Portrait

It had been a while since I sat down and did a painting. I was really really rusty, but I'm glad I did this. Its much larger than what I'm used to working on (19 by 25 inches) so I had a lot of fun completely immersing myself in this.
Sorry about the low res image, I could only get a photo from a phone for now.
Oil pastels for the portrait and some soft pastels on the background.

Ajji

After much crankiness, I decided I'd draw this adorable old woman. I've been feeling a little stuck in my style so I thought I'd start drawing faces, and this is an attempt over three quick sessions.

This is...

Five months of non stop entertainment. You boys will be missed, thank you for everything!
Click to enlarge image.

For those of you wondering what the title means, check this out :

This song was the effective soundtrack to all our weekend (and frequent I-cant-handle-this-workload Tuesday) debauchery.

Cheers!

And dined ~

Close family friend asked if I could redo their menu. I din't have much to start with since he only handed me a couple of print outs with the dishes listed in some loony font. I think he expected me to only retype the menu, in some other font and add some splashes of colour, you know, make it 'designery'. But I've always wanted to do a menu, and was excited enough to dig up some old photos I had of Mangalore and use them for reference.
Quick overnight job, but it was quite fun to do.
Shown here is just the cover page and center spread. Click on the image to view details.

Cheers!

Strummer

Boy plays the guitar.
I like to go overboard with photoshop.

Also, just realising that working on a very excellent monitor can get you carried away with colours and textures that might just get lost on other screens. *makes spoilt brat face*

Of plants and trees

Click on image to view full details please!

Some work I had done for the good people over at Vriksha nursery. Illustrations for their blog background. Unfortunately the project fell through, I was crazy busy shifting home/life base. I had super amounts of fun doing these though!

Space gypsy

I've been fussing over this one for quite a while. She started out as a tiny outlet to my frustration in the corner of one of my notebooks. The type had me bothered for quite a while too. But I decided to let go at one point, and here she is, beautiful. Just as she was meant to be.
Hopefully her three eyes provide me with some insight over the weeks to come.

Im thinking of converting these to prints, or maybe T shirts. What do you think?

Much love, hope you have a wonderful weekend!

9ft*10ft

THE WALL

(Do check out the link, its an unlisted youtube video, so I couldnt post it here)

Early feb.
I'd promised Adu that I'd paint the wall in his new home quite for quite a while. Finally made a quick trip to Mangalore for four hot,, sweltering unventilated days of wall painting. Did I get a head rush from all the paint fumes? Yes, yes I did. But its turned out really beautifully and I'm so glad I took some time out to do this. First mural *YAY!*

Just to give you a feel, the White Tara is almost as big as me (5ft 4in, thank you very much) and the painted room is small enough for the painting to loom over it all! I still need to add some finishing flourishes, just waiting to get a few days off so I can do it.

Sorry about the shaky video, Adu's handywork. The boy does take brilliant pictures though! Go look!

Megha cycled for water!

Megha contacted me recently to very very quickly make an illustration for this wonderful initiative she's working on. Working with Milap she hopes to raise money to provide clean drinking water to villages in southern India, by participating in a cyclathon. It sounded like a really fun idea for a really great cause and I agreed to do the crash assignment.
Over an evening of giggles and tea, this is what I finally came up with.

Check out her page over at Milap, and if you're feeling generous enough, DONATE! (the donations work as a loan, so you get 100% of your money back, which I think is a much more dignified way of helping people out)

Why I love the beach...

After several restless weeks in a Bangalore that refused to let go of the wintery chill, a few of us decided a beach trip was due.
Ive never been to Gokarna, even though home town is just a few skips away. My first visit there and I'm in love.
And as is must of all trip-happy-hippy beach places, there was music on the beach.
Boy, leftmost on guitar along with two French gypsy jazz playing fellows made lovely music while I sat right next, sketching and trying to draw as much heat from the nearby bonfire.

And a customary sketch dump from the two wonderfully lazy days.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Hello lady!

She's been sitting in my computer, scanned from an old sketch, for a very very long time. One semi drunken evening, I decided to colour her.
She smiled, sang to me all kinds of wonderful, strength filled love letters, stroked my hair and then gave me one big push when I needed it the most. 

