An event to cherish!!! An enjoyable painting session!!

Dear all!!
I hope you have been well while I was gone out of the blogosphere for so long.

Perhaps this artwork I made dedicated to UAE under the Zee Art Community Umbrella says it all!
…Which... I just have come to realize this very moment!

I would like to hear if your subconscious speaks to you in this way too…. Where your art and passions have led your quest for whatever future you have been seeking.

While doing this live along with 8 other truly passionate artists living and working in this country (Do take a look at all the other paintings made that day by my new artist comrades:
http://tinyurl.com/obdpw2r having their own stories to tell through their paintings.),

….little did I realize that the past 5 months I have been a lot more a part of this portrayal than ever before.

And so today as I get ready for another artistic performance…the excitement in anticipation of yet another new UAE experience I am going to see today (will tweet or instagram when I am there in a few hours), I cannot help feeling pleased at the opportunity I received on 2nd December and find it urgent to register this here to share with you and extend my gratitude to the lovely organizer of the ZeeArt community here in Dubai!!

Let me explain the story behind this piece so that all of you can see the context of my narration here. So that you too can relate to it.

While creating this piece I was enjoying the fact that people watching me, came up to me so curious to know what I am trying to show here. And I just told them it is for them to guess and if they have at the end of my art session, I think I have succeeded. Else it would be otherwise and think I have better luck next time as a performing artist. Luckily a handful... to my joy did guess what I intended although I left out one important subject from my painting. I felt okay because I could make myself an original painting than a derivative. The metaphor is what was important.

This picture explains my take on the theme to paint that day "My UAE". which takes us along the path of a classic English fairytale we all have enjoyed growing up through elementary school.
"The Jack and the Beanstalk"
You may refresh your memory from here: :o)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN_C-eGzEEs

And the subject I have chosen not to paint in here is little Jack. Instead I have attempted to indicate that there are a number of us here climbing this beanstalk to find treasures up above the beanstalk.

So there! I hope you have enjoyed and been able to reflect while reading on like I have totally enjoyed replaying my inner thoughts while creating this realistic abstract piece. 

So long till the next time! I am sure I am coming back here sooner to tell you more of my adventures…while I climbed this beanstalk … a lot to share but I rather tell it in small potions (I meant potions not portions) as I want to relate to it as how it all turned out to be artistic inspirations for me whether the experience was a struggle or victory.

Will be back on the next day I feel so overwhelmed with beatitude!! as today! And hopefully all of you can take away a bit of my happy artistic moments to make this life a better journey!

Sci-Fi Novel Trilogy in the making (Design Ground-work)

Great to be doing some ground work to create an art-piece for my favorite Sci Fi author yet again. This time it is for his upcoming third novel as part of the trilogy.
It is always very exciting to make a piece for Gunnar C. Garrison as his creative briefs are in itself a masterpiece. 
I am quite pleased for this week as he is the second among my treasured clients who are just so perfect at painting the exact picture of what they have in mind.
Makes it so much easier to swoop into their story and get the piece done with a few sittings.
The following are the first and second novels I am pleased to have illustrated for... now available on Amazon. Both works were created by Digital painting, complementing the original characters with background filled with image-processing.

Thanks for passing by!

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!

A thought for the day for an immigrant creative

Today yet another weekend day after a recharge at the end of the weekdays mill, I sit pondering upon a few visualizations while chasing a deadline. It happens to be very appropriate... a subject so real... being an immigrant professional for over a decade now and having the honor to get first-hand experience in working and living amongst a multinational society.

Living in a foreign country as a foreigner is in my opinion, a hit and miss situation because nobody can be proud of enjoying lasting associations or friendships as it is a society that is coming in and out. (That is why I used the word "transitional".

As I create my pieces it brings back some mixed memories of the past, of people I have come across...Of the good people who come and go and the good people who have adopted nasty habits perhaps to survive... to me these survivors whether in the right or wrong, stay longer. Multinational societies are excellent but capitalism becomes the word of the hour... So in these times of global citizenship I make these drawings from my experience as an artist, professional, executive while working in various parts of the world. Every experience ironically speaks the same language because at the end of the day most of our interactions are with human beings irrespective of creed, cast, race, gender or age.

In my opinion this scenario has given a lot of learning but has come as part and parcel with unbelievable challenges for each of us.

Tune in for my take how I tried to live realistically in such a harsh but exciting world away from my home.

