Relieving Workload Stress with Sketsa Pulang Kerja, A Growing Drawing Community for Workforce
Sketsa Pulang Kerja is a drawing community in which several people gather together every Wednesday night at 7PM to draw together in a coffee shop. We sat down with one of the founding member, Amanda, who joined this community in its pioneer city, Bandung and currently has moved to Yogyakarta. In a well lit and spacious coffee shop in Yogyakarta city, some people both men and women sat in a long table and exchanged greetings like they were old friends. Some of them started to produce drawing tools from their bags like drawing papers, watercolor set, pencils, brushes, digital drawing tools and many more. This spectacle could be seen in one session of Sketsa Pulang Kerja that put together random people with one purpose, which is drawing together. “Drawing and illustrating are meditative. Just like going to the beach that feels relaxing, drawing is similar although it feels different. There is a satisfaction when we draw even if it’s not finished yet,” said Amanda about Sketsa Pulang Kerja’s passion in drawing.
Workload could sometimes become the source of our stress and high blood pressure, thus this bad vibe needs to be diminished and drawing is one of the cure. Amanda told that Sketsa Pulang Kerja was an idea that emerged out of boredom of working in an office. The longing from workers who want a spare time to draw also became the reason why the community exists. Sketsa Pulang Kerja placed its roots in Bandung with the founding members, Anita and Reza, who are a couple, unintentionally asked their friends who love drawing to sketch together in a coffee shop. Since then the activity became an after-work routine, and Wednesday is chosen to be their gathering day since it is the mid-day of the week. From Bandung, some of the members moved to another city in Indonesia to pursue their careers and in the new host city, they branched out the drawing community.
Amanda said that Sketsa Pulang Kerja already have branches in Depok, Yogyakarta and Surabaya. The movement started in 2016 when she and another member named Yani had to move to Yogyakarta. Then they brought the same spirit of Sketsa Pulang Kerja from Bandung and initiated the get together agenda in Yogyakarta until now. Each city has its own person-in-charge, while Amanda is the head of community in Yogyakarta, Aedel supervise the community’s activity in Depok and in Surabaya the baton has been passed on from Tino to another member. Amanda further chronicled the story of handling the community in Bandung with such great passion. “There was one time that I had the responsibility to handle Sketsa Pulang Kerja in Bandung when Anita wasn’t there. That time I thought about asking all people who haven’t joined Sketsa Pulang Kerja to contribute. I listed all the people who love to draw and ask for references from Ananda Badudu (of Banda Neira) which resulted in a lot of names. I contacted all of them and asked them to upload their drawings with the hashtag #sketsapulangkerja. Since then, the community has gotten even bigger every Wednesday,” she told us.
The members come from various working backgrounds starting from multimedia field to a conventional ones like banking. In the meantime, they have no strict rules and purpose for the community to achieve. They merely want a platform to draw together as a part of relaxation regime after such hectic work schedule. They have joined a drawing cup competition that was held by Yellow Coffee Truck in Bandung and Yogyakarta, but they’ve relatively been easy about it. They also have a plan to exhibit their artworks someday, even though not in near future. With roughly more than twenty members in each branch in one session every Wednesday, the community foresee a growing number of people in the future. They also reveal a plan to open branches in Jakarta or Bekasi. Seeing the high appreciation towards young and talented artists in Indonesia nowadays, Sketsa Pulang Kerja believe that they could become another medium for these creative people and will continue to support those artists outside of their community. For those who want to join this community, simply head to their Instagram to know their latest activity and maybe you could join one of their session.
Contributor & Pic : K. Adhyatma / Editor : Novita
