SMELLS

 Click on the pictures for bigger images -

Arty Party

Since the model from the Life Drawing sessions was open to private posing, I invited some of my interested illustrator colleagues to my home along with the model. The difference was huge. 15 minutes per pose is a lot of time as opposed to 1 minute and 2 minute poses at the crowded life drawing sessions. The natural light at my home was at its best and the model, posing amidst the potted palms looked like a woman in a Gauguin painting.

Life drawing is difficult. You need to be given a firm foundation in art college, something which most of us do not get, and the one colleague of mine who made excellent drawings (with a felt pen that too) had some grounding at JJ School of Art. I was pleased that with just a few regular sessions of Life Drawing, my own figure drawing skills have improved, especially with the leisurely pace we were indulged with.

When illustrators get together to socialize, they need a "purpose", and drawing from life provided that. I guess it is the equivalent of a party theme. There was one exemplary 3 year old boy engrossed with his train set in one of the bedrooms. The other "boy" at the table was engrossed with his phone. He came and left with the model. There were salads and foccacia for lunch, but the serene superwoman mom of the 3 year old baked and brought the best New York Cheesecake ever. While all of us decided we must call a model over for private sittings like this again, I think we also (read I also) secretly hoped there would be cheesecake as an accompaniment every single time.

The Ancient City

George

This is a drawing of one of the two people I know named George. There are certain remarkable similarities about both of them. They live in the Cantonment area, have long fraying grey hair and straggly beard, are misfits and are blessed with the "gift of the gab" - They have the ability to pass of their many failures as wisdom just by making their words do charming acrobatics like pierrots in a side show. 

This post is about the George who used to sit under a tree at DaCosta square where I used to go for my walks. I once asked him for a cutting of a creeper growing on his mango tree. He gave me the plant and said in hushed tones, eyes wide open as if he was handing me a magic wand, "These are cephalophytes!" I didn't engage him, I took the cuttings and scooted. What is a cephalophyte anyway, try Googling it.

One night George was sitting at his usual place and I took a hazy picture of him during my walk. In an attempt to engage me in conversation he asked to see the picture. "You compose very well" said George, "not a lot of people do that!" 

I think any woman who has lived long enough in India knows that when a man praises her it is more about him than about her. I had to wait for about 3 minutes and that inevitability happened. 

"I appreciate beauty" said George, "I am a lover of nature. That is why I can appreciate how nicely you've taken this photograph,see? I appreciate the curve of this tree trunk here, I appreciate the flowers overhead, see that dead tree? I watched it die!"
And then George said, "God speaks directly to me through these trees." I backed away and fled.

My story accompanying this picture could so easily have cast a benevolent light on the friendly neighbourhood eccentric, it could have been a story in Reader's Digest or a church magazine,or even a children's book, with a colourful illustration accompanying it, safe, non-committal,un-opinionated reinforcing in its gentle readers the goodness that they want this world to be about, Sweet George giving Priya a creeper and telling her that the trees spoke to him. But I am not a children's book maker and my one stint long ago with a church magazine committee left me with an eternal sense of horror.

But irrespective of my story, there is the fact that George makes a great composition sitting in the dark with the streetlight on him and his doggy friends scattered around. It took 4 hours non-stop to finish this in my Canson sketchbook and I am happy with it.


My childhood in a cult

A Kashmiri Girl on a Cover

This is the cover for my picture book due in October 2019, published by Seagull Books. The cover illustration is done by me and the cover design by the awesome Sunandini Banerjee who designs all the Seagull Books covers. 

Here is Sunandini's response to me after sending me this cover design:

Thank you for the beautiful work you continue to do, and for having faith in me—for trusting me to add to your image on the cover. It has been a tremendous freedom and a responsibility and I am so very glad I could make you happy.

I am very touched to read this. While I am personally wary about emotion expressed over artwork, I have to admit that this time, when I saw my illustration placed within this understated and sophisticated cover design, I discreetly wiped away a tear. Who would've thought all those years and years of practice I put in would all lead to this?

This book was what I spent part of 2017 and most of 2018 frantically illustrating. To say that it was hard work would be an understatement. For an illustrator, making a picture book is akin to writing a novel. 

Here is a synopsis about the book ~

Priya Sebastian and Neha Singh, 'Is It the Same for You?'

‘The day they found my brother with a blood stain, I found one on my kurta too, but no one noticed my blood stain.’ Thus begins “Is it the same for you?” a story of a young girl in Kashmir as she goes through the turbulence of adolescence in her conflict-ridden world. While larger issues of terrorism, violence, and death engulf the hearts and minds of all those around her, she struggles to come to terms with her changing body and all that it entails. Left alone to deal with her constant questions, she experiences despair and loneliness but also shows resilience and hope in the faint knowledge that maybe it is not very different for all young girls around the world. : ‘Is it the same for you?’ she asks.
With powerful yet sensitive illustrations by Priya Sebastian, which infuse the story with universality, this beautiful volume is a tender attempt in imagining the different strands of a young life in Kashmir - a place where the inner conflicts of voiceless, adolescent girls are often overshadowed by the political, religious, and military conflicts that are now a constant in everyday life.

Forthcoming. October 2019.

Re emergence after a Sabbatical

These pictures below a keyhole peek at Unbox Festival where I was not only a flâneur but also a participant.
You can interpret the pictures however you want. Whatever meaning you derive from them will stem from an intersection of your instinct with your creative desires ~

And my studio, again. I suspect I am a bit in awe of this space which it seems my efforts in collaboration with my energy field have generated.

Deep and Dark Drawings

Hello Every Sunday

"There is nothing more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The adulthood that is the span of life before you. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of."

~ Toni Morrison

Gooseberry Jam

There has been a resumption of Hello Every Sunday after exactly
one year. I am glad for it since experimenting leads to all kinds of surprises like the illustrations in this post where I've tried to create a comic out of an unusual encounter. With the progression of each panel I found that my drawings gathered strength, much like I did. Rather than going around feeling dead after the previous project, I found myself reviving once more.