Bingo, Beans and Burning Under the Sun
For this sprouter, Saturday started with a mad rush.
I was at Larkin bus station in the wee hours of the day, jostling with the working crowd for a seat (two if you count my huge luggage) on the ever reliable bus 170. After two transfers at the customs, I arrived at JTC just on time for the opening. By then, the wonderful SPROUT! crew has already set up and prepared everything for the workshop. The participants were looking fresh and eager, much to my delight. All I had to do was to give an opening to kick off the event. Damien then took over to play a BINGO game with the instructors and participants; discovering everyone's quirks and habits like "Has 5 body piercing" (None, thankfully) and "Detest M___donalds" (most people) along the way. With everyone slightly hyped, the session was handed over to Arron and his co-instructors, Matthew and Mingshi. Rather than diving straight into strokes and methods, he got everyone's attention by analysing lines the participants drew. Like a mental guru, he got the participants to draw lines to describe their feelings for the day. At Mingshi and Matt's insistence, I too, showed Arron my "mood". Surprisingly enough he was able to read between my lines. Beans, as in the title, was what he taught next. These are not ordinary beans; when placed strategically, they can be transformed into a myraid of characters and animals. While this was happening, I sneaked back home and took a quick break, hence no pictures to show. By the time I returned, he was onto an unconventional method of live sketching. "Without looking" he says, "draw a continous line to form a picture". Literal enough, the method is called "One Line Drawing". The second method involved making dots to form pictures, which the participants did with gusto using markers, pens and pencils. At once, the room was filled with a low, constant pounding sound, as everyone tried to outdot each other. After lunch, the crew headed out to Chinese Garden for some live sketching. As the bag watcher, I could only watch as the participants followed Arron, Matt and Mingshi into the faux oriental garden for sketching inspiration. Along the way, I was told, the 3 instructors showed the participants some nifty handwork and got everyone to make sketches of interesting objects in the park. Mingshi even bought along some charcoal to share with her group. When her group returned, they showed the rest their interesting dark pictures and their darken palms. Debrief was conducted a little like an informal crit. Everyone's sketchbooks were turned to their favourite sketches and Arron highlighted some interesting ones. The participants squated and huddled together to get a better view of each A5 size sketch. It was deja vu. Just a few days ago, me and my friends were squatting and huddling in the same way under a hot Terengganu sun; except we were eating durian then.
Posted by SPROUT!
