A very wet and rainy day, the soaking big city skyscrapers, a glass window separating the wet, cold world outside and the warm, loving world inside, and of course … a steaming cup of hot coffee.
Just add some old time music and a companion to share the memories with!
Painted using Acrylics in canvas 20″ X 30″.
Introducing 2 workshops this month – 21st and 22nd May
Introduction to Pen and Ink drawing is for beginners, or those who want to brush up their skills with pen drawing. It also covers the vital art of “Seeing the picture”.
Composition and Perspective is for those who have some basic knowledge of drawing and/or attended the Pen and Ink drawing workshop and want to build on it for doing some amazing artwork.
I spent the last 5 days in Konkan, the beautiful coastal area of the Maharashtra state where I reside. It was a different world, with endless scenic vistas, rustic life in villages, and best of all .. no cell phone coverage!
These are some of the glimpses of Konkan through my sketchbook.
Village Well – This stone well, along with the multi-colored contraption to draw out water was one of the highlights of the resort where we stayed. Pen and colored inks.
Beach of Ganeshgule – An ultra quick sketch. Brush pens.
A Dry Stream – in the village Kurdhe. Pigma pens.
View of the Ganeshgule Beach – Pens and Black ink
A Beautiful House in village Kurdhe – Pens and Black ink
Mahakali Temple in Adiware Village – Pens and colored inks
Stone wall – This stone wall, along with the interestingly placed logs formed the boundary of resort with the seashore. Pens and colored inks.
Storage Shades – These shades were used to store the coconuts regularly falling off the trees.
Swings – Pigma Pens
Old Door – House in village Kurdhe. Pigma pens.
Tree House – In the resort where we stayed in Ganeshgule. Pigma pens.
Today was my second outing with Pune Urban Sketchers group, once again in Fergusson college campus.
Today I sat on the steps outside one of the classrooms, and drew this sketch of this building opposite. This building was heavily covered in shrubbery and trees. So the main challenge was to show enough of the building through the trees, but at the same time keeping it covered with foliage. Had a lot of fun with this.
Drawn on paper with Brustro pens, various sizes. Total drawing time – 1 hour 15 mins.
When Casino Meets Art
Popular art icons with casino themes
Every casino patron is familiar with the iconic painting of Dogs Playing Poker. This whimsical approach in a painting has won the respect of art critics and enthusiasts alike and still remains as a classic art piece, today. It’s hard to imagine that this painting is actually more than a century old. This casino-centric masterpiece was painted by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge in 1903, according to 94.3 Loudwire.
Image from Wakpaper.com
This simply goes to show that art knows no time or place. Today however, we rarely see casinos as the subject of paintings, since we often turn to photographs for a glimpse of a certain place or event. In fact, casinos in general are seeing a decrease in their visitors, especially with the rise of mobile casinos. But like their counterparts, these mobile casinos display art in their interface. We often find digitalized and cartoonish depictions of slot machines and poker games too.
Image from pocket fruity
So why is casino art becoming a trend? Casinos are the spitting image of today’s entertainment industry—busy and always on the go. With so much going on inside these casinos, artists who are looking for subjects or perhaps inspiration for their next paintings look to a vibrant setting in casinos. One such artist is Lisa Esherick, a casino fan who describes herself as a “figurative painter with abstract leanings.”
“I am interested in the expressive nature of painting. I want to convey the emotional presence that I find in the still world of objects. I want to feel the space between things and hear the silence. I want to explore shadowy things — things hidden from view, what cannot quite be identified, things unknown that yet have great power in our lives,” Esherick said as she described her passion in Art Slant.
Image from lisaesherick.com/
Certainly, her expertise in art manifests well in her depiction of casinos. The expressive nature of her work fits the casino setting very well, where subjects often display the most natural of human emotions. Esherick captures the buzzing scene of poker games. And at the same time, her interpretation of well-composed poker players are well renowned by the art community as one of today’s best in figurative art.
This unique approach is even evident in today’s booming casino industry. Art is no longer about natural landscapes, or realistic expressions. Art is a tool in which we view realities. In a day and age where casinos have moved from brick and mortar casinos to virtual ones, we also find a new age of art in the digital world. Through the eyes of artists, casinos breathe new life to the canvass.
I visited Andaman Islands in the November of 2013.
Andaman and Nicobar islands is a group of tropical islands off the coast of India in Bay of Bengal. It takes approximately 2 hours to reach by flight. Andaman and Nicobar is a cluster of nearly 575 islands, most of them either uninhabited, or inhabited by primal adivasis (the ancient tribal residents of Andaman, untouched by modern civilization).
Andaman and Nicobar are extremely beautiful and teeming with exotic corals and wildlife. But Indian history has a very dark era, where these islands were used to destroy hope and lives of so many people.
During the British rule of India, near the start of 20th century, Indian struggle for independence from their British overlords was gaining momentum after the failed uprising of 1857. The Indian youth were demanding more rights. The British rulers were feeling the heat of organized peaceful political protests on one hand, and violent revolt of the revolutionists on the other.
