Back in 2019, a friend from ISZAF—a buzzing art collective in Shenzhen—invited me to join one of their Thursday night sessions. From 2016 to 2019, those gatherings were my creative playground: sketching, painting, swapping tips, and running the occasional workshop. The highlight for me? Getting involved in a PechaKucha Night—an event where presenters share 20 slides, 20 seconds each, for a rapid-fire storytelling ride.
My task? Sketch each presenter live while they were talking. Two to five minutes, tops. No pressure, right? With a light brown marker in one hand and panic determination in the other, I scribbled like mad to catch their essence before the next person hit the stage. Some portraits came out surprisingly spot‑on… and a few? Let’s just call them “creative interpretations.”
By the end, I was equal parts exhausted and grinning. The room buzzed with energy, the presenters were brilliant, and my sketches became these quirky time capsules of the night. Scroll down and you’ll see them—proof that sometimes rushing can be a weirdly fun superpower.
