No, PrettyGreenBullet does not have a disease. If you’re wondering what the dots are above, they’re a sort of count up to my exhibition in December. I add a dot a day and that gives me a dose of morning fun. Simple minds, simple pleasures. And my Header page on WordPress is starting to resemble one of my airplane countdown charts.
Filed under: airplane timelines, The Book of Traffic Lights & Other Observations | Tags: air, airplane, muscat, oman, passing, time
indecent babies, inconsiderate co-passenger
Filed under: airplane timelines, Crossword Puzzles, Notes & Doodles | Tags: airplane, bic pen, crossword puzzle, ink, Kuwait, solution, timeline
are we there yet?
I love crossword puzzles. You can leave me in a room with one for days on end and I won’t tire. Sometimes, however, my urge to draw is greater and I’ve never been one to suppress an urge. (more…)
Filed under: airplane timelines, moleskine | Tags: airplane, beirut, color, coral, ink, Kuwait, markers, moleskine, pen, reef, seafood, timelines, uniball
short trip, not much time, too many children
I finally ventured into my dad’s printing/scanning/uploading system and it all worked smoothly and now I’m a happy girl again. I feel so liberated. This trip to Beirut from Kuwait was quite swift and uneventful. Two hours and five minutes, an ideal time for any trip 35,000 feet up in the air. I’ve also sneaked in two ‘meditative’ drawings I did during my time here in Beirut. I got a little help by my daughter coloring in Seafood. (more…)
Filed under: airplane timelines, Sketchbook | Tags: airways, doodles, flight, Kuwait, plane, scribbles, sketch
counting time with different colored pens
On our way back to Kuwait from Paris. This time I had a window seat which I always prefer. The estimated flight time was 5 hours and 50 minutes. I was counting time by creating squares for each minute we were flying and methodically scratching them out. That flight (also a daytime flight) I saw a rainbow. I’d read before that if you see a rainbow from above, you see the whole circle, not just an arc. I couldn’t really believe it until I saw it. It appeared as a small circle, but exciting nonetheless. (more…)
Filed under: airplane timelines, The Bspot | Tags: amira behbehani, flight, ink, institut du monde arabe, kuwait airways, pen, plane, sketch, thuraya al-baqsami, time
These were done on board Kuwait Airways in late 2006. I was flying with Amira Behbehani (to my left) and Thuraya Al-Baqsami (on my right). We were en route to Paris for a group show at the Institut Du Monde Arabe (also with us was Suhaila Al-Najdi sitting in Business Class the lucky duck). It must have been one of the most unpleasant daytime flights ever. The cabin crew had asked passengers to draw the window blinds and turned off all lights. Thuraya was really funny because she wasn’t going to take it sitting down. She finally asked-well, told-the flight attendant that she knew what they were up to; that they wanted the passengers to be asleep throughout the flight so that they didn’t have to worry about serving us! Soon after her complaint, the lights were all on again and people were starting to wake up from their siestas. The drawings I’ve included here are a fraction of the ones I drew on that plane. I started off in an orderly fashion but soon enough I started losing it. I came to a point where it didn’t matter what I drew as long as I kept my hand busy. (more…)
Filed under: airplane timelines | Tags: airplane, anxiety, fear, flight, Kuwait, notebook, Sketchbook, squares, tantric
the squares. i think this is when it all started
What was supposed to be a simple flight from Frankfurt to Kuwait turned into a nightmarish Juha-like trip which spanned three days. All thanks to the incompetence of our then travel agents. I was traveling with my ex-husband and three children, first to Amsterdam and then a road/train trip around Germany. A few days before our trip back to Kuwait, we luckily learned (to our horror nonetheless) that our flight back had been cancelled. So our revised and far-less-than-improved itinerary became as such: Frankfurt, north to Amsterdam, south to Abu-Dhabi, north to Bahrain, and then north again to Kuwait. The sketch above is the first incident of my square fixation. I was drawing the squares in a tantric-like state, from Amsterdam to Abu-Dhabi. I soon started a small sketchbook dedicated to just squares, page after page. I lost that book. (more…)
Filed under: airplane timelines, The Bspot | Tags: airplane, cairo, color, diary, eyes, Kuwait, ramadan, trip, wataniya
cairo post-apocolypse
This plane sketch was done in my ‘Ramadan’ diary. Some may remember it. I love being up in the air, it really clears my mind. And on this crucial trip, the distance and change of scenery allowed me to open my eyes, which I had left closed for too long.
Filed under: airplane timelines, The Bspot | Tags: airbus 330, airplane, cairo, counting, doodle, egypt, Kuwait, novair, sketch, tally marks, time
what crawls down your skirt?
This was a short flight aboard a rented Novair Airbus 33o (I think Norwegian). In a tumultuous period of my life, I found peace at 35,000 feet. I was alone on this trip, attending my friend Dagher’s wedding. It was my last trip to Cairo [I have been to Cairo since I posted this].
Filed under: airplane timelines, Sketchbook, The Bspot | Tags: aboard, airplane, box, doodles, emirates airways, kuala lumpur, Kuwait, madness, sketch, spider, time
i eat time for breakfast
I’m going to start posting my airplane sketches on here. These are drawings I do on a plane. Because I’m a nervous flyer-well, I used to be anyway-my sketching style changes. There is a purpose to most of these drawings and that’s to help me pass time.The drawings are different and distinguished in several ways. First of all, I don’t use my beloved Isograph pen. It took me years (and two accidental self-inflicted wounds which I like to pretend are tattoos) to realize that the depressurization on the plane is too much for this mechanical pen. I usually end up with massive ink leaks. Instead, I use a regular felt tip or ball-point pen. Secondly, there are the squares, or sometimes tally marks that serve as a time-telling device. I don’t wear a watch so I draw these squares and fill them win whenever I feel a minute or five or ten have passed. Lastly, and this is something I realized just today-after a sketch or two-that I tend to go a little insane on a plane. I start to draw spirals and squiggly lines as you will notice in these pictures. The drawings here are just some that I did on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kuwait via Dubai. (more…)
