Drawing from life

Local artist Julie Baugnet is taking her artistic process away from her desk and into the community, inspired by the area’s historic buildings and urban landscape, and is inviting other artists to join her and do the same with Sketch De Pere.

“I’m originally from De Pere and so I know De Pere and I’ve seen it grow throughout the years,” she said. “When I came back a couple of years ago, I was looking downtown and I saw galleries like newARTspace and it seemed like De Pere really changed a lot — new art galleries and great coffee shops — and I started getting the idea that I could live here.”

After living in Minnesota for 30 years and teaching art at St. Cloud State University, Baugnet moved back to De Pere this summer with her husband and brought her passion for art right along with her.

“One of my interests in the last five years has been to work with Urban Sketchers — it’s an international group and there are chapters all over the world,” she said. “I started going over to Europe and sketching with Urban Sketchers in France and also in Vietnam. When we moved, I was like, ‘Oh, we have to do some urban sketching and get a group together.’

This fall, Sketch De pere was born.

“You have to belong to a chapter to call yourself Urban Sketchers, so I called it Sketch De Pere,” she said. “I thought it would be a great way to get a group of people together. The first meeting was in October and we had three people… The next meeting was November and we had twice as many — like eight people. Our next Sketch De Pere is going to be Jan. 16.”

Eventually, Baugnet hopes to get enough people regularly attending Sketch De Pere events for the group to become a part of Urban Sketchers and even assemble a gallery show of sketches produced during Sketch De Pere meetups.

“It’s my vision to get [Sketch De Pere] into an Urban Sketchers chapter,” she said. “What’s really neat about that is you can go online and see Urban Sketchers all around the world and learn from how other people are approaching that. It’d be an international group right here in De Pere… Because of our historic buildings and things like that, I think we have a good chance to get enough people interested and coming out.”

“We try to meet once a month and the idea is that people don’t have to know how to sketch — all they need is to bring some pencils and some paper,” Baugnet said. “Just like Urban Sketchers, the idea is to be out in the landscape or to be outside as much as possible or be in a coffee shop or out in public and just draw what you see.”

An average Sketch De Pere meetup lasts two to three hours and invites artists of all skill levels to come out and simply draw what’s around them.

“We meet up in a certain area and then everyone walks around and decides what they want to sketch,” she said. “Some people like to sketch with a partner and they chat while other people just want to go solo. Within about two and a half hours, we come back to the group and do a ‘drop down’ and kind of look at everyone’s work… We throw all the drawings in a circle or in a grid and go around and look at other people’s techniques. Everyone comes with something different — maybe it’s pastels or watercolors or just pen and ink — and we learn from each other that way.”

The most important element of the sketching done at these events, Baugnet said, is that it is based on real-life objects and scenes — not photos.

“That’s kind of my art school approach — drawing from life,” she said. “Photos flatten everything, which is great and that’s why it’s easier to draw a portrait from a photo. That is a good way to learn, but when you’re out in the elements and with the people, there’s a social part of it and you’re loosening up a little bit. Instead of sitting at a desk and drawing just with your wrist, you’re loosening up and using a sketchbook and you can draw things really quick instead of thinking everything has to be perfect.”

In Baugnet’s own sketchbooks, that loose, dynamic style is abundant.

“When you look at my sketches, there’s some action and some activity in the drawing,” she said. “People think that when you draw something, it has to look exactly like that thing. I call that ‘masterpiece syndrome.’ Everyone thinks that when they do something on paper, it has to look great, but it doesn’t.”

Without the expectation that every sketch will look identical to its subject, Baugnet said a great variety of sketches come out of Sketch De Pere events.

“It’s great to see that people don’t have to have a formal education to sketch — you just have to start looking and go one sketch at a time and each time you get better…” she said. “As an artist, I’ve taught drawing for many many years — 20 or 30 years. I like to see how someone sketches when they haven’t gone to art school or they haven’t done any sketching. What do they do? How do they approach it? And because we’re so open and we’re not judgemental, people aren’t inhibited and we just have fun with it.”

For aspiring artists considering stopping by an event, Baugnet suggests stopping by an event and seeing where it takes you

“Just come and see what people are doing,” she said. “You can observe and start your own sketchbook and look online. There’s so many videos where you can learn how to draw, shade, use values, use pastels and different mediums… And then it’s just a little bit of commitment — taking some time and starting out. Draw your cat or draw a plant. Organic shapes are good because they’re never exact… You can draw a banana and no one’s going to say, ‘Well, that’s not exactly what the banana looked like.’ Start with simple things and see what you can do.”

More details about Sketch De Pere and upcoming events can be found in the Sketch De Pere Facebook group.