Looking beyond the everyday

Bruce Ingram wants to create an Urban Sketchers group in Tauranga. Photo: John Borren.

For someone who 'isn't an artist”, Bruce Ingram has an impressive sketch portfolio of Tauranga's buildings and scenes.

Now, he wants to find others interested in getting together to draw places around the city and form an Urban Sketchers group.

The Urban Sketchers movement is a global community of artists that draw on location in cities, towns and places they travel to.

'Around Tauranga it really is a journey of looking,” says Bruce. 'The more you look, the more you see.

'Urban sketching is all about going outside and doing it, and about telling a story about where we live, work and travel, one drawing at a time.”

Bruce wants the group to be informal and social, and wants to give people the chance to learn from each other.

There will be coffee and chit chat as well as drawing on location.

'Hopefully we can build up a group of people who have quite a nice comradery without any pressure to be a fantastic artist or anything like that.

'It's just doing something you enjoy.”

The unofficial artist enjoys drawing buildings and different styles of architecture, but people who join the group can draw whatever they feel inspired to - be it landscapes, buildings or animals.

Getting together to draw, rather than doing it alone, will help people if they feel self-conscious about drawing in public, says Bruce.

Most people who have seen him out and about are friendly, curious and often stop for a chat, he says.

Bruce appreciates the new perspective you get from spending time sketching something.

'You get a whole different view of something the longer you sit there looking at it.

'So rather than just glancing at something and walking away, you get a much better appreciation of shapes and colours and things like that.”

Bruce recently spent time drawing St Peter's Anglican Church in Mount Maunganui.

'When you first look at it, you think it's a fairly plain looking building. But the more I sat there, the more I saw.

'I couldn't believe how much detail was actually in the design, the build and the architecture.”

There has been quite a bit of interest in the group already, and Bruce says they can meet any time or day depending on what works for people. The goal is to meet fortnightly or monthly.

For more information, or to join the Urban Sketchers group, email: marketedgenz@gmail.com

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