Don Low | Illustration | Design | Comics | Paintings

In 2016, my missus and I decided to make a trip to UK to visit some friends and to recharge as well. It was a trip we always wanted to do as a couple. We remembered our trip to UK for the first time in 1998. My wife drive ourselves across UK all the way to Scotland. It was unforgettable. This time we wanted another memory made together at the same time to celebrate our anniversary. We were married for 18 years by then.

LInk to the video on Youtube: Sketchbook Tour UK Trip 2016

Duration: Approx. 4mins Edited with: Filmora Sketchbook: Hand.Book Journal - Watercolour Grand Portrait (Travelogue Series) Size: 10.5" X 8.25" More info (not affiliated): https://www.amazon.com/Hand-Book-Jour... ---------------- Places Visited: 1. Central London 2. Greenstead Avenue 3. Tate Modern 4. Bath 5. Polruan & Fowey in Cornwall 6. Cheltenham 7. Stow-on-the-Wold 8. Conwy 9. Cumbria

USK Symposium 2016 (Manchester)
Also the key reason was to attend the USK Annual Sketching Symposium, this time held in Manchester. The days leading up to the event was nerve wracking because I would be conducting a workshop on sketching people. Teaching a workshop is different because it has to be concise and sometimes 'entertaining'.

The following are the other sketches done on another sketchbook during the stay in Manchester.

Oxford Street & Cavendish Street. Manchester

Nice looking building in Manchester City

This wasn't my first time in Manchester but the first in sketching on the streets. I have not explored Manchester so thoroughly before, thanks to USK.

Sticker gift & autograph by the one and only Rob Sketcherman

Sketching the sketchers

Participating the drink and draw event

University of Manchester

Sketching on the bus

Visiting Kat's close friends living in Manchester

Innside Hotel, Manchester

Heathrow Airport

In total we spent a great 2 weeks in UK. We drove from London to Manchester and back. A pretty awesome and exciting road trip but really tiring after that. However we were glad we could do it together. We weren't sure when we would do it again but to our delight, we were back in 2 years time in 2018 as a stopover on our trip to Porto Portugal for another USK Symposium.

Somewhere in Quebec City.

The virtual sketching community has grown a lot bigger just this year and the last because of the pandemic lockdown. Many sketchers around the world have been relying on Google Streetview to sketch different part of their own hometown or some part in some remote area. I have been doing this even before the pandemic just so I could explore more places.

This piece was one done to warm up for the day and also I was just relaxing to music and reflecting. A Pilot marker was used for the lines. I held the pen further away from the pen tip so I have less control over the lines draw, resulting in some quivering lines to add interest. A quivering line is still a line and a straight line is not governed by how perfect it is. As long as there is a obvious starting and ending point in a certain angle, it is a straight line. Tones were added with watercolour. I have to leave enough white to suggest a sun lit location.

The darks (shadows) were added with a Pentel brush pen - no going over the same area more than once - was the principle I held on while filling in the darks. Anyway don’t mind the crayon marks on the sky.

My Favourite Tools for Sketching and Drawing

The tools I used for sketching and drawing

All over the world, people wants to know what are the essential jobs during the pandemic or who are the essential workers in times like this. It is crucial to have the right people not to be locked down when the cases of Covid19 was on the rise. In Singapore, however, people are interested to know who are the non-essential workers who are holding the least important position in a crisis. So a local newspaper did a survey and published the result.

Source: https://mothership.sg/2020/06/sunday-times-survey-artist-non-essential/

Lo, and behold, the top 5 non-essential jobs are revealed, and topping it all was "Artist".

From the repost:

In an article on June 14, The Sunday Times revealed the results of a commissioned survey on people's perceptions of essential jobs within the context of a pandemic.

Results were collated from the responses of around 1,000 participants aged 16 and above, with a "nationally representative sampling across age, gender and income groups."

It was carried out by Milieu Insight, a Singapore-based consumer research firm.

To a nation that produces one of the world's leading GDP, the artist is the least essential during a crisis. Artists sit around all day without anything to do. So we were all wondering who they got to produce the infographics that was published alongside the survey data. If it wasn't for the artist, who else was responsible for the graphics and the layout? Engineer? Computer scientist? My mother?

I was more curious who were interviewed for the survey. It is uncertain how the survey defined what an artist is. Why artist? Was it given as a multiple choice? Was there no other option left? Was it done on purpose to sway the public to believe that going to a art and design school is non-essential. How did the public perceived what an artist is. There were so many question popping into my head when I saw the results of the survey.

The most pertinent question was, how did a national paper allow such survey to go through? And "Why is this need to publicly proclaim as to who is doing important work and who is doing lesser ones?

The survey has sparked many to voice out.