Sketching the City’s Backside

Urban sketching, as its name suggests, reveals the characteristics that define the city: the crowds of people, the density of the built environment and also the messy textures that can be found when you stop to look. The urban alley, a corridor that is the backside of our urban fabric, is filled with service necessities — garbage containers, electrical and communication utility lines, garages and parked cars — as an alternative to the front yards and commercial corridors. Alleys can be textural with fencing, vegetation and rough, messy landscapes. But they are also rather simple as most are single point perspectives. We will be exploring these important but overlooked spaces through sketching, using a variety of media, pencil, pen and ink, and colored pencil and watercolor.