The British realised that killing and punishing few would not serve to break the moral of others. So they devised a jail called ‘Çellular Jail’ in the Port Blair island of Andaman. Cellular jail was built from the slave labour of Indian prisoners over the course of 5 years.
Cellular jail is so named as it has 693 tiny cells, out of which 663 were built for solitary confinement of prisoners. From the beginning of 20th century till the Japanese occupation of the island during WW-II, the jail witnessed one of the blackest chapters of torture, misery and unbreakable human spirit of freedom.
The prison sentence imposed on the political prisoners being sent to Cellular Jail was termed ‘Kala Pani’ (Black water). The sentence consisted of solitary confinement of prisoners in their respective cells, very small rationing of food and water, just to keep them alive, constant humiliation, and slave labour, where they were forced to do inhuman tasks like producing 30 pounds of coconut oil etc. Failing to do these tasks invited further punishment like flogging, food deprivation and being bound in chains for days.
Many prisoners went insane due to this torture, many died. When prisoners went on hunger strike to demand better conditions, they were force fed milk to break their strike. Many died during this force feeding, because the milk entered their lungs. One of them was Mahaveer Singh, a close associate of Bhagat Singh. There’s a garden across the road from Cellular jail now, where statues of 6 martyrs are erected. Four of them have died due to such force feed.
Cellular jail is today a national monument to the sacrifice of innumerable people, who were unreasonable enough to denounce the foreign rulers, who were stubborn enough to sacrifice their today for others’ tomorrow, and brave enough to endure the relentless torture in this bleak prison.
Every day, a light and sound show is held twice in the Cellular jail premises to remind us of their sacrifices. I attended such show on 31st Oct last week.
I must admit that I was a bit sceptical about the quality of show when I entered the premises. It’s one thing to have a great subject material, it’s another thing to represent it correctly, effectively and by touching the viewers’ emotions.
When the show ended, I was extremely grateful to the organisers that they came up with this show!
The show has no live human characters, it has no moving statues. The whole show is based on light and sound effects emanating from various places in the jail premises, cells and walls.
The show takes us through a brief history of Andaman, and the conception and construction of cellular jail. There’s a solitary Banyan tree in the premises. It was there before the construction began, and it survived the logging and deforestation of the land where the jail now stands. It was a very nice and touching idea to tell the history of jail by this tree, as it has seen it all.
One of the greatest freedom fighters India has ever seen, Veer Sawarkar was given a sentence of 50 years of kala pani. When he entered the jail, the jailer met him and sarcastically asked him, “So Sawarkar, you are here for life now. Do you want to spend 50 years here, or go insane before that, so you can at least spend some time outside?”. Sawarkar replied, “Mr Jailer, do you seriously think the British rule will last for next 50 years in India?”. Sawarkar’s prophecy came true eventually.
The tales of suffering, torture, humiliation told were heart wrenching, and I am not ashamed to say that I cried during the show. Not once, but many times. However the tears were not borne of depression, but gratitude, towards those who gave their present for our future.
Today, we talk about globalization, and Indian tiger in the great game of global economics. We talk about getting to be a world superpower, and touching the Moon, and the Mars. We talk about Indians getting recognized and celebrated in the same vein as our European and American counterparts.
But all this started with the self respect which we earned by earning our independence. And these were the thousands of unnamed people who refused to let the circumstances break their spirits.
As I walked out at the end of the show, I was proud to be their fellow countryman.
Finally the version 1.0 of HuesAndTones is ready to be distributed to the world.
It has been a tireless (actually, very tiring) and very fulfilling journey till now. More and more features and design elements are in the pipeline.
Awaiting your candid responses and feedbacks on the site design and content
Blog-Prologue:
Recession. Yes, that dreaded word which has taken the world by storm, has sent some rude awakening calls for ordinary folks the world over. Job losses, bankrupcies, frustrations and depressions abound.
And I am no different.
A part of the (so far) growing Indian IT industry, whose main clients reside in USA and Europe, it was impossible to be completely immune from the global meltdown. Luckily for me, I am still holding onto my monthly paycheque (It’s not AS brutal in India in terms of layoffs as in some western cultures), I was still worried.
Then it struck me.
Can this recession time be a blessing in disguise?
I have been sketching and painting for many years. In the eariler years, I had made some comics as well. But these comics were without any direction and real content. In my college and university years, I made many sketches (primarily portraits) and oil paintings (situations). One common factor amongst all these artworks was that they were always copied from various photographs and faithfully reproduced on paper / canvas. Even though many people around me liked them, it did not really satisfy me.
The recession and resultant free time gave me an opportunity to contemplate and think, to tinker with the part of brain clouded under stringent IT project deadlines.
First I tried out my hand at a small short film, followed by a claymation film, which proved to be quite an enriching experience. Making these films was the time when I discovered that I could write some interesting stuff, too.
More stuff about the making of my comic coming up