Urban Sketching

Urban Sketchers Aachen

I have been a member of the Aachen Urban Sketch Group since 2019. Urban sketching is an international movement of people who enjoy drawing and do so often, outdoors in the city, on location in urban environments. 

After the pandemic in September 2022, I decided to become more active again and launched ‘Sketch Thursday’: I told the group that from now on, I would be standing at the Elisenbrunnen fountain every Thursday at 6 p.m. and setting off from there on a short ‘sketch walk’ through the city centre. Come rain or shine, even in winter at dusk and in the dark, I stood at the fountain every Thursday. At first, sometimes alone, mostly in a small group of two or three, more and more people gathered over time. 

I realised that urban sketching trains your eye to notice the environment you live in, and you start to see things you would otherwise have walked past. And I learned that there are enough streetlights everywhere in the city in the evening to make sketching possible, that it often rains in Aachen, and that my time limit in sub-zero temperatures is about 30 minutes. I didn't see this limitation as an obstacle but as an enrichment: having to work quickly helped me overcome my fear of mistakes and bouts of perfectionism. I love the process, even though I can only show the results here.

After a year, I was given the opportunity to teach a drawing class on Thursdays at the Bleiberger Fabrik, an art school for children and adults in Aachen, and the Thursday Sketchwalk continued successfully without me.

In 2024 our group became an official member (‘chapter’) of the international organisation. Urban Sketchers Aachen has grown considerably in the meantime, has its own website, several chat groups and is active on social media (Facebook, Instagram and Cara). We sketch together on a regular basis, outside, in cafés and on events.

In addition to Thursdays, there are still monthly get-togethers and now also a fixed hiking weekend date each month. See more infos at https://www.usk-aachen.de