Urban Sketchers Tacoma: West Coast Sketch Crawl

Urban Sketchers Tacoma hosted the 4th Annual Urban Sketchers West Coast Sketch Crawl over this past weekend, 19-21 August 2016. The team was led by Frances Buckmaster. Kate Buike, Mark Ryan,Rom LaVerdiere, and Darsie Beck made up the rest of the main team. Leading up to and during the event many of the Tacoma sketchers were volunteers. The event could not have run so smoothly without so many pitching in to help.

The planning started in earnest about 9 months ago. In the final week leading up to the event there were several tasks to do and several Tacoma sketchers helped. We stuffed 200 goody bags on Monday. Then on Thursday we set up our venues for Friday night and Saturday morning.

: The team stuffed 200 goody bags in Frances' studio on Monday: Mark, Alison, Jane, Frances, Feather, Beverly (and me, behind the camera!) These are about half of them.

: Alison & Jane do the flower arranging for the Friday evening Meet & Greet dinner.

By the numbers: There were 153 sketchers and guests who came to dinner. About 150 were sketching on Saturday. They traveled from all up and down the west coast, Vancouver BC to San Diego, CA. There were also a few from much further away: Arizona and Missouri.

The event started with dinner at the Picasso's. It was the ice breaker and a chance to meet people informally. After a delicious meal, we did 5 minute portrait sketches of each other. Frances had gone above and beyond to obtain donations from sponsors for door prizes and goody bags. After the drawing came the drawing!

: The founder of the West Coast Sketch Crawl, Jim Bumgarner, welcomes the sketchers and guests.

: 5 minute portrait sketches

: Eric won the door prize grand prize, donated by Daniel Smith Art Supplies, which was a set of all their watercolor sticks.

More photos of the Friday evening Meet & Greet
https://redharp.smugmug.com/SketchOutings/2016-0819-Meet-Greet/

The next morning our event began in earnest at 9 am. Sketchers poured into the auditorium of the Washington State History Museum after picking up their goody bags filled with art supplies... also wrangled by Frances.

: Jim's opening remarks included the hashtag for the event.

We sketched until 11:30 am when we met on the plaza near the Museum of Glass for sketch sharing and a group photo. There were about 150 sketchers there that day.

: Sketching views of the history museum and Union Station (now a court house).

: Becky and others sketching on the Tacoma campus of the University of Washington (UW).

: The Headquarters information table was inside the cool, air conditioned, Museum Lobby and was staffed by Tacoma volunteers. All the locals wore red shirts.

: morning sketch sharing

: The 11:30 am group photo, with the Museum of Glass "hot shop" tower in the background.

We broke for lunch. Tacoma sketchers played host and led groups of out of town sketchers to various lunch venues. The day was very hot, by Washington standards, hitting a high of 95 degrees. Some sketchers spent at least part of the afternoon sketching the view from inside an air conditioned location.

We met again at 4pm for more sharing, in the shade, and another group photo.

More photos of Saturday Sketching
https://redharp.smugmug.com/SketchOutings/2016-0820-Saturday-Sketch/

Sunday brought another early start with a meeting at 9 am outside the Tacoma Museum of Art. A few announcements were followed by the founder of Urban Sketchers, Gabi Campanario (at left), joining us.

: Gabi, Frances and Jim; photo by Pam Jenkins

We dispersed to sketch around the area. This day was unseasonably chilly. Many were not prepared for 58 degrees in the morning after yesterday's scorcher! Again, there was sketching from inside but in this case in order to stay warm. Today I took a break from photographing the event to do one sketch.

We met at 11am at Tollefson Plaza, directly across the street from the Tacoma Art Museum. It was announced that the 5th Annual Urban Sketchers West Coast
Sketch Crawl will be held in Vancouver, BC. A date has not yet been set.