Worldwide Sketchcrawl

Yesterday was the Worldwide Sketchcrawl, for which urban sketchers all over the globe turned out singly and in groups to sketch their surroundings "en plein air" in their sketchbooks. The Los Angeles division of Urban Sketchers met up at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel (when did Millennium become part of the name? it's the old Biltmore) downtown on Grand Ave., to immortalize all of its very fancy bits and pieces. We usually have 10 or 15 people show up, but added about 10 or 15 new people this time (perhaps because it was the worldwide date), so we had around 30 of us spread out in the lobbies, hallways, and façades.

I managed to make three sketches. The first was a doorway from one of the Biltmore's many hallways to the street, with a little ceiling detail thrown in. My proportions were incredibly wonky for this one, and I misjudged size so that only the top half of the doors were included.

I had found a good place to roost for this drawing, on some carpeted stairs going up to a ballroom, so for my second painting, I simply glanced upward and decided to draw part of one of the fancy wrought iron hanging lamps backed by the even more elaborate ceiling "rosette" surrounding it. I clearly didn't know what I had got myself into with the sheer detail featured in the concentric circles!

I'm kind of sorry that I introduced any kind of color at all into the lampshades; they were such a pure white, both in color and in illumination, and I wanted them to really pop against the relative darks of the lamp frame and the rest of the background, but I thought the lemon yellow would give them a little more clarity as light sources. Instead, it tended to make them blend in too much.


My third painting, a quickie in the last 10 minutes, was back in the lobby. I found a place on a sofa, and this man was sitting near me, at the end of the coffee table. I managed it by pretending to paint the room's scenery and then taking surreptitious glances. Every time he looked suspiciously my way, I was innocently studying the wall behind him. (Some people don't wish to be drawn!) I liked his frowny-faced concentration on his phone.

Traffic was horrible from the Valley to the Biltmore, and as usual, I got lost on the way back trying to find a freeway onramp from downtown (those one-way streets!), and finally managed to get on the 101 at Temple and Alvarado, far from where I had started. But it was really fun to go out with others, see what they did, show them my work, and feel more comfortable drawing and painting as part of a group, instead of being the lone person within eyesight who is drawing. Here's a photo of our group:

The guy standing next to me in the photo, in the black and red plaid shirt, was in Los Angeles on vacation from (I think he said) Malaysia, and just decided to show up for our sketchcrawl. They have a huge, active group where he lives. Nice to know you can show up in almost any city in the world and find urban sketchers to hang with!