Croquis Nights Helsinki is turning 4!

I started Croquis Nights 4 years ago. For 2 years now I also have been teaching it at the prestigious Kiasma Museum. The upcoming workshop will be on the 26th October.

So why did I start it?

When I was at the National Gallery in London, early this year, with my 11 year old son, he asked me why it is so important to have all these paintings in such big rooms, a great question! I had no easy straight answer and tried to find the answer with him. As with music, much of the original purpose of drawings (or paintings) was and is to communicate. We are social animals and exchanging thoughts and experiences is fundamental to us where we can witness the different interpretations of realities.

The different techniques applied in that process are also worth sharing in such museums as well as being historical documents portraying events long passed, where photo cameras were not yet available.

My pleasure from drawing came, as so often is, from childhood. One of my first ever memories from childhood was that one event at the primary school, when an older colleague, sitting on my left side, at another desk, was finishing a drawing of some super heroes. Back then, Zorro and cowboys. I was blown away by the mix of simplicity and accuracy, how could one do that? He looked at me, and gave me that drawing. I still have it 30 years after. Whenever I have the chance, me too I have been giving my sketches away, especially to youngsters. I started copying the style of that boy and then of others and then drawing what I would see, then what I would imagine. Our internal head’s library, of how to draw something, grows and one perfections the technique, not by assimilating all the existing ones but by a process of rejecting the worst ones. Choosing good ideas from bad ones is one of the features of creativity described by the great polymath Henri Poincaré.

I kept on drawing throughout my life, made several exhibitions, sold my drawings, was published in magazines and published graphic novels. There is a sense of well invested life time when I draw.

During my Masters in architecture in Darmstadt Germany, I participated in weekly classes of nude and figure drawing and sculpture. I also modeled and occasionally taught too, if either the model or the teacher would fail to come on that day. Now settled in Helsinki, I started in 2014 to organize nude drawing sessions with a group of friends at my office. I noticed some best practices and some useful tips to give to others to motivate them and to immediately have a wow outcome despite apparent lack of skills. The results have been great and so in 2015 it became a course offered to the public.

Soon I hope to publish my method in a book.

Hope to see you soon in one of our courses!

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Pedro Aibéo is a trained Design Architect and Civil Engineer. He is at present a Kone Säätiö Research Fellow, a Visiting Associate Professor at UNAM University, Mexico and at Wuhan University of Technology, China, and a Lecturer and Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University, Finland on "Architectural Democracy". He is the founder and Artistic Director of “Cidadania” theatre+games group, a professional Musician at Homebound, the founder and Chairman of the World Music School Helsinki, a drawing teacher at the croquis nights and at Kiasma and a Graphic Novelist.