I've been drawing comics since I was small, perhaps even before I entered primary school. Looking back, I realise I'm very much a storyteller at heart, and among my favourite media is that of sequential art. Comics are a combination of words and pictures, two things that appeal to me very much. However it is only very recently that I began to use this art form in the context of on-location urban sketching. This July, I will be giving a lecture on Sketching Stories at the International Urban Sketchers Symposium in Manchester, UK. Just last year I gave a 3-hour workshop in Bandung on the same topic in May. This year's lecture will just be about an hour and it will be given twice over 4 days. Hopefully I'll be able to share an approach to urban sketching that will be new to many.
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| Copyright © Favian Ee 2015 |
Urban Sketching and creating comics are not easy partners. The former thrives on spontaneity while the latter often requires a lot of planning and is not always easily done on-location from direct observation. But that does not mean it can't be done. Familiarity with the comics art form will allow the artist to adapt it into different situations. The first two drawings in the page above, for example, were done on-location. The last one was added later.
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| Copyright © Favian Ee 2015 |
Sequential art allows you to describe a space, like in the example above, which was done during a sketchwalk to the National Museum. I didn't cover the museum. The sketches were done at Fort Canning Park behind.
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| Copyright © Favian Ee 2015 |
It also allows you to cover events, like this sketchwalk we had at the National Library recently. Addition of text as captions, speech/thought balloons, and sound effects allow for greater narrative possibilities. Both the examples above were done on-location. Planning the page before execution is pretty important. To do that, it helps to do a quick survey of the area before starting work.
A lot of the time, especially when I'm on holiday, I don't have the luxury of time to sketch everything on-location, so sometimes I just do a few sketches on-site and the rest from photos, or I do them entirely from photos, which wouldn't be considered urban sketching, like the 2 pages below.
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Copyright © Favian Ee 2015
Page from my sketch journal of my trip to New Zealand |
While I'm no speedster, I can do quick sketches when I need to, even while using a sequential art approach, like the following sketches I did on a National Education tour during my army reservist training (some of them are more akin to sketch note-taking). I worked directly in ink on an A6 sketchbook while I followed the group around. Each sketch took just a few minutes and had to be done before we moved to the next location once the guide had finished talking (with the exception of the Surrender Document, which I finished up later).
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| Copyright © Favian Ee 2015 |
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| Copyright © Favian Ee 2015 |
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| Copyright © Favian Ee 2015 |
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| Copyright © Favian Ee 2015 |
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| Copyright © Favian Ee 2015 |
These are just some things I'll be sharing at the Urban Sketchers Symposium come July. There will be more things to share, including some tips to get those new to comics creation started. Looking forward to Manchester!
Check out my
Sketchpacker Diaries blog too! That's where I put my travel sketches.
