Sketch 1: The Beginning of My Sketching Journey

The 1st of September marks a beginning of 'The Sketching Project'; my year-long journey, during which, I will sketch the world around me and upload it to this blog. Drawing and sketching have always helped me to notice, experience and explore the world around me to the fullest. However, I have always found it impossible to commit and draw regularly. Even as an architecture graduate, I found it so hard to look around me and notice something worth capturing? Every day, we experience SO MUCH! Our days are full of both mundane and exciting things, we interact with people, we are surrounded by cities and nature, hear sounds, have thoughts... And on most days, I struggle to make time to capture a single thing that caught my attention. Does it mean that most days go by without me remembering anything from them in the long run, despite their seeming importance and richness at the time I experience them? Not really. I have always loved recording my days in diaries, filling my sketchbooks during vacations or when I got bored, writing gratitude journals… But for the upcoming year, I want to take this beautiful opportunity to create a new habit for life. A habit of creating a visual memories of my special days, no matter how ordinary they might seem.

So why ME?

I am not a Michelangelo, but who is? Most of us can sketch = can make diagrams that capture something from the real world on paper so that we can understand it or recollect a memory by looking at it. And that is the power of the art of sketching. In this blog, I share with you something simple and mundane, yet rich and telling. I am not trying to make Art and find Beauty, a sketch captures the world as it is: messy, disproportional, fun, belonging to everyone! Just like everyone lives surrounded by architecture, cities and nature, everyone can and ought to enjoy looking at it, judging it, noticing it. This blog is not about art, it’s about our everyday. It is not for artists, it is for people.

So why NOW?

In June 2019, I graduated in architecture at the University of Cambridge, and ahead of me is a new year of both ordinary and extraordinary endeavours. During the upcoming year, I plan to travel to volunteer and explore Nepal, visit my international friends in their homelands, spend Christmas in the Czech Republic, my beautiful home country, to live and work abroad, and probably much more! I want to remember my travels, not from a few photos on my phone. I want to remember things as I saw them, moments as I experienced them and felt them. Every day, I want to think about WHAT'S WORTH CAPTURING. I want to observe, question and be curious. I want to find little extraordinary things within my 'ordinary' days at work or home. And sketches help to do that. They make us ask 'why', discovering the little pebbles within our amazing world, patiently, mindfully, one at a time.

Sketch of the day: Childhood on the beach

Today, I saw a Greek boy sitting in a café on the beach. We are in a wonderful village in southern Crete, where a vibrant community of both Greeks and foreigners come to recharge and spend their vacation (more on that in another post!). Everyone here tries hard to enjoy each and every well-deserved moment. I found it so funny that for a local boy, being here at this magical place feels as boring as it gets, spending his hours as most boys would; with a coke, pizza and his phone. I wonder, do we sometimes do the same at home? How often do we ignore the beauty of the place we know very well and don't bother to look around us? Well, I am here now, and I am looking around, with a sketchbook in my hand.

Location: Sougia, Crete

Daytime: 14:30 pm