I can draw a tree!

One of the reasons I like using crayons so much is that I have always found watercolours to be quite intimidating. I was talking to a friend the other day about how people just assume that since you went to design school, you would already be an expert at drawing or painting. The only drawing I was taught in design school was fashion figures. The rest is all upto the individual to figure out.

Anyway, I was in the middle of cleaning and organising when I found this watercolour painting of a tree that I made a while back and thought I'd share it. Every time I look at it I am amazed that it was me who made it! I found a Youtube channel - Watercolor by Shibasaki and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who is scared to pick up a brush and paints. He makes it so simple and easy to draw - this tutorial video is just five minutes long, and that's just about how long it takes to make this.

And of course, I had to try it again in my crayons. I have to say, I had equal amounts of fun doing both!

Millennial Pink Guavas

Pinterest has been obsessed with watermelon prints lately, but aren't guavas the real millennial pink fruit?

Crayons to the rescue

Sometimes (most times) when my mind goes completely blank looking at a fresh page of my sketchbook, wondering what to draw, fearing an uninspired, ugly sketch, I turn to the comfort of crayons. The sensation of just rubbing a rich, creamy oil pastel crayon on a sheet of paper feels almost cathartic. And the resulting page with its saturated, textured colours is quite satisfactory to look at.

I always keep a box of crayons handy, for inspiration is a moody thing, you never know when it decides to fly away.

Puddles and paper boats

Anyone who is old enough to have experienced climate change would know that it doesn't rain like it used to. At least two or three times every monsoon, it would rain so heavily that water would fill the streets and we would have to wade through almost knee high water while coming back from school. Sometimes the water would come all the way inside the apartment buildings, getting into the scooter garages and even going up a couple of steps.

The water would be muddy with all sorts of debris floating in it. I distinctly remember getting tiny Gulmohar leaves stuck to my legs as I would make my way back from the bus stop to my house.

But the dirty water never stopped us from playing in it. The building entrance with the garages would give us shelter from the rain, while also giving us easy access to water to play in. We would tear off pages from old notebooks - the rectangular shape of those pages was perfect for making paper boats - and float the boats in water.

Paper boats are probably the first thing I learnt to make by folding paper, maybe even before I learnt how to make paper planes. I'm sure anyone who has experienced heavy monsoon rains would definitely know how to make a quick paper boat. 

Mystery of the missing chappal

Pia and I were inseparable. We lived in the same building and would spend our entire time together, right from coming back from school, till dinner time. We would refuse to go back to our houses and sometimes we had to actually be shoved out of each others' homes at night. When I would go to Pia's house and stay for too long, my mom would send my brother to fetch me. And being silly kids that we were, Pia and I would devise different games so that I could stay a bit longer.

(I can't stop laughing as I write this and I laughed throughout drawing too)

Sometimes, we would hide my slippers and pretend to look for them, just so we could spend those precious few minutes having fun together. Eventually, my brother would lose his patience and find my slippers, and then I would have no more strategies to stay back. Until the next day, when I would be back at her place or she would come over to mine, for another day of fun.

Street Ramayan

When I was growing up, there were not many programmes on the TV and there was only one channel - Doordarshan. DD2 came a few years later and we finally got cable the day I gave my last exam of 12th standard. Anyway, the one show that was really popular was Ramayan. The whole family would watch it together on Sunday mornings and us kids would re-enact it later in the day.

During Durga Puja festival, there would be stalls which sold toys at the pandals - plastic maces (gada), cardboard swords, cane bows and arrows, all covered in shiny paper. Add the Ramayan fever and you get some really spirited re-enactments of the fight scenes from the serial. Our neighbour kids, along with my brother would re-create scenes from the battle between Sugreev and Bali, complete with dialogues from the serial. I being the only girl had to play Sita, so I had pretty much nothing to do but get bored, waiting for my turn to play with the "weapons".

Embarrassing and endearing at the same time, childhood memories always make me smile.

Sunny days and rainbows

Prism_sunlight

There are dolls and cars and blocks, and there are lenses, mirrors and prisms. We played with both.

Summer afternoons were sometimes spent burning carbon paper with lenses, making rainbows with prisms, or simply spinning the colour wheel to see a muddy grey mix of colours (instead of the theoretical white). We would be fascinated by how things appeared upside down when seen through lenses, and how they would distort in convex and concave mirrors. Sometimes we would just lie back and look inside a kaleidoscope, and sometimes we would try to look at the moon with binoculars.

While my interest in science took a deep dive in high school once it became all about formulas and calculations, optics remained the only subject I managed to enjoy in Physics.Even now, I occasionally gaze into this dusty old kaleidoscope I bought a few years ago.

Even now I run outside every time I see a rainbow, staring at it till it fades into the sky.

I try to zoom into the moon more and more with every new camera phone.

