a walk among giants

OIC sketch walk just rekindled my interest in drawing.

I'd first heard of the OIC through Bella only last week when she showed me the website at http://organisationofillustratorscouncil.blogspot.com. The Sketch Walk was basically about trekking through various parts of Singapore and drawing everything along the way.

So we met at Bras Basah Complex at 2pm outside Basheer bookstore. There I met Andrew a.k.a Drewscape, Billy, Benjamin and Mike a.k.a Mindflyer (OIC chairman). I also met Kesheng, a J1 from RJ, and Josephine from NYJC, both of whom were Art students. In fact, as far as I know, everyone there was either in the art industry, in art school or studied art as a subject. I felt sorely out of place. Bella arrived shortly after.

And so we set off. The first stop was the area outside Guan Yin Miao. I sketched a very uninspired and messy drawing of a building with a lor of birds on it. We were given something like 25 minutes for every stop, and it was admittedly hard for me to produce something of decent quality in that amount of time. But I guess it forced us to stop dwelling on details, and see bigger shapes and blocks of colour. Or rather, it was supposed to, but I han't realised yet. Bella drew a spiffy perspective drawing with short trees.

We then went upstairs of the hawker centre and drew from there. I decided to be a little less ambitious what with my huge landscapes and decided to focus on one object instead. I singled out a trishaw (and later realised that Andrew picked out the same one - I must have a pretty developed eye!) and drew exactly what I saw. It was literal and boring, and didn't even come with the amount of technical mastery literal and boring pictures ought to have.
We took a walk to the Gotham City building and sat ourselves in the courtyard. There were four statues of important personalities, between which I failed to draw any link. I mean, Sun Yat-sen, Churchill, Lincoln and Plato aren't exactly brothers. But anyway I stole Bella's marker and Chinese brush and drew them all.

Next stop was supposed to be Haji Lane, but we were in dire need for refreshments so our group took a rest at this little shop and had tehpeng and some snacks. Josephine asked if I had Greek blood. Wth! Haha actually a part of me wishes I had some funky exotic ancestry. Bella's half Chinese half German and half Japanese. (lol) In any case, I scribbled out a BMW, defining every line I could make out, and was pretty happy with how it turned out. Mike later commented that I need more confidence in my linework.

By then it looked like it was gonna rain pretty soon, so we hid in the Army Market for a while. I tried the waffles there, but found nothing much to rave about it. Definitely doesn't justify the hype. Or maybe I'm just a ruthless foodie.

Next stop was the Kallang Riverside Park. By then I was already feeling rather uninspired, in the end only managing to render a coconut tree in chinese brush. I have to say though, we did stop at a rather weird spot.

From there we proceeded through Geylang - no not the main road but the extra seedy streets hidden in the back. Never seen so many prostitutes in my life, I swear. They were standing there in their skimpy little outfits and (for some reason) carrying umbrellas. There were almost just as many potential patrons standing around, but on this day it seemed supply outstripped demand. You'd think that in order to lure the lechers into their lair they'd attempt to force a seductive smile. But none of them could.

Geylang was supposed to be one of the stops (figure studies?) but Bella was growing increasingly uncomfortable so we thought we'd better move on. It was getting dark, which made it hard to draw. I set out to make a drawing of a playground (always had this thing for playgrounds) and cast it in really moody lighting.


The last stop was Kallang Airport hawker centre! Fleecircus was there, but unfortunately I didn't get to speak to her. Really like her style. Anyways I didn't really care much about drawing anymore and proceeded to wolf down a chicken chop before drawing Jill Valentine with a blue G-Tec.

This was the really cool bit. Drewscape and Mindflyer, the two pros, went to each and every person and offered to do a critque of what we'd done that day, as well as our little portfolios if we'd brought them. Mike seemed rather incredulous that the OIC website was attracting people from JC..I thought why the heck not! Anyway the comments I got were as follows:

1. try to see shapes, and render the subject in tight blocks. My lines tended to be a bit too loose.
2. Squint your eyes and try to see things in three tones: light, medium and dark, and proceed to shade the line drawing in that way. Dark should preferably be adjacent to and complementing the light areas.
3. be more confident in your linework

Billy shared his portfolio with us, and it was chock full of damn inspiring anatomy studies and excellent anime lineart. Benjamin had this album of anime drawings rendered in Photoshop. What can I say man. These guys are all damn pro. We agreed to meet up again for a similar session on our own, this time without time constraints and a different route. I can't wait!