Sketchpacker Diaries

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Aotearoa: A Sketchpacker's Diary

I've been on 3 trips so far this year, but I still haven't finished my sketches from Hong Kong and Bandung from April and May. Thankfully, I've just completed my sketches from New Zealand (actually all but 2 blank pages that I left out with intentions to draw my packing list). I'll put up the drawings from my earlier trips in the coming months, but here are the New Zealand sketches for now. Enjoy!

Christchurch Cathedral. Ruined by the earthquake in 2011.
They still haven't decided what to do with it.
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

View from the Tranzalpine train ride
from Christchurch to Arthur's Pass
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Franz Josef Glacier
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

10-15 minute sketch at Haast Pass, where we dropped
some of our tour group mates for their river cruise.
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Arrowtown
Queenstown
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

The view of the Remarkables mountain range from Queenstown.
Drawn during breakfast.
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015


In case anyone is wondering, that's 2 different types of wool on the left. Skyline Queenstown TSS Earnslaw

Milford Sound
Te Anau
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Dunedin
First Church of Otago
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Moeraki Boulders
Steampunk HQ
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

You should really check the Medieval Mosaic out.
Lake Pukaki
Lake Tekapo
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Kaikoura
Ohau Stream
Picton
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Interislander Aratere
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Incredible work by Weta Workshop at the Te Papa museum.
Giant soldiers created to the last detail, pores, eyelashes and all!
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Bulls - likely THE most punny place in the world!
Lake Taupo
Tamaki Maori Village
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Agrodome
Te Puia
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

If there's only one reason for a Tolkien fan to visit New Zealand, this is it.
Hobbiton Movie Set
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Waitomo
Auckland
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Auckland Art Gallery
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

Remember to put your Manuka honey in your check-in luggage!
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

In case anyone is interested, we took this tour.
Copyright © Favian Ee Sept 2015

That's all for now, folks! Kia Ora!

Monday, August 24, 2015

Home-made Watercolour Sketchbooks

What inspired me to go through all the trouble to make my own watercolour sketchbooks? It's silly looking back at it. I was packing my sketching kit for my upcoming trip and thought that lugging a whole Moleskine watercolour journal would be a bit too much, so I figured since I had a sheet of Strathmore Imperial paper lying around, I might as well use that and make my own sketchbook. I didn't need a whole Moleskine's worth of pages after all, I reasoned. But when I discovered that I would only be able to get 13 A5-sized leafs (26 pages) out of one sheet, I realised I probably needed to make 2 books and bring only one out at a time.

And so I did.

I didn't take photos of the process, unfortunately, but here are some photos I did snap after making the first one.

Double rubber bands. I forgot to include them for the 2nd book.

This is how thin the books are. This one uses 300 gsm Saunders Waterford.

The cover is made of 1 folded card and another couple of cards pasted over the outside.

The pages are not sewn but bound by thread so they can be removed and bound after the trip.

Back page is about 1/2 page. Can be used for testing watercolours.

This is the second sketchbook in progress. This one uses the Strathmore Imperial.

The 2nd cards haven't been glued yet. I totally forgot to put in the rubber bands for this one.

In the end, the 2 sketchbooks weigh more than 1 Moleskine. However, since I'm bringing only one around at a time, my purpose is still fulfilled.

I'm Going on an Adventure!

I've barely finished my sketches from my Hong Kong trip in April, Bandung trip in May, the Urban Sketchers Symposium in July, and my mini personal project over Singapore's Golden Jubilee weekend, and I'm about to embark on another trip! Whereabouts? Aotearoa - the Land of the Long White Cloud. A.k.a Middle Earth, a.k.a. New Zealand. This will be my last major trip in a while, I expect.

I started putting together my sketch kit a few weeks back. I told myself that since I'll be going on a coach tour and staying at a different hotel every night or every few nights, I ought to keep things compact and light. And I'm not a light packer by nature, cos I tend to pack for contingencies. Then it happened. Again.

Sigh....

I guess that's the "packer" in Sketchpacker. And I haven't even included my marker set in the photo.

