Urban Sketchers Palm Beach: New exhibit celebrates the art of documenting everyday life with pencils, pens, paint and paper
- Apr 29
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 29
URBAN SKETCHERS ARE everywhere.
Pressing pencils, pens and paint brushes to paper, they document everyday life in San Francisco, Hong Kong, Dubai and other big cities around the world.
They create visual records of the goings on in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia; Medicine Hat, Alberta; the islands of Madeira, Portugal; and other far off locales.
And they tell stories about people and places right here in Palm Beach County.
Just about every weekend, the amateurs and professionals of Urban Sketchers Palm Beach meet for an on-location “sketch off.’’
Maybe you’ve seen them in action at — in the crowds at The Gardens GreenMarket, at a Rudy’s Pub guitar jam, along the sun-splashed vias of Worth Avenue, in the wilds of Grassy Waters Preserve.
This weekend they’ll be roaming the streets of downtown Lake Worth Beach — and you’re welcome to tag along.
It’s part of an Urban Sketchers Palm Beach celebration.
A loose group of artists who usually share their work with each other and on social media, the Palm Beach sketchers are showcased in a new public exhibit at the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County.
Featuring 14 sketches and paintings, the free exhibit opened April 4 and runs through June 27 in the Donald M. Ephraim Family Gallery at the council headquarters at 601 Lake Ave. in downtown Lake Worth Beach.
“These are local artists doing beautiful work,’’ said Jessica Ransom, the council’s director of artist services.
“You can have sketchbooks, but nobody sees it,'' she said. "This is a really great opportunity for people to see this beautiful work.”
You can also see them in action.
The Palm Beach urban sketchers are inviting the public to join them Saturday, May 3, at the Cultural Council building for a sketch out. It starts at 1 p.m. and ends around 3:30 p.m.
USKPB co-founder Carl Stoveland will offer a brief overview of what urban sketchers do and why they do it. Then the artists will disperse across downtown Lake Worth Beach to do their thing.
It's called “reportage,” a central discipline in the urban sketchers’ manifesto for creating a visual account of what they see.
Just as you and I might pull out smartphones to photograph whatever grabs our attention, urban sketchers pull out pencils, pens and paintbrushes to capture inspiration.
“We draw from life,’’ said Stoveland, a Lake Worth Beach artist. “It's important that we get out of our houses and draw what we see and tell that story,’’ he said.
Stoveland formed Urban Sketchers Palm Beach with friends Anne Hoctor and AnnaMaria Windisch-Hunt one day in 2022 at the South J Street coffee shop Common Grounds.
The chapter got its international status in 2024, joining the global network launched in 2007 by Gabriel Campanaerio, a Seattle Times columnist known as the Seattle Sketcher.
Today, Palm Beach is one of 499 Urban Sketchers International chapters in over 70 countries. It’s one of seven in Florida, from Jacksonville to Key West.
Some sketchers are professional artists. Many are not.
“We come from all walks of life. Doctors, artists, accountants, people who just like to draw,’’ Stoveland said. “We sketch, and at the end we have a throw down where everybody shares their work and tells what they struggled with.’’
Many sketchers have sold pieces and had their work displayed at exhibits.
Others are serial doodlers, like Ken Adler of Boynton Beach, who says he’ll wait in the car while his girlfriend gets her nails done and sketch whatever he sees — people, cars, fire hydrants.
“I like sketching when I’m traveling,’’ said West Palm Beach architect Dominic Arresta, who also contributes to Inkeages, a local sketch group focused on architecture. “I’ll use a small pocket-sized sketchbook and draw for 30 minutes.’’
Arresta immersed himself in urban sketching in 2016 on a trip to Italy, where he was mentored by artist Simonetta Capecchi. He joined the Palm Beach sketchers two years after moving from Long Island.
“The main difficulty is if there are people moving around, if the scene is changing. The lighting might change. It can be challenging,’’ he said.
Professional artists always try to keep their skills sharp. Urban sketching for them is like batting practice for professional baseball players.
