Blogger Profile: Urban Sketcher Sigrid Albert

Over the years I have profiled bloggers from the Northwest Territories to the Fraser Valley, anyone that interests me and that I hope will interest you as well. A few years ago I started asking a standard set of questions and on occasion I send these out to local bloggers to continue the series. Click, share, explore, and enjoy!

Sigrid Albert

Blog: Urban Sketcher

How long has your blog been around?
I started my blog urbansketcher.ca in October 2012, just a month before I moved to Berlin for 3 months to live and work from this exciting city.

What is your role?
I do everything on the blog: owning, writing, photography, artwork, design, functionality, and software updates.

What does your site do/what is it about?
I talk about my practice of urban sketching, which I started back in 2010, and show the resulting sketches of my hometown Vancouver as well as the places I travel to. The impetus to start this blog was my 3-month Berlin stay from November to February — I wanted to document what I was doing there, mostly so I would remember it, but also for my family and friends in Vancouver to stay up to date on my activities while I was over there. So the first 3 months of the blog are chockfull of my Berlin experiences, a bit like a travel/sketching journal. It was a giant head rush to move overseas for a period of time, you feel like a newborn baby.

What can people see, read, and do when visiting your site?
It’s really a random collection of thoughts and sketches, mixed in with travelogue, observations about my hometown of Vancouver and the places I visit, my opinions on life. But everything is loosely centred around the theme of incorporating art into my daily life. For the purpose of this blog, the art is mostly in the form of decidedly lowbrow drawings of my surroundings.

Why do you blog?
I can think of five reasons right now:

1. I blog first of all for myself: the blog is an artistic journal for me, and sometimes a travelogue. I find it easier to build on something when I know where I was coming from last year, last month, last week. Often, a thought or a sketch leads to a creative inspiration, which leads to another.
2. I don’t have the best long-term memory, so the blog helps me to remember things I did and thoughts I had.
3. I also enjoy writing, so I often write for the fun of it. I like to amuse myself with my writing, and I am thrilled if it entertains other people as well. The blog is a perfect outlet for combining my imperfect writings and imperfect drawings.
4. I want to promote my Meetup group, Vancouver Urban Sketchers, and get people to come out and draw the city with me, to overcome their artistic self-criticism and just enjoy sketching at whatever level they’re at. I don’t really believe there is a “bad” drawing. You just have to get beyond the urge to see realism as “good”. If you want a realistic looking picture, take a photo! But don’t even get me started on how unrealistic photography can be.
5. Finally, I hope to inspire others to be creative and to pursue their passions in life, whether that is making art or moving overseas for 3 months like I did. It was a breakthrough for me, a breath of fresh air, to move to Berlin at this stage in my life. We often limit ourselves, even without any hindrance from others, thank you very much, so I hope my readers get inspired to push beyond self-limiting beliefs.

What is the ultimate goal for your site, how would you like to see it grow?
I don’t have definite goals for my blog, apart from being committed to continuing it. But I hope to be open to whatever develops from it. For example, this interview with you has been a cool development — next thing you know, I’ll be on Oprah. Or whatever it is that Oprah is doing now. 😉

Read all entries in my Blogger Profile series and feel free to suggest a blogger for possible feature in the comments of this post.