Things I do

For Suttonese People -

Hers and His birthday cards.

A Bangalore Montreal Dialogue

Every Sunday, Julie and I upload all the drawings that we do that week on a tumblog called Hello Every Sunday. You've seen the icon on the left and yes, Facebook readers already know, but since I love my blog I must put it here as well.
Over here in the about section you can read why we do what we do. 

Otherwise do follow us and cheer us on as we drive this little monster forward every week throughout this year.

The top and bottom pictures of the first four photographs are mine, and the pictures in the middle are Julie's. See the difference in lighting of the two countries - the golden winter light from South India and the blue winter light from snowy Quebec.

Here are pictures of the sketchbooks that we are using and that we arrived at by trial and error -
This is the sleek sophisticated fancy Stillman and Birn which Julie decided would meet her needs.

And the bright and chubby Lekka Pustaka (account book) which dazzled me with its red shirt and swore to fulfill all my desires.

When I look at how different the sketchbooks are from each other, I cannot help but think of all the opposites in this project: The cultural differences in the two countries, the different colors of the light, the opposites in temperatures, the fact that we drink tea and coffee respectively, Julie's systematic way of working and my last minute jams... Still, art communicates through all kinds of differences and boundaries. I am sure that towards the end of this project we both will carry away with us a lot more than we ever expected when we started this.

Nostalgia

Photo of rare white-haired Suttonese mushroom hunter.

Circa 2014 A.D.

Hand painted pebble by native Suttonese artist 

gifted to Indian explorer.

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 nos·tal·gia noun nostalgia plural noun nostalgias
A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Something done or presented in order to evoke feelings of nostalgia.

The Mighty Oak

Because I had read about Oak trees in books from my childhood, written by English authors, I had often wondered about The Mighty Oak and wished I could see one in real. Once, an acquaintance gave me an acorn for my seedpod collection where it remained one of my most prized possessions for a long time (yes, an acorn). So it was with awe and delight that I set my eyes on my first Oak ever somewhere at Westmount. The cold autumn air had freeze dried the leaves of this tree so that they'd slowly lost their color and yet retained their shape in this magnificent creation.

And the leaves! One has to admire them and press them and draw them -

Needless to say, I now have a hell of a lot of Canadian acorns in my collection :)

Quotation seen on a coffee mug:
'Every mighty Oak was once a nut that stood its ground'.

Trees in February

 In Bangalore on a summer evening.

In Montreal, during a winter afternoon.

An Exercise in Curiosity

 There is a lot of difference while working on large sheets of paper with charcoal and when working on smaller squares of paper and graphite. While working with charcoal, I am standing at my desk, exerting pressure and practically hurling my entire body onto the paper, cutting, tearing, blending, coaxing...The complete opposite seems to be the state that I am in while completing these 13 illustrations for a story about barbaric Witch Hunts in India.I have posted two other illustrations for these in the previous post as well. 
While drawing these I have been seated at all times during the last two weeks in the same position and the only movement has been my wrist as it builds up layer upon layer of graphite on textured paper (Cretacolor 6B graphite on 180gsm precut Canson). The only sound is the kich kich kich kich as the lead moves while shading yet another area.

I took on this graphic novel kind of short story for The Big Picture in Mint, out of curiosity, to see whether I could do this, if I liked doing it and if I had the patience. This platform is a great one for amateur illustrators and writers and I only wish I had had something like this to work on in my early years as an illustrator. However for professional illustrators this is a wonderful way to try out and experiment with what they have never tried before as I am doing now. I directly began the fair work without rough sketches or planning because you are compelled to work at a fast pace. In this case unlike the highly professional editorial illustrations that I do which involves so much thought, planning and conceptualizing, a completely different mindset is required. It seems that here the illustrator is a tool rather than a voice.

Will I attempt this again? I am not sure. I find sitting chained to my desk for lengthy amounts of time exhausting and frustrating. Also, there is not much if any thinking at all for the illustrator because you are told what to draw. I found the trite visual interpretations given to me tiresome and while I did what was wanted of me for some of them, I also did what I wanted for others. If I do attempt something like this once more, the story will have to be a very good one. However I must say this, doing this has left me with nothing but admiration for illustrators of graphic novels, their patience and tenacity is to be lauded.

