sketchbook, travels

Flying

When I travel, I usually have two choices: to stress or to philosophize. To counter the effects of the the first, I start drawing, and thus ensues the second without any conscious effort.

Airports: The best places to watch and draw people. The placelessness alleviated by signs of culture in the food and in the washrooms, voices, customs, signage. Rushing about doesn’t help in drawing and got a few new white hairs from Lufthansa’s delayed flights.

Airports_spread_b

I was reading Reclaiming Conversations by Sherry Turkle and engaging in a lot more conversation with fellow travelers.

“I am on my sabbatical” and negotiations on the cost of holidays.

“I’m going to a conference on the future of printing – not on paper.”

“I like to take a shower between connecting flights.”

“Hey! You can’t break the line because you’re going to miss your flight!” said a spiffy but rude first class traveler going to Chicago and Atlanta.

“I go to Gymnasium” said a seven year old Nicolas from Germany, who was traveling all by himself.

I was thankful to get some peace and time to sit and draw and be at one with myself.

Airports_spread

Airports_spread_z

In Munich I had currywurst and coffee and thought about judgement:

“Judgement is an escalator. Easy but avoidable.”

Airports_spread_y

After a point, the drawing, the relative imprisonment, and the food and drink always forces me to take some well-earned rest.

This time however I was looking forward to some cheese that did not materialize.

Airports_spread_a

On the way back I was lucky enough to get an extremely amusing companion who made me laugh the entire journey.

And as always so happy to return home and be reunited with the brown boy and our little tornado.

Airports_spread_x

sketchbook

Munich Diary

Design, Event

The workshop in Munich

Last week I went to attend Urban Spaces in the Web 2.0 Era in Munich. It was organized by Martin, Moritz, Nemanja and some others as well, and was a part of the C&T2013 conference.

Here are the sketchnotes I made:

First there was a Pecha Kucha session, where we all had to present our position papers, beginning with Elmar

Lea, Zack

Mads and Nina

Pelin

Maria, Dimitrios

Pasi, Bronwyn

I was the last to present. Then we formed groups and went out into the city for a field exercise, each group to a different location in Munich. My group was supposed to go to the Viktualenmarkt, but unfortunately it was shut, so we went to Marienplatz instead. Then we came back and presented our findings, around different ways of navigating the city.
Here’s Nemanja and Martin presenting their findings, they used a paper map.

I got really engrossed in the discussions that followed so there are no more drawings from the workshop, but later on at the conference Moritz presented the workshop proceedings (only he wasn’t grinning like I’ve drawn).

I’d never been to a workshop before, so this was a really good beginning. The best thing was that everybody was coming from different backgrounds around a common theme, and so there were a variety of perspectives for discussion. I came away all inspired, and looking forward to the next workshop 🙂

People, sketchbook, travels

Travellers

I was traveling more than usual in February, and spending a lot of time in those placeless places called airports. Needless to say I kept myself entertained drawing – and judging – other travelers. (Click on the images to larger views)