Sketcherfest is the convention of all time
I attended my first Sketcherfest in Edmonds, Washington this year. I will lead with my conclusion that Sketcherfest is the best convention I've ever been to.
(If you missed it, also read about how I spent my time in Washington pre-Sketcherfest!)
Sketch kit
I didn't have to modify my art supplies at all since they're already adapted for travel. I brought my microscopic watercolor palette (more on that in a future post), Neocolors, pens, mechanical pencil, and waterbrush. And of course the Traveler's Notebook came along.
I didn't use my Neocolors as much as I expected to because I managed to remove several important shades of green from my tin without replacing them.... and green is a little important. So that was sad! I also forgot to bring lead for the pencil so I was really living on the edge.
Getting to Edmonds
Edmonds is reportedly a nuisance to get to via public transportation. It would have cost $75 one way to get a rideshare from where I was staying, so I decided it would be much less financially ruinous to get as close as possible on transit before summoning a car. The nearest train station to Edmonds is Mountlake Terrace, which is about a 15 minute drive to the Edmonds Waterfront Center (home base for the convention). That rideshare cost $15 one way, which was much less financially ruinous.
Edmonds is a pretty little town with beach! and a downtown area that was blocked off to cars. I didn't have a lot of time to explore the downtown area because I got there only about 30 minutes before that day's meetup. Next time, I'd like to leave earlier so I'll have more time to wander. The total commute time was about an hour and a half including the last stretch via car. (In theory, driving straight through would have been 40 minutes, but also highway traffic.)
What is Sketcherfest
Sketcherfest bills itself as an "international festival of travel sketchbooks." From the website:
It brings together urban sketchers, travel sketchbook artists, art vendors, publishers and the general public during a weekend of workshops, lectures and exhibits in Edmonds, Washington, a city north of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. [...] The goal of Sketcher Fest is to celebrate art, travel and the practice of documenting people, places and culture in sketchbooks.
The short version is that it's an urban sketching convention. The entertainment is different than your average convention in that much of it takes place outside. There are sketching meetups and workshops on location. Inside the Waterfront Center, there is the Sketchbook Fair (the approximate equivalent of the artist alley) in the main exhibition hall, in addition to artist talks (the approximate equivalent of panels). Outside of the scheduled events, many people chose to roam around outdoors and draw.
I only went on Sunday for the meetup and the Sketchbook Fair. I didn't attend any of the talks or workshops because they were pretty expensive to go to sight unseen and I didn't have that much room in my budget. (Did you know Washington is a little expensive to vacation in?) Now that I'm familiar with the artists, I would consider at least going to some of the talks.
Tangent: Workshop tickets
Workshops were limited to 15 participants, which is a reasonable size for what is basically an outdoor art class. The Sketcherfest organizers said they wanted to avoid the race-to-click registration model, so ticket opportunities were distributed by lottery instead.
During the weeklong registration period, you could sign up to request your top two choices (first choice and backup) for each time block on each day. If your top choice wasn't full at the end of the registration period, you'd automatically receive a link to pay for a ticket to the workshop. If it was full, 15 people were randomly selected to receive the purchase link. This link would expire after 48 hours, at which point another person would be selected to replace you.
I thought this was a refreshingly normal way of managing demand, so I wanted to mention it here even if I didn't partake in it.
Sketch meetup
My first activity for the day was the sketch meetup. The meeting point was right in front of the Edmonds Waterfront Center facing out towards Olympic Beach. Most people chose to stay close, including me because I didn't trust myself to manage my time well. And... beach.
There were a lot of people but I felt really awkward about talking to anyone! I wish I had put myself out there a little more. I think it'll be easier the next time I go now that I'm familiar with the event. I did talk to the people who approached me first, though.
The sketching portion of the meetup lasted for 2 and a half hours, which was enough time for me to be indecisive about what I was going to draw AND draw three pictures, two of which were colored! Amazing! I've mostly gotten over my fear of being perceived when I draw in public, but I still feel a little like a freak for it. So being surrounded by people drawing was fun.
