digital painting

How tragic it is to buy a wacom intuous and be away from it for more than six months! Well, I finally reunited with my presently favourite tool and here is what I did with it. This is still a new medium for me and I am thoroughly enjoying working with it. I was always lazy in practising anatomy and study from life, which is obvious in this piece. Making these digital paintings is however giving me the motivation to do that now. yay wacom :)

type design, yay :)

Yes it is possible, you go through thousands of available fonts and yet not find one that's perfect for your project. What do you do then, hire a type designer to do custom font for you, or if you are an enthusiast like me, design one yourself. Creating a font from scratch isn't exactly as easy as writing ABCD. Creating limited number of characters, say for a logotype, is less time consuming. Yeah, I took the easy road and drew only four characters, but c'mon, it was still super fun, and mind you, took no less attention to detail than a complete set of characters. 

I have played around with latin characters before, modifying the letters a slight bit to fit my requirement. Working with devnagari characters though, this was a first for me. The number of strokes in this script is greater, and the curves are very different than the usual latin forms. Well, that's what makes it even more interesting. You can view a quick process in the pictures below, from scribbles to the final result. 

This logo was done for a photographer based in Indore who does mostly weddings. I suggested the name chaayachitra (meaning photograph) and he agreed instantly. I am still not sure if he loved the name for his brand or he agreed because his wife's name is Chaaya :D 

wedding album 03

Weddings are a perfect time to dig into your art cupboards and make some fun and cute craft and decorations. We did these little giveaways with the simplest of materials and in very little time. These are balls of jaggery, dried coconuts and half coconuts wrapped in bright coloured tissue fabric and moli and decorated with other pretty tidbits. These three things are traditional choices and are signs of good luck. Moli is a red and yellow cotton string considered holy; it is used widely in temples and for any auspicious occasion, both for worship and decoration. 

 

wedding album 02

A close friend and a talented illustrator made this wonderful cartoon on the roles a good husband needs to play, after my engagement for me and my husband. We couldn't stop smiling when we saw it. You can see more of her work here.

wedding album 01

Here comes the first post from my wedding in April. We did do a traditional Hindu wedding invitation which was posted to family members. But it wouldn't be as much fun if I didn't do some design in my own wedding, would it. For my friends and the not-so-traditional relatives, I did an e-card, my style. The dolls were drawn by a close friend and illustrator who later made a series out of these very cute figures. You can view them here. More design from the wedding coming soon...

the abandoned apartment

The sheets covering the furniture are laden with dust. The window panes are splashed with pigeon droppings. A lone jute doormat lying carelessly in the passage has gone so dry, it would disintegrate with the slightest touch. An old rusty calendar on the kitchen counter indicates the year until when the place was full of life and the year when it was emptied of it. The owner doesn't want to rent it, he doesn't want to sell it either. He once lived here with his family, but now only their things remain. An empty house looks like an empty house, this apartment full of stuff that isn't being used, gives it a sad abandoned air. Despite all the abandonment and lifelessness in this place there is something here which makes me think that it is not progressing to ruin, it is not the end yet. I see cups they drank their tea from, the forks they ate their meals with, the chairs they sat on and chit-chatted, the windows they looked through. These are inanimate objects but they did contribute, I’d like to assume, to a full and happy life. These lifeless objects give me a feeling of hope that the occupants of this place will return, to use their things once again, to bring life to this place again. Isn't that why they left chunks of their routine right here. I’d like to think they did.

I found this apartment in one of the buildings when we were searching for a new place. It aroused such emotion and inspiration, I regretted not carrying a camera. These pictures are clicked with my phone and edited on it using a photo editing app. Working outside Photoshop didn't give too much flexibility, but using presets made it quick ;)

after a long break

It's been long since I posted something here. Well, I guess I can be excused, I was getting married :) After all the crazy preparations, a wonderful wedding and a beautiful honeymoon, I am back. I thought I'd give you a sneak peek to my wedding designs and decorations. That, however, is taking some time to compile. No harm in returning with a non-wedding post after the wedding I suppose. The next post is actually quite opposite in nature to my present state of togetherness and happiness, still, hope you like it.

the fun of the first time

Work was perfectly fine with my usual tools, paper, pen, computer, mouse. But neither just work nor routine methods are ever enough to keep the brain full or the mind at ease. I was dwelling on the idea of getting a graphic pad for sometime and bought it the first chance I got. The excitement of using this wonderful, high-tech and much loved by digital artists around the world, tool was so great, I couldn't wait to start scribbling. After a couple of days of playing with my new Wacom Intuos 5 Multi-touch and drawing leaves and flowers and lines not very different in form from a 3 year old who is learning to hold a crayon, I decided to do something more like a grown up. Without having the patience of going through the many instructions I quickly googled for an interesting reference picture and started with my first sketch. Drawing and discarding and drawing and discarding, I managed to gain control on my digital tools. Here is my first stint with the Intuos 5 Multi-touch.

Although this is a fairly basic portrait in a regular style, the process was so fun, I might end up ignoring other media for a long while now. Next on my mind is to explore various pen tips and brushes and develop a good rendering style. Discovering the possibilities of this new tool should be very enjoyable, but nothing can beat the fun of the first time.