Rally against "Culture Loyalty Law"

Sketches from rally against "Culture Loyalty Law" - bill conditioning arts funding on ‘loyalty’, which advance our Minister of Culture. 

More than thousand artists from different areas gathered yesterday night to say that they will not give up on freedom of expression. "Nobody can't take from us the right to think, to imagine, to create..." - were words of one of the speakers. I want to believe that such a law can't pass here.

Rally against the deportation

Maybe I'm naive, but being yesterday together with tens thousands of people protesting against the deportation of refugees in South Tel Aviv made feel hopeful. Hopeful that after all we're all human and that what will lead us at the final.

Common future

Last night I took a part in a protest march common to Jews and Arabs, for equality and against racism. You can call me naive, but  I believe that most of people just want to live in piece one with another and that we much more in common. And that it is the only way to survive in this crowded place. It was something very optimistic in those people marching together in the heart of Tel Aviv.
As usual, people approached me to see what I'm drawing. I got ungrudging comments from both - Jews and Arabs - which is the first proof that I'm right ;)

Singapore USk Symposium - part 2

I'm continuing my first post about the amazing experience of Singapore USk Symposium. Teaching our workshop "Face the City!" together with my friend from Denmark Ea Ejersbo was, of course, the main reason for coming there. Ea spent the last winter in Israel, near me, and then born our idea of leading a workshop together again. As our mutual favorite sketching subject is people, the starting point was easy to choose. We even did a rehearsal of our workshop in Jaffa for the local Urban Sketchers group. But, of course, doing it in Singapore, for the international audience, as part of the USk symposium, was a different experience!
Certainly, it's impossible to learn sketching people in three and a half hours, and even in there and a half days. Nothing can't exchange her majesty practice, but still, it's possible to transfer our approach to sketching people, and even maybe to the urban sketching in general. I don't fancy perfect step-by-step recipes of a perfect sketch. For me the way is not less important than the result. Lets's say, the way is what really matters, the final sketch is a nice by-product result. In our workshop the main emphasis was on trying to look better, observing, searching for the stories to tell. First of - what you want to tell, and only after - how. To make it easier, we broke our workshop into three exercises. In first one, called "Capture Emotions", we asked the participants to look around for people with recognizable facial expressions and try to capture them.

In second one, "Capture Action" - to pay attention to the body language, which can tell us a lot without words.

In the final exercise we asked to put our "heroes" in their surrounding and tell us a story, using our ability to capture emotions and feeling through facial expressions and body language.

The results were really wonderful, but most important, we saw the participants overcoming invisible barrier, making step out of their safe zone and really enjoying the process!

I enjoyed it very much! Here are some sketches done on the workshop's spot, checking it before and while doing the demonstration.

I'm grateful for the opportunity of being a part of so great team of Symposium's instructors, also because teaching is the best way to learn!
Here is the link where you can download our workshops' flyer.

We want change!

Last Saturday I went together with more ~50.000 people to the Rabin Square - central square of Tel Aviv, to take a part in the demonstration calling for the change of the government in Israel. There were amazing energies of hope and will for a better future, hope we'll have here new government in a one week!