17th to 22nd January 2023
Drawing each day was one of the best parts of my travels through Asia.
It is a great way of starting a conversation. When I took out my sketchbook to draw on the flight from London Stanstead to Istanbul, the little girl Dilara, sat beside me on the plane, wanted to look at my drawings. We both took turns to draw her mother Gul (as well as her pet chicken Senep).
Next, I decided to draw the people sat across from me in the departure lounge at Istanbul airport. After I had finished, I went across to show them the drawing I had done of them. I think it is only polite, after staring at them for all that time. I ended up chatting with the family, who were on my flight to Muscat. They very kindly offered to give me a lift to my accommodation, which given that we were arriving at 4am, was incredibly welcome.
I set myself the specific challenge of drawing people, as I have never been very good at faces. My first attempts weren’t great, in fact the one of the little girl (above) was so poor that it prompted me to say to everyone I drew from that point on “It probably won’t look like you and you may feel insulted.” But I kept going and began to slowly see improvement.
Nedal was the host of my Airbnb on the coast in Muscat. He kindly allowed me to draw him while he watched TV. I was again, quite nervous about drawing him. I am so glad I did, because every time I see this drawing of him, I am taken right back to that room with all of its atmosphere and all the conversations we had.
All of these drawings took less than an hour to complete, with the majority taking around 30 minutes.
