Setting up my sketchbooks for my first solo exhibition titled ' KL Sketchnation' in Galeri Serdang, University Putra Malaysia (UPM) in march 2016.
The ART of Sketching : Walking the Lines.
ARCHITECTURE, the 'mother of arts' as they said, was the first spark that gets me into my art venture. Architecture and built environment was always part of my life since the very beginning. I was born and raised in a family that is actively involved in the built environment industry in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
I was exposed to arts and architecture as far as I can remember, as it’s a common topic at home especially when most of my relatives are also in the same related field of architecture and arts. Knowledge on drawings, painting, music, writing, theater and films had been taught to me through my childhood, as we were actively involved in joining arts societies and communities during our past time.
Colouring competition when i was 2 years old (1992)
SCHOOL YEARS – attachment to heritage and conservation.
The exposure of arts throughout my childhood had made me a ‘multi-enthusiast’ as I have passion in a lot of different branch of arts. I was always interested with all kind of arts since I was in school. Been selected into a premier an old heritage Colonial British building, the Victoria Institution dated 1923 during my high school was my first encounter to experience a place where I was really emotionally attached. I was not sure why during that time but I just know that there significant elements of the building that are very precious. Indeed now I know they are.
As the conservation rules and regulation were very loose in Malaysia in those years, the building conservation was not been taken seriously. The school management has all the rights to do anything to the building. During my 5 years there, the building had faced a lot of challenges and pressure in its maintenance as no one else from the school management was really concern about the conservation of the building. For some reason, my exposures and experience through my childhood had made me understand that the building was being ‘harassed’ with crude renovations, unnecessary changes, minor demolitions and short-cuts construction solutions in which broke my heart seeing each one every time. Then, i realized that i have deep concerns for my surrounding, and i need to do have the power to change things around me.
My alma mater, Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur. Photo from the early years of 1920s. source
SKETCHING the ARTS, beyond visuals.
I guess, these experiences developed my interest and thinking skills in producing arts. I do believe that arts is more than just pretty pictures. For me, art is knowledge. An artwork will only qualified to called arts when theres knowledge embedded in a piece of creation. And with that, i started to develop the idea that arts could not exist in vacuum, it needs audiences. Arts will only be valuable when the audiences believe it is valuable. In the other hand, arts can also be valued in the contents; the knowledge an artist wanted to deliver with their artworks.
Another thing that i did soon realised when im more engaged with making arts, are the power it possessed in connecting people, and delivering messages. Arts does have it ways to connect to not only human minds, but also their hearts, making it a powerful tools for inception to convince people with big ideas.
So i pushed it further, making the art of sketching into a social tools with "togetherness in sketching" as our modus operandi for "KL Sketchnation".
The SKETCHNATION
When I was in my first year in the UK in 2011, I was already an active urban sketcher. My favourite thing to do is to go to places with a sketchbook and a pen, do a quick 15 minutes live sketch of what intrigues me there and then take a picture of the drawing with the setting and share it on social media. I found this is actually a good practice to train myself to be more sensitive of my surrounding as well as making all my travels worth my while rather than just taking pictures. I would include captions of what I was sketching to share it with the world. I had been doing that for a number of years since I started my architecture studies. I had collections of completed sketchbooks with the sketches from all over the place I’ve been to.
There was the first ever meeting and gathering of a group called Manchester Urban Sketchers founded by a senior lecturer of Manchester School of Art, Simone Riyard in front of the newly finished MMU Business School at that time. That was my first time ever heard of the USK (Urbansketcher) group.
Urban Sketchers is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people around the world who draw on location where they live and travel. They bring an aim ‘to show the world, one drawing at a time’.
I was so thrilled to know that I wasn’t alone! Ever fortnight, they will have a session called a ‘sketchcrawl’ where they will set a location and time for everyone to gather with all their sketching sets, disperse to sketch around the area within a period of time and after that gather for show and tell, and finishing it with a group photo. It such a perfect gathering to socialize with a lot of different people from different ages, different professions, different styles but yet sharing the same passion of sketching.
I never missed a session for 2 years until I have finished my degree; I become a part of the committee members where sometimes I’ve been given the honor to lead some sketchcrawl. After my graduation, I have no choice but to go back to my hometown in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for my year out as my VISA has expired.
During the year out I missed having sketchcrawl sessions like I had back in Manchester. I tried to find Urbansketchers Kuala Lumpur but the group was no longer active so I had decided to start my own group with the label Kuala Lumpur Sketch Nation (KLSketchnation) in March 2014 using the same discipline with USK Manchester did. We started just as a sketching group to gather sketchers community around KL but words spread out fast, the group than grew into a non-profit voluntary organization.
The official logo for KL Sketchnation i started in the year 2014, have now gets its name in the world. Check out our website www.klsketchnation.com .
