Instructor and Moderator Bios

Mike Daikubara

Mike Daikubara began carrying a sketchbook in 2000 to communicate better and faster at his design day job. Now he sketches daily to see, understand, and enjoy! A Japanese American, Mike grew up in Tokyo and New York City attending an international school with kids from all over the world. He is an artist, author, and designer with over 20 years of product development experience in various industries such as cosmetics, consumer electronics, bath/kitchen products, medical, and the juvenile industry. He currently lives in Charlotte, NC with his wife and two Bengal cats, Tenten and Totora.

Mary Jo Ernst

MJ Ernst is a multimedia artist. After living in Chicago for 37 years, she recently moved back to West Michigan where she grew up. Creating art is like breathing and has been a stable element in her life. Being semi-retired from her custom dress shop business has allowed creative experimentation. One of her favorite mediums is a soluble blue Pilot pen, and she has developed a sketch technique that produces bold, expressive, and dramatic values in her artwork. She is very involved in the global Urban Sketchers organization and mentors art groups in North America to become official regional chapters. Artistic outreach is important to ease people's fears of what is holding them back from creating. MJ teaches regularly at a local art center in West Michigan and at large sketch events in Michigan, Chicago, Toronto, and now Ohio! She is very excited to be part of the Ohio Sketch Summit 2024 and get messy with blue ink. It is never too late to create, a blank page stays blank until you make your mark, any mark!

Yuki Hall

Yuki Hall is an award-winning watercolor artist whose approach to watercolor painting emphasizes simplicity, effective use of tonal value patterns, fluidity and execution of confident brush strokes. In her painting, she strives to create a sense of atmosphere without being bogged down with unnecessary details. Yuki holds a signature membership to Transparent Watercolor Society of America, Ohio Watercolor Society, and Whiskey Painters of America. Yuki’s work has been accepted into highly competitive national and international-level watercolor juried competitions, and her works have been often published by art/watercolor publications, such as Watercolor Artist Magazine and Splash, Best of Watercolor by North Light Books. Most recently, her pen and wash sketch was featured in the fall 2021 issue of Watercolor Artist Magazine. Yuki is also an avid teacher who has taught watercolor painting and sketching since 2013. Her highly organized, friendly, and non-intimidating teaching style has been well received by students of all levels. Visit her website at www.yukihallfineart.com.

Nancy Lick

Nancy Lick is an award-winning artist from Cleveland who works in a variety of media, including watercolor, collage, and printmaking. She has taught drawing and design courses at Ursuline College, Cuyahoga Community College, and Baldwin Wallace University and currently teaches illustration at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Nancy works out of her home studio in South Euclid and shows her work regularly in a number of galleries.

Kenny Moore

Kenny Moore is a retired educator. He has been active in Urban Sketching since January 2020, participating with both the Dayton and Cincinnati chapters. He lives north of Dayton, in Clayton, Ohio, with his husband, Anthony and two feisty Scottish Terriers, Finn and Freya.

Marlene Steele

Instructor and artist Marlene Steele has 40+ years of experience as a plein air painter working in oil, pastel, and watercolor. She is the Fiscal Year 2019 recipient of the “Individual Excellence Award” from the Ohio Arts Council for her plein air series on the renovation of the Cincinnati Museum Center. Steele has exhibited her pastel and oil pieces widely throughout the region and the nation.

Jeff Suntala

Jeff Suntala is a lifelong, Cleveland-area illustrator/watercolorist who became consumed with all things digital once it became practical for creating art. He soon realized that while it was a great way to make a living, it wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as creating actual physical art. A member of the Ohio Watercolor Society, Jeff has concentrated on urban plein air painting of Cleveland for the last several years. His watercolors can be found at suntalawatercolors.com, and his illustration work can be found at suntala.com. Jeff has participated in the Cleveland Urban Sketchers group since its inception.

Jose Pablo Ureña

Jose Pablo Ureña is an urban sketcher, visual artist, and co-administrator of the USk chapter in Costa Rica. He walks through cities and neighborhoods with ink, watercolor, and paper in hand, which has given him a unique contact with the landscape, urban culture, people, and architecture. His artistic work is a bridge between drawing and painting, experience and memory, with special attention to the physical and symbolic transformations of urban places. Ureña currently works as a drawing professor at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Costa Rica, from which he has a degree in Fine Arts and a Master's in Visual Arts. 

Christina Wald 

Christina Wald is a designer, illustrator, and educator. After illustrating over 60 picture books, she has finally written a book! Sketching Here & Everywhere: My Sketching Obsession is the culmination of years of teaching sketching to others and her own journey.

Christina loves to travel and sketch all over the world. She went to New Zealand with the Urban Sketchers in spring 2023, did a month-long artist residency at Chateau d'Orquevaux in the Champagne region of France in summer 2023, and produced a Travelogue about the experience. She is taking groups of sketchers to Romania in June 2024 and will be teaching a workshop in Tuscany in May 2025. She started the Urban Sketchers Cincinnati group in 2017 and is the Social Media Coordinator for the International Urban Sketchers group.

Her picture books are sold all over the world from the San Diego Zoo (for she has illustrated three books including their Centennial children's book) to The Wild Life of Elk in gift shops in the Grand Tetons to Camas & Sage: A Story of Bison Life on the Prairie in Yellowstone, to Return to Kew Gardens on sale at Kew Gardens in 2022! She also regularly illustrates German-language books for a Swiss publisher, including one by yodeling star Melanie Oesch! Her latest books out in 2024 are The Train Rolls On to the County Fair and The Story of KRIT.

Christina teaches illustration and narrative storytelling at Northern Kentucky University and lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and three cats.