Introduction

Inspired by the questions I received after a lecture in Skopje, and after the feedback from the progress of the Summer School, I decided to devote a separate blog post on possible urban storytelling toolbox ingredients.

The Urban Storytelling Toolbox aims to serve architects, artists, writers, designers and other creatives who are passionate about understanding and developing their own intimate story with their:

• experience of Home,
• travelogue recording,
• mapping of spatial experience,
• expanding spatial imagination,
• exploring meaningful Places to writing-drawing varieties.

Figure 1. The Urban Storytelling Toolbox

The photograph shows the instruments I am using most frequently when I am drawing a trip experience, exploring a design question or simply offering my hand, thoughts and feelings the freedom to make a story on their own pace.

This Urban Storytelling Toolbox works for me also as an SOS box for urgent help when I am facing a creative blockage, or when I am overwhelmed by the (self imposed) anxiety of »not working fast enough or good enough«. While pressure works good in bringing technical decisions and operative solutions, it may have a devastating impact to the creative process:

You cannot force a plant to bloom, if it hasn't taken the time to grow its roots inside the earth.

 

Instead of pushing myself to work harder when I feel the lateness and lack of time within a design or a research process, I am taking a step back and go for a short 30 minutes “vacation” on the drawing paper. When approaching the blank page with a drawing intention, this is what follows in the drawing process:

• Letting go of control: returning to my body, and recalling that it is safe to be there
• Surrendering to my embodied memory, trusting my memory, trusting my hand
• I do not represent: I think, experiment and explore instead
• I avoid realism: I search and extract my own points of meaning, by transcending their ordinary connotation into a meaningful story inside my project
• I don’t expect, I don’t plan: my drawing is a form of “becoming undisciplined”, I do not allow it to become another ‘planned’ or ‘predicted’ activity.

The best way to overcome the feeling of fear from the blank page, is to transform it into a territory of freedom.

 

Figure 2. The brush by brush method: watercolor dialogue: I. Cvetkova and V. Bogdanova. Transparent paper was added one week after the watercolor drawing.

The Toolbox: Instruments of Storytelling Meaningful Realities

The instruments on the photograph, from left to right, are ordered in few groups, according to similarity:

• line drawing tools: pencils, fountain pens, rapitographs
• cutting and gluing tools (collage): large and small scissors for detail cuts and a white track
• watercolor tools: brushes, pencils, ink, tubes, water holders/color mixers, water ink.

As an example of using these tools in the creative process, I will discuss the meaning of these tools in my work with a particular emphasize on how it may be useful to architects who are keen to artistic practices but operate within a rigid and difficult environment that does not encourage their sensitivity to beauty beyond “technical”. The examples of usage can be also applied and reappropriated within other creative professions, industries and practices beyond architectural profession. The tools are explained within three main dichotomies that architects face: pencil-pen, real-imagined, precise-effortless.

Photographs represent a match between the tools used and the concrete drawing produced.

Pencil-pen dichotomy

Figure 3. Clumsy pen sketch for a design project during the process of deciding the landscape elements. Project: Kicevo sport complex, 2nd award, 2019. M. Dimitrievska, D. Spasevska, V. Bogdanova, M. Dokuzova. 

Pencil – the simplest and most basic tool, setting us free of the anxiety of making a mistake: you may always erase a line when a rubber is near. However, the paper still contains the almost invisible mark as a processual trace.

In drawing architecture, I use technical pencils with different thickness (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 2.0), but also normal wooden pencils. While this was more natural in the early years of learning architecture, I still work with pencils in drawings with intense “fragility” where the precision is needed in scale. In writing, however, I never use pencils for one simple reason:

I trained myself to let go of the fear of making a mistake in my drawing and my life, by exploring my attentive behavior when I am drawing directly with inerasable blackness of the ink. In this way, I stopped perceiving my unpredicted moves as mistakes: I transcended them into events of opportunity that made the painting itself a living organism.

My father’s best friend, Andreja, was an architect in retirement. When they were working together in late evenings (architect & civil engineer duo), I was a child and was always around the table, exploring the drawing equipment. I followed them even on their walks and dinners, when I witnessed the creation of napkin sketches. Andreja thought me to “free” my hand from “mistakes” from an early age. At school, in the first few grades, we were not allowed to use pen, under the pretense of learning how to “erase” our “mistakes” and not to be confident “too early”. We were also instructed to write and draw within notebooks with squares and lines – a form of learning “order”, which additionally damaged my already terrible diopter. Andreja thought me to “get rid” of the dark side of the pencil immediately, to set the hand free, to surrender to the flow of the ink. My father on the other hand, thought me to find my own order within blank sketchbooks – away from lines and squares.

