ABOUT

Hi! I’m Rob.

Digital urban sketching has taken me around the world, teaching workshops at many global sketching festivals, including 7 official Urban Sketcher Symposiums and taught students from age 6 to 86.

As an active part of the global Urban Sketchers movement, I have been serving on the Education Committee and Advisory Board for several years, and for 2 seasons during the pandemic, was the host of the USk show, USkTalks on social media to help unite the global community around guests and topics of urban sketching.

I also ran some of the first in-store iPad sketching workshops for the public at Apple‘s flagship stores in San Francisco, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Apple, Procreate, Bloomberg, EY, KPMG, the W Hotel, Shangri-La Hotels, HSBC, BMW, Fendi, TUMI, Facebook, Moleskine and Turismo Portugal are some of the clients who have commissioned me to work with them.

I have also trained art teachers to use iPads for visual storytelling at top international schools in Hong Kong, and for many years as a guest instructor at the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the Arts under the Ministry of Education, SIngapore, I have showed several cohorts various ways to integrate iPad urban sketching and visual storytelling into the nation’s classrooms.

Now I’m bringing self-paced online courses to anyone who wants to pick up digital urban sketching. 

Why use an iPad?

“And do you draw on paper?”

I used to and did for decades. The walls and floors of my home used to be piled high with sketchbooks, a few scattered canvases, with the latest acquisitions from the art store liberally stuffed in remaining corners. Ina compact home, that can get overwhelming. 

A tech experiment one windy day on the Peak of Hong Kong in 2013 showed me the promise of Procreate on my then iPad 3. I was intrigued and impressed, even when there was no sign of the Apple Pencil back then.

A month later, the woman who has always been my better half gifted me the first gen iPad Air, and it was a speed demon compared to that old iPad Air with power under the hood. 7 layers at 4K!

Paired with halfway decent pressure sensitivity (still pre-Apple Pencil and iPad Pro), I found the digital world much easier to keep tidy, store artwork without concern for shelf space or humidity bonding entire sketchbooks together.

Over the years, I‘ve seen how the simple practice of urban sketching transform individuals, and have loved showing people around the world how the iPads they already own can be a creative powerhouse. 

Like any tool, it  takes a little time to learn, but Procreate is a fantastic app that makes the process a delight.

Here are some advantages:

• the convenience of having a full digital studio in a small, light package
• set up and pack up in seconds
• no more cleaning up
• no more scanning artwork
• no more color corrections
• saving lots of physical storage space that used to go to sketchbooks, paper and large collections of paint, markers and other media 
• work from a small footprint and create work that can fill a huge wall
• practice without wasting paper
• unlimited ways to experiment with color, media and techniques
• undo and Layers = the power to change your mind (you can choose not to Undo as well)
• reduce your carbon footprint. iPads can be totally recycled. How many chemicals and natural resources were used to manufacture items in traditional setups?

 And for those of you who love paper, well, dipping your toe into digital waters doesn’t have to be all or nothing :) If you already have an iPad, it makes sense to learn to use it as another creative tool in your arsenal.