Why so many things, you ask. Well, mainly because I draw in different styles. One of those styles happens to be the comic style I use for my Sketchpacker comic stories, and it uses a specific set of tools, namely felt-tip markers and pens (top row and 2nd row middle). It also requires A5 portrait format paper, hence 2x Daler Rowney Graduate sketchbooks (bottom left).

But I'm going to New Zealand! Land of Hobbits and Elves! I can't visit the place without decent watercolour paper and materials! So in an attempt to lighten my daypack ever-so-slightly, I made 2 of my own watercolour sketchbooks (bottom right) using one sheet of watercolour paper each (1 sheet of Strathmore Imperial which I've had for a long time, and 1 sheet of Saunders Waterford). I'll be carrying only 1 about and leaving the other in the luggage till the first is finished.

But watercolour paper is terrible for pencilwork! I found a landscape A5 Daler Rowney Graduate sketchbook, which I made by chopping an A4 one into half, sitting on the shelf.

But what if I need something palm-sized? So the Perfect Sketchbook and the Seawhite A6 landscape (middle right) came to be in the kit - the first for watercolour, the second for dry media.

The 2 small A6 notebooks at the bottom left are from Muji for writing notes.

I'm such a SketchPACKER... I bet Bilbo didn't bring as many things on his adventure... And that's not mentioning my necessities, clothing, SLR + 2 lenses, and an Irish whistle. Packed in to 2 separate bags. I must be crazy...

P.S. When a couple of friends found out I was going to NZ, they realised why I was bringing so many materials. Much to draw (I hope!) and not much chance to replenish materials. I'm vindicated!

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Sketchpacking Bandung - Beginnings and Lesson Preps

Barely a month after my trip to Hong Kong, I'll be jetsetting again! This time to Bandung, Indonesia. Why Bandung? Well, it's an interesting story. Remember my Sketching George Town II: A Sketchpacker's Diary? I think it had something to do with it.

The Bandung sketchers were planning for the Bandung Sketchwalk #25 "Sketching with Friends" (International Edition) event months back, and they were looking for workshop instructors when Marvin Chew from our Singapore Urban Sketcher group suggested me. Me? Of all people? I thought. There were better artists out there by the loads! It turned out that they felt they had too many watercolourists already and wanted something different, maybe someone who works in a different medium. So I got contacted by Thamrin from the Bandung group. The original idea was to teach something about pencil sketching with storytelling. I figured it would be too much to teach two topics, so since they seemed more interested in the storytelling aspect, I figured we'd concentrate on just one of them and.... teach them how to tell stories!

I love telling stories. Loved it since I was little. I'd make up my own cartoon characters, write my own poems, draw illustrations, staple them into a book. I'd draw comics using my characters. Later as I grew older, I wrote stories, illustrated them, composed songs, recorded them, imagined animated sequences. I created worlds in my head.

Cartoons and comics have been my passion since I was young. Now I do more writing. But being a good comic artist means being good at both drawing and writing, so I guess it's an art form that suits me and my interests best. It took me years before I realised that my art, writing, music, etc. all centred upon one simple word: Storytelling. And here I was going to conduct a workshop on it! Rare opportunity indeed, and I couldn't say no.

So over the last few months I've been trying to come up with my lesson material, and to make it more interesting, I decided to transcribe it by hand. In cursive. In a Muji notebook:

Yes, I'm old-school like that.

Of course I made bulletpoint notes on OneNote first before writing them out. That was more for organizing my thoughts.

I've never been to Bandung before. The only bandung I know is that drink made of rose syrup and evaporated milk. My most frequented spot in Indonesia is Batam, but that's mainly for church camps. I don't have much of an itinerary planned, but I have a bunch of Singapore Urban Sketcher friends going who have some, and then there's the event programme. That failing, there's always the locals to consult on possible places to visit. Five days is not a lot of time, especially with 2.5 days spent in the event itself. If I hadn't run out of leave, I'd probably make my way to Central Java and pay Borobudur and Prambanan a visit. I'll probably make another trip to Java, who knows when? But in the meantime, I'm sure Bandung will be an eye-opening trip. I heard that the food is great too!

