Grateful: Sketching with friends online

During the times when going out to the library or cafe to sketch with friends is not an option I sketch with friends online. 

It is not a meeting. There is no agenda, no rules, obligations. It is a very low-key event that happens almost every week and I am very grateful for it. 

I just have a standing appointment with myself to be online at certain time, sometimes I am alone for 30 min - drawing. But usually Suhita Shirodkar joins me and sometimes others too. And for half an hour or so we can talk or be silent and just be together doing the thing we love - drawing.

In the past we sent each other photos of streets to draw, we tried live cams of different places, tried finding places on google street view or mapcrunch to show each other places we know or to find a completely new places we've never been to. 

Lately we've been using the window-swap.com to find a location to draw. You can read more about this simple site in the New Yorker's article here. I miss the snow (this year especially) so I've been looking for windows with the snow lately. 

Making Zines

Another sketching game I play is making little zines and filling them. Now - Zines are small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images. I've learned about them from the art of Kate Bingaman-Burt (she has a class about zines on skillshare) and then fell in love with the Malaka Gharib's amazing little zines and then Austin Kleon made a flock of zines during the quarantine - so I ended up following my heroes and started making zines and filling them with things like "what I saw on my walk" (see video below) etc.

I usually make a bunch of empty zines and then use them during the week.

 

This is my favorite spread from this zine.

Sketching Game I play

I am playing a sketching game almost every day these days. 

I found it on Louise Gouët's instagram and loved her work and the idea so much it became a little present I give myself. Giving yourself little presents is one of the things that I recently added to my repertoire of survival skills and now I recommend it to everyone. Especially now. But that is a reason for a whole separate post.

About this game: I go to the mapcrunch website which gives me a random street view from Google maps. And then draw stuff that I see! Granted some adjustments are needed often - but it's a great start! And if I wanted an urban scene - I just go to google maps and do a street view of a city I want to visit one day. These are mostly super-quick 2x4 inches sketches on whatever paper I have in my pockets (which is a story for another post!)

And then I post it with the #locationdrawathome tag on Instagram.

Try it out and send me a link / tag me on Instagram to see!