Adrenalin

At 2am on ordinary paper.

Before We Visit the Goddess

I was very pleased when the Art Director at Verve magazine invited me to illustrate a story by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I had wanted to illustrate for Verve ever since I saw their beautiful magazine years ago when I returned from Australia. Then, during pre-internet era, when I contacted them with samples of my work, they sent me an article to illustrate almost immediately. However, because of the logistics of couriering actual work across during those pre-digital times, it was an exercise in futility and nothing came of it. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised when I received a mail inviting me to illustrate for them this time. 

I haven’t received my copy yet, but a walk along Indiranagar with a friend and a bid to escape the heat by plunging into air conditioned Crossword assisted me in getting my hands on a copy and photographing it.Do check out the April 2016 issue of Verve. But you can also read the story here >>

The story is a beautiful one about young lovers, a red sari and stars in the night sky on the terrace. It was a pleasure to do and it is one of my favorite assignments to date. The focus of the illustration is on his hands cradling her and her sari enveloping them. The resulting shapes remind me almost of a foetus within a womb, safe, loved and secure.

For those of you interested in such matters, this illustration was done on Canson Colorline paper with the rich pigments of Daler Rowney pastel. I love the grainy texture and the rich but muted, sophisticated colors that resulted. This has been one of those rare moments when there is a sense of satisfaction with what has presented itself to me at my desk. 

The Indian Witch Hunt

The Indian Witch Hunt

In spite of having put this up on Facebook where it got some 3000 hits and so many shares, one feels obliged to put up these pictures on the blog as well, since this is after all a platform for my work and there are a few regular readers I know who are not on Facebook.
The editor at Livemint sent me an email acknowledging that there were many, many queries and compliments for these illustrations. He certainly paired my style with the right story. The feedback actually encourages me to attempt a few more comics.Who would have thought that would happen?

The Werewolf

'It is a cold northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts. A child decides to visit her sick grandmother deep in the forest. She takes her father's hunting knife with her...'

Twenty years ago around this time, I traveled to Australia to study illustration. There I unlearned and relearned everything I ever knew about drawing, literature, language and illustration. Apart from expressing myself in words, I learned to voice my opinions visually. This was akin to learning a new language except that instead of putting down words on paper, I drew images. But then I learned how to draw these images in a way where they would say what I wanted them to say.I remember I drew far more than I had ever done until then and I remember trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t with my drawings. 

The image above was for a story by Angela Carter called The Werewolf which I did as part of my final project work at Queensland College of Art. It is based on the fairy tale of Red Riding Hood, but with a chilling twist - The wolf who attacks the girl on her way to her grandmother, turns out to be the alter ego of this grandmother-werewolf. The image denatures Little Red Riding Hood accordingly: the figure of the girl and the hood is traditional. The character of the girl and the setting are Carter.

The reason I put the picture above up on my blog was the similarity of the environment within it to the cold winter forests in Sutton (below) where I was taken for a walk. I am surprised that the environment that I created in my image twenty years ago ended up manifesting itself in real life later, even if only for one seemingly endless blink of an eye.

Brought to Book

The Caravan, an excellent magazine of politics and culture invited me to do three editorial illustrations for them, super-fast, for an extraordinary essay about an author who had to face litigation for some of the contents in his book. He was hauled to the courts by people who hadn’t even read his book or deliberately chose to misunderstand what he had written. I had very little time to deliver something substantially complex for a story such as this. In the time I need to conceptualize and complete one illustration, I had to do three. But one does one’s best, takes a few by lanes and is thankful when such a project is completed and delivered.

In the illustrations I did for this essay, rather than creating standard visuals with courtroom scenes, I chose instead to depict the overwhelming emotions of paranoia, bewilderment and frustration that the author was consumed by; how small and vulnerable one can feel while battling strange and terrifying forces in an unfamiliar world. 

Favourite Things

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

The Village Headman

'Tis the time's plague when madmen lead the blind.
~ Shakespeare

Website! :-)

I now have a website :-)

(J'ai une nouveau site du web)

Check it out at priyasebastian.net