“For others, it’s a chance to do something they have never tried before, maybe been a little afraid to do it in public,’’ Stoveland said.
Graphic designer Lydia Dardi of Palm Beach Gardens has two ballpoint pen sketches in the Cultural Council exhibit — something she said she never dreamed possible when she first heard about the urban sketching scene one day at an art store in Maine.
“Some lady started showing me her sketchbook: ‘This is what I do when I’m waiting for my bus or at a doctor appointment,’ and I loved it. She inspired me to buy a water brush and a little sketch pad,’’ she said.
When Dardi spent more time in Florida, she found the Palm Beach sketchers.
“It's a nice group. It's a supportive group,’’ said Dardi, born in Montreal.
“It's a wonderful hobby to share with others who have an interest in art,'' she said. "And it's great to be outside instead of being stuck in the studio or at home.’’
The sketchers aren't always outside. When it’s too hot or rainy, they’ll try to set up somewhere indoors, like Mathew’s Brewery or The Breakers or the Norton Museum of Art.
To truly appreciate their work, you have to see them in action, turning a blank piece of paper into a vibrant scene, one stroke at a time. The process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours.
“One guy walked up to me once and said, ‘You should just take a picture. It’s easier.’ But to me, there’s so much more to this. There is style, there is technique,’’ sketcher Debby Coles Dobay said the other day at Ragtop Motorcars Palm Beach.
Urban sketching often overlaps with impressionist plen-air painting, which focuses on the aesthetics of the finished piece. The goal of raw urban sketching is to tell a story and create a visual recording using any medium.
“It’s more documenting. You learn a style,’’ said Jeanne Martin, who has three sketches in the exhibit. “You're making marks on the paper and, what do you come up with?’’ (Martin was featured in a cover story in the fall 2024 issue of art & culture, the cultural council’s magazine.)
Many sketchers found the hobby through a passion for art or a desire to socialize. Some discovered it through personal loss.
Steve Philbrook, a retired golf pro, said he had no interest in painting until his father developed Alzheimer’s about 15 years ago. “I started painting with dad to spend time with him and keep him active,’’ he said.
After father died in 2006, Philbrook blossomed from a self-taught artist to a painter whose work is in private collections along the U.S. East Coast and in parts of Europe.
Debbie Bathen, the daughter of two art teachers, had dabbled in art on and off for most of her life. About 15 years ago, she said, her terminally ill brother “insisted I start drawing and painting, so I did. And I really love it.’’
She got involved in urban sketching last year.
“The more I've done it the more I'm getting attention,’’ the Lantana artist said. “People are looking at my work and go, ‘Gee whiz, this stuff has a caricature feeling to it and its light and its airy and fun.’’’
Bathen has three pieces in the Cultural Council exhibit. All three were sold the first week the exhibit opened.
“Part of my credo has been: It’s never too late to create,’’ she said.
“Some people have an art background. But there are many who don't have an art background and feel intimidated. I say you just go out there and enjoy. If you like to sketch, go do it. Nobody is judgey about it.’’
For some sketchers, inclusion in the Lake Worth Beach exhibit “is a real feather in their cap,’’ Stoveland said.
“Everybody is just tickled pink to be in the Cultural Council,'' he said.
"Some have a bucket list to be in a show and a gallery. This is just more visibility for us, so we can get more people out sketching, which is the big goal.’’
(Cover photo: Debby Coles Dobay sketches a 1979 Volkswagen Beetle Cabriolet at Ragtops Motorcars in Lake Worth Beach.)
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IF YOU GO:
Urban Sketchers of Palm Beach County Exhibit
April 4 – June 27, 2025
Donald M. Ephraim Family Gallery at the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, located in The Robert M. Montgomery Jr. Building at 601 Lake Ave. in Lake Worth Beach.
Hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m.
Call (561) 471-2901 or visit palmbeachculture.com.
Join the urban sketchers at a "sketch out" in Lake Worth Beach on May 3, 2025. Meet at the Cultural Council lobby at 1 p.m.
About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.
