DIARY of a War THE URBAN SKETCHERS TAG LINE IS “SHOW THE WORLD, ONE SKETCH AT A TIME.” IN KEEPING WITH THIS SPIRIT, WE ASKED URBAN SKETCHER, NINA KHASHCHINA, TO SHARE HER WORK, ALONG WITH THAT OF OTHER UKRAINIAN URBAN SKETCHERS.
These pages: Nina Khashchina is a Ukrainian-born nature and food illustrator, and designer, gouache enthusiast, and sketchbook artist located in California. Her parents live in Kharkiv, Ukraine and before the war they would talk about twice a week by video calls. She has been posting sketches of her phone calls with her Ukrainian parents to tell their story. Nina: Since the beginning of the war on 24 February 2022, we have been connecting multiple times a day via texts and phone calls to check on the
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status of different parts of the family and friends. And we have one long video call when I get to draw them. We are a Russian-speaking family, and most of the little bits of conversations in these sketches are in Russian. Kharkiv was a Russian-speaking city when I was growing up, and when I was in school, Ukrainian was taught only from the 4th grade – the same as a foreign language. So my Ukrainian is not as fluent as I wish it were, but both my parents are fluent and our conversations turn to Ukrainian history and language often. Day 7 (above): My parents are sitting in a very dark room as we speak. The whole city is under a curfew, with
orders to keep all lights out. This is a preventive measure to make it harder to aim for the artillery and air attacks. But it is very hard to operate in the darkness for my parents, so they are trying to finish all the daily tasks before 8 pm. Two Russian missile hit Kharkiv regional administration building and a square next to it, where Kharkiv’s oldest University is. My mom works there; her co-workers reported that windows and doors were blown out by the shock wave from the missiles. Day 17 (above right): If you look at this image you will see yellow circles – each time I heard an explosion during our call I wrote it down. Our
