30-Day Drawing Challenge
First off, my quest to blog here once a week has really gone down the drain, but for a very good reason: I have really come around to embracing life here in Phnom Penh. The month of May was just so exciting and was filled with many amazing moments here in Cambodia, in the company of amazing people (I seriously cannot emphasise this enough). Luckily, I decided that I was going to do a 30-Day Drawing Challenge that month, and now have a sketch book of memories of the amazing month that was.
I decided to do this Challenge because I realised I was way too dependent on words to express myself and was only utilising half my brain. So in a quest to use the creative side of my noggin, I decided to draw everyday for 30 days.
My sketch of lunch at the Russian Markets, PHNOM PENH 2014 (notice my inability to draw the food lady)
I should mention that by no means am I a drawer - I think the last time I sketched something was over a year ago for my 30-Day Draw What You Eat Challenge (more on that next time). But making people think you were a sketch artist was pretty cool, until they saw how dodgy my sketches were haha! The first couple of sketches were pretty average - nothing I was really proud of because my drawing skills were definitely lacking given the many years of neglect. I mean, we all used to draw when we were kids because we didn't know any other way to express ourselves. The act of picking up a pencil and putting that to paper and drawing a smiley face was something so damn natural to all of us. We just sometimes forget that in a world of words (at least in my world).
Attempt at trying to capture the beauty of nature, MONDULKIRI 2014
Slowly but surely, my drawing skills improved. I was lucky enough to be living with a professional illustrator who gave me awesome tips on how to make my drawing better: always have a sharp pencil, shade with pencil and not your finger, start with copying a still image before trying to draw from memory etc. These tips really allowed me to embrace drawing and really come to enjoy the slow and meditative effect drawing had to offer. I also learnt a couple of things about drawing myself: that natural landscapes were very hard to capture in a single sketch, that I wasn't very good at drawing people, but that I was better at drawing animals and food.
Drink & Draw, PHNOM PENH 2014
During the Challenge, I also attended my first Drink & Draw here in Phnom Penh, where my good-looking housemate was the life model for the event. It was such an awesome first experience of life drawing. There was 5 x 20 second poses, followed by 5 x 1 minute poses, then 2 x 5 minute poses, 1 x 10 minute pose, 1 x 20 minute poses and 1 x 30 minute pose. After the whole thing was over, I felt incredilbly in awe of my life model-housemate's ability to be so still, I was so inspired by my illustrator-housemate's creative skills, and was amazed at how I had just spent two whole hours drawing a human being whilst consuming copious amount of delicious tea doused with tumeric. It was such a cool experience.
Charlie Chaplin to signify an awesome day, PHNOM PENH 2014
I have yet to draw since the completion of the Challenge. This is probably because I felt my beautifully bound leather journal being neglected, and felt compelled to write out my thoughts and feelings about Cambodia and how awesome it has been to me instead. I realised there are some things better expressed in words, but sometimes a drawing has the ability to bring back a million memories in a single instant - my final drawing of Charlie Chaplin symbolises the amazing day I had at the end of the month, a day I wish to never forget because it was one of those seredipitous days where amazing things just simply happened.