Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Friday, September 5, 2014

Organizing Artworks: A very Creative experience!

Hello there folks!

It is Friday here in Dubai and we are a good time into the weekend at this fag-end of a middle-eastern summer. Something very creative happened this morning. And I found this my best time to register it.

This was the spectacular start of my creative weekend. Organizing my Art!
I am very pleased to come back after a number of months of Fridays I could not update happenings at my side. Will tell you why in the coming weeks!
There sure was and is a lot that has been happening, all... too much and too over-crowded to update as surprises and interesting things kept happening "by-the-minute".

I wish I could send you a series of what I refer to here, right now, at once. While it is a near impossibility to do that, I promise I will put it out here to share for everyone in the community to learn from in small accounts from time to time. I will try to make it perhaps in picture strips to be worthy of looking at as like a story. :o) As I do have to illustrate each situation for one and all to take away from.
However, at this moment, all I can assure is that for certain I was on a great big educational journey where life in its mysterious ways allowed pockets of joy, pockets of surprise, pockets of awe and of course allowed opportunities to learn the truths about some lies, and the actual truth of dark intentions which lay behind quite a few "angel faces". I bet you would have seen some of those sometime in your lifetime too. Only that these veiled-with-an-angel-face was an occurrence all too frequent in a post-recession atmosphere that it has become almost predictable. So that's a good thing for all of us, isn't it?

So after this coming-back for good "speech", to start off this very very exciting season in my creative and art world, I make this post to share how today in spite of starting off as any other normal day turned out. It was one so spectacular, triggered by just a mundane chore I decided to do. I decided to clear up a couple of my mini shelves filled with doodles and paintings of work-in-progress and I was so pleased what I found. Like a pandoras box, I was pleasantly surprised to find my long lost treasured sketches which I had forgotten about. Now this added a whole new note of motivation for me to rollout this blogpost as the first special for the season.... making me capture all these sketches right now into my workstation.

While I keep my paintings and unfinished pieces to post for another time, I choose to post here a few of my ink & pen sketches.

So enjoy! while you share this wonderful thought as all we artists very often find ourselves in
An Aceo Ink & Pen Piece made for Ebay
I post this in tribute to my friend who passed this mid-2014


"one does not need a large, rare occasion to scintillate ones artistic inspirations....like I always say....little things in life can give one that immeasurable pleasure of being and making this a wonderful world to still exist in.

(1) Pen & Ink sketch - Cotton Tree in India sketched during waiting-time in my car

In spite of any low-moments for any of you, there is always hope in this world of unending opportunities....you may walk through the face of an opportunity and come out with none, but you may very well ramp into that next best opportunity when you least expect it... Or better still... a number of them land up all at once, all of a sudden putting you in a dilemma of what "one" opportunity to choose. This has happened to me many times. So don't worry!

You are in a good place!
So for those of you who haven't found that dream opportunity... just "believe" that it is waiting somewhere hidden... very close to you. You only have to find it and experience that it is your joy in your own small world. right?

View on!!!

(2) A 5-minute pigment ink doodle made on location Time Square Mall @ Arte early this year

(3) Enjoyed sketching these kittens playing their pranks.

These are just a few sketches I leave you with so that I can come back with the rest from time to time. So let me say goodbye while I go make those watercolor pieces. Weekends in Dubai is all I get to make my gallery works peacefully in my studio away from the weekday business grind.
Take care and get inspired by everything and anything out there. Remember nothing is a bad influence on your perceptions!! Take care!







Sunday, March 16, 2014

An ART group in Dubai made it for me

My apologies for missing from my blog from the new year of 2014. The real-life grind goes on but I am going to be coming to give you an update about this exciting season in Dubai!

How have you been doing with that New Years resolution?

As for me and some folks around here the madness continues and my motivation to keep up with the race has been several this season. It all started in January when I took part in Street Art Night - city beautification project when one felt this revolutionary period in art in Dubai is something no one could afford to miss. This phenomenon does not seem to stop anytime soon for the liberalization of conducting programs like this has only made Dubai all the more sparkly with different races of people from around the world coming into the country in droves.

