Bangkok Sketches part 2

In my previous post I talked a bit about going  in a new direction with my sketches.  Whereas previously my sketches were a weird jumble of things that I saw with no distinct purpose, I liked the exercise of drawing everything I could see without moving my head.  This forces me to put myself in a position where there's an interesting angle that I can draw.  As Paul Heaston said, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.  To add another degree of fun to my sketches I'm also now visually thinking of where I should be placing the text, so there's a little graphic design exercise for me there.

The left-hand page is from a boutique in Pratunam Market.  Aissa left me sketching while she went shopping.  I love the little detail of the dog lying underneath the clothes.  The right-hand page was made while waiting for our train to Ayutthaya.  Train stations and airports are visual feasts if you're sketching people.  They draw in all kinds of people, from the hippie backpackers in the background and the average Thai travelers in the foreground.

Filled with the vigor of my new sketching exercise, I decided that sketching in the train wouldn't be a bad idea.  Sure it was kind of shaky, but it turned out all right.  On the right hand side is a sketch of Aissa in Wat Phra Si Samphet.  I'm trying to get over my fear of sketching her.  A fear born of never being able to capture the image of her I have in my head.  She liked it, so that's what counts.

After tramping through temples we visited a night market and sat down to have dinner.  My eyes were drawn to this bedraggled man selling what looked like wooden flowers.  There's a part of me that always feels for the guy who looks like he's had a rough time.  Luckily, before we stood up, he'd had quite a few customers already.  I guess wooden flowers are really popular in Thailand?

The right-hand page sketch is the famous Buddha face lodged in a Banyan (Bodhi?) tree.  I had no idea, but turns out there were quite a few people leaning over and taking photographs of me sketching.  A white guy patted me on the shoulder and gave me a thumbs up before saying "Good job."  A Japanese man and his wife came over and started chattering animatedly about it, and looked through my sketchbook with choruses of "sugooiiii!".  I think they were pleased that there were sketches of Japan in there.

This "drawing everything" style can be quite tiresome, and sometimes when you rush it the perspective of things is all awry, like the bench on the left-hand page.  On the right hand side our train back from Ayutthaya was even shakier than the train going there, hence the wiggly lines.

This was the last sketch I made.  I was already feeling quite tired at this point, but I wanted to record the last few moments of our vacation.  Passengers had congregated in this area where there were a bunch of benches and comfy sofas to wait until their plane was boarding.

The copy I inserted to the left of the gate sign, "Everyone is just waiting to leave again." is my half-hearted attempt as something poetic, and isn't actually written there in real life.

Bangkok and Ayutthaya were fun, and I was happy to be able to visit some places old an new.  I'm definitely happy that I lived here once, and I think I would happily live here again one day.

Bangkok Sketches part 1

Aissa and I took a short vacation to Bangkok a couple of weeks ago, somethong I'd been looking forward to for some time.  Our first trip to Bangkok was about going to the main sights, but this time around I wanted to try to visit some of the places I used to go to when I lived there as a child.  It's amazing to me that I can say that I lived somewhere 20 years ago, but that is Bangkok to me, a part of my history.  I ultimately failed at going back to my old school due to some time constraints, but I did get to eat at a Sizzler and an S&P restaurant, as well as visit the grocery we used to go, which opened up a wellspring of memories for me. Here are some sketches I made with a quick description of each.  I'm sorry I can't do more, but I'm pressed for time lately!

Wat Yan Nawa.  This curious temple is a few minutes walk away from Sathorn Pier/ BTS station.  It has a chedi built like a Chinese junk (the boat, not their privates).  It's a riverside temple, so I suppose the idea was to pay homage to the Chinese junks that used to crowd the Chao Phraya river, bringing information and trade into Bangkok.

I'd forgotten this about Thailand, but most houses and large establishments will have a spirit house, where theoretically spirits are appeased and given offerings so they won't harm the inhabitants of the dwelling.  When I was a child I had no understanding of this, and just thought our apartment had an oddly located dollhouse.  This is the spirit house of The Littlest Guesthouse, whose proprietor also owns the serviced apartment we stayed in.  I would highly recommend staying in either place.

The classic Thai form of transport, the Tuk-Tuk.  This was sketched right outside the Littlest Guesthouse.  Aissa was getting a massage while I sketched it, and I finished it just as the mosquitoes were starting to wake up and dine on my blood.  I really liked how this turned out and I plan on coloring it at some point.

This is a quick sketch of the area around our apartment.  Those W buildings are everywhere!  The scene on the right was from a riverfront marketplace called "Riverfront Asiatique".  There are free ferry boats there, and while it's touristic and a little pricey there's a nice history to them, given that the buildings are the former warehouses of the East Asiatique company, a Danish trading firm that was very active in Bangkok until the early 20th century.  We also lucked into a showing of Muay Thai Live! It was one of those "not on the itinerary" things that we just randomly walked into.  Tickets were a pretty steep 1300 baht each, but I was considering it.  Then the saleslady explained that for February they were running a buy one take one promo, and it was a done deal.  No sketches of the show, but I highly recommend it.  We learned some Muay Thai moves, our favorites being "Rama walks in the jungle", "Elephant destroys the shelter" and "Master pounds the herbs".

Part of my memories of growing up in Bangkok was a restaurant called Sizzler.  It's not very Thai at all, as it featured Steaks and an unlimited salad bar.  But Sizzler opened up its first restaurant in Bangkok when we were living there, and it became one of our go-to places for dining out.  I'm glad they're still around, but very sad that one of my favorite items in their salad bad, the fried potato skins, was no longer there.  I guess they realized that some potato lover had snuck them in the salad bar menu, where they really had no place whatsoever. Whoever you are, I salute you, brave potato lover.