Ah! Technology...

working with clunky computers is no fun. :(

Hell hath no...

Nothing more ferocious than a pissed off woman, yes?
Unfortunately, I just had to face a kick-in-the-gut kind of heartache. Normally I'm one of the more peaceful people around and the women I draw are the gentle, flower wearing, beach loving kinds. But nothing like having someone scorn you to bring out the inner Kali faced-skull wearing-Imma eat soup from your severed head-breed of anger.

Im really enjoying this linocut esque style right now. Mostly because slowly scratching away all the lines and negative spaces while listening to Susheela Raman's version of 'Voodoo chile' is great, great catharsis for this sad heart.

And a film was born

Finally, as promised, my classroom project is up.

Ive been typing out the official synopsis of this film so often, that I dont feel like doing it again here. So all I'll say is that this is sorta my love letter to the sea.

Also I made this comic below during the last few days that I was finishing up my film (this was in April)

Click to enlarge please

And as cliched as I think the whole my-film-is my baby line is, making one from scratch sure felt like one. Though of course, my knowledge about birthing babies is limited to... well... that it happens!

I hope you enjoy and please do leave feedback!

That beachy feeling

So it hit me again. I want, no, NEED to go to the beach. Anyone who even vaguely knows me, will tell you that I find the sea and beach mesmerising. Though I dont know why Im getting sudden pangs. Maybe because Avirup has been talking about a trip to Diu a lot lately.
Maybe its because of these moody rains that wont let up.
Or my rainy mood that wont either...
Also Ive been thinking of my classroom project again (Im uploading it, I promise!), so I guess thats where the imagery comes from.

And yes, thank you Nandini for kicking my ass a little and getting me to do this!

Tried the whole photoshop brushes jazz, though I must admit I half assed my way through the backgrounds :P

Dancing queen

The original one.

Meant to draw it as a foil to natraja's more aggressive force, and while the figure of natrani does exist I wont say that my drawing is an accurate representation of her.

I drew it at a time when my body was complaining that I wasn't dancing enough. I guess thats why it took me months to finish this, since she kept reminding me of what I was missing. Maybe now that the painting is done I'll move a little bit more.

Micron pen and inks on cartridge.

Baby, baby, quite contrary...

A few friends and I went to watch the movie 'Rango' yesterday, and the enjoyable experience of watching a nice movie and a wonderfully air conditioned hall on a hot summer afternoon was some what marred by a three year old and his (obnoxious) parent sitting in front of us. The kid spent half of the movie asking his dad what was happening on screen and the rest staring at us and chanting 'popcorn! popcorn!'
This comic was somewhat prompted by that incident, my inability/refusal to deal with kids and Gala Darling's post on the subject.
Now to tell my mum about my future (non) family plans. Soon.
Please click to enlarge.

P.S. sorry about crappy scan quality, it was a rush job on the insti scanner.

Illustration friday : Bottled

My friend Charu and I were roommates last year. I made this drawing then of the collection of various bottles we had on the floor in a very dorm-DIY-esque instalation. What my mum called junk when she came visiting, we called 'art' (ok, so we never called it anything, but 'art' is a nice name for the proof of our drinking habit! )

Illustration Friday : warning

My mum was always warning me that if I din't drink my milk everyday, I'd be a bad girl.

On a side note though, parents are funny creatures. They warn us about the most inane things in the hopes that we dont become bad/dead people, like drink your milk, eat your food, dont be fat, look both ways before crossing the road, dont get tattoos etc etc. So much so that they forget to warn us about the things that really mke us bad. I dont think I've ever heard a parent say "dont do that, thats a bad life decision!"...nope, not ever.

watercolours and pencil colours on paper.

scribble.sleep.not.colour.juice

I normally write a little something below each of my posts, but for this one, I can't think.

Mostly because this was one of things that I just saw in my head (while I was 'working'), and then drew out.

Twisted sleep cycles and work stress is doing strange things to me.

Digital scratch to finish. (Ideally I would have drawn the woman in inks.)