Pen – especially a fountain pen – is probably the dearest tool of architects. You may see them wearing fountain pens inside their shirt pockets as elements of self identity. I also do this, especially when within a work environment or within a series of pedagogical encounters. The brightest sides of the pen as a tool are:

• the simplicity and the effortless transport of the medium anywhere and on almost any paper
• the quickness of transmitting the thoughts to flow on the paper in a clear line
• the precision + the possibilities of thin or thick line (rotation of the pen)

Rapitographs are often used as ‘technically’ precise pens, that are applied above the pencil lines of a hand-drawn scale drawing. This is a necessary skill to learn as an architect, but for me personally – I try to avoid this kind of “repetition” too much. Either I do a scale pencil drawing, or I do a pen drawing. I use different pens with different thicknesses to emphasize strong moments or to grasp delicate details in the perspective drawings.

Please note that nowadays the computer software offers countless and time-efficient opportunities of generating your preferred graphic ‘representation’ of your project, as well as testing its various views. Use the hand-drawing and the hand-writing as an alternative means that widen your perspective, not to catch yourself into endless detailing. Do not bring yourself into a newly built ‘cage’ of mere representation.

As much as the blessing of hand-drawing slowness is desirable, do use it mindfully; do not over describe, but pose questions, explore perspectives and test the impossible – within your drawing.

 Figure 4. A pen-made map of Florence: plan in scale with oferlapping perspective drawings.

Realistic – imaginary dichotomy: the importance of displacing the ordinary

But is it possible to do these processual explorations of the project digitally?

Of course it is, today more than ever. The switch that needs to happen inside of you is the displacement of the ordinary. You can do this by digital or analogue techniques, or a combination of the two: filming and film analysis, digital and/or analogue collage, digital perspective or axonometry drawings with incorporated fragments of hand-drawings, Letraset on analogue drawing etc. The analogue does not exclude the digital and vice versa: one should observe them as two toolboxes made in different eras, that serve you in this present moment to offer your preferable form to your inners voice.

Figure 5. The walk in Assisi is made of pen movements, dark shade of a thin watercolor brush and fragments of analogue collage. I used pencil in some fragments to roughly define the composition.

You may be asking: “How would I know which tool fits me best?”

The truth is, each of them will serve you in different ways. You will not know how, what or when until you try.

One of my dearest artists, Svetozar Bogdanovski, was also my art teacher in primary school, for 8 years. Besides being the most open-minded painter and pedagogue that I have ever met, he knew how to sculpt violins. He started this passion as an act of love towards his son, because he could not afford buying him a new violin at that time. Few years later, his violins gained an immense international respect and recognition as instruments with precious quality and soul. Svetozar graduated as a painter, but he also privately manifested his skills as an architect: he renovated his own house in a traditional style, with a contemporary spatial language.

So, one day during our arts class, he gave us the task to draw a forest in springtime. I have to note here, that I loved the organization of the art classroom – the only room in the school with an immense presence of light falling on the individual tables for each student. Unlike the other rooms, where we were considered to be “good kids” if we were loud, sociable and a perfect fit at the table for two, or – even worse – a group table for 6, at the art class each student had a dignified distance from the others. Here, each one of us had a chance to immerse into the creative process without (or with minimal) disturbances from the surrounding. Of course, not everyone liked this, since not everyone could deal with himself/herself at that age, not even for 45 minutes. Moreover – not everyone was ready to face the questioning of the given reality, which happened in each sentence spoken by Svetozar.

I remember drawing the elongated trees from the bottom of the paper towards the ‘sky’. I literally enjoyed drawing the branches intuitively, not staring outside the window, but simply inhabiting my treetops. I used light movement of pencil and then I opened the watercolors. My ‘plan’ was to simply inhabit the treetops with imaginary flowers, while previously painting the one color I was sure that corresponds to a real forest – the brown color of the trunks. We are speaking of ‘reality’ of a child at the age of 7.

Right before I applied the color on the pencil-drawn wood on the paper, Svetozar happened to be walking near my table, observing the clumsy decision of ‘brown’ over the fragile pencil lines entwined on the white paper.

• “Why would you do that?” – he asked.
• “I… think that the wooden part of the tree is brown.” – I answered with a ‘frozen’ hand movement.
• “Is it?” – he smiled and without further discussion asked for my brush with a silent palm opening.

