It is easy to inhabit a city without fully appreciating its finer details, like the beauty of its buildings. This was the principle behind Sketch Crawl, an event organised at MG Road recently by travel company Make It Happen. Led by architect-traveler Immanuel Nicholas Iyadurai, the idea was to “make people observe things that they wouldn’t usually observe by taking pictures.”
The idea was first implemented by Nicholas a few years ago when he was a guest faculty at RV College of Engineering. “We then wanted to do it near historical monuments, like in Hampi or Badami, but schedules never matched up. Then we decided to start in Bengaluru.”
The event started outside the MG Road metro station, and the first building on the itinerary was the Higginbotham’s building. Hard Rock Café was covered next, followed by the grand St. Marks’ Cathedral.
Bengaluru : 12/12/2014: View of Hard Rock Cafe on St Marks Road in Bangalore . (Pic to go with Metro Plus heritage report) Photo: Sampath Kumar G P
“The idea is to capture the memory of the place you sketch,” Nicholas goes on to explain, “In this mechanical world, we don’t pause to stop and appreciate things. We just click a picture and keep moving. But sitting down and sketching makes you take notice of the small things.”
Roshna, one of the participants, said she wanted to experience seeing the city in a new light. “I’ve seen Bengaluru change and I wanted to come back and see what’s left of our heritage.”
“Mistakes are okay,” the architect explained to participants, “It adds to the essence of what you’re trying to capture. Your personality comes out while you sketch.”
BANGALORE, KARNATAKA, 13/04/2014: Members of "Pencil and Chai" sketching the parked antique Volkswagon Cars near Central Library at Cubbon Park in Bangalore on April 13, 2014. Photo: G.P. Sampath Kumar
Two friends, Shruthi and Chandini, decided to sign up for this as a bonding experience. “I’ve come so many times to Hard Rock Café, you know, but I’ve never actually noticed how pretty it is,” Chandini laughed.
“It is interesting how four or five lines can evoke so many memories when you get back to them after a few months,” Nicholas observed. “Also, this is largely Baroque architecture, so while sketching these buildings are a bit hard, we aren’t aiming for perfection. That comes in photographs.”
“The important thing is that people don’t have to be artists,” Maria, the organiser of the event, explained. “Anyone can sketch, it is the memories that you make that are important.
