Portsmouth & Southsea Sketchers is a group of likeminded illustrators, sketchers and artists that have been going out and about around the city with their sketchbooks for a few years now. The group was created by Chris Webb with the aim of the group to encourage people of all creative abilities to meet up and sketch together plein air in our beautiful City of Portsmouth for free. The group now has 80 members and continues to grow.

As part of this group’s supportive atmosphere and knowing that creative people can be shy when it comes to speaking out about their own work Chris undertook a study looking at the members’ photographs they had voluntarily shared to the group’s social media. Chris used a criteria of 10+ likes and came up with a top 17 urban sketches for 2014-16 (excluding himself). Chris reposted these 17 artworks and asked members to re-like their favourites. This resulted in 2 clear winners for 1st and 2nd place, with 4 members drawing at 3rd place. Another post and re-like gave the final winner in 3rd place. Some of the winning images are shown below, see the group Facebook page for more and who created them.  The prizes donated were 3 urban sketching guides by some great artists.

The competition has increased the supportive nature of the group further and they are looking forward to meeting again very soon. If you are interested in finding out more about the group visit:

 www.facebook.com/groups/sseasketchers