Urban sketching has been around for a long time, but these local residents are bringing a whole new meaning to downtown Billings.
If you ever see a group of people sitting in chairs on the side of the road in downtown Billings, no need to fret. It's not a protest. It's just the Billings Urban Sketchers working hard at their craft.
“Art, when I am doing, it kind of just makes me feel like I have put my mark on something and have recorded that moment in time for either myself or someone else to look at," said Billings Urban Sketchers member Lynnsey Slanina.
Slanina wasn’t alone Wednesday afternoon. Close to 20 sketchers joined, and most focused on drawing the Babcock Theatre.
Local artist John Kennedy founded the group about two years ago.
“It really started off pretty small. The first time I went out, it was just me and two other people," said Kennedy. "Over the course of the last couple years, we have probably gotten 35-40 people, maybe more than that on my email list.”
The group meets every week or two at a different downtown spot, with their chairs and sketchbooks ready to work. It's just how Kennedy imagined it.
“I just thought I wanted to be outside in the summertime. I love buildings. I love old buildings. People walk around downtown, and they look at some of these buildings and say, oh, building. Or that is a crummy-looking alley. And we go downtown, and we see an alley full of telephone poles and dumpsters and say, that’s beautiful, I want to sketch that," said Kennedy.
Kennedy isn’t the only one who feels that way. Vince Long, another member, sums up the group’s thoughts.
“You spend lots of time with your subject matter. You can’t draw something till you’ve really looked at it. You really get into the intimate details of things, and you see things you really would never have noticed before," said Long.
For many, downtown Billings is often seen as sketchy, but for these sketchers, they see the true beauty in all of it.