I'm going to leave this post with this last sketch of Bangkok traffic because it represents a new direction in my sketching style.  While we were on our way to Pratunam Fashion Market I browsed through "The Art of Urban Sketching and discovered the artist Paul Heaston.  He describes his process as simply drawing from the bottom up and capturing as much detail as possible.  With some exceptions, this is what I've tried to do in the sketches I made for the rest of the trip, which I'll talk about in more detail next week!

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

The review below originally appeared in Fully Booked's Zine. I highly recommend this book to any introverts or people with introvert friends or partners so that they can better understand themselves or their partners. I was originally wary of this book because I was worried it would be a rah!rah! book espousing the greatness of introverts, but I really like its balanced approach. If you're thinking about picking the book up, please consider doing so through my Amazon Affiliates link.

As a self avowed introvert, Quiet : The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking was a revelation to me.  It explained to me why it is that I don’t particularly like parties (introverts prefer meaningful conversations over light banter), why I like being early to meetings in areas I’m not familiar with (introverts are more comfortable when we know the area and “own” the space) and why working from home is the perfect situation for me (introverts are easy overstimulated and need quiet places for their minds to think).  These are things that I’ve always inherently known and understood about myself, but it’s good to know that there’s decades of research behind it.

 Cain also explores the “extrovert ideal” and why it has such a powerful hold on (mostly western) societies.  She links the extrovert ideal to the financial crisis of 2008, making the case that the collapse of so many financial institutions might have been averted had the advice of more cautious introverts been heeded.  Ultimately she argues that the best organizations have a good mix of go-getting extroverts and mindful introverts and gives both personality types the kind of working space that they need to excel.  

However it’s not just the office space that Cain explores in this book.  She offers up examples of introverts at school, as parents and children, in relationships, in religious institutions, and a variety of other social situations.  If this book were to come out as a distilled “How-To” guide for introverts it would shoot up to number one on the sales charts.  But even in its current in-depth form it is exactly the kind of book that an introvert would adore, one that promises a better understanding of themselves and of the world at large.

The Dildo Factory Mod, Etc.

The last Alpha update for Prison Architect last year finally opened up the game to mods.  Clever people had already figured out a way to hack mods onto the game, but by opening up the gates PA's fans were finally allowed to go buck wild with their imaginations.

1. The Dildo Factory

When I sent a tweet to @IVsoftware notifying them of this mod, all they had to say was "surprised its taken them this long".  

2. Star Wars

Awwwww yeaaaah.  This is what modding was for right?  Those custom Stormtroopers are just plain adorable.  They have R2 droids too!

3. British Boarding School

Fancy playing a top-down version of Bully?  Well you're in luck! Coms complete with plush carpeting and everything.  Surely a Hogwarts mod is on the way.

4. Seasons Mod (4 seasons, get it? GETIT?)

This was one of the first mods that came out when the Alpha was released, and the aim is provide a different mod for whichever season we're currently in.  This was winter, so it featured snow on the trees, Snowmen as your workmen, and Santa Wardens.  Winter lends itself to this kind of modding, so I'd be curious to see what they do with spring (Easter Bunny Wardens?) and summer (Baywatch Prison?).

5. Clearer Needs Mod

This mod gave me the most pause, because it's very obviously critiquing my own work.  Specifically it takes issue with the iconography I used to describe the prisoners' needs.  If the mod were badly done I could laugh it off, but the thing is I sort of agree with this modder that the icons I made are unclear, especially at smaller sizes.  I got caught up with the idea of the body language of my prisoner icons helping to inform the icon and neglected the fact that at smaller sizes a lot of the detail would be lost.

I'm no stranger to critique and indeed I'm happy that someone took the time to think over the same design problem that I did.  However my built-in insecurity about the worth of my work reared its ugly head.  I had been paid to create those icons, and the guy that made this mod did arguably a better job than I did. So he should get my job, right?!?!?

But looking at the other mods I realized that essentially every modder thinks that he can do a better job than the original designers.  It's the very nature of modding!  So people will tweak the code, the settings and the art and make it something they think is "better".  It might be, but better is usually a matter of personal taste, in the same way that I'm using a launcher that completely changes the way Android works because I thought it was cool.

The moral of the story?  Just work as hard and as smart as you can and stop worrying so much about other people.  Looking forward to some more amazing mods!

FASTER!

The sketch above is one of the many converted merchant warehouses that line the canal district of Kurashiki. It's available as a print on society6, as well as other sketches I've made over the course of our travels.

Me: Kono densha wa, Kurashiki e ikimasu-ka? (Does this train go to Kurashiki?)
Train Attendant: Hai! (Yes!)
Me: Domo Arigato (Thanks.)
Another train rolls up on the platform behind us
Train Attendant: Her eyes widen slightly, then she points to the train behind us and says... &@(&(*$@! (Something in Japanese)
Me: Looks confused
Train Attendant: Thinks really hard, then...FASTER!
Me: OH! Jumps onto train with Aissa.

2013 was supposed to be like that train.  I'd switched trains to go faster that year.  Towards what end I'm not sure really, but I hoped it would at least put me in a better place to achieve whatever it was I put my mind to in 2014.  Unfortunately, the metaphorical fast train kind of derailed in the middle of the trip.  There were some small victories of course, like trainguide.ph winning the "inclusive mobility" award in the transit app challenge. I traveled to Korea and Japan again, and met some cool indie devs in Singapore during Casual Connect Asia. My marriage continues to be rock solid, and Aissa has had some great things happen in her own career.  So while I can't say it was the best year of my life, 2013 was good year, albeit one that scarred and humbled me.  I cannot say that I'm optimistic about 2014, but at the very least I think I know what I want now, and I just have to figure out how to get there, even if it means taking the slow train.