It will take me a lot more practice to master this form of drawing, but I think I was finally starting to get the hang of it by the end of class.
Saturday's weather turned out to be what I consider typical Chicago - cold and windy. After being outside for so long, everyone in Don's class was starting to shiver, so we moved inside to Uniglo's Starbucks for our final critique. Too bad they don't have a Uniglo store in St Louis, because they had some great looking women's clothes. (No, I didn't stop to shop, but I did check out some prices on the way to the restroom to wash all the ink smudges from my fingers.)
We woke up Sunday morning to much better (warmer) weather. I started the day with Lisa Flahive's class, "Capturing Chicago's Rhythm & Energy." Lisa is also a gray-marker artist like Don, but she used really wide markers (1-inch wide) to create her drawings.
She was incredibly enthusiastic and always got excited when different vehicles drove by (like taxis and horse-driven carriages). She was able to capture them in a few seconds, but I needed a lot more time to get something recognizable down on paper. A bunch of us walked across the street to Argo tea to sit at their outdoor tables - a much more stable drawing surface than my knee, plus Argo's Carolina Honey Tea was delicious.
On Sunday afternoon, I went to Paul Ingold's watercolor, pen, and ink class called, "Light & Shadow." This was the first teacher who let us use pencils and erasers while sketching (all the other teachers made us jump right in with ink pens).
While I think this class was actually intended for beginners, we learned some interesting mixing techniques using only a 3-color palette - ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and yellow ochre. I'll have to explore this technique a lot further on my own, because I think it will work well with the subjects I always like to paint (anything falling into disrepair).
Both of my Sunday classes were actually on a street corner across from Loyola University's Archbishop Quigley Center, another huge French Gothic structure even more elaborate than Holy Name Cathedral. I managed to draw the small clock tower above the main entrance, but I'll have to save drawing this entire building for a day when I have a lot more time.
All-in-all I thought the workshop was a really great experience. All the people (both teachers and sketchers) were incredibly friendly. Since Courtney is local, she's thinking of joining the group on their monthly sketch outings. And even if I'm not around to join their regular group, at least I've discovered a new place to hang out and sketch the next time I'm in Chicago (not to forget, I still need to check out that Uniglo store).