He started painting the tree with a mesmerizing beautiful dark purple color in the shadowed parts, lightening the areas where the sun was falling with light pink followed by million shades of white.

• “Do not ever surrender your power to a brown color in your own drawings.” – he finished his tree, returned my brush in my hands, and went back to his walk.

I learned that trees may have purple stems.

I learned to see beyond what is obvious, beyond what we were elsewhere thought verbally, ideologically.

I learned not just to open my own eyes, but also to trust my imaginative awareness.

This skill is essential in architecture: you have the freedom to displace fragments of reality as much as you wish. However, it needs to have a reference to the real scale and the real images experienced by all people. People relate to stories. And your story, however imaginary, should be built upon the principles of the existing ones – upgrading them, opposing them, but never ignoring them.

Precision-carelessness dichotomy: the case of watercolors

Now let’s go back to the toolbox.

Most architects are somehow afraid of using watercolors – or any colors that work with surfaces thicker than the line of a pencil or pen – since they are losing the control of articulating the precision of the spatial drawing.

But to go beyond spatial drawing, and to enter the world of spatial atmosphere, the painting of surfaces that exhibit the entering of light inside and around the designed building is desirably needed.

To be honest, majority of architects can’t switch from over-controlling and predictive line drawing to a careless brush playing, expect for the bravest ones. I realized this also in my own case: when I wanted to make a photo of the tools I am using in drawing, I was surprised by how many of them I put out of use during time.

Now, I find a great freedom in playing with memory drawings or imagination testing directly with a brush, no pencil foreplay. But before getting there, before playing without control with the watercolor Van Gogh pallete, I first used watercolor pencils. The watercolor pencil is transitional tools that offers you the freedom to soften the precision from sharp black to colorful soft line that may be diluted with water right after it is applied on the paper. It is a much “dryer” method that offers a greater control of surfaces. However, after a while you will reach a point where you might be yearning to go back to the brush.

Figure 6. Landscape in the Mist: an experimental temporary hovering routes in the forest of the Ljubljana Hill. Waterpencils and the tiny brush.

Another transitional tool is the watercolor ink (brush pens) whose ingredient arrives on the paper by an embedded super-thin brush, whose solubility is much greater and whose color intensity is much more present than the soft line of the watercolor pencil. An accompanying tool is the water pen – a water holder with the scale of a pen, spreading the water content through a brush.

Finally, the stage of letting precision go is exploring different forms of watercolor brushes to create atmospheres experienced through human senses. I must admit – my favorite brush is the tiny mini brush from the Van Gogh box. I use other brushes when I want to dissolve the intensity of the color, like light dispersing through a glass, or when I want to roughly sketch with an almost white color the composition of the intended drawing. I often start intuitively, from a fragment, but if you wish to plan first, always use lighter colors at the beginning, since adding whiteness after the dark tones is a tempera method that is not efficient in watercolors drawing. You can find watercolors also in tubes, but I recommend using a box for an easier and more organized transport (Van Gogh, Winsor & Newton or else), since the color boxes are removable and you can always buy individual colors and then create your own preferrable pallete “to go”.

Three more technical tips:

• always have a napkin to quickly remove / absorb undesirable dispersion of color / water
• always have two water glasses – one for washing the dirt and one for ‘watering’ the brush with a clean water before applying lighter shades on the paper. It is not necessary, but it is hygienic for the drawing, especially if you wish to evoke feelings of lighter atmosphere.
• always have in mind that it is not only about how you apply color, it is also about how you apply water. For more precise movements – apply colors on dry fields of the paper. For more diluted atmospheres – apply clean water first, and then play with the dance of color over the wet paper.

Figure 7. Mapping a Ljubljana walk: pen, waterbrush, waterpen, two tiny brushes. 

Conclusion

The Urban Storytelling toolbox is a set of ingredients that help you to deliver your voice and your opinion through a graphic language of expression. They are means of sharing yourself to the world, through your understanding of the spatial context you observe, analyze or design.

This means – they are meaningful instruments if you feel them as meaningful extensions of your creative self. Not everything needs to work for you, and not always. Just don’t hold yourself back from trying: there are no mistakes in this craft. The more you are trying, the greater your progress to authentic self-expression. The more you reach out to the world with your own language of sharing, the greater the probability that your story will be heard by the people who need it the most.

Figure 8. Fragments of joyful carelessnes. Watercolor brush and water pen, memory drawings.