Flight

This is my favourite illustration; two lovers escaping into the unknown. The story I had to illustrate for IQ Magazine was set in the tribal jungles of Arunachal Pradesh in the North East. In the descriptions in this story by Mamang Dai, the lovers who escaped under cover of darkness seemed very small and almost insignificant in the midst of the overwhelming  natural forces around them.
When I look back at this illustration, I like the fact that there is a sense of mystery, beauty and excitement in the atmosphere that has been created. The mountains and the stars seem to envelop the lovers in a protective way as the river supports and carries them forward into the unknown.

“Love is always a voyage. All travelers whether they want to or not are changed.

No one can travel into love and remain the same.”

 ~  Shams Tabrizi

Counterparts

In my body you search the mountain

for the sun buried in its forest.
In your body I search for the boat
adrift in the middle of the night.

~ Octavio Paz
Many thanks to Sajana J. for sending me this poem to accompany the illustration.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
~ T.S.Eliot

What I listened to while illustrating this picture >
The Unknown
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The Bong Detective

I was feeling very blue since there were no sketching jaunts outside Bangalore this weekend, when the doorbell rang and I was delivered the latest copy of The Indian Quarterly (IQ) Magazine.

Here is my illustration for Calcutta Noir, where I had to illustrate a Bengali woman addicted to detective novels who eventually ends up solving a murder. I have depicted the protagonist engrossed in a detective story in a Kolkata tram and a scene from what she is reading taking place in the tram window behind her.
To show that the background is her imagination, I have done it in moody colour as appropriate to the story she is reading while the rest of the illustration is in black and white. To bridge imagination with the reality of the story, I have shown a cloud from the coloured scene making its way into the black and white one.

I was asked to do this illustration right at the beginning of the year, before I had barely recovered from the cacophony of a New Year party. Voices with strange South-Indian accents were ringing in my ears, weird psychedelic lights flashed in circles behind my eyes, drunken men carrying a sofa knocked around the insides of my skull, bad memories of fruit flavoured beer I had been plied with haunted my dreams and I was still freaking over the contents of my 2014 horoscope when the curt and coldly professional art-director sent me a mail saying 'Kindly complete this in three days'. Trams! Electric wires! Kolkata! Three Days! If that wasn't bad enough, I swear with my hand on my heart that drawing electric wires across the sky is the most daunting feat I have ever accomplished in my entire career as an illustrator. As any illustrator who has attempted this will know, it is like running full speed across a tightrope with your heart between your teeth. It can make or break all your hard work in creating the illustration. By the time I finished this picture, my hands were shaking with nervousness and my teeth were chattering with excess caffeine...

But it is done! And over with! And published!
Abbah!
Now I need some more morning filter coffee.

Compliments and Comments

The editors of IQ Magazine wrote to tell me that Prajwal Parajuly, the author of the story that I had illustrated, liked my illustration so much that he had 'pasted it all over Facebook'. I found Prajwal's page and saw what he had written:

' The November issue of The Indian Quarterly has an extract from LAND WHERE I FLEE, my novel. One of my favorite characters in the book -- a beedi-smoking badass octogenarian Nepali-Indian grandma from Gangtok -- has been so accurately and amazingly interpreted by the artist that I want to sit down with the fascinating artist for a coffee. Notice the cigarette, the ring stretching the septum and the loose end of her sari covering Chitralekha Neupaney's head -- the uneasy marriage of demurity and brazenness...'

I don't often get appreciation from the authors whose stories I illustrate. More often than not, when the subject is women, it is typically and unimaginatively about suffering and sacrifice where I resort to the asked for formula of bent head and bleak colours. Therefore, it was wonderfully refreshing to read a story extract from Land Where I Flee and illustrate the wily Chitralekha Neupaney with her beedi, ensconced within an atmosphere of intrigue. 
I am waiting to get my hands on the book - Land Where I Flee.

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One day, during a Google search, I chanced upon this beautiful image of a princess dancing. The artist who created that image was Clive Hicks-Jenkins, a name I was not familiar with. Some more Google searches revealed that he was a very well-known Welsh artist whose paintings on Google images had me hooked for days. 

Mr. Hicks-Jenkins also keeps an Artlog where he documents his process in creating all the many wonderful things that he does. There is always an erroneous perception that artists simply whip up their work out of thin air. But creating art is work, sheer donkey work and very few artists, caught up in the frenzy of creating, have the patience to document their usually exhausting process. Clive Hicks-Jenkins however does that and watching him build up step by step from basic to marvellous is as riveting as reading an engrossing detective novel.

A few days ago I was surprised to find an email by Mr.Hicks-Jenkins in my inbox. He had actually come over to my blog and looked through my work. Here are some of the nice things that he had to say -

First of all, I LOVE your work. Just wanted you to know that. The images for Current Conservation are beautiful. Direct, elegant, harmonious and vividly conjured.

This gorilla skull is magnificent!

But you do 'tender' beautifully too, as in those gorgeous images of boats on a dark sea.

I don't know what happened to make you disable comments. Something bad perhaps. If that's the case, then I'm so sorry. You should be fielding praise for what you do. I love it. LOVE it. Just sayin'.

Keep up the good work.

When I have Clive Hicks-Jenkins asking what happened to the comments section, I just quietly put it back.

When I read appreciation like this, I think wow and I am reminded how far I've come since the days I landed back on Indian shores with a fresh post-grad from a distant country and to a dubious family. Nobody really knew what illustration was then let alone the possibilities it could open up apart from 'diagrams' for how to sow seeds in a farmer's catalogue or pictures in textbooks for school children. I was desperate for encouragement and appreciation then, but the things we chase with anxiousness always elude us.

Enjoying and improving my drawing however, has resulted in surprising by-products. Suddenly door after door has opened up and I am heaped with praise, not Facebook likes or idiotic numbers, though I get that too, but emails from bloggers, other artists and authors, who take some of their precious time to tell me how much they appreciate my work and that they avidly follow my blog. During such moments these days, I realize that I am happy for a while and I am truly encouraged by such words, but it is also during these moments that I am also very aware of the fact that I am blessed to be given the time, the privilege and the peace of mind to draw. 

Nothing else really matters.