2026 Ohio Regional Urban Sketchers Summit

This year, join us in Cleveland for the 5th annual Ohio Regional Urban Sketchers Summit! This year's summit will be held on Saturday, August 8, 2026, at the Cleveland Institute of Art, an inspiring creative campus surrounded by architecture, public art and countless sketch-worthy views.

Cleveland offers endless inspiration—from iconic buildings and industrial character to vibrant street life along the lakefront. In addition to the ticketed workshops, we’re planning free public sketching meetups during the weekend, including: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Patio dinner with fellow sketchers!

Artists and sketchers from across the Great Lakes region are invited to gather, learn and celebrate drawing together.

Each Summit participant receives access to (1) of the following workshops. These are only available during the morning session (9:30 AM-12:00 PM).

➤For information regarding workshop supplies, please check

➤Important: Every participant also receives ( 1 ) FREE Lunch. While selecting your workshop, please select ( 1 ) from the available options!

Workshop Description: Set outside the reflective facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, this workshop invites participants to draw the city as it bends, fractures, and reassembles itself. Instead of aiming for perfect perspective, we’ll embrace distortion, overlap, and surprise. Street life, passing figures, traffic, and architecture become layered and reimagined through reflection.
Through playful, guided exercises, participants will sketch directly from real street views while capturing their warped reflections at the same time. We’ll explore how reflection disrupts scale, flips space, and creates unexpected compositions that feel both abstract and deeply urban. This workshop encourages letting go of “drawing correctly” and leaning into observation, intuition, and experimentation—resulting in energetic sketches that blur reality and reflection into a contemporary urban narrative."

Workshop Description: You will learn to approach sketching a montage (various sketch subjects placed throughout the page) through solid design principles.

Workshop Description: Get acquainted with inking techniques that will build dramatic contrast and stunning, layered textures in your drawings. We will use ink markers, traditional ink wash, and tonal markers to explore quick, gestural sketching as well as develop more rendered pieces using line and crosshatching techniques. Tips on perspective, negative space, and focal points will also be covered to strengthen your compositions.

Workshop Description: This workshop will focus on building a sketch that combines richness and simplicity using colors and inks on toned (color) watercolor or mixed media paper. For our first sketch, we will start with a simple rough line sketch (pencil or permanent ink), then add our first large areas of color over a large part of the sketch’s surface area. You will then complete the sketch with smaller applications of ink and color. For the second sketch, we will start in much the same way: with a rough sketch line and/or color first. But then, we will cover the finished sketch with more restricted/fewer areas of color and/or line, leaving some of the paper completely or nearly blank.

Workshop Description: In this workshop, you’ll learn practical drawing and painting tools for simplifying complex scenes. Street and urban environments are endlessly engaging subjects, but they can quickly become overwhelming without a clear approach to editing and composition.
Through examples of successful work, we’ll explore what makes these compositions effective, how I simplify visual information, set up drawings and compositions, and how to apply these strategies to your own urban sketches.

Workshop Discription: We will be drinking coffee and sketching people in a coffee shop.

The Courtyard by Marriott Cleveland University Circle is offering a special group rate to Ohio Regional Urban Sketchers Summit participants.

Address: 2021 Cornell Road, Cleveland, Ohio, 44106. The hotel is 0.4 mile (about an
8-minute walk) from the Summit venue, the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA).

Rate: $179 per night plus tax. Reserve your room by Friday, July 17 to receive this rate.

Reservation Link: Group rate for Urban Sketchers Summit. If you are a Marriott Bonvoy member, you can earn points for your stay.

• Note: If the room block is full when you try to reserve a room, contact us via email ([email protected]) by or before July 17. The Summit organizers will work with the hotel to get additional rooms released whenever possible.

Important hotel parking note: The Marriott only offers valet parking ($27 per day with unlimited in-and-out privileges; no self-parking option is available). . The Marriott also offers a shuttle that goes to CIA regularly.

Summit participants can park for free in the CIA’s Annex and rear parking lots from Friday, Aug. 7 at 12:00 PM until Sunday, Aug. 9 at 6:00 PM, including overnight.

Access both lots from E 117th Street. Click here for a CIA downloadable map and driving directions.

For all additional information regarding this year's summit, including additional free events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Sketchwalks,Work Shops, and Supplies please refer to the Ohio Regional Urban Sketchers Summit homepage!

Event Venue

Cleveland Institute of Art, 11610 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, United States

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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