Sketch Season

We're a week in to November and still there is no sign of autumn/winter. However today was a bit ok and the weather seems to finally become somewhat bearable.

I decided to take my fishing chair, a large bottle of water, and my sketching gear to make the most out of this lovely Saturday morning. I decided to go to this beautiful small harbour at Zallaq, which lies just next to an old house that once belonged to a rich pearl merchant from Al Dossary family if I'm not mistaken.

Hopefully this will be the start of more outdoor sketching here in Bahrain this year.

20 minute sketch

A quick 20 minute sketch while the Mrs does her make-up. I usually draw an outline in pencil first to make sure that I got the proportions correct. Did not have the time this time so used a pen from the start.

Little India

Sunday morning was sunny and a bit chilly, perfect for a stroll at Manama suq. The Mrs and I decided to have a quick breakfast at one of the new hip cafes in the suq, Barastea, and then check out Little India, a project launched by Bahrain Authority of Culture and Antiquities (BACA). Opened in December 2015, the project features some road upgrade works, splashes of colours on building facades, artworks displayed on the streets, and small public spaces for weekly events.



I picked a corner that I thought was an ideal spot for a quick sketch, which eventually took me 3 hours to complete while the Mrs checked out the jewellery shops nearby (Thank God I have a sensible wife). The thing about sketching on spot for hours during lunch break, is that the perspective changes as people and cars come and go, shops close, shutters come down...etc. I started while the street was busy, and by the time I finished, the street was empty and you can can tell what's for lunch by the smell on the street!





I thought I'd share my sketching process in this post, which starts with a pencil drawing outlining the key features of the view. The next phase I use a black ink pen to draw clean lines and detail the drawing. Finally, I take out the colouring markers to give the sketch the final touch. In this case, I thought I'd concentrate on the work done by BACA; the facade painting that really gave the street a new special character.

Nationalism

As I returned to Bahrain for a quick holiday, I noticed that there was a re-branding wave across the country which caught up with BTV and Batelco logos, perhaps commemorating the 10 years passed since our King came to the throne.

Amidst all the advertising boards on the highways, I was captivated by Batelco’s add near Seef Mall, which had the above picture; two hands, one red and the other white, coming together forming the flag of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The way in which the hands interlock with each other is very forceful, whenever I try it, I do have to force the knuckles through until there are no gaps. Yet the resulting bind is equally unbreakable. I almost sense that I need more force to take my hands away from each other than bring them together. Is there a political statement behind this gesture? Well Arabs generally like to bring politics in everything, so I might be reading way too far into it if I said so.

Nevertheless, the image is strikingly beautiful, whenever I pass the billboard on the highway it stays in my head throughout the journey. The brightness of the colors and the texture of the human hand’s skin made it a beautiful abstract piece of art. This is the first time that I actually saw the beauty of our national flag.

I Shot The Sheriff... Bahraini Style

"I shot the Sheriff... But I didn't shoot no deputy. Oh no noooo!!"

Oh yeah... nothing is better than the irony in hearing the Bahraini Police Force playing the legendary Bob Marley song.

Bahrain in 3D

Apparently Muharraqi Studios has finished working on a 3D full master plan of Bahrain in 2007, which is supposed to enable developers to Plug in the newest developments for the Future. I wonder if in 5 to 10 years time it would be accessible to anyone like Google Earth. I hope so that would really be fun.

Contemporary Art in Bahrain

Dr. Ahmad Baqer


Kamal Abdulla Ali


Husain Fateel

The last time I've been to an art exhibition in Bahrain was 5 years ago; it was a student exhibition when I was at school. I didn't have the enthusiasm and interest about art back then and I guess that's why I never admired Bahraini artists other than Abdulla Al-Muharaqi, a famous Bahraini cartoonist who is also a painter. However I've just been to the 34th Annual Fine Arts Exhibition in Bahrain Museum which opened at 26 December 2007. And I have to say I am really impressed. The exhibition opened my eyes to the great talent in Bahraini artists and the incredible potential of art and culture in Bahrain.

You might notice that there is something common in all 3 pictures I posted. There was a huge variety in the subjects and styles of paintings which made the exhibition more interesting. There were human portraits, urban scenery, landscape, calligraphy, sculpture drawn or built in different abstract styles. What caught my attention and really impressed me were those paintings that contained Islamic or Arabic subjects expressed in different abstract styles. Although I do admire realist art and the ability of artists to draw objects to the tiniest detail in outstanding accuracy, I am not very fond of this style because I always sense there is a lack of feeling in the painting. The painting will only touch viewers if the scene is familiar and the genius in those paintings is in selecting the perfect scene rather than the process of drawing. However in expressionism, artists distort reality according to their feelings; drawing technique, brush strokes, medium and many other factors open the gate to interpretation and interaction with any viewer and that's where the beauty in abstract art lies.

After leaving the exhibition it got me thinking of the lack of attention on culture in Bahrain. With the huge wave of residential towers, office buildings, and other recreational and commercial projects under construction; cultural projects like theatres and museums are less than a handful. There were some design proposals in the exhibition that might see the light, the most significant is the Museum of Contemporary Art by Zuha Hadid. But it would be great to finance a great deal of cultural projects in addition to the commercial and tourist attractions to bring back Bahrain as a leading Gulf State.

Again... Bahrain 2030??

I found this map of Bahrain and had a lot of thoughts about it... some say it was a proposed reclamation map of Bahrain submitted as a document to the International Court of Justice for the Bahrain/Qatar dispute... others say its part of SOM's planning development strategy...

Either way... I find it scary considering that the country is thinking about doubling its size within the next 20 years.... at the moment most urban development is allocated at the north of the main island... most of the southern part, lower parts of the east and west coasts and the lower middle lands are privately owned, military bases or just an undeveloped desert.

There are a lot of disputes about the ownerships of those lands... some say lots of those coasts at the lower part of the island should be public... some say they were unfairly distributed... others say they were taken by force... anyway those are political issues that I don't know a lot about. But in an imaginary, ideal, optimistic, perfect world people will think about the country's needs and not only their pocket's needs... and from that point of view I would think that developing the whole mainland equally instead of concentrating the whole population on the northern parts is a more sustainable thing to do... plus it would be more environmentally friendly than reclaiming land and destroying the marine life for new development... As far as military bases go... those could be set in one of far island isolating it from civilian life.

Plus I think its important to develop islands like Hawar islands and Um Al-Na'asan (which again people say a lot of things about their ownerships)... but of course before any planning there should be deep and lengthy studies and surveys about the site and the wild life in it and what needs preserving and what needs to stay clear of development for wild life protection and so on...