Event recap: Day 2 — USk Van Sketch Weekend 2025

You haven't checked the Day 1 post yet? Read it here first.

On April 5 and 6, 2025, Vancouver Urban Sketchers hosted its inaugural Sketch Weekend on Granville Island in collaboration with the Urban Sketchers Executive Board. Unlike the sunny Day 1, Day 2 arrived with rain, unfortunately. However, the sketchers' energy wasn’t dampened by the gloomy weather. It was truly encouraging to see many sketchers stay engaged and show up for the morning workshop and sketchwalk. Here's a recap of Day 2 of USk Van Sketch Weekend 2025, full of learning, sharing and simply fun moments.

[Workshop] Color First Ink Later Workshop led by Mike Daikubara

Sunday's workshop was taught by the newly-appointed USk Vice President, Mike Daikubara.

He demonstrated a watercolor-first method. By starting with watercolor, a medium that is hard to control, he taught participants how to be bold and to trust their intuition. You have to look at the bigger picture, focusing on the big shapes and letting the colors mix and merge on paper.

Starting out a sketch is always intimidating, but Mike made it simple and fun. The participants even got to play with dripping effects and splatters with watercolor.

The next step is inking. Mike made the group look for a shape that is more defined and start there. Let the patterns and shapes of the initial watercolor wash be the guide. From there, the participants started to add more details. They added more colors, lines, and highlights to bring the sketch to a finish.

As the rain was getting harder, the group had to head back to the sharing space at Opus earlier than scheduled. Yet, they still had a valuable time of learning great insight towards the instructor's approach and techniques in sketching.

[Sketchwalk] Capturing Granville Island’s Charm Through Ink and Watercolor Sketches led by Becky Cao

An artist and art educator based in Vancouver, Becky Cao, led a group of brave sketchers on the sketchwalk themed ink and watercolor sketching despite the rain.

After some surveying around, the group settled down in a tunnel opening towards the sea, with buildings of Vancouver rising across the river.

She planned the scene by identifying the three layers: a parked car as her foreground subject, a row of low houses as middle ground, with far off high-rises on the opposite bank as background. She suggested moving objects around or removing unwanted ones from canvas if the scene isn't entirely to your satisfaction so that it makes the scene easier to read.

The sketch was directly done using a fine-liner. Becky half-jokingly commented on the merits of “wonky lines” with this ink-first approach, saying, “If all lines are wonky, then none are”. She also remarked that urban sketching is not copying what is before our eyes, but capturing what we experience of the environment at that moment. Then, she started applying watercolor. By grouping together areas of similar colors while foregoing some precision, she created synergy in her sketch.

While Becky was doing a demonstration, participants were also sketching. They shared their work on a bench and then headed back to Opus, followed by more sharing and learning the artist's insight.

[Artist Talk] Bob Altwein: Stories Through Sketching

In the afternoon, we had artist talks by two amazing local urban sketchers at Zameen Art House. The first speaker, Bob Altwein, has been an artist for many decades, and he's even been sketching before meeting with the idea of urban sketching! In this talk Bob shares with us sketches he's done over the years and the stories that came with them.

In this sketch Bob told us the story about how he intruded on protected land accidentally. Bob ended up having a long friendly chat with a local there, and offered to sketch her house as a nice gesture for the stories shared. Bob goes back to visit every year even now!

Bob sketched this during Covid lock down when the usually bustling Downtown streets were empty, giving an eery feel to an otherwise busy part of town. Bob called this “drawing other drawings” as he's found these wall art incredibly intriguing. They contained the wishes and thoughts of other people living in the same city.

Bob shared so many other sketches, from social reportage to just himself hanging out on the beach with a friend. Bob's sketches bring many stories and inspires us to tell our own stories through sketches as well.

[Artist Talk] Heather Souliere: Urban Sketching With Inks

Heather Souliere has been working in the Animation & Film Industry for over two decades. Outside of work she often goes capture the cityscape in ink and gouache. In this talk Heather shared with us the importance of sketching to her.

Heather mentioned how sketching also helps her in her professional work. In urban sketching there's only so much time before the light and shadow changes so you're forced to sketch fast and loose. Heather noticed that when she got to do more urban sketching her speed also improved in a professional setting. Heather's incorporation with her day time job and urban sketching is truly impressive!

When Covid hit and Heather was stuck in her home, she's found sketching an important bonding activity with her daughters. Urban sketching has always been meant to connect people and it's truly pleasing to find Heather achieving that with her family!

Some attendees sketched while listening to the talks.

Raffles and closing— More sharing!

The fun time is about to end. In the closing, we acknowledged those who were involved in this event. We were truly lucky to have an amazing team of volunteers, and also generous sponsors. The sponsors offered art supplies and vouchers for our goodies bags.

• Watercolor / gouache dot cards from Daniel Smith 
• Watercolor postcards from Etchr Lab
• Colored pencils from Caran d'Ache
• Sketchbooks and Marvy Uchida fine liners from Opus Art Supplies
• Mini Artist Pads from Legion Paper
• Discount cards from Art Toolkit
• Also we made our logo stickers and badges!

There were few special limited-quantity items and they were given away as raffle prizes. Five lucky attendees received raffle gift bags. The first prize even has an Art Toolkit watercolor palette!

In the end, we had more time for sketchbook sharing and hangout. It felt like we could've gone on forever, exchanging insights, tips and art supply recommendations. 

This event wouldn't have been possible without Urban Sketchers' global network, support from the sponsors, hard work by the volunteers and admins, and each participant's enthusiasm! If you participated, thank you so much for making our first Sketch Weekend a success. If you didn't this time, we are eager to host more exciting events in the future so stay in the loop. See you all soon!

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Urban Sketchers Vancouver

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