Comics workshop with The Animation Chamber

The early evening scheduling of this comics workshop by Dubai's The Animation Chamber was very helpful in ensuring I would get to Maraya Art Centre in minimal time, given how thick traffic to Sharjah tends to later. The program plan was also perfect for me, since it focused on character design and strip development rather than drawing; I already took a course in comic drawing previously.

The workshop consisted of several short timer-limited exercises, beginning with a warm-up: each participant drawing one consecutive panel of blank strips being passed around in each turn.

Then came each participant's individual assignment: random selection of three descriptors each for two characters, prototyping each character, and reducing them to easily-drawn essentials repeated in different poses. It was a little tricky for me at first, as I only trained in the drawing of human faces, but I eventually adapted some of those techniques and kludged up something halfway decent.

After a much-needed break, we chose names for our characters (in my case, "Greta" for my wise hippo supermodel, and "Wilhelm" for my psychotic turtle psychotherapist) and got down to the final stretch of comic production: plot conception, storyboard planning, bordering, sketching and drawing. I was familiar with the idea of the one-page foldout format, but I had never actually created a comic using it, and was pleased with the result achieved in the limited time we were allotted. It was a fun workshop, considering how the 3 hours flew by, and I even got some practice in for my drawing hand after a long time.

STREETCON urban art fest and the new Al Ghurair Centre

Al Ghurair Centre seems determined to not disappear amid the deluge of new malls that has flooded Dubai in the last couple of decades. While geographic factors ensure that it will not be able to compete with Dubai Mall and the planned Mall of Arabia, its latest expansion is extremely bold, and is also timed to coincide with a re-branding that includes a new positioning, new marketing, a new logo, and community activities like the STREETCON urban art festival. If the momentum is sustained, it could result in a new lease of life for Dubai's first mall, and a revitalization of what used to be Dubai's high street.

Most of STREETCON is not actually on the street, except for a couple of murals painted along the road that runs through the mall's premises. One of them is a collaborative mural, to be completed by numerous artists over the ten days of the festival.

A small multi-artist gallery and studio called "The Mash-Up" was packed into a vacant space at the Spinneys block, in which customization toys were being worked on by artists, and urban/alternative art works, ranging from tin art to glass art to graffiti, were displayed.

The AGC expansion itself is actually quite revolutionary. It's a three-level complex with two large atria and many more shops and cafes, connected to the old mall, but with a brighter, swankier look. An expanded food court and entertainment centre have been added. AGC has also launched a magazine that, despite being an obvious promotion for the mall, actually has some low-spiel, interesting content.

Drawing in thejamjar at the third 3rd Mondays

Dubai gallery and art space thejamjar has been hosting a new series of art-focus fora and workshops by The Domino, called 3rd Mondays, for a couple of months now. The have been taking place on - surprise, surprise - the third Monday of each month, and I attended the third this week, titled "Why draw?". As I have a little experience in cartooning, this was a topic on which I was particularly keen.

My own "drawings" (hey, some of these had time limits in seconds)

I arrived in time to catch the latter part of a documentary about drawing, following which I participated in a series of drawing exercises.

Drawings by people who had a better idea of what they were doing

We were given instruments of our choice and sheets of paper on which to try out a number of different challenges, such as drawing oneself or an object within view, in spans of time ranging from 5 minutes to 5 seconds.

A large collaborative work at the end

At the end of the event, we all got an opportunity to draw together on a single, large space, which was a lot of fun. Right before that, though, we had an interesting and informal round table chat about our own experiences with drawing. Many of the attendees were indeed very experienced (evident in what they produced during the exercises), so there was a lot of productive knowledge-sharing regarding materials, technologies and practices.