Drawing on Location With No Plan
Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!
Visual Storytelling through drawing:
At the beginning of this year, I followed an 8-week visual storytelling course, taught by Rita Sabler. It was one of those experiences that quietly shifts how you see things.
The course covered a lot of ground:
how to tell a story through drawing,
how to capture a sense of place and time,
how to show people and activity,
and how to document a process as it unfolds.
Finding the Story
For my final project, I based my story at the central train station in Amersfoort, where I live. It's a familiar Dutch railway hub.
The assignment was to make 5 sketches with narrative, showing place, time, and activity.
It started as a visit to the station with no clear direction, but I trusted that stories unfold organically when you draw on location. And that's exactly what happened here.
Without a fixed plan, I focused on a station kiosk: a hub within the hub. I sketched the space, counter, and a portrait of employee Abdullah, using the station’s yellow and blue and the kiosk’s bright red for my color palette.
At home, I took the sketches into Procreate on the iPad, adding notes and composition. The title, A Place We Go in Order to Leave Again, was inspired by Rita’s words.
One of the big takeaways: creativity is not linear
The project pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me feel I expanded my skills and confidence in the end. The process reminded me that creativity isn’t linear. It's full of surprises, doubts, and happy accidents.
Materials used:
Accordion sketchbook
Watercolors
iPad with Procreate
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