VISUAL CITY
Despite prevailing wisdom these days, the internet has brought humanity a few good things. Just ask Douglas Gorney, the founder of Sunset Sketchers.
In 2018, Gorney started the organization — which uses real paper, pencils, pens, even watercolor — as an offshoot of a Bay Area group so he could pursue urban sketching with like-minded folks and focus on the west side of the city. A professional artist, Gorney posted his own work on Facebook and the group took off.
Yes, urban sketching is a thing. Seattle artist Gabriel Campanario gets credit for turning what might seem like an introverted pursuit into an international phenomenon, not to mention a nonprofit with a manifesto and a hashtag: #USk.
There’s an annual gathering of thousands. (Next year: New Zealand.) Thanks to the internet — Instagram in particular — sketchers around the world find each other. Gorney says visiting tribe members from Hong Kong and Switzerland have dropped in on the Sunset Sketchers recently.
It’s not necessarily about flash or sparkle. Sunset Sketchers often capture the opposite — snug Doelger homes, telephone poles, and the low-slung commercial strips of the city’s outside lands.
Whether you’re in New York, Delhi, Bangkok or Paris, says Gorney, urban sketching encourages people to record their daily environment, “even if you don’t live in a field of daffodils or a pretty forest. Most of us don’t.”
The idea is similar to street photography, which is dear to our hearts here at The Frisc.
“I often look for something relatively mundane, like a nondescript building corner, and try to discover its beauty in the process of sketching it,” says Zareen Choudhury, an SF writer and cartoonist who joined the Sunset Sketchers last year. “I think that’s what urban sketching is really about — slowing down and noticing things you wouldn’t otherwise.”
‘We support each other and draw together. We share our drawings online.’ — From the Urban Sketchers manifesto
That said, the sketchers aren’t allergic to the city’s more exotic or iconic shapes. Weekly meetups, which typically attract a dozen or so of the 400 members, might gather at Sutro Tower, Ocean Beach dunes, or the Ingleside Terraces sundial. (The term “Sunset” is applied quite liberally.)
The group skews older, but Choudhury, 26, says she’s noticing a shift. “I sometimes bring friends my age to the events as well. I hope this trend continues, because I’ve made some fantastic friends of all ages through the group.”
The Frisc art director Jeremy LaCroix — who also loves to make pictures with a unique city perspective — met the sketchers at the recent Old Car Picnic in Golden Gate Park, where the colors and curves are irresistible. “You won’t see Lamborghinis or Austin Healeys,” says Gorney, but the picnic is a great place to catch a 1969 Dodge Charger. “My earliest subject as a young artist was cars,” he says. “I thought I would be a car designer.”
So what happens when the Sunset Sketchers encounter Karl the Fog, the west side’s most persistent resident? Viewed from afar, a classic fog bank is a perfect invitation to break out the watercolors, but if you’re in the thick of it, “it’s drippy and moist, and you have to watch out” — Karl might splotch your canvas, says Gorney.
Even if conditions aren’t ideal, the camaraderie makes up for it. At the picnic, the sketchers were at times intense, playful, and energetic. The solitary work morphed into a community effort, especially with the respectful critique of each other’s drafts. “We support each other and draw together” and “We share our drawings online” are two of the eight values in the Urban Sketchers manifesto.
And in a city with far more than its fair share of iconic images, there’s perhaps no better civic lesson than a group of people all keeping their eyes and minds open to everyday details that, even though they’ll never make a glossy guidebook, truly bind San Franciscans together. — Alex Lash
Jeremy LaCroix is The Frisc’s art director. Alex Lash is editor in chief.
