Tracing the city architect with pencil & colours

Bhubaneswar: Colours splashed across Market Building, the one-stop destination for shopaholics of Bhubaneswar, this morning as 33 sketchers got down to the task of capturing its unique architectural style and the urbanscape.

With an objective to present ancient structures through art and storytelling, the Bhubaneswar chapter of Urban Sketchers had organized the event.

The buildings at the city's busiest market, where shoppers haggle their way to materialistic moksha, carry the stamp of architect Julius Vaz, who played an important role in shaping the city skyline. All his works in the Odisha capital are original and unique as he adopted Hindu style of architecture with some modifications to meet the social needs of the people.

“The event saw 33 participants including students from KIIT School of Architecture and Planning and Piloo Mody College of Architecture, urban planners and professors. Besides the bustling and colourful market, the event aimed at highlighting the original Market Building designed by Vaz. The two towers fascinated the artists who had gathered at the venue,” said programme coordinator Swayamprakash Mohanty.

Apart from streetscape sketches, the participants also made doodles and water colour sketches, he added.

Urban Sketchers are part of a global community drawing on location every weekend in cities across the world. The idea behind the effort is to imbibe culture and heritage among youngsters and connect them with the ancient past of a city.

The members maintain a network of blogs and an online-group where the drawings accompanied by stories are shared with co-members in other parts of the world. The group was started in 2007 by Seattle-based journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario, who created an online forum for all sketchers and exhorted them to draw cities by being on the location instead of photos or memory.

In their maiden attempt, the Urban Sketchers here picked Mukteswar-Kedar Gouri temple complex for depicting the ancient heritage of the city through bold strokes of pencil. They then moved on to the banks of Bindusagar and presented Art Haat to mark the World Heritage Day. “The Old Town offers countless themes to work on from classic and ancient architecture to lively shops, water bodies and picturesque streets,” said Mohanty.

After drawing and sketching the different hues of the city’s ancient architecture, the group then decided to capture the splendour of New Capital region and Market Building was one of them, he added.