Pune Urban Sketchers

Sanjeev Joshi brings sketching back to life in Pune

Pune Urban Sketchers
Photographs:Sanjeev Joshi / Anand Ukidve
Text: Abhiviraj Dev Singh

Pune urban SketchersUrban Sketchers is a nonprofit organisation which promotes the practice of sketching and on-location drawing, along with a group of like-minded people who can be sketchers of all levels, skills and backgrounds. Groups of Urban Sketchers can be found all over the globe. The Urban Sketchers manifesto is a loose set of ideas which help create a unifying vision for the global community. They promote drawing on location, telling the story of their surroundings and creating a record of time and place through sketching. They encourage being truthful to the scenes while using any medium and cherishing individual styles. Lastly, they support each other and draw together, sharing their works online, showing the world one sketch at a time.

Pune Urban Sketchers Pune Urban Sketchers

Sanjeev Joshi
Sanjeev Joshi

Architect Sanjeev Joshi, who is also a skilled painter and calligrapher, took part in The International Urban Sketchers Symposium, held from 22-25th July, 2015, in Singapore. After conducting three workshops and numerous sketching related activities, he decided to initiate a similar chapter back home in Pune. Together with an ever growing group of sketching enthusiasts he sets out every week to a new location to sketch live. The freedom of the medium enables the group members to capture views in a variety of ways. This activity promotes sketchers of all skill levels to create a community that fosters and encourages growth and sharing.
Every week’s events and works are uploaded to Pune Urban Sketchers, a Facebook group, and his blog http://architectpainterjoshi.blogspot.in/

Sanjeev Joshi further shared that the group will soon apply for a regional chapter status of the Urban Sketchers international group. Also, the group plans to have many activities after getting the affiliation, like exhibitions, publications, workshops, expeditions etc. in the future.

Some sketches shared by Sanjeev Joshi and Anand Ukidve

One Response

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Recent

Source - Deccan Chronicle

Wall As a Public Space
“To read public space only as a spatial condition, as a matter of square footage, zoning, or physical access, is to miss half the picture.”
—Reshma Esther Thomas

Reshma Esther Thomas examines how Hyderabad’s flyover pillars, painted with Cheriyal-style murals under the GHMC’s ‘City Art Scape’ initiative, reveal the paradox of managed public space. What appears to be beautification is actually cultural assertion in the wake of the 2014 bifurcation, bureaucratising a surface that once belonged to those without institutional power.

Read More »
Khazans in Slavador du Mundo, Bardez, Goa. © Kusum Priya (1)

The Map That Was Never Yours
“If publicness is reduced to what is legally accessible, then these landscapes were never public to begin with.”
—V.V. Kusum Priya

As part of our editorial: What makes a space public?, V.V. Kusum Priya argues that Section 39A of Goa’s 2024 Town and Country Planning Act this isn’t just a legal issue, and that it’s the erosion of an unrecognised but collectively sustained commons, and a question of what “public” really means and who benefits from the legislations surrounding this.

Read More »
Life on the public spaces in downtown Calcutta. Source - Wikimedia


“Appropriation of public spaces is the genesis of political movements, of ideological apparatus, and of endangering the city’s multi-dimensional fabric.”
—Dr. Seema Khanwalkar

Dr. Seema Khanwalkar, explores how the public spaces in India are dynamic, contested areas shaped by informal economies, migration, and social negotiation. She reveals how the transactional activities democratise ownership of these spaces, while the political and religious appropriation increasingly displaces this organic vitality, creating exclusion and anxiety. This shrinking of inclusive public space threatens urban social fabric, yet remains largely absent from city planning conversations, making it a far deeper crisis than mere encroachment.

Read More »
Sen Kapadia


“… people like Sen [Kapadia] don’t really leave. They become the questions we continue to ask.”
—A Tribute by Nuru Karim

Nuru Karim reflects on his relationship with Sen Kapadia through three transformative “states of being”—as a student, as a studio colleague, and as an independent professional. To capture Sen’s essence, Karim draws on three powerful metaphors: a mountain (commanding yet silent), a banyan tree (generous and sheltering), and a river (unseen yet ever-present). Together, these images paint a portrait of a man whose quiet depth left an indelible mark on all who encountered him.

Read More »

Featured Publications

New Release

Stories that provoke enquiry into built environment

www.architecture.live

Subscribe & Join a Community of Lakhs of Readers

We Need Your Support

To be able to continue the work we are doing and keeping it free for all, we request our readers to support in every way possible.

Your contribution, no matter the size, helps our small team sustain this space. Thank you for your support.

Contribute using UPI

Contribute Using Cards