The ferry had docked by the time I started drawing, so I focused on that first. I'm still winging it with drawing boats, but they're kind of like... water cars... right? I was really satisfied with the color accuracy here, especially for the sand (of all things).
An ink and watercolor painting of the Edmonds ferry, which is white with green trim. The water and sky are painted with loose, suggestive washes in the same shade of blue. There is negative space in the water to suggest movement. The beige sand is also expressed with a loose wash of color.
There was a little open "bandstand" right behind where I was sitting with a high school jazz combo playing. I always love drawing with live music around, and it helps that they were really good! I drew two of the musicians as I waited for my boat painting to dry. I enjoy drawing musicians because they move enough to be challenging while remaining static enough to draw without losing my mind.
An ink drawing of a bassist (left) and saxophonist (right) playing in the jazz combo. The drawings are loose and gestural without details like faces.
I was at a loss for what to do after I finished drawing the musicians, but I still had about an hour left. I was already feeling pretty full of myself after doing a decent job on the musicians, so I made a drawing of people drawing.
As with the musicians, it helped that everyone was really focused on the task at hand and didn't move around excessively. I made a conscious effort to limit the palette because I didn't want to muddy the colors of the rocks and plants. (Also, nobody was dressed that colorfully anyway. My general observation throughout the trip was that neutrals are so hot right now in Washington.)
An ink and watercolor painting of artists hard at work at Sketcherfest. They are sitting in a section of beach with rocks and plants against the sidewalk. Some people are sitting on rocks, while others are seated on the sand. There is also a pair of people sitting on a bench in the background. The people are primarily painted in grey and blue, which contrasts with the brown of the rocks and green of the vegetation.
I also felt vindicated watching everyone taking their scenic holding-up-sketchbook photos to post online. They look cool, see?!?!
I finished with a bit of time to spare before the throwdown. I chatted with some other people and admired their work while we waited. If you're unfamiliar: at the throwdown part of an urban sketcher meet, everyone throws their sketchbook onto a convenient flat surface so everyone can take a picture and peruse other people's work.
Everyone's work looked great! There was a lot of sketchbook size variation. I didn't have the smallest book in the group, but it was still small enough that a few people commented on it.
Sketchbook Fair
Sketchbook Fair tickets were sold for different entry times, so I bought mine to enter right after the sketch meetup. The room wasn't very full and my time was the third to last slot, so the woman checking my ticket didn't look at it very hard. I'm guessing they paid more attention in the morning because tickets were actually sold out for those times.
The Sketchbook Fair cemented Sketcherfest as the convention of all time. Unlike the typical artist's alley/craft fair setup, nobody was selling anything! I always feel terrible engaging with vendors when I have no intention to buy anything, so this was amazing.
I hardly took any photos of the actual table setups, so I borrowed one of Tina Koyama's for demonstration purposes. (Did I mention THE Tina Koyama was there and I saw her in real life????) This is Kumi Matsukawa, one of the artists I got to talk to.
The tables superficially look like Artist's Alley tables because most of the artists had large paintings displayed behind them, but the tables were filled with their sketchbooks instead of stuff to buy. You were encouraged to flip through and touch everyone's books and talk to them about it. I took notes in my sketchbook so I'd remember everything the artists told me.
"Nobody was selling anything" is a mild oversimplification because there were a few vendor tables around the perimeter of the exhibit hall. They were all art supply companies. I'm not starving for supplies, so I didn't linger at these tables for very long. I did thoroughly enjoy that the Daniel Smith table was full of the rocks that they use for pigment. (Daniel Smith paints are manufactured in Seattle and the company sponsors Sketcherfest, so I wasn't surprised to see them there.)
If you wanted to throw money at the artists, you still had the opportunity to do so at a table in the lobby. Most of what was being sold were printed versions of the sketchbooks at the fair, but there were also some individual prints. I thought having all the sales in a central location was efficient and much lower-pressure than a traditional vendor booth setup.
