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. 

purana lamp-post

As I was driving home one evening, I saw an old dysfunctional street lamp tucked behind new shiny ones. One in many is always somehow left on the road when installing new ones, I don't know why. They just stand there doing nothing. I must've seen one of those a thousand times, but this time, it caught my attention, can't say why.

dialogue box animals

Getting bored isn't really too bad, well, when the result of scribbling in boredom is cute animal drawings. That is the fun of scribbling, lines-circles-rectangles-triangles-speech bubbles-rotating speech bubbles-distorted speech bubbles-animals! Just when you see something taking shape within those random strokes, there is this moment of joy and excitement and boredom suddenly disappears. Then you have a task at hand, mine, in this case, was drawing these baby animals out of speech bubbles. I call them Dialogue Box Animals. What are their dialogues, I haven't figured out yet. I am thinking of developing this into an interactive toy of some kind for my cute little nephew and nieces. Hopefully I'll figure out what exactly soon enough. Until then,  keep scribbling...

the frenchman who lost his heart

No I do not know any Frenchmen, in fact I have never known anyone but Indians. I think this thought is inspired from the movies I have been watching -- three movies in three days, coincidentally all three protagonists were deep, passionate, creative, sensitive and French! and the food shows I watch, where no one ever stops talking about French food and how they put love into everything, even in their cooking. Well, it is not a happy love story this one, but does it matter? Isn't one person loving better than no one being in love at all.

pretty little things - 3

A yacht is hardly a little thing, but pretty? oh yeah, mighty pretty. Okay so this one is not exactly sailing in placid water or under a clear sky, but a yacht is beautiful in any case. This is the third illustration in the series I started drawing sometime back. The first two can be found here and here. 

remote east

During a trip to the east, I saw these deserted railway platforms from the window of my train. It was unusual to see no one running with their luggage to jump on the train, no hustle-bustle of a busy station, no food stalls, no vendors selling beverages, toys, books, cards, or anything else, a characteristic feature of train journeys in India. These platforms were just slabs of concrete standing unsheltered next to the railway tracks. They belonged to the many small towns and villages of one of the most densely populated states in the country, but had no occupants to prove that. Through the old yellowish glasses of my window, these appeared to me like places from another age.