Apparently, communal/social sketching is contagious. Our participant started out from architecture students but as it grew, we noticed that those who joined us are coming from different disciplines; medical students, lawyers, accountants and many others. They had come to join us sketching and appreciating different settings of architecture around Kuala Lumpur. Within several months, there were 20 active voluntary committee members. Our participant grew tremendously from just about 5-10 sketchers towards our biggest turn-ups record of 80 sketchers in a session.
As the group developed stronger and bigger, it evolved into an art movement in the art scene of Kuala Lumpur and had attracted a lot of other charity and non-profit organization to collaborate with us. When we thought things couldn’t get any better, we had also drawn the medias to us that lead to grab the attention of sponsors.
When I had finished my year out, I came back to Manchester for my Part 2 with KLsketchnation was established for one year and had lead a new sensation of art community in Malaysia. New art based communal groups spurs with different positive social engagements and charity projects.
KL Sketchnation co-hosted the World Sketching Symposium with Manchester Urbansketchers in Manchester in the year 2016 that involved 400+ people from 44 countries all over the world.
Further into formal research.
As I have been putting so much effort into it in the past year, I have decided to go further all out to document the process and had proposed to put KL Sketchnation into my research dissertation paper for my MArch. The research title was “The Sketch Nation: Architectural Appreciation Through the Means of Urban Sketching”, using KL Sketchnation as the foundation of research and studies. It was themed under humanities, anthropology and psychological studies of architecture under Dr. Ray Lucas. After the completion of the research paper and finished my first year, the dissertation had passed with distinction. KL Sketchnation has now become research based and was registered as a full non-profit organization.
September 2017 marks another step further that i took in pursuing the art of sketching; taking the very same fundamental idea into a doctoral research, in the realm of cognitive psychology, theory of perception and arts of sketching. You can have a read about it on my previous post about it here;
@kymio/the-science-behind-sketching-psychological-theory-of-perception-and-cognitive-psychology
Artworks : Travel Sketching.
Most of my artworks are on travel sketches where the drawings were done on location while im travelling. The highlights of these artworks were always the back stories of my experiences that i had during my visit and doing the sketch in public.
You can have a look at some of my previous postings to get a better picture;
@kymio/sketching-in-public-made-us-a-star-guest-in-disneyland-shanghai
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@kymio/sketchnation-sketching-kuching-native-tribes
@kymio/sketching-the-vibrant-details-thean-hou-temple-live-sketching-timelapse
@kymio/travel-urbansketching-sketching-sydney
Achievement Highlights.
"Urbansketching Assorted 01" is a piece of my urbansketching photography collections printed on aluminium panel.
Exhibited my artwork in the Malaysia National Art Gallery for the 'Open Show' 2014.
The Open Show Catalogue.
My first solo exhibition in 2016.
Recognization : Media publication links.
- Newspaper/blog/online
a) National
The Malay Mail : http://www.themalaymailonline.com/features/article/mmoxgtf-join-kl-sketchnation-as-they-invade-george-town-on-sunday
http://www.ykeni.com/index.php/2016/03/16/architecture-meets-art/
http://www.upm.edu.my/berita/details/sketchbi?LANG=en
http://www1.hmetro.com.my/node/128254
http://juxtaart-sequel.blogspot.my/2014/08/kl-sketch-fest.html
http://selebritionline.com/nurul-izzati-ibrahim-pemenang-sunsilk-menemanimu-sejak-tahun-2000/
http://klpac.org/ysdartsfest/lineup/kl-sketch-nation/
b) International
http://spaceportx.com/events/122
http://events.msa.ac.uk/2015/group/15/
- Videos
Utusan Online: http://m.utusan.com.my/video/lakar-persahabatan-melalui-lakaran-1.206627
Malaysia Hari Ini : 
Manchester Sketch Fest 2015 : 
- Publications
http://englishjer.com/hundredhundredfrustrations/
- People’s post
http://tokrimau.tumblr.com/post/95821861969/sketchers-i-met-at-kl-sketch-nation-sketch-fest-i
http://addictedwithdots.blogspot.my/2014/08/kl-sketch-nation.html
http://johorsketchers.blogspot.my/2014/05/kl-sketch-nation-johor-sketchers-at.html
http://poskod.my/features/ramadan-sketch-challenge/
Hope and plans for Sndbox Summer Camp.
It will mean the world to me if i can be part of the Sndbox, as i know i will definitely taking the most chance of it and opens up the opportunity promote steem and grow the #sketchnation community that ive just started few months ago to gather the existing global network of urbansketchers into blockchain. These urbansketchers have been actively blogging since 2009, it is time for them to get into the world of steemit.
One of our sketching workshop we did in Manchester for Manchester Sketch Festival that we held in 2015.
Besides that, encouraging steemians to use graphic sketching as part of their post to improve the interestingness and the reach of their post, no matter in what topic are one of our target and goal. Steemit now have become one of my referral point to witness the proves that through visuals and sketches can improve communication of knowledge transfer across different disciplines.
Thank you @guyfawkes4-20, @anomadsoul, and @sndbox for the chance for me to share my aspiration. :)
