Urban sketching in San Diego is great! Specifically, the famous Balboa park is a perfect place for nature journaling and urban sketching. During a recent stay in San Diego I went to an official Urban Sketchers San Diego meetup at the Old Cactus Garden. It was a beautiful location to sketch. In fact, one of the hard parts was choosing a subject to focus on.
Urban Sketching in San Diego (Pros and Cons)
Whenever I am in San Diego I make it a point to go to this park and the nearby San Diego Zoo. In fact, you could visit San Diego and only go to these two places. Actually, that would be a good idea because one of the main cons of San Diego is all the driving and the traffic. Right now, I will list some of the pros and cons from my opinion:
Pros:
- Obviously there is the weather. Almost everyone loves the weather in San Diego because it is mild almost all year and rarely rains. This weather makes urban sketching in San Diego possible outdoors for most of the year.
- Second, there is a good mixture of nature and urban.
- Third, there is a good Urban Sketching and art community in San Diego. Check out their website.
- Lastly, there is a lot of variety in neighborhoods and cultural diversity. If you are like me and want a boba tea when you are sketching and Vietnamese food or street tacos after sketching then you are in luck!
Cons:
- First of all the driving. Like I said, San Diego is a very car-based city. If you don’t have a car it can be hard to get around. But if you do have a car, be prepared for traffic.
- Next, San Diego is not a very old city. If you are very focused on sketching old buildings then you will be disappointed. Balboa Park and Old Town have some interesting mission type architecture but that is about it.
Are you totally new to Sketching?
Do you need help choosing supplies and getting started? Check out this post. It is written with nature journaling in mind. However, I personally use the same setup for urban sketching and nature journaling.
Do you want to take your sketching on the road? Check out this post about travel sketching.
