Turban

 

One of my early images which was commissioned for Kipling's Kim. The art director preferred this preparatory drawing done on newsprint paper to the finished image.
I can see why. 

I got this picture framed recently and left the tears and crumples as it is.

Please note that these images are copyrighted. Any unauthorized use without permission is prohibited. 

Several years after this drawing was used for a book cover, my art director M and her family came home for lunch. She was surprised at how big the drawing was and took this picture of me with it.
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Priya Sebastian
#priyasebastian #charcoaldrawing #turban 

Basket

 

This beautiful palm-leaf basket I found at a craft fair. 

Trunk

 

I love the base of the trunks of the Gul Mohar trees. They are actually the roots which rise up from the ground and create these caves and crevices which are ecosystems for plants, insects, small animals and a whole host of other natural things. As children I am sure some of us have played inside these trunk roots creating little houses for ourselves. The drawing above is made with ordinary Bril writing ink and a flat brush on newsprint paper.

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Priya Sebastian
#priyasebastian
trees #treesofbangalore

Egg Shop

 

I took this picture sometime in 2019. I did go looking for this shop earlier this year and managed to find it. It was clean, whitewashed, modernized and all the egg trays were uniformly blue in colour.

Wall Drawing

 

A floodlight placed next door cast this stunning shadow of tree outside, on the wall on my terrace.

I did what I had to do.

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Priya Sebastian
#priyasebastian #bauhinia

Nandi

 

Sometime after I'd finished illustrating my first picture book, I felt rather lost as one does after completing an intense project. I mentioned this to a young friend and she encouraged me to Google adventure groups to see what they had to offer. One such group, Unventured, offered a bike ride around the base of Nandi Hills. If you grew up in Bangalore, you'd have invariably taken a trip or more to Nandi Hills, reached the top, lolled around a bit and then driven back, but the base of Nandi Hills is not exactly a tourist attraction so I was intrigued. I enlisted.

This is probably one of the most memorable adventures I've ever had. Apart from the guide and I, the others who enlisted were two women in their twenties, both software engineers visiting Bangalore, one from the US and the other from Singapore, who were looking for some adventure over the weekend. We were taken in an Innova to the a farmhouse at Nandi Village, fed a sumptuous breakfast and then given our cycles. It had been at least 15 years since I'd ridden one but I did my stuff. It was a glorious Sunday morning when we rode the empty streets of Nandi Village. We were shown a silk-making unit, tried our hands on a potters wheel, taken to one of the most beautiful temples I had ever seen, the Bhoganandeeshwara Temple, and most memorable of all, shown this beautiful old colonial railway station pictured above.

These villagers below at the railway station posed solemnly in attention, as villagers always tend to do for a photograph.

I decided to walk back to the farmhouse through the village. Below are my cycling companions passing me by and a glimpse of Nandi Hills in the background.

Village house

The village barber

Silk worms!

The Temple selfie

The colour of my sneakers

I was determined to revisit Nandi and sketch the colonial railway station, so a few years later, I took a train from Cantonment Railway station to Nandi.

Here is the colour of some of the trains in this country. Embellished to the hilt. Every inch of space a chance to fill up with lots and lots of colour and pattern.

I got off at the Colonial Railway station and crossed the tracks to get a better view to sketch. The Army was conducting an exercise close to where I sat. Seeing me sitting on the ground and drawing, they brought me a table and chairs and fresh lime juice. It was so kind of them!

It turned out that the train departed from the colonial station back to Bangalore only at 7pm so I walked through Nandi village and saw scenes like the one below - a cauliflower patch!

I revisited and explored the temple, took an auto into a small town nearby and thanks to the fact that I spoke Kannada, found and paid for a taxi ride back home. Coming to Nandi cost me something like ₹50 if I remember right, but returning by taxi cost me over a 1000 bucks. However, there are some adventures that are worth it. Perhaps I'll go there again.

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Priya Sebastian
#priyasebastian
Nandi, #nandivillage, Nandi Village, #bhoganandeeshwaratemple, #cycling, #unventured

Hairs

 

One morning, as I crossed the road and headed towards the coffee van in front of Lalbagh West Gate, the Coffee Man had already spotted me and had my order ready: "Darku, lessu", he declared and handed me my glass. Dark coffee, less sugar.
There was this woman who was his assistant who looked at me and said, "Nice hairs" at my new haircut. That is when I noticed her long black plait and complimented her for it. She told me that she regularly gave her hair for c@ncer patients who needed wigs. Here is a photo of her gorgeous plait. That is the coffee man beside her who had my order ready.

I might not have a plait, but I can draw one. This image below is some mucking around I did at my desk with the bits and pieces for one of the Mommies from my book, the hairy one.

It is so nice to get back to blogging. It is like keeping a diary and I didn't realize how much I missed this ritual.

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Priya Sebastian
#priyasebastian

Mahalakshmi Tiffin Room

 

Whoever thought up the interiors and colour schemes of Mahalakshmi Tiffin Room on DV Gundappa Road, should be given a prize. They really knew what they were doing.

I thank serendipity for sending this lovely poser in his bright blue shirt to sit down in front of me. It was the plum on top of the pudding. So perfect for this picture below.