Outside, the Bangalore winter results in cloudy weather and beautiful diffused sunlight in which I took the first three pictures at my desk. Naturally my thoughts go back to last year especially when I see blog posts of friends in the midst of winter. Some of the pictures are beautiful, like this post from The Cassandra Pages and these haunting and moody pictures from the same blog.  Winter can be beautiful when you are looking at it in photographs.
But when I look at my own pictures like the one above (this is a color picture btw), I am reminded of how I removed my gloves, quickly took a picture and quickly, quickly put the glove back on again over my freezing hand at -20 degrees in Montreal last year beside the St. Lawrence river. Immigrating to Montreal too was an exercise I took (a mega exercise perhaps) to satiate my curiosity and yet again, I wonder how I ever did it all.

The Indian Witch Hunt

Island of my Dreams

Foreign lands never yield their secrets to a traveler. The best they offer are tantalizing snippets, just enough to inflame the imagination. The secrets they do reveal are your own - the ones you have kept from yourself. And this is reason enough to travel, to leave home.

~ G. Sparkes

One day I will improve my photography skills and figure out how to take clearer pictures as well as remove the distortion. This picture above does not show the beautiful pale yellow colour and lovely texture of the background paper which is Canson Mi-tientes Lichen. Both the picture of the water and the island were done on Hoesch Watt paper and affixed on to the background. This picture is 25.5 x 21.5 inches in size.

Also, thanks to my blog, it is very nice to be reminded how sketches I made from visits to places a couple of years ago manifest themselves in an illustration in a different context. The picture of the island is very reminiscent of the first picture in this post of a boulder at Hampi.

The Meal

This illustration wasn’t created to depict my hosts as a rhino and a bird, that would be far too simplistic an explanation. Instead, what I am trying to show in this picture is how much of a divergence into the strange my experiences in Montreal were for me, somewhat like stumbling into a forest full of unusual creatures and vegetation. Of course like most urban Indians who have traveled and are brought up on a diet of Western films, the settings of Montreal were familiar, however actually partaking in rituals within those settings made me sometimes feel like an aberration. I should have been outside watching this on screen.

Montrealers, at least all those kind and lovely people I met, went out of their way to introduce me to their culture. The question I was asked most often was: Do you like it? There was my friend B who looked at me anxiously while I partook my first artichoke, ‘do you like it?’, there was my loony Montreal flatmate who handed me Maple syrup poured into a spoon, ‘do you like it?’, there was The Mushroom Hunter who watched me cautiously try squeaking cheese and asked  ‘do you like it?’, my friend J gave me  green smoothie one morning and asked ‘do you like it?’, there was my kind proprio, benevolent as always, who handed me something, one of the many things she handed me while she asked ‘do you like it?’ Everyone showed me something, handed me something and always asked me anxiously, ‘do you like it?’ while I, new immigrant, utterly, totally overwhelmed and bewildered by it all, never knew what to say…

Montreal Sky and Bangalore Color

One early morning sometime at 6am, I ventured outside during a Montreal winter to catch a bus to Sutton. Around me, the world was a desaturation of black, white and grey. And then I looked up and saw the sky. It was this shade of intense blue, the colour I would use as a child to colour in a night sky but while thinking that skies did not really exist in this colour and I was using this shade of blue because it was the darkest blue in my box of crayons. But here it was, that impossible blue as the real thing contrasting against strange shapes in a monochrome world. An hour later, the sky turned grey, then dirty white and everything looked bleak once more.

And then Bangalore where the brightest of bright colours clash and jostle with each other. Montrealers will wonder what the heck I’ve drawn above while Bangaloreans will instantly recognize a Bangalore sky in October - bright orange of African tulip flowers set amidst leaves that are so dark green they are almost black. Rows and rows of them emphatically making their presence felt against a bright turquoise sky.

At an Art supply store in Queen street in Toronto I saw giant bullet-shaped sticks of Senelier oil-pastel obscenely priced at nine dollars each. Here, an artist down the street has an entire box of them in different shades of red which I was generously allowed to use. 

And this beautiful woman standing with confidence in her Sunday best. I quickly hurried home and drew her in her stunning attire.

I am Elephant

This illustration is for my mushroom hunting friends who will be leaving their forest in Sutton to live in Montreal. I drew this picture so that Aaney the Elephant and champignons will be with them wherever they go.

Since returning to Bengluru I find I cannot quite remember whether one has to say le elephant or la elephant (something all students of French will agree has caused them to bang their heads on their Francaise textbooks and die), so when translated from French, the words within the bubble in the picture read ‘I am Elephant’. Aaney of course is the word for elephant in Kannada, the language spoken here.