Brb

Adding spice to our daily work!. My Technical Painting Days

Folks folks!!! This is an exciting cry from my studio because this day... I might say that am in the middle of volumes of sketches and reference images in front of me....essentially doing my "Dream Project"...for the third time in my years in this industry.

I love doing Scientific or tech. drawings especially when a client comes to me and says he/she wants it as an actual painting....with the freedom to use anything....paints, photoshop, 3D or vector drawing software.

So am on my way to do such a piece...

How lovely it is for a change to actually re-learn our science sessions at school...which we may have almost forgotten ....to be able to renew what one learnt years ago and update with todays inventions...urging me to make my artistic representation of each of it at every step....What a great way to brush up my brain cells ... A chance which rarely came by....now overjoyed to be in that moment of nostalgia and pleasant deja vu.

Isn't this certainly an up-side to being in the creatives-business? There is a kind of getting back some reward while imparting and serving the society.

Do keep yourself updated on my youtube channels for video and animation born out of projects of such nature. In demonstrating these in my social media, I hope it would help you with some ideas on how to enjoy yourselves too while working in todays grind...I feel that no matter what field you maybe in. :o). Think of things to beat boredom at your daily job.... Have a chirpy weekday!!

Ciao then for now.

I like to Live caricature in Dubai

Greetings all

This is a post I originally made just to showcase my live caricature stints. Just about 10 days ago when I first posted this, I was completely oblivious of the fact that not everything is milk and honey in the world of a full-time caricaturist who makes a living doing cartoons at live events.

This is a new context (dated 20 April) to my old post after I did my own research as a blogger in the creative arts industry which is the product of one of my art adventures.

It ain't so pretty in the life of a caricaturist if one wants to caricature for a living. I leave it to you guys to go out there and get curious about what transpires in the life of one of these talented souls. I empathize with them but in the end they are their own masters and only they can keep up to the serenity of their talent.

With this said .... you may now read the rest of the post which I promise is the chirpy part of the bargain :o).

Just to update you, I only perform live caricature for the shear pleasure of doing it. And no thank you shall I say....to do it for profit or attach any commercial interest to it ...for then it just becomes a menial manual activity with all its grace lost. At least it is a great work-out for my mind. And hence am so pleased and proud to do it via my main facilitator ARTE UAE on a weekend or two. Thanks to them it is with great pleasure that I now share my works and views on caricaturing along the middle-eastern coast while I interact with a vibrant transitional multi-national society who hail from various races, color, creed, speaking different languages from different parts of the world.

I must say my exciting journey has taken me into caricaturing just to have some child-like fun which has given me such fulfillment compared to my regular work in branding or creatives or infographic direction or any other creative activity I do, in saying that when I caricature I get into this special dialogue with my target audience bringing about an interactivity and informal conversation where I get to speak with each one of them from their comfort-level, eye-to-eye with all their inhibitions melted away, their reservedness and people-shyness, all disappeared. The intriguing part of it is that while I sketch, my subject is constantly in touch with me conversationally helping me make a better and meaningful image of them and their gestures. Even better, I find something I learn from every individual whether he/she be 4 years of age, 20, 40 or 80. Not only does this enhance my learning about life, but I am pleased that I am able to share my knowledge when my subject tries to learn from me more about art and cartooning which is all the more pleasing when I  teach for passion.

These are some of my other caricature of people, all of which have their own stories to tell.

Having shared this, let me end this post by explaining a bit what caricature means ... from some information gathered from Wikipedia

A caricature is a rendered or processed image (made by traditional drawing on paper or canvas or wood or drawn digitally into a computer screen) which shows the features of its subject in an exaggerated way. 

As far as I am concerned, I prefer to make my caricature subjects have pleasantly exaggerated characteristics so everyone has a smiling face when I hand over my sketch  :o) My intent is to enhance the "feel good" emotion in my subject.

In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.

Caricatures can be insulting or complimentary and can serve a political purpose or be drawn solely for entertainment. 

I enjoy making my caricature "Solely" for entertainment and entertainment of the events guests to compliment guests of the party or event.

Be it a birthday party, farewell, retirement, wedding etc etc.  I like making caricatures for the group to think - happy thoughts or get into that "happiness bubble."

Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.

