Our next art in the time of coronavirus will be on Tuesday
30 June, when we suggest that you try virtual sketching. This has been the Urban Sketchers’ solution
to the problem of how to carry on sketching contemporary life in a time of
widespread home lockdown, and it has become possible thanks to the technological marvels of those
internet giants, google and facebook.
Many of you will be familiar with google’s streetmaps and aerial
photographs of more or less the entire planet now; they have also driven round
every road everywhere and photographed everything. Artwork can be produced from these
photographs, and the Urban Sketchers have organised a daily programme of “VirtualSketchtours”
since early on in the lockdown. As a
sketching group, we thought that Art in the Park should be aware of this
development, and try it out at least once.
However, in the centre of the IAS Art in the Park we only
have the barest minimum of technical capability, and are completely unable to
work out our own virtual sketching tour.
We have therefore decided to join in on one of the Urban Sketchers’
Virtual Sketch Tours.
Individual urban
sketchers have taken the trouble to go through google’s photographs and select
a number of places which would sketch well, and incorporate them into sreet
tours. These events are open to all, and we have
decided on the Talinn tour. Talinn is
off the beaten track for most (but not all) of us, has the charm of novelty, is
an attractive historic city, (in Estonia),
and has one of the better sets of photographs, google’s photos are not
taken with any regard to allure.
What you need to do is this:
1) sign in or
register with facebook – you can always unregister if your principles prevent
you from contributing to Mark Zuckerberg.
It is possible that this link will let you see the relevant page on
facebook without registering, but we would not bet on it: https://www.facebook.com/events/1696654720472739/
2) Search within
facebook for #Virtualsketch
3) Click on
Events (in left hand column)
4) Scroll down to
Talinn, Estonia
5) Click on See More
at the end of the Talinn introduction
6) Click on one of
the location links for Talinn beauty spots
7) A photograph appears; move your cursor around and you will find
that the view changes, it will stop moving if you stop moving your cursor
8) Repeat until you
have looked at all the locations, and found something which you would like to
sketch
9) If you are using
your desktop computer, the light will almost certainly be unsatisfactory. If this affects you, take a photograph of your scene or scenes, and
transfer it into your ipad, which you can then set up so that the light is OK
10 Then create art in
the comfort of your home studio.
Certainly post your art on the #Virtualsketch facebook page
if you are registered both for facebook and as a member of the Virtual Sketch
group, and if you so wish. This should be done on or after Thursday 2 July,
which is the date of the official Urban Sketchers sketchtour. In any case, please send images to Sue Lees
(via Susan@lees.org.uk) in the normal
way and they will appear on the blog in
due course.
Virtual sketching is much more fun than it sounds, and it
does offer the opportunity to make something of a subject which almost
certainly will not have the attractions of one which you have found yourself by
actually padding the streets. It also
means that you are not constricted by time, changing light, weather, parked
vans, and the other problems of plein air painting.
Good luck! We look forward to seeing many interpretations of the Talinn street scene!