This is my third year of exploration and experience in the entrepreneurial world and it has been nothing but an exciting ride filled with mystery, conviction, uncertainty, learning from life's ruthless ways of wisdom-sharing, artists camaraderie, collaborations and finding the long sought after niche. Along the way, I was truly touched by some very genuinely human (yes I emphasize) human beings and some very inhuman behavior from but only a few others. But all of it have been a part and parcel of being a growing entity not losing sight of what I wanted to have at the end of 2014.

The plan to set priorities straight this year:
Resolution 1: To give a hearing to my true calling in being a realist and impressionist and taking fine art to my next level...because art to artists makes work-life not all business....but gives a sense of release and a balance to normalise living.
Resolution 2: To shift gears within my corporate offerings to remove some of my services which are beaten up and broken into a sorry commodity and to look closely at what I have as a niche offering. I have managed to lock down a couple... those which I have gathered slowly, painfully with several years of seasoning.

So now I am rather pleased to say....resolution no. 1 has been met more far beyond expectation.
And resolution no. 2 is on its way to its victory.

Here are my posts in relation to my first resolution going forward oh so successfully.

I became a regular exhibitor, also having the courage to face members of the public, holding live portrait sessions at Arte - The Artisans of the Emirates which is an art market in Dubai. I realized that my sketches were such a great vehicle to create my dialogue with many people face-to-face in the city. So overwhelming was this experience which I had dreamed of in all my years as an artist.

Almost 2 weekend days from January - March 2014 I was there getting into an artistic trance like no other. Hats-off to this very thoughtfully created group... who make us and Dubai pledge "to Go Handmade!"

Arte was one among the good samaritans who have helped me see my resolution through this far.

Following are the pictures born out of my involvement with Arte. Dubai with Arte, this season got me into the groove of making portraits by the numbers....getting to practice like this is simply a joy.

I can't express enough the enjoyment I felt in mingling with a multi-national Dubai community doing what I did, getting into split-second friendly conversations no matter what their age, 6, 16, 30, or 80. Getting a thumbs up or a couple of cheers from passers-by who otherwise would just have passed by. Everyone shared a broad smile as if to say thanks for entertaining them. 

These pictures may show a bit of the flavor of my experience and an introducing to my signature style in portrait and caricature. 


Besides, I was pleased to make portraits of 2 great people....
Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela soon to be available as limited edition prints.




I have never enjoyed live-sketching like this before in Dubai!!
Truly no 2 people were from the same region.
The past 2 weeks I made portraits of 2 Africans, an Indian child, a Jordanian child, a Lebanese chil and portraits and caricature of many people who send in pictures. If faces that passed by were so portrait friendly as in good posers....I was pleased to give a portrait to them free like this Egyptian Child.



and even a 5-minute portrait of my pet daschund which quickly got bought by a second-grader "Deniz" who looked at him like eye-candy. 

It was a small struggle to part with my first portrait of Robbie yet I was pleased to hand it to little Deniz who I knew would treasure it dearly. 
Here is his picture.

 However I made a new one of him soon after. :o) Shall post it here for you as soon as I can.


I was also very pleased to re-introduce a couple of oil paintings (in flesh & blood) from my personal collection which I painted back in the 1980s and 1990s, shipped in from my home country.
I couldn't believe they have been with the household as silent companions for more than 20 years.

She is the product of my study of one of the great masters Rembrandt


This bear family piece made in July 1994 was inspired by the impressionists.


So the season this far was something to treasure....
Today being the start of the Art Week in Dubai the March fever hasn't stopped just yet.
I am waiting for another artistic trek this weekend.
Wait till I uncover what, where and who were here when I blog about it next week same time.
The only thing I wish is I had an extra self to help me take part in the bubbling events in store for artists right now.

Keep an eye on this space....because posts of it all are going to be rolling in regular succession. I have been bitten by the writer's bug once again ;o)

So long until next time!