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Gail Wong’s love for travel and sketching intertwines. Her most recent sketchbooks are filled with colorful drawings of Peru and Argentina. She has also filled numerous concertina-style books with sketches made in Portugal, the Netherlands and many other destinations. A retired architect and lecturer at the University of Washington, Wong co-wrote “The Urban Sketching Handbook: Spotlight on Nature,” with Virgina Hein in 2022. Her passion for sketching and painting revived after joining the Urban Sketchers Seattle chapter in 2009 and later serving on the board of the international organization. Working in ink and watercolor, she’s been capturing landmarks and cityscapes ever since.

Jane Wingfield got her start at the Chicago Art Institute and later studied art in college and sumi painting in Tokyo. She started sketching on location in 2009 when she joined the fledgling Urban Sketchers Seattle at a gathering at Volunteer Park. Since then she has been sketching nonstop and volunteering with Urban Sketchers in Seattle and internationally. She has taught workshops in the Pacific Northwest and New York City. Sketching on location for more than 16 years has given her the gumption to start sketching just about anywhere. She believes travel sketches are not only fun to make but also the best souvenirs to bring home after a trip.

Eleanor Doughty is a Seattle-based artist originally from Virginia. Her mixed media work captures realistic subjects and imbues them with significance and character. Inspired by artists such as Charley Harper and Masaaki Yuasa, Doughty‘s style has been described as lighthearted and nostalgic while seeking clarity and visual impact in her drawings. Doughty has been traveling internationally to teach on-location sketching since 2019. She writes the newsletter Hand To Paper on Substack and co-hosts the popular Street View World Tour on Zoom with Jenny Adam. Outside of urban sketching, Doughty is a freelance illustrator, specializing in large format works up to two stories tall.

Stephanie Bower is the author of three best-selling books about sketching, “The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Perspective,” “The Urban Sketching Handbook: 101 Sketching Tips,” and “The World of Urban Sketching.” A self-taught watercolor artist with a background as a licensed architect, Bower juggles parallel careers as an architectural illustrator and sketching instructor. Her awards include the prestigious Gabriel Prize fellowship in architecture to Paris and the Civita Institute’s fellowship to Italy. She has also been honored twice with the “Best Travel Sketch” prize in the KRob international architectural competition and her work has been featured in Watercolor Artist and Artists Magazine.

Christina Wald is a designer, illustrator and educator passionate about travel and storytelling. She is the author of “Sketching Here & Everywhere: My Sketching Obsession,” a combination of personal anecdotes and tips from years of teaching. In 2023, she published a travelogue about her artist residency at Château d’Orquevaux, followed by a second in Romania in 2025. She is currently working on one about her experience traveling in Argentina last fall. Wald founded the Cincinnati chapter of Urban Sketchers in 2017 and has taught illustration and narrative storytelling at Northern Kentucky University and the Art Academy for more than a decade.

Rita Sabler is the author of two books of reportage, “New York Reawakens” and “Listening to New Orleans,” and currently works as a freelance visual journalist for Oregon Public Broadcasting. An award-winning visual journalist, author and educator for more than a decade, Sabler has inspired diverse audiences to cultivate a lifelong passion for travel sketching and reportage. From 2019-2023 she served as the education director on the board of the Urban Sketchers organization. Her reportage about the Kalaupapa Settlement received the International Sketchbook Prize at the 2019 Rendez-Vous du Carnet de Voyage Festival in Clermont-Ferrand.

Bill Russell works in a variety of creative skill sets, as an illustrator, designer, painter and visual journalist. He served as an Adjunct Professor of Illustration at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and created “The Bay Folk Sketchbook” as a staff artist for the San Francisco Chronicle, showcasing unique portraits of people at work and play. Russell’s insights on reportage can be found at IllustratedJournalism.com. Based in Marin County, he recently traveled to Japan, Morocco, Tahiti and Buenos Aires on sketching trips.

James Richards is a traveling artist, author, urban designer, former professor and international workshop instructor. His sketching expertise, workshops and lectures have taken him to 50 countries and 27 universities. He’s a founder of Urban Sketchers Texas and the author of “Freehand Drawing and Discovery” and “Travel Artist,” as well as an online instructor for Skillshare, Craftsy and The Great Courses. His work has been featured in 30 instructional drawing books and numerous art and design magazines, shown in group and solo exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, and seen on NBC Nightly News. He’s based in Siesta Key, Florida.

Sanika Phawde is an illustrator, educator, cartoonist and reportage artist born and raised in India and based in Boston. Through autobiographical comics, visual essays, drawings on location, gouache paintings and illustrated interviews, Phawde’s work strives to capture and communicate instances of emotional connection, queer immigrant culture and conversations people have over meals. Phawde’s illustrated storytelling has been published in The New Yorker, On the Spot and many other publications.