USK Bristol: 10th anniversary!

Bristol Urban Sketchers are celebrating their 10^th Anniversary today on board MV Balmoral… (I’ve been a member for the past 7 years). It’s a brilliant, free, worldwide ‘organisation’ that encourages people to sketch en plein air (ie. outdoors). We meet at least once a month throughout the year – along with our sister group in Bath (which effectively means that many of us are meeting up twice a month).
It’s open to artists of all abilities (and age!) and, for me, it’s become one of the real highlights of my retired life! I’ve got to know some REALLY lovely people and made some brilliant friends along the way. It’s a wonderful, welcoming and encouraging community. Here in Bristol, we frequently have 30-40 people turning up at each session to sketch for up to two hours. Obviously, beer+wine are also involved(!) - once our sketches are completed, we meet up to share what we’ve done (and being nosey about the pens and paper we’ve each used)!
We even continued to meet during Covid lockdown – via Google StreetView and Zoom (I know!) and ended up ‘travelling’ to more than 20 locations around the world in the process.
After my family, it’s definitely one of the highlights of my life (huge thanks to Ian Adams for highlighting ‘Urban Sketching’ all those years ago). Who knew?!
Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/906335416054980
Photo: One of our 10^th anniversary exhibition boards (we always try to get a ‘team photograph’ at the end of all our sketching sessions).