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.

The Candy Coloured Temple

This jewel, we passed on the way somewhere in search of something to sketch.
Absolutely unforgettable.

Some more photographs of my sketching trip can be seen be here >>

Forest

In the forest, you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf , or the living Christ, or an old enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment before you don't recognize her, you will think she is someone you know.

~ Wolf Hall
Hillary Mantel

The Indian man who planted trees and made his own forest

A Moment of Beauty

P, S and I went on an impromptu sketching expedition to Ramanagaram today. 

At SRS Betta, we started climbing up the hill, 

up each step consecrated with a dot of vermilion. 

P was climbing the steps in front of S and I. He passed through the porch of the small white temple in front of us. The darkness of the doorway was smeared across the old white walls like a  black stain

Suddenly, we heard a voice speaking through the darkened doorway. 

Then we saw this -

S and I gasped at the beauty of this moment.

Till the flame died down.

The three of us came back with lots of unforgettable memories and lots of drawings. 

While making this blog post, I received a message from P telling me he couldn't forget the Obbattu we all savoured at lunch. I don't yet know what S found unforgettable, but for me it was this, this moment that I quickly wanted to place here on my blog lest I ever forget it.

*

Quotation taken from the last page of Fludd

Lips drawn from a painting by Ambrosio Bergognone

2014

The drawing above, an old one dug out from one of my sketchbooks, was supposed to be complete for a new-year blog post, however a really bad cold and the tightest possible deadline for what seems to be the most difficult illustration ever has put a hold on it.

Instead I'd like to share this beautiful quotation with you -

The peace that we are looking for is not peace that crumbles
as soon as there is difficulty or chaos. Whether we are seeking inner peace
or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build
on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises. Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that is expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.
~ Pema Chodron

I wish each one of you reading this, a peaceful 2014 and the time and resources to do what you really love.

My prayer for 2014

Excellent Printing

Sometime ago, after Dr. Kalam's book, My Journey, was published, the editor of a publication in Indian languages wrote to me to tell me how much he appreciated the illustrations that I had done for the book while working on its Tamil translation. Mr. Kumaraswamy, the editor promised he would send me the Tamil edition of My Journey so that I could see for myself the excellent quality of the printing at Manjul Pulishers. I received my copy this morning and was truly pleasantly surprised at the way my illustrations jump out of the page almost as if I had actually drawn them right there. The quality of the printing is indeed sharp and excellent as you can see. The different textures and nuances of charcoal are brought out to their best and partner so nicely with the beautiful Tamil script. Now I feel my efforts in illustrating the stories have been worthwhile. Good printing does matter.

Once again I am really touched by the kindness of readers of this blog who stop to comment, write to me, take the trouble to personally meet and befriend me as well as encourage, assist, and appreciate what I do through the years. If Mr.Kumaraswamy had not taken the time to write and send across a copy, I would never have known how well my illustrations had been printed in the Tamil edition of the book.
Thank you!

Process for illustrations for the book My Journey

Gathering Shapes at Hampi

When I look at this image that I've created after my return from Hampi, I cannot help thinking how comical it is and yet so reassuring at the same time. This is my interpretation of Hampi; reassuring in its simplicity and unpretentiousness and yet simultaneously comical in the strange vibe it gives off, thanks to the kind of people who flock to the land and inhabit it - gaudily dressed hippies and English speaking villagers who intersperse its giant boulders. I had the option to either immerse myself in hippiedom or in natural surroundings. I chose the latter which is why the picture above is sans hippie.

My first visit to Hampi was over 10 years ago when it was far less touristy and when thanks to the kindness of a villager, for some fifty rupees I was taken to see all the many monuments of Hampi off the beaten track known only to locals and given one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life.
This time however, I was very clear that I wanted to relax and take a total break after hurtling from deadline to deadline for nearly the entire year and to resuscitate my brains which had been frying over the internet way too long. I did exactly that, and Hampi was the perfect place with its 'chill-out joints', natural beauty and laid back atmosphere.
I didn't take too make photographs, I didn't anxiously try to create magnificent drawings in my sketchbook, I simply ate, slept, took long walks, finished a storybook, explored shapes in my drawings and drank lots of masala chai. It was wonderful.
Here are some pictures that I'd like to share with you all -

The sweet smell of exhaled pot-fumes and lolling hippies finally calmed my anxious city-girl nerves at the Laughing Buddha, where I drew Matanga Hill while eating a delicious wood-fired pizza.

 

Day 2, I grudgingly clambered over to Achutaraya temple and stuffed up many attempts to capture its shape in my sketchbook. Then I got up and explored the beautiful landscape further, breathed freely in open space, drew some more and caught the last ferry back across the river.

The final day, I simply drank lots of masala chai, finished my book, swayed gently to sleep on the hammock and took leisurely walks along the river. The only tangible things I brought back with me were my drawings and these beautiful stones that I found along the banks of the Tungabadra. What better treasures could any traveller carry back?

While processing my visit on my return, I remembered that I had chanced on an unusual 45-degree angle of Virupaksha temple which I had happened to glance up at while returning to the ferry in the late afternoon sun. A dark jagged curve climbed up against the sky along the left side of the temple and seared downwards in a dark trail across the centre. I drew it at home in my large Moleskine sketchbook with graphite and pastel.

Later I reminisced about the things I saw to another artist who had visited Hampi earlier. "The shapes at Hampi are different from the shapes in Bangalore" I said. My listener knew exactly what I meant. Ultimately I think that is what we artists do, gather shapes and collect them within the pages of sketchbooks. And then sometimes we interpret them in our pictures. That is what we live for.

The Journey

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.

*

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.

Purple and Green