A rare sketching opportunity came my way when I was approached by a junior architect friend to provide drawings for his exhibition project at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, the second oldest hospital in Thailand, opened since 1914. My provision for this exhibition are sketch images of some original buildings, now all demolished, and other historically related images. The exhibition will be held from 9th to .. of June to co-incide with the up-coming Ananda Mahidol day on 9th June at Pathayapat Building in the hospital compound.
With a few rounds of walk in the busy public hospital that takes care for some 1500 patients a day plus several books for back ground, I proposed to have two main focal drawings for the exhibition.
An over-all aerial view of the hospital compound from Rama IV Road as it was some 50 years ago.
Allow me to introduce to you my sketchbook. You must have heard of it belore but perhaps did not have the opportunity to make an acquaintance with. Sketchbook is just a form of diary keeping, and I am sure you are familiar with diary. Instead of writing down in words, I draw instead, of whatever caught my attention. It can be any kind of drawing and techniques including coloring and even writing just like you would a diary. For more fun, I often keep materials related to whatever I am sketching about, such as tickets, postcards and so on just as you would a scrapbook.
Many people never thought of recording or drawing subject or situation that could be their "once in a life time" experience. Some may wonder why keeping sketchbook at all when it is easier to take a picture with a camera and some might not know how to start one even if they like the idea! I am not surprised by all these doubts. I myself had no interest in sketchbook keeping at all till late in life. Despise being an architect where drawing, sketching (work related) is what he does for a living and it's easily his every day's activity. I did not have a single sketchbook during the 25 years of career as an architect. Of course, I produced tons of drawings, by hand since it was before the auto-cad days. My first sketchbook materialized only when I stop working as an architect, nearly ten years ago, while on a family vacation!
Looking back in wonder why I did not get interested in sketchbook during those long exciting career years and I realized that, perhaps, because I never heard of sketchbook activity, never saw one, no one around me ever mentioned of one either. Again, looking back and I was sure that if I was introduced to sketchbook earlier, I would have started earlier. My collection of sketchbooks would have been in their hundreds instead of tens as of now.
And I feel it is for me to try introducing sketchbook to any one the pleasure, the value of sketchbook activity so that some people are happier sooner!