While I do a lot of caricature of politicians  but do not allow for it to see the light of day because I choose to only publicize caricature of neutral subjects and of individuals who personally request me to make of them.... Caricature is also all about capturing the moment and living in that moment. Hence there is no time to crib because this art-form only celebrates the fun element of a character at that moment.

The term is derived from the Italian caricare—to charge or load.

So, the word "caricature" essentially means a "loaded portrait".  

My portraits take a bit longer to create. Whereas my caricature are quick because I tease out ones character from the portrait the best elements in a few lines drawn.

Thank you for stopping by. I sure did enjoy explaining about what transpires whenever I want to become a humorist in the form of my sketches. In a few weeks I am excited at the possibility of showcasing one of my good humorist friends who is a celebrity doing it again as a pleasure in his own country. Wait till I reveal the face of that great artist. Coming soon on this space.

Coming back to my intent of making this post...I hope this art form is preserved to its best.

One needs to recognize the fact that there is intricate split-second brain-power going on inside a caricaturist's mind to be able to churn out such unique pieces of art. And there is a sure need to pull back out of the commercial world and view this with some empathy.

The other best places to see them in action in Dubai are Ripe Markets, Dubai Shopping Festival, Comicon Dubai, Dubai Summer Surprises Events, Al Qasba Sharjah, and of course Arte.

So long till next time. I have a couple of very interesting posts coming up. So gear up for another coffee-time read just coming up.

A bonus brand new venue for ARTE during Art Season Dubai

Finally it is going to be that day to check out more of Dubai's arts and crafts in the city through none other than ARTE (arte.ae).
I am sure it will be as 150 or more other folks who are passionate about making art pieces think so....As they are going to welcome the tireless Dubai weekend wanderers to an exciting location called Business Bay Mall to accommodate more artists in a fun fair setup.

I am looking forward to spend some weekend fun again reliving that new dialogue I started with members of the public through my portraits, sketches and art.

For more details do take a look at the poster below and the location map:

So long and have a great weekend!

Art Dubai - a take from a local contemporary artist

To all you art enthusiasts interested in the Art world happening at the centre of the Middle-east ... a hub for art with multi-cultural interests....That is Dubai
Here is my quick run-down of our Art Dubai visit.

Sit back and enjoy while you read my take.

On the 22nd of March was the day a small group of artists visited to see Art Dubai - a showcase of galleries from about 75 countries around the world at Madinat Jumeirah.

This was the best piece I liked.....priced at about 4000 British Pound. It looked like a print....and was sold out to at least 5 buyers

We were all looking forward to the grand display of internationally acclaimed art galleries showing their world class artists' designs, art and installations.

Here is narration with my pictures I took along the way.

At the Cartier Stands

Cartier Displays were flawless and Spectacular!

The first piece we encountered....worthy of study... A strong play of mixed-media here including Gauche

Very interesting ceramic piece!

This was no photograph...but paintings!

Interestingly named with the word "blue" in its title. 

These stood apart from many other displays simply because of its monochrome colors....It was also very relaxing to the beholder.

Corrugated card board installation.

An ambience within the show which seemed complementing every art piece on display

Interesting display....I am unable to recollect the title....but sure is thought-provoking.

Interesting piece of art....well worked-upon.

A realism mixed with surrealism?

Interesting play of colors

Artistic installations from the ceiling

My most favorite installation....we noticed it right at the end....as it sat modestly waiting for everyones attention :o)

Interesting installation....makes one stop and look at thoughtfully

Abstract piece I would understand if I had spend more time at the venue

Interesting installation was definitely a crowd-puller :o)

A piece we noticed right at the entrance...with the Expo 2020 logo on it

Check out the ambience! Once again

Interesting piece....I am sure there was a great story behind it.

This installation certainly makes its presence felt....and is absorbing the light and shadow as it feels fit

Reminds me of a piece I indulged in a few months back

Lovely installation complementing the ambience....

very meaningful to many.... 

Play of color harmony to me.

Nice installation....worthy of study...

Lovely play of light, shade and depth

This piece played upon our sense of illusion. This is not a perspective shot....but a piece which actually looks like this

Interesting piece....one could capture true meaning from it

An abstract....should be really meaningful for the artist.

These pieces were priced $30000

This piece was USD120000

I saw a mirror piece which was sold out for 250000 (not sure if it was add or use). Either way the buying for of the piece was huge!! eh?

Hope you guys enjoyed Art Dubai 2014 report. So long on this same note same time next year!