"1st Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers' Sketchcrawl"

Click this image to see more images created by the participants to the event.

This last winter I decided Barcelona was going to be too far away, too expensive, and too hot to attend for the 4th International Urban Sketchers' Symposium.  Once the decision was made I began thinking about what alternative to the symposium I could come up with. 

I've always loved San Francisco. Being born east of there, a hundred and six years ago, the city has always felt somewhat like one of those anchors in my life; but I've only been able to visit it a few times in my adulthood. 

Why not find some folks like me, who aren't going to Barcelona, and get together for a sketchcrawl there? I contacted Gabi Campanario first, the originator of the Urban Sketcher movement.  I wanted to get his approval for possibly conducting an alternative event to Barcelona, on the same weekend.  He said it was a great idea.

I contacted Jana Bouc, the admin for the USK: San Francisco Bay Area group and asked her if she, or someone in her group would be interested in putting the event together.  In no time I was in contact not only Jana, but also Cathy McAuliffe, Carrie McClish, Sonia Tamez, Susan Ford and my friend, Irene Wang, who I met in Santo Domingo last summer. 

It took about 4 or 5 months of planning, and now that it is behind us we can say it was a terrific weekend. We were expecting about 115 sketchers, and the official count was . . . 115. 

Here's a group shot of about half the people that attended.  This was at our group share at lunchtime in San Francisco, across the street from the Ferry Building.

Check out some of the other photos of the event by clicking on the pic.