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Sketching Under Pressure

by Arts

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.
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Art and Design Workshop

by Arts

Back in 2017–2018, my Saturdays felt like something special. I’d head over to the cafés around OCT Loft, sketchbook in hand, knowing I was about to spend the afternoon surrounded by art, chatter, and the smell of good coffee. Those workshops started with quick warm‑up sketches and a few light demos from me, but pretty soon the pencils took on a life of their own. The best part was watching people settle in, let loose, and discover what they could do once they stopped overthinking. There was laughter, a little mess, and a lot of joy in the air.

The place itself made the experience even richer. OCT Loft, with its reinvented factories and creative pulse, was already alive with design studios, galleries, and music. Our favorite spot was a cozy art café, where the “entry fee” was simply ordering a drink or snack. It sounds simple, but that little shop gave us a home. The wooden tables, the clink of mugs, the way sunlight washed over half‑finished sketches—it all wrapped the workshops in a kind of warmth you can’t manufacture.

Looking back, the time was brief but left such a mark. Those afternoons shaped not only how I teach art but also how I share it with people I love—especially my daughter, who sat beside me often, learning in her own way. Life shifted, work demanded more, and the workshops eventually faded into memory, but the spirit of them lingers. Even now, whenever I pick up a pencil, I can still feel echoes of that community, that light, and those Saturdays in OCT Loft.