is where I went last weekend to join the Urban Sketchers gang which meets on the last Saturday every month at a specific location. The reason why many of us look forward to this once a month rendezvous is that not only do we get to draw as a group feeding off each other’s passion and enthusiasm for art, we also meet the wonderful artists whose works we passively admire on social media and get to peek into their sketchbooks, watch them in action, sift through their tools and at times pick their brains and receive invaluable advice and feedback.

Shophouses on Tras Street in Tanjong Pagar drawn using dip pen and ink

Having said that, one massive downside to this otherwise uplifting event- affecting only your wallet- is that you are unfailingly smitten with a certain fountain pen, brush, crayon, pigment, sketchbook or camping chair that you find one of these artists using to get those ‘impossibly good results’ in their art, or so you think. The more you watch them using it the more needy you become so much so that you cannot imagine your life without it. You find out where it is retailed and then vamoose!

I had every plan to sketch more on Tras Street, instead I have a new water brush.