Artist lightning round
Here are all the artists I talked to, along with the photos I took of their work.
Alex Hollmann had paintings with color that was so bold and opaque that I was surprised to hear him say he didn't use gouache. I made a mental note to try pushing my colors further when I use watercolor, as I tend to keep my washes pretty transparent. His pen of choice is a Pilot Parallel. My desire to buy one only grows...
Alex Hollmann: A watercolor painting of a lake in Montagu, South Africa. The lake and sky are painted deep blue, and the surrounding vegetation is painted in warm green and orange. The brushstrokes suggesting trees are broad and loose.
Apparently, I didn't take any photos of David Chamness' paintings because I was too busy looking at them. But he gave me a sticker! He is a prolific travel painter and explained that he will stockpile sketchbooks once he arrives at a location because he will get through most, if not all, of them during his trip. He also had a lot of drawings with red ink that I liked the look of.
Michael Sánchez had a lot of beautiful watercolor paintings, but I was particularly drawn to his ink work. His use of hatching to create texture is phenomenal.
Michael Sánchez: An ink drawing of tropical plants, primarily alocasias and monsteras. The values in the drawing are shown using varying degrees of hatching. The middle part of the drawing is mostly uninked except for the holes in the monstera leaves.
Kumi Matsukawa (pictured above) is from Tokyo, so she has a lot of great city material to work with. Her sketches often involve dense crowds of people, which I still struggle with drawing (mostly because I don't see crowds a lot). Also, a lot of her work used highlighters, which I really want to try now!
Kumi Matsukawa: An ink drawing showing a crowded street in Asakusa, Japan by the Senso-ji temple. The drawing is colored using pink, orange, yellow, and green highlighters.
Santi Sallés was here from Barcelona. He uses Neocolors in a much nicer fashion than I do, so I talked to him about it while frantically taking notes. He primarily uses smooth paper, which helps him get more coverage with the Neocolors as they tend to stick to the bumps in textured paper. Even with the smooth paper, I was impressed at how even his coverage was; he told me he usually uses watercolor for the base layer before going in rather aggressively with the Neocolors.
Santi Sallés: A sketchbook spread with very scribbly and gestural vegetation (left) and a table of Italian food (right). Clockwise from the top, the table features bread, a bottle of wine, a glass of limoncello, a plate of pasta, one cannolo, a glass of wine, and a plate of roast beef. The palette is bold and composed mostly of yellows, pinks, and maroons.
Santi Sallés: A sketchbook spread with color studies of trees and other plants.
Jim Richards was a delight to talk to. He was very friendly and polite, and he formally introduced himself to everyone who came by his table. His architectural drawings are spectacular (figures, as he did urban design in his previous career). They're loose but very technical at the same time; he's much more intentional with his use of a fude nib than I am! I also learned that his make-everything-look-50%-better trick is to paint buildings with a light wash of Naples Yellow before adding other colors. I was also surprised that he painted on top of his lines because of how frequently his paint bleeds beyond the lines. Like I said, very intentional!
Jim Richards: An ink and watercolor painting of a street in San Gimignano, Italy. The buildings are painted with transparent washes of warm colors.
Judith Dollar was also wonderful to talk to. I probably spent the most time at her table because I find her approach to art the most relatable. Her larger sketchbooks are interspersed with random doodles like fountain pen ink blobs or knobs of ginger she got at the store. She uses bold color and is more concerned with capturing the essence of things than getting the details precisely right, which I've been trying to do lately. Also, she was unusual among this group of artists in that she rarely uses line drawings in her paintings. I learned from one of her sketchbooks that she's been to Colorado, so we talked about the places she went! She also gave me the idea to try making accordion sketchbooks as a low-effort alternative to hand binding.
Judith Dollar: A watercolor painting of a lake surrounded by trees. The lake has a lot of negative space with pale blue blobs in it. The trees are painted with large swaths of green, and details were added to the leaves and the bark with colored pencil.
