Deb Rossi- symposium participant

Hello everyone. I have so enjoyed reading every one's intro. We are quite a community! That is what I like about the Urban Sketchers group.......the Portland group and now the symposium group too.

I heard about Portland Sketchcrawl/Urban Sketchers from another landscape designer. (Like the sketchers group our landscape design group is supportive and sharing.) I started meeting with the sketchers last fall and have pretty much made it to all of the drawing sessions so far. Like several of you, I had not actively done any sketching (except a little when traveling) in a long while. To be honest, it is baffling that I 'just didn't do it' to paraphrase a familiar saying. But now I have the community of fellow sketchers to go out and conquer!
Sketching as an activity is and always has been so appealing. The idea of plopping myself down to draw what I see reminds me when I was a teenager. Back then my parents would drop me off in some neighborhood of Philadelphia leaving me there for several hours to sketch. It was wonderful and I still have some of those sketch books to relive that time through the images. In the act of drawing you are aware of the various extraneous atmospheres around you and can recall it later through your drawings. In school I was a 'painting' major..... wishing there was such thing as a 'drawing' major. But, I got back to it in the end by doing my 'painting' thesis in cray-pas on large paperboard!

My 'go to' tool is pencil but as you can see from the drawings I am having fun exploring other drawing tools....another advantage of sharing with other sketchers...by their example you open yourself to other tools and techniques.

I am looking forward to the challenge and fun of the symposium, sketching our way around this wonderful city of Portland. See ya!