The BVAA Uxbridge SketchFest is back for its sixth year! Grab your pads of paper, pencils, and pens, for it’s SketchFest time!
Here’s the plan.
Sometime between September 17th and October 31st 2023, head out to your favorite locations in Uxbridge. Make sketches of whatever catches your eye. Send them into us at info@bvaa.org. Each person can send us up to three sketches. Please have the last JPGs in to us by midnight on October 31st 2023. Participation is completely FREE!
If you can also send a photo of what you were sketching, or its location, that would be lovely. That way people can tour Uxbridge and see the locations of the artwork.
We will make a virtual gallery of the sketches and also a YouTube virtual presentation! We’ll share all the beautiful artworks for the entire community to enjoy!
All ages and abilities are warmly encouraged to participate. This is open to the public!
We launch our 2023 Uxbridge SketchFest with a fantastic FREE Urban Sketching workshop with the talented artist Howie Green! All are welcome to participate!
Here is Dennis Smith’s great map of wonderful locations in Uxbridge. Click on it to get a larger version along with details about each location. This is a starting point. You can make your sketches anywhere in Uxbridge.
What Is A Sketch?
Just what is a sketch? We’re glad you asked!
For the sake of our SketchFest, a sketch is a quick representation of a scene done with pen or pencil on paper. It can then be colored in with colored pencil or watercolors. Here’s a beautiful example done by Pamela Siderewicz of a lawyers’ office building on Uxbridge Common.
Talented artist Scott Nelson led an urban sketching session on Grafton Common – you get a TON of tips from Scott in this on how to compose and approach sketching in a town setting –
At our 2019 Uxbridge SketchFest we had the amazing Laura Sfiat from the Urban Sketchers Boston group come guide us through sketching. Here is one of Laura’s examples (not of Uxbridge) which provides a few details about how she works.
Here’s Laura’s website which has all sorts of great information and advice:
https://belleartwork.wordpress.com/
Here’s a video of the afternoon session with Laura, which focused more specifically on portrait sketching.
Here’s a 22-minute YouTube video by Alphonso Dunn that goes step by step through how to create an urban sketch. You can skip the first two minutes – those are an ad for his book :).
To get some inspiration, here are sketches from the 2021 Uxbridge SketchFest:
If you can’t get out to a site in person, here are some photos of locations that our BVAA members have allowed you to use as a basis for a sketch!
Here’s a flyer for our 2023 Uxbridge SketchFest. Please share this flyer with local websites, libraries, and schools!
Ask with any questions, and we look forward to seeing your beautiful sketches!
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