Alright. Back to lesson preps for now!

Chin Chow with Bandung.
The drink, not the place.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Sketchpacking Hong Kong 2015 - Day 3-5

Continued from Part 1

Day 3 - Stanley and an Old Friend

Kai Siang suggested we have breakfast at Yee Shun Milk Company. He liked the milk pudding so much! We went to a different outlet this time and had the hot version. There was quite a queue but it was worth it.

Milk pudding, beef and egg sandwiches, milk tea, and horlicks!

One more satisfied customer!

After breakfast we passed by a wet market on our way to catching the bus to Stanley, south of HK Island, a rather prime district next to the upmarket Repulse Bay. Both are coastal areas with nice beaches and seaside residences. We went around Stanley market before settling to sketch the famous Boathouse, which, again, is slated to be demolished to make way for a boutique hotel.

Prime residences at Repulse Bay
Copyright © Favian Ee Apr 2015

Stanley first look from the mall

The Boathouse
Copyright © Favian Ee Apr 2015

Sketching the Boathouse on the Perfect Sketchbook

Murray House

Stanley Ma Hang Park

Murray House
Copyright © Favian Ee Apr 2015

Dog being fed ice cream

Sandy and Kai Siang were so engrossed sketching the Boathouse they almost forgot about lunch. I went and got us some sandwiches from a nearby cafe.

We had a dinner appointment in the evening with an old JC classmate of mine, so we left right after 5 pm and took the bus back to Central.

While waiting for our next appointment, Kai Siang and Sandy took out their sketchbooks. Sketchers never need to get bored!

Central, outside IFC
Copyright © Favian Ee Apr 2015

Hong Kong, City of Spires
Copyright © Favian Ee Apr 2015

Finishing up sketches from the afternoon

Dinner was at Greyhound, a Thai fusion restaurant. Peijun, my JC friend who is now living and working in HK looks like a supermodel. When Sandy first saw her, she went, "Wow..."

Amazing to-die-for mango crepe

Old friends. Still young!

Day 4 - Easter Sunday

Kai Siang wanted to visit a church he helped plant some 6 years ago, so that's where we went on Easter Sunday. It's the first Easter weekend I spent overseas, I think. Interestingly, it ALWAYS rains on Good Friday afternoon in Singapore. Has happened for almost as many years I can remember. In HK, it was sunny and dry. And pretty hot.

After church, we caught up with the Urban Sketchers Hong Kong on one of their sketchwalks. Alvin brought us for lunch at Modi Cafe, after which Gary took us to Temple Street where we went up to the 8th storey of Yau Ma Tei Carpark Building to sketch the streets below. We met

Lunch with USK-HK

Boiled Coke with lemon and ginger??

Kai Siang enjoying Alvin's sketchbook

Tin Hau Temple

Temple Street Night Market. It never ends!!

Noble and Gary

My sketch

After I finished my sketch, a security guard appeared and told us we weren't allowed to sketch from in the building. We packed up and left in no hurry (the guard wasn't hurrying us either) and Kai Siang, Sandy, and I decided to do another take of the Peak. So off we were to catch bus 15 again! We reached the Peak just as the sun was setting.

Queue for the Peak Tram. Which is why we took the bus.

Having caught our sights and gotten our photos, we made our way down back to Causeway Bay for some dinner and shopping. We caught the Avengers: Age of Ultron exhibits at Hysan Place too.

Day 5 - Farewell, Hong Kong

Our flight was at 2:15 pm, which means we had to be at the airport at 12:15, which means we had to leave by 11. We had time to have one last breakfast with Sandy at an eatery below our apartment, a well-known HK dimsum place called Dimdimsum Dimsum. It was right under our noses and we almost missed it! Then again, we missed ordering their famed Po Lo Bun. Oh well.

After breakfast, we thanked Sandy for her hospitality and made our way to the airport. It would be a long delay and mad rush (who knew we had to check in at Terminal 2 then take a bus to Terminal 1 before we could board our flight - a process that took a whole 15 mins or so excluding the delay at customs).

On the brighter side, we were blessed with beautiful skies on the way home. I'll end with some of those photos.