Eleanor Doughty's linework is very angular and scribbly, and it reminded me of mine in a way, except hers is a lot nicer and more stylistically intentional. She had a beautiful sketchbook with rainbow paper from a German brand called Nuuna. She told me she primarily uses marker, pen, and pencil on it because the paper doesn't like being painted. I don't want to get into using paint markers, but she gave me some ideas for incorporating more color onto my colored paper drawings. (She also gave me another sticker!)
Eleanor Doughty: Two sketchbooks. The one with white paper (left) is open to a page with a watercolor painting of a large evergreen tree in front of a house. The palette is composed of muted greens and browns. The one with pink paper (right) shows a marker drawing of a scene in Twin Falls, U.S. There is the shoreline of a body of water with large rocks in it. Two of the rocks have people on them. The palette is made up of darker pink, white, and green.
Exploring
Once I had my fill of the Sketchbook Fair, I went upstairs to a room called the Sketch Lounge. It was a quiet space with chairs and tables with some supplies for people to try, and there were huge picture windows facing the water. There was also a rotating "artist in residence" who you could talk to. I had already spent a considerable amount of time drawing water so I didn't stick around, but it was a really nice space with a great view.
Oh and there were stamps, so I stamped all my drawings and one of my notes pages. I can't say no to a good stamp!
Because of the long commute, I had to leave fairly early, but I still had enough time to squeeze one more drawing in. I walked along the beach until I got to the pier, which meant it was time for MORE BOATS! I don't get to see big sailboats like this at home, so might as well draw as many as I can. I drew the boats with my Carbon Black pen so I could add color to them later.
A drawing of boats in the Port of Edmonds. The same drawing is painted with watercolor in the second photo. The left boat is mostly blue with a black sail, while the right boat is white with a blue sail. The reflections of the boats blend into the wash of the water beneath them (or at least that's what I was going for). I decorated the right page with both Sketcherfest stamps.
While I was drawing the boats, two women came up to see what I was doing. They thought it was really cool, and one asked if I just did it for personal fulfillment. She was pleased when I answered affirmatively. I'm still not completely used to comments from strangers, but it is a fun conversation starter and people are always very nice about it.
Reflections
I've tried really hard to make myself like conventions, but I've never been able to. There are too many people, they're expensive, and the way I like to socialize isn't really compatible with it so I end up getting simultaneously bored and overstimulated. Sketcherfest was a completely different experience. Most of the fun took place outside (I love outside), there was a healthy crowd without it being overwhelming, and the focus was entirely on the art and not on buying stuff.
There's almost nothing I would change about Sketcherfest, but I think it would benefit from some sort of buddy matchmaking system for people who are traveling solo or want to make new friends. Like I said, I think I got most of the socialization jitters out of my system after the initial shock of newness wore off, but it would still be nice to have a pre-established person or group so you don't have to wander around looking for people like a confused puppy.
The Sketchbook Fair was a surprisingly effective perfectionism buster. Most of the artists didn't attempt to curate their sketchbooks, so there were a lot of failed experiments and odd scribbles between the nice finished pieces. It was validating, and I thought a lot of the failures looked nice anyway. I'm doing my best to view my own work in the same way.
I've also been extremely aggressive in trying to fill out my sketchbooks in the week since I got back. I really liked seeing the subjects people at the meetup chose to draw because there was a lot of stuff I wouldn't have looked at twice. I've been making an effort to draw less photogenic subject matter for the past year and a half (it was essentially my 2025 resolution), but there's always stuff that I might be overlooking. I also realized that I've been spending a lot of time waiting for the "right time" to draw things, and that's been stalling my progress. No more! I'm doing my best to find something interesting to draw every time I go out, even if the drawing is rushed. If nothing else, I need to commit to drawing from the photos I take because I always think to myself that I will... and then I don't.
I've already decided I need to go again! It might not be next year, but it will happen. I hope Sketcherfest continues to grow and find success so it's still there when I'm able to return. (As pricey as Washington is, it's either this or the Urban Sketcher Symposium that takes place in a different European city every year...)