And I still get lost in the colours of light scattered by glass.

Up and away

Kites in this country are associated with Uttarayan or Sankranti, on 14th January. But growing up in Delhi, we used to fly kites around 15th August, cool monsoon winds making them soar high. My role was mostly limited to holding the kite and throwing it up and then running to the other side to hold the 'maanja'. Sometimes my brother would let me hold the kite string for a minute or two, before he would have to swoop in and save the kite from taking a complete nose dive.I've been planning to work on a series of illustrations and having an iPad makes it so much easier. (I never thought I would get so much use out of it!). So here it is, me and my big brother on our apartment terrace with its faded red walls and that beloved neem tree at the back. And while the watercolour version is definitely more relatable to me, I discovered the crayon tool on the software and decided to make another one. I can't decide which one I like better, so I guess there will have to be more illustrations in my nostalgia series for that. :) Which one do you prefer?

Me and my fashion girls

When I was going through my treatment, I stayed home for over six months, spending all of my time in the most comfortable sweatshirts and pyjamas. In between office work and naps, I thought of the time I would go back to office, which would be a swanky new building, and getting dressed up everyday. I work in fashion and what I love about working where I do, is that you can wear anything you want - shiny heels or knee high boots, torn jeans or mini skirts, spaghetti straps, biker jackets, short shorts or layered kurtas.. anything! In the two years of corporate life before I got sick, a basic safe t-shirt or top with clean jeans and sneakers was my uniform, punctuated with a dress or a skirt and heels on a rare Friday. It is the six months of continuous pyjama wearing and the amount of time I had to think, that I figured out a few things.For a long time I had been (and sometimes now too) conflicted with my interests that clash so much with each other. I want to work on environmental issues, grow trees, reduce plastic, recycle.... and I work in the fashion industry where I make more and more clothes to sell. For the longest time I felt guilty about being interested in fashion, while hating fashion at the same time. It is only recently that I started to acknowledge that for me, dressing up isn't always dependent on buying and hoarding more and more. And besides, what's wrong with wanting to look nice, or wanting to look a certain way?"Life is too short to wear boring clothes" (and youth is even shorter!)So I drew things I would like to wear when I go back to work, with my hair in a short crop and of course a good amount of artistic license. :)I just recently got around to scanning those illustrations, so here they are:I am always partial to crayons as a medium, for their sheer convenience (and also their smell and creamy texture), but looking at some not-so-bad attempts at watercolour, I am encouraged to take out my paint brushes and watercolours more often. Miles to go, but it seems like a fun path.Will definitely do more illustrations now that I am back to work, dressed up in my kitten heels and red lipsticks. :)p.s. Click on images to enlarge

The time is NOW

Timeisnow

On most days, I get a sudden sense of panic during that lazy post-lunch hour at work. I get restless with thoughts bombarding my mind - not desperate, negative thoughts, but thoughts of great creativity, excitement and motivation. ...Of things I should be making, subjects I should be drawing, topics I should be writing about... endless lists bubbling in my brain. But a corporate schedule doesn't allow for sudden outbursts of crayon doodling, and by the time I get home, I'm too tired to pick up my tape and scissors to make anything.

So I've decided to try out something new. I am going to try to satisfy my creative urges whenever I can, on priority - whether there are chores to be done, the house to be cleaned or emails to be answered. Even if it means making an ugly, out-of-proportion fashion illustration, or just filling up a page vigorously with a creamy stick of oil pastel crayon, I'm going to do it.

Because the time to live is NOW.

In my sketchbook lately

When I don't feel like drawing my usual fashion figures, thinking they might not come out right, I just doodle letters. It is easy and gives me the tiniest bit of accomplishment that I drew at least something today! But yes, it's time to practice some sketching.

Before I lose them in recycling

...last year's drawings

Been wondering

Giffing aruond with scarves

Shedding season

Hair

Am I going to get obsessed with it? Only time will tell.

When in doubt, go abstract

Crayoning in Auroville (again!)

Whenever I go on a holiday, or a weekend trip, or sometimes even somewhere for a day, I carry my bulky sketchbook and big box of oil pastels, which more often than not, don't even get out of my bag. But this time when I went on a weekend trip to Auroville, between all the eating, meditating on a hammock, looking around and doing touristy things, and between doing office work on world's slowest internet dongle, I managed to sneak in a bit of crayon scribble time.

Now it has been ages since I have done any drawing, so obviously the results were crappy, but I did not let that stop me!

Anyway, it is good to be back on the blog, back in all the colourful action, and here's hoping it continues. :)

View from the porch

Colours of the beach.

And of course, there were a few mandatory Instagram shots. I'm new to Instagram, a late and reluctant joiner, but I must say, I quite like it. (Except for the hashtag overload).
Check it out here: http://instagram.com/shivanigakhar

It's good to be back

No excuses