Marching and sketching at IWM

croquis, Events, Mexico, Street scene

I took my sketchbook to the International Women’s Day march and managed to jot down some 30-second croquis on the hoof.

Zapatistas at Oventic

croquis, Events, Mexico, Sketch

Quick pencil sketches from a cultural event at Caracol Oventic, one of the civic centres of the Zapatista movement for indigenous autonomy.

Office swap meet posters

Britain, Comics, Events, sustainable development, Watercolour

A small and delightful project: drawings for the office swap meet (which I’m also organising). My dayjob office is by far the most diverse place I’ve worked, but there are still subcategories of colleague. So I wanted to draw people who’d look like real colleagues… but not exactly like any one colleague. I think one or two (or three) did end up being very close to real individuals. I’ll see if they spot themselves!

Mo tools, mo joy!

Project teaser

Book, Events, Mexico, Sancris en Colores, Sketch, Street scene

A sketch for something bigger…

Raw from my sketchbook.

Women’s festival batch 3

croquis, Events, Mexico, Sketch

More croquis from the EZLN International Festival for Women who Fight! (Although the verb luchar in Spanish in this case means “struggle” as in “the ideological struggle” , rather than actually fighting. It also means wrestling, as in lucha libre. Fun with etymology.)

I drew these women during a really confused lecture on “Dismantling The Man into Things”. Hence the sceptical faces.

Zapatista women’s festival

croquis, Events, Mexico, Sketch

7000 women make a noise like a low-frequency beehive. Every morning when we crawled out of our tents in the freezing, clear air, the hum was already going and it kept getting stronger as more people woke up and started looking for breakfast. The festival was organized by the Zapatista movement and hosted by Caracol 4 in Morelia. Nobody knew quite what to expect. I arrived with a contingent from Ama-Awa, the women agroecologists, carrying tents, food and water for three days. We were pleasantly surprised to find abundant flushing toilets, food outlets (although the queues did stretch out), showers and drinking water taps… all without the presence of a single man. And no alcohol either. My friend’s ten-year-old daughter could attend any session she liked without her mum having to worry. And there was plenty to choose from, ranging from lectures on land rights, Indigenous lesbianism, masculinity in childhood to art, dance and theatre and workshops for making reusable menstrual pads. And a Colombian batucada.
I sketched participants during the lectures, amazed at the sheer range of women there… tall, short, skinny, round, old, young, lawyers, hippies, gorgeous, ugly, of all colours, made-up and rolled-out-of-bed. Here are some of them.

History of the festival: http://luchadoras.mx/mujeres-zapatistas/

Amazing photos by Trasluz photographers

At the opening ceremony

This was just one of the hardcore women who brought their babies to the event and stood with them in the hot sun for hours during the first day’s plays. Wearing layers of heavy clothing and knitted black balaclavas.

Tostada seller

Smoking and chatting

The Danish delegation

Sketch of the day: Tenejapa carnival

croquis, Events, Mexico, Sketch

The week-long carnival in Tenejapa in the Chiapas highlands includes several colorful elements, such as this “chasing of the cow”. The men dress in red ceremonial finery and, among other things, chase a woven-mat “cow” around the town plaza. (Later there’s “chasing the bull” at another plaza, looking exactly the same as “chasing the cow”, but at that event cameras aren’t welcome… so I figured sketchpads aren’t either). It’s a day full of symbolism and prehispanic references and local pride – also lost of whooping at jokes. It’s very contagious and after we left we spent the rest of the day going “i-e-e-e!!”

Special costume including a stuffed ocelot.

Even though he was standing still it was hard to get all the textile detailes!

The procession’s drummer.

The “cow”!

Ocelot man from another angle.

Zapatistas and zapaturistas

Events, Mexico, Sketch, sustainable development

Some sketches from the art festival CompArte at the zapatista centre Caracol Oventic. The festival took place for a week at the campus of CIDECI with concerts, changing art shows, workshops, documentaries and theatre; and at the weekend there were performances at Oventic too.

EZLN soldiers holding the crowd barrier

An intrigueing experience for sure. This time I had a bit more time for sketches as most people stayed put watching the performances of theatre, dance, poetry and music.

A “bailable” dance

The girl band – like all the zapatistas, wearing Indigenous traditional dress and balaclavas – were a riot of energy and power.

Zapatista girl band singer

Zapatista girl band bassist

As always, people couldn’t resist filming instead of watching. Or, in my case, drawing.

