Would you like to have a picture that sells the project? Meet Simone Ridyard, Prolific Art Lecturer and Urban Sketcher.
There’s always something magical about seeing everyday sceneries rendered in sketches and watercolours. The way it makes the sceneries unearthly and out of this world is something many people find astonishing and beautiful. Simone Ridyard is one of the few people who possess the talent to convert cityscapes and everyday urban scenes into stunning works of art.
Simone is an artist based in the United Kingdom, but you might be surprised to learn that being an artist is neither her first nor her “official” profession. She studied architecture at the Canterbury School of Art and practised as an architect for many years. After that, she explored the world of the academe, and now, she is working as a senior lecturer at the Manchester School of Art. While teaching in Singapore a few years ago, she discovered the global sketching community. And when she returned to the UK, she found Urban Sketchers Manchester. She is also a member of the Society of Architectural Illustration or MSAI.
As far as sketching urban scenes and being an artist, Simone has had a prolific and productive time. Alongside her teaching commitments, she has taken the time to take on several art-related projects. She has done some work with the Academy of Urbanism in the UK. She also led a couple of sketch crawls and talked at an event celebrating Gordon Cullen’s anniversary.
In addition to that, she led the 2014 summer school at Tate Liverpool entitled “Drawing the City.” She also went to Paraty, Brazil, where she talked about her work at the 5th Urban Sketchers annual symposium. Currently, she is busy working on a commissioned artwork for Disney, which is quite impressive considering the staggering number of talented artists and illustrators the world-renowned company already has under its employ.1
If you think doing stunning urban sketches is the only thing Simone can do, think again. Believe it or not, a book will soon be published under her name. Simone recently revealed that aside from working on a Disney-commissioned artwork, she is also busy working on a book on architectural sketching.
The book will be published in the United States by North Light Books and RotoVision, part of Quarto Books in the UK. She said she was excited about the book because it’s the first one she has authored and contains some fabulous contributions from the global urban sketching community.2
1 Profile of Simone Ridyard here
2 Ridyard, Simone. Festive Greetings