The card was meant to be a surprise but since it has been well over two weeks since I posted it and since I am fed up with waiting for the package to reach I have decided to put up the picture on my blog.

Ashte

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My birthday this year could not be more different from the one the year before. Last year I drew in my sketchbook, there was a Plum tree in front of me, I was in a strange land. That evening I dined with a friend at her home and ate my first artichoke, a rather strange flower that I’d never eaten before. I was halfway around the world, far away from all that was familiar, uncertain and wondering where my choice would take me.

This year I am home.  I have received my things, am unpacking them and setting up my studio once more, bringing a goal I worked at for four years to a full circle or spiral as I prefer to say.But when I pause and reflect, I cannot help thinking what a year it has been, clashing contrasts of seasons, bizarre adventures, strange encounters, unbelievably wonderful friendships, horrifying uncertainties, bone-chilling winters, springtime forests and a steady, certain journey back home, back to being myself, back to my studio and back to doing all that I love most.

What is it Like?

Being a new immigrant feels like a fish being compelled to ride a bicycle, in other words, you have to completely discard your identity and assume a new one and that is something which feels grotesque and unnatural, much like what the illustration portrays. My friends will vouch that throughout my entire stay in Canada the expression on my face was exactly like that of the fish on the bicycle. 

No country can give you everything that you want. If in one country you finally had the hard won life you created for yourself, centered on what you value most, another country might have eventually given me the quiet and dignity that I desired. However in my case, it seemed to be at the expense of all that I had striven for till now. ‘What do I value more?’ was the question that I asked myself frequently in the midst of my immigrant dilemma. The longer I stayed on searching for something which I began to suspect did not exist, the further away I kept moving from the path that led to all that I held close to my heart. The consequence was great unhappiness and an acute loss of confidence. Whichever part of the world you live in, the truth is what an illustrator who has also been through it all once told me – “The only happy place is inside our heads, when we are drawing and being kind...”

Strange Beliefs

Letting Go

There is something scary about letting ourselves go. It means that we will screw up, that we will relinquish the possibility of perfection. It means that we will say things we didn’t mean to say and express feelings we can’t explain. It means that we will be onstage and not have complete control, that we won’t know what we’re going to play until we begin, until the bow is drawn across the strings. While this spontaneous method might be frightening, it’s also an extremely valuable source of creativity. The lesson about letting go is that we contain our own creativity. We are so worried about playing the wrong note or saying the wrong thing that we end up with nothing at all.

~ Jonah Lehrer, Imagine: How Creativity Works

When I read a quotation like this, I cannot help thinking how beautifully the author talks about the process of letting go, how well it is put into words and how good it is to read it; somewhere someone else has gone through something that is similar to what I am struggling with. Yet the frustrations, dilemmas and emotions that actually accompany the process of letting go of an outcome can be terrifying and confusing. When I took that leap full of faith and hope and as much research as possible into Montreal, as careful as I was,I inched forward for a while and finally crash landed into a mountain of dirty brown snow and sank down into the bottom. Now I am simply going through the motions of desperately crawling out. As another wise man once said, ‘it is easier to be philosophic when things are going well’. Indeed it most definitely is.

These are scenes from this year's Montreal winter. It was the coldest and worst winter since 1889. After four months of bitter cold, it is still snowing outside; giant trucks carry loads of snow outside the city which they pump into enormous white mountains; I am still wearing my Canada Goose; I still experience acute homesickness when I see pictures of flowering trees from a Bangalore summer. As a newcomer, I feel I am running through an endless labyrinth which leads nowhere... It is excruciatingly difficult to be an immigrant during a recession and a soul-killing winter, alone in a foreign city which speaks a language other than what I am fluent in.

But to try and end this post on a positive note, before I came to this city, I corresponded with an artist who wrote me these words that I've never forgotten: ‘The warmth of the people makes up for the cold temperatures...’ How much those words ring true over and over. If there is just one redeeming feature about Montreal and its endless winter, it is the kindness of the Montrealers and the warm friendships I have made here. It reminds me that there were other seasons too and that I still have memories of Montreal that look like this - 

But while the fleeting summer and autumn in Montreal were ephemeral, it is the winter that is eternal and so my drawings of Montreal will always be of bare branches and snow ~

Immigrant Journals