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Snappy sketcher Erik Pinaroc is immortalising some of his favourite and final memories from Bahrain in a series of quick drawings that he hopes to turn into postcards one day.
The 28-year-old Filipino architect, artist and spoken word poet is celebrating his seven-year-stint in Bahrain with a series of sketches marking milestones along his memory lane in the kingdom.
“I am at a season of preparing for a big change as I am moving back home to the Philippines soon and these sketches are meant to be a record of my final memories in Bahrain,” Erik told GulfWeekly.
“I have sketched a myriad of moments, namely street corners where I used to get shawarma from, a 2am Eid Night chat with my close friends, the pocket park with a bench I used to eat lunch on, architectural details that are unique to Bahrain, restaurants where I ate a delicious meal with my parents and a whole lot more.”
After seven years as an architect, Erik is set to fly back to the Philippines in early 2025, eagerly looking forward to getting engaged to his college sweetheart Rochelle Mae Ong.
The two have been in a long distance relationship since Erik moved to Bahrain in 2018, joining his parents in the kingdom.
Erik and Rochelle got engaged in April this year and will be married in 2025, choosing to settle down in the Philippines.
To celebrate the indelible mark Bahrain and its stories have left on him, Erik has been busy sketching up a storm of 30 pieces, the most recent of which have been at the ongoing Muharraq Nights festival.
“On December 13, I stumbled into a musical performance from a traditional band called Isameel Dawas Band in Dar Al Muharraq along the Pearling Path,” he explained.
“The music was so enticing and everyone was just soaking in the syncopated beats, claps and singing of the group.
“It prompted me to capture the moment and challenge myself to sketch it before the band ended their performance.
“I showed the output and they were just incredibly jovial and appreciative of the sketch, even teaching me the Arabic word ‘Koshey’ as praise to the effort.”
The sketches all feature block-type writing, and are usually down in red, reminiscent of architectural sketches.
Erik usually takes anywhere from five to 10 minutes for sticky note-sized sketches, and 15 to 30 minutes for A6-sized notepad drawings.
“Urban sketching has always been a medium of on-the-spot, fast freehand output and my personal philosophy is to sketch with the skills that you have, and the tools that you have,” he explained.
“It all started when I left my common black pen fine liners in a sketching session.
“However, since I work in a consultancy firm, we always have a stock of red pens and markers on hand for comment mark-ups. The result is a bolder and eye-catching output which I grew to love and I have stuck with ever since.
“Sketching has always felt natural to me because architecture demands you to ideate spaces in conceptualisation stage.
“Ideas flow faster when transmitted from pen to paper and it offers a looser concept as compared to Computer Aided Design (CAD) which tends to be very rigid and mechanical.
“On a personal level, I have preferred to record memories through sketching as it forces you to slow down and really take in the minute details of a scene and memory.
“It’s like being a camera; but you as the artist are imprinting and delineating the memory yourself.
“I also like the fact that in a sketch you don’t always have to detail everything except the most interesting parts of a scene - in a way, it’s like note-taking but in visual form.”
Of the more than 20 sketches that Erik has done so far, some of his favourites have incidentally been the ones he gave away as gifts to the subject - each one an incredibly ‘noteworthy’ and human moment, according to him.
As to what he plans to do with the sketches eventually, Erik hopes to turn them into postcards, ‘not necessarily to sell them, but to see them as a source of momentary joy to strangers when they rummage through a random bookstore shelf.’
For more details, follow @erikpinaroc on Instagram.