Filming

Spectators

Ears

EZLN soldier holding up a crowd barrier

Adults’ colouring in

Colouring-in, Events, Mexico, Värityskuvat

I took a pile of my colouring-in pictures to a work party recently, reasoning that not everyone would like to join the bachata class or read a poem and this could be a nice activity for the less extroverted of us. It worked a treat! The table with the pictures and box of coloured pencils quickly became a centre for chatting and colouring.

I was also surprised over how different everybody’s style was. Antonio started by colouring the whole elephant an even grey, according to me the most boring part of the picture. Lupe coloured all the shoes and was the only one who finished in the sense of covering her whole picture in colour. Giovanna added patterns and psychedelic details to the forest scene. Both she and José Luis gave the little girl in the picture a green or blue elf skin tone. I think this could be a hit at other events too.

Sketch of the day: Valentine’s Day elephants

Events, Sketch, Uncategorized

Done as part of a Valentine’s day postprandial drawathon. The guests’ productions (below) were considerably funnier.

By Mateo: cutout centre

By Carla: with 3-D wings

By Patrick: the best.

Your organisation’s holiday card

Events, Vector graphics, Watercolour

Soon you need to send out electronic Christmas/holiday cards to your stakeholders. How about a personalised one from Development Cartoons? I can make a lovely watercolour or cheeky vector graphic customised for YOU. The card can jog memories of important milestones (plus falling snow), celebrate good achievements (by serene candlelight), express you vision & mission (plus reindeer)…Your people will remember your organisation best if you make them smile!

Lessons and commitments graphic recording

Africa, Events, graphic recording, Watercolour

All We Can gathered the participants’ learning and commitments from their partnership conference using a method called cascading, or the snowball, or, we decided, the River. In this exercise, people think individually at first and then gather in increasingly large groups to select the best contributions. At the end, about ten peoples’ thoughts have been distilled into ten points. I drew the process explanation diagram and also the final result… Here’s the resulting poster, drawn live in the session!

Ethiopia field trip

Africa, Events, Sketch, sustainable development

These guys were watching us visit the beekeeping centre. They work for ADHENO, but Tarike is the kebede (village) manager.

The All We Can partnership conference involved a field trip to two of their Ethiopian partner organsations. I went to ADHENO’s project where they’ve spent twelve years developing conservation agriculture and reforestation. We saw beekeeping, the fuel-efficient stove workshop and the church where the project began. A great day with great people.

Inspiration! Networking!

Events, graphic recording

The All We Can conference aims – in pictures!

Inspiration! Partnerships! Learning! Networking!

We’re in Ethiopia at the All We Can partnership conference where I’m working as graphic recorder. So far the drawings have garnered lots of positive comments from participants (and organisers)! A good start!

All We Can partnership conference – scan test

Events, graphic recording

The All We Can partnership conference is starting tomorrow and we’re testing our equipment. This is a marker drawing scanned with a scanner app – nifty! – showing some of their partner organisations.

Graphic recording at SOCLA – relatorio gráfica SOCLA

Events, graphic recording, sustainable development

Friday saw Development Cartoons amid professors, farmers and students, and combinations of all three, at the 5th Latinamerican Conference of Agroecology, SOCLA. I provided the graphic recording for the agroecology team from ECOSUR in Mexico during a brainstorming session about key factors of success in agroecology projects. Here’s the result!

Drawn during the ‘sharing in plenary’ stage of the workshop.

With the ECOSUR team post-workshop

Conference illustration in Ethiopia coming up!

Events, graphic recording, Uncategorized

My next job is prrrretty exciting: graphic recorder at the partnership conference of the Methodist NGO ‘All We Can’ – in Addis Abeba! All We Can partners come from countries that range from Haiti to the Philippines. I’ll work with the rapporteuring team to add visual summaries of ideas and discussions to the proceedings, reflection and summaries – and we’ll see how well cartoons translate ideas across language and cultural divisions. Addis here we come!

Festival session in – Batman!

Events, graphic recording, Inclusion, Sports and Development, Turkey

This month sees Development Cartoons in action in Turkey. Here are some photos from the end-of-project festival of ‘Start with Sports‘ in the delightfully named city Batman. 400 project-participant kids had to be entertained and edified and I, with Eija and Cihan on the team, ran a series of 20-minute sessions for them on ‘Drawing sports’. We used stick figures to draw action poses. The sprogs behaved admirably well and produced some expressive football, basketball and badminton drawings.