Artists could survive a blackout. Read on...

One spring morning my whole office went off all electronic gadgets. And that was indeed a blessing in disguise for me. When I had the opportunity I bought a one day break from all my business associations and decided to make good this once in a life-tine opportunity. Yes! power-cuts such as this is rare in Dubai where I live and work but back in India where I grew up if there is no power cut in a day maybe considered a once in a life-time opportunity to enjoy uninterrupted work.

Here is a painting I made on one of my visits to India when a power-cut at dusk made me take the brush and paint to wash off my impatience of grappling in the dark.

But this day graciously compelled me to go back to our roots where our artist fore-fathers picked up a charcoal or a pencil to sketch.

And so with the natural light of the day and a candle light for the night, I made a small sequence of cel animation with my peg-bars and papers lit underneath the glass-top table with a tea candle.

When I made this small project and ran the line teat, it lightened up my spirits giving me a confidence that we artists have a chance, way past our retirement. That even if a gadget fails on us we do have some job to make ends meet.

All my life, having my traditional art as my alternate career makes me heave a sigh of relief that I could count on a skill like many of we artists who possess a traditional grounding to give back to the world intelligently even with minimum resources... All we need is a passion and conviction eh?

Thanks for coming by.
See you again.

Illustration - Sizing to High format is no joke!?

I am sure many illustrators have run into a situation I am in now and doing what I am into at this moment.

One of my designs has brought on the need for me to make it 50 times larger in size. Oops! That is going to be several man-hours of pixel-level make-do and late hours of work and great strain to the eyes.
Below is a tiny clip of my mural sized once tiny artwork: Will upload it here once I am done.

But the good side to this exercise is that we get to learn the intricate details of the subject. For example what I am working on now is on an organic subject where I need to go down to the details of painting in its blood vessels. So am enjoying the research I am doing to get it right and glad to think back and realize that how my years of sketch-outings to make it my way of life as an artist is paying off... to do live sketches of humans and animals at gyms and the zoo respectively.

There are to regrets for the investment of time and energy I had spent at a time where many in my part of the world would have frowned upon to make sad judgments about this. How else could an artist grow in a city where specialties in art merely lay primarily within the passion of the learner whether an art-school student or a normal student who worked side by side with a passion in art. The only option was to enliven the dormant motivation within. As a Math graduate student with a passion in art.. which is all I needed to get started to hang out with a few naturalists in the city, while they covered nature with their various elements, I sketched without boundaries on anything under the sky. Right there was my art-schooling which has helped to reap the benefits today when I sit with this simple pleasure.