Ireland

Róisín Curé

A professional artist from the age of 14, Róisín Curé discovered sketching on location in 2012.

Since then she has written three bestselling books on sketching (including the title Drawing

Expressive People, one of the Urban Sketching Handbook series) and taught hundreds of workshops and classes to individuals and groups, online and in person. She has taught at USk Symposia in Porto, Amsterdam and now Poznan, and in smaller USk groups across Europe. She’s sketched on location for government bodies in France, the UK, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. Nowadays, in addition to classes and workshops across Europe, Róisín runs a thriving community

of sketchers from around the world through the Róisín Curé Sketch Club. They have met live

online once or twice each week for the last five years.

In December 2024 her SketchPocket sketchers’ bags hit the market. Made of eco-friendly cactus leather and designed to be used in even the most cramped sketching situation, the SketchPocket got rave reviews from sketchers who saw their sketching output grow considerably, especially in unexpected, impromptu situations. The bags quickly sold out. Between her teaching, marketing and social media broadcasting activities, Róisín’s SketchPocket gets a lot of use!

I Feel Like I’m There: Using values to bring a sketch to life

Workshop language: English, French

Rather than an illustrative look, with flat, bright colours that don’t reflect reality, I take a more realistic (but playful) approach to sketching. To achieve this look you need to have strong drawing, but most of all you need to understand how to use values in order to portray light and shadow well. In this workshop, as well as helping with accurate drawing - which can be very quickly

demonstrated - I will explain the principles of conserving whites, using values and adding

shadows for maximum effect.

Key skills:

  • Developing the habit of leaving areas untouched
  • Using values (and shadows) to bathe parts of the sketch in light

Suggested material:

  • Recommend 55 degree fude pen, but participants can use any pen with waterproof ink (any colour)
  • Watercolours in a set of half- or full pan. They must have either Payne’s Grey, Indigo, Shadow Violet or Shadow Grey.
  • Decent round brush with a point, in size 8 upwards.