Sketching the Wright Stuff in Lakeland, Florida

 18 sketchers, 12 historic buildings, and 1 renowned architect combined for a memorable day of urban sketching on the campus of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. The world’s largest collection of buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright provided an opportunity for learning about a visionary college president meeting a visionary architect and visually telling the story of how the buildings they created are still used by faculty, students, and the community today.

The college's relationship with Wright began with a president's dream

Organized by the Orlando chapter of Urban Sketchers, the day brought together sketchers from across Florida and as far away as Atlanta to share a guided tour of the campus with time spent inside a Usonian house intended as a model for faculty housing and a pair of chapels intended for the campus community in meetings and services large and small.

Two chapels designed by Wright sit side-by-side

The smaller chapel's stained-glass window glows in the Florida sunlight.

At the tour’s conclusion there was a box lunch at the Frank Lloyd Wright visitor’s center and then the sketching began. Sketchers fanned out across the campus to focus attention on various interiors and exteriors that caught individual eyes during the tour. A local neighborhood festival being held on the day provided plenty of humans to populate the sketches and gray skies cooperated by holding onto their rain until sketches were all complete.

Two hours later, the sketchers gathered for the throw-down – an Orlando Urban Sketchers tradition in which the sketchers set down their sketchpads for general perusal and conversation about subject, approach, technique, challenges, and the general joy that comes from being an urban sketcher. In this case there was incredible variety in both subject and approach to the sketches.

Some of this was due to the range of professions represented among the sketchers, with architects, landscape architects, architectural illustrators, space planners, students, artists, and writers putting pen, pencil, ink, and paint to paper during the session. The result was a collection of images that captured the day in total, as renderings both technical and loose lay on the ground in front of a life-sized sculpture of Wright.

There were conversations among and between the sketchers as they talked about why they chose particular subjects, how they decided on visual approaches, and (as always) the interactions they had with people who walked by and couldn’t help but take a look at what was happening on the page.

After the throw-down many in the group adjourned to “Black and Brew”, a local coffee shop. Drinks had been ordered and tables under umbrellas procured when the Florida clouds opened and rain began to fall at a rate of several inches an hour. When the rain began to fall horizontally the group went inside and then began to find their ways home in the gathering gloom. It had been a great day of sketching and camaraderie, and a bit of water from the sky didn’t change that.

Now, it was time to relax and begin planning the next Orland Urban Sketchers outing somewhere in the middle of the Sunshine State.