Urban Sketchers Colombo community celebrate International Sketchers Week – 1ST TO 7TH MAY 2025
The Urban Sketchers Colombo community celebrated International Sketchers Week with a lively sketch meet and picnic held at the landmark Independence Square in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on May 4th, 2025.The group of creative individuals normally meet on the third Sunday of every month in a scenic or historical location within Colombo city limits. Artists of all ages and diverse backgrounds share their love for the places where they live and travel. The Urban Sketchers is a global community of sketchers dedicated to the practice of on-location drawing.
Urban Sketchers, or USk is a nonprofit organization which was incorporated in the state of Washington, USA, supporting and representing a grassroots community of sketchers. In 2007, a global community of urban sketchers began to form when Seattle-based journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario created an online forum “for all sketchers out there who love to draw the cities where they live and visit, from the window of their homes, from a cafe, at a park, standing by a street corner… always on location, not from photos or memory.” A year later, Campanario invited a group of sketchers to share their drawings and storytelling in a blog, Urban Sketchers, where readers could “See the World, One Drawing at a Time.” The blog helped the community gain visibility and inspired drawing enthusiasts from all over to sketch in the spirit of our manifesto.
The concept of an urban sketch is a drawing created on location, indoors or outdoors, capturing what the sketcher sees from direct observation. Urban sketchers use any kind of media to tell the story of their surroundings, the places they live, and where they travel. From 1- 7 May every year, the Urban Sketchers showcases the activities of the community and the various ways that urban sketching brings people together , changing lives around the world as everyone is given the opportunity of forming new connections with shared interests. Anyone anywhere is free to participate in International Urban Sketchers Week!
In Colombo, Sri Lanka, the Urban Sketchers community was first established in December 2021 by Megali Nanayakkara,with its first sketch meet held at the Vihara Mahadevi Park. The Urban Sketchers Colombo follows the principles of http://www.urbansketchers.org/, and aims to bring together a community of people who love to sketch. Join the Urban Sketchers Colombo Facebook group and follow @UrbanSketchersColombo on Instagram to know more about upcoming sketch-walks, and form warm connections with fellow sketchers, and to share your on-location sketches. Use the hashtag #USkWeek2025 to share your sketching stories from 1st to 7th May 2025 and show the world what urban sketching means to you!
