Something Light

Stuff is cooking

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:40:30 +0530

Jakarta Jive

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 02:37:36 +0530

Bittersweet farewells again, Ms.C. But tropical fruits and frangipanis await. :)

Gender and Image

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:56:58 +0530

The paper I wrote as part of our research colloquium course. Would really appreciate comments, criticism, feedback and further discussion! Do take a look.

(Click on the title for the link)

I hope it’s normal to hate the rest of the world when your...

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:17:42 +0530

I hope it’s normal to hate the rest of the world when your favourite friend is away. Come back soonly Ms. Chakravarty.

The Bamboo is getting a proper chewing up. Good workout for the...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:12:11 +0530

The Bamboo is getting a proper chewing up. Good workout for the let’s-now-attempt-some-digital-art-phase. And this be the lovely Laura Marling, who’s been on my mind and in my ears for weeks now.

This awesome song and video.

Every winter I manage to demolish mountains of oranges and sweet...

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 02:40:34 +0530

Every winter I manage to demolish mountains of oranges and sweet limes. It’s a proper addiction; and I would eat them whole if the peels were edible. Damn you awesome fruits! Vitamin C will be the death of me :D

Saori surprises

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:42:22 +0530

I never cease to be amazed when something begun with no expectations, unplanned and free, turns into a beautiful creative process.

A long-lost yearning to learn weaving suddenly surfaced again and the search led to Saori, a Japanese free-style hand-weaving technique that I decided to try. The lovely story about the origins of Saori is here.

I’m still looking for a way to properly describe the joy of all this intertwining colour goodness, and the thrill of running your hands over new textures that just magically spring to life. I’ll have more of this please!

I followed this awesome tutorial (it’s crazy what you can do with a piece of cardboard) and then just went on a wild ride, which is what Saori is supposed to be: a truly creative, ‘let the universe decide what colour you pick next and what patterns you make’ kind of thing.

Even the back of the loom sent me swooning! Rivers and rivers of saturated colour. Oh God.

A closer look at the final piece. I guess the universe was in an electric, neon mood with this one :) This will probably become a sketchbook cover or a wallet, but who knows, I’d much rather just frame the thing and look at it all day. :)

New obsession. Yay!

It’s Diwali! :D Happy times and multilingual wishes coming...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:29:41 +0530

It’s Diwali! :D Happy times and multilingual wishes coming your way.

Bright lights and joy forever more!

Tried something new. YAY!

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 00:44:00 +0530

Tried something new. YAY!

The overcast ocean, as seen from a lovely breakfast place...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 00:42:00 +0530

The overcast ocean, as seen from a lovely breakfast place (Mushroom crepes and stuffed omeletes!) on Carter Road in Bombay. Rainy times are happy times!

Sunshowers

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:05:00 +0530

Literally!

Or should I say on Shreya’s mind…I made her some crochet flower hair-clips as a leaving-India-for-Germany parting gift :)

She’s the original punk-rocker, with flowers in her hair :)

Can’t believe I didn’t take a decent picture of her wearing one of them though! Least I could get was this…Shreya don’t kill me :D

Star-spangled glamour

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:25:00 +0530

Bring on the disco sparkle!

Presenting the official flag that Shreya and I quilted for the VC (Visual Communication) intro parade at this year’s Monsoon Fiesta.

Monsoon Fiesta is the annual madness mela at NID where the VC and ID (Industrial Design) students get pitted against each other, the kingmakers, and against those eternal underdogs, Foundy (Foundation, the first-year kids) and GN (Gandhinagar, the ‘other’ NID campus) :) it’s weeks of music and dance and creativity wars and rain, and of course, handmade patchwork flags!

I got to relive (after what seemed like ages!) my favourite pass-time of wading through a pile of fabric scraps at the tailor’s. Design students probably amuse tailors very much, snooping through their trash bags for that perfect sliver of cloth :)

The themes for MF this year were all time periods, and VC’s was the 1970s. And what logo screams the seventies better than a psychedelic Rubik’s Cube with a dance-floor on top that actually spells out ‘70’! :D

Coupled with Shreya’s leftover stash from her quilting course, we had enough crazy magentas, purples and greens to suitably psychedeli-cize the flag. Add a ton of sparkly sequins and we had it!

Now off to the dance-floor :)

Bound

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:58:23 +0530

One hour, two broken needles and several sore fingers later: my first leather-bound sketchbook, done with the Japanese binding technique. Another happy journey begins :)

A river runs through it

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 22:48:00 +0530

A day spent over, under and on either side of the Sardar Bridge, which lies across the Sabarmati river here in Ahmedabad.

Gab Collab!

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:28:01 +0530

Watercolour blobs to draw on! How can I not love it. So I went overboard with my first attempt :D

Sad Blackbeard bear with the fuzzy headgear holds on to his teddy, with little girl and sparkly fish gathered around. I saw them all in that blob! What possibilities.

http://gabcollab.tumblr.com/

Illustration Friday: 'Suspend'

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:51:15 +0530

I’ve had this nagging urge to plunge headlong into a pile of those awesome multi-coloured play-pen balls and cause a massive dotty-plastic explosion! But they don’t let grown humans into kiddie play areas anymore. Sigh.

Illustration Friday: 'Space'

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 15:19:50 +0530

Dug up a recent sketchbook doodle for this week…because space is what you make of it.

Everything is connected

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 23:54:00 +0530

So I went and crocheted the world! :)

I’d always wanted to learn crochet, but for some reason believed it was too difficult. And then in January, during a two-week crash course as part of our ‘Open Elective’ - in which we could pick a new skill to learn - I managed to get hooked (sad pun, but true) and actually made this! Woohoo :)

My piece took off from the idea of everything being connected, something I’ve always believed in and reinforced by our awesome instructor Sheila, who termed our classes the ‘Crochet Controversy’ sessions…crochet is the perfect activity to gossip and debate over, which is what we did :) Thanks for the fun Sheila! I hope you never stop dressing the world :)

Crochet is crazy addictive, I tell you. We had two weeks to learn the basics AND come up with something to display, so the ten of us threw ourselves into it like crazed old ladies. But then you realize that crochet isn’t just for Nana…our final display had everything from shoes and clothes and hair clips and bags to lampshades and laptop covers, and of course, the map by yours truly!

Sheila even got us crocheting with recyclable/used materials, like these garlands we made from shredded old saris [and later used to yarn-bomb the campus! These went around trees and pillars :)]

These days all I seem to be thinking of is what to crochet next! Just the sight of so many beautiful yarn balls waiting to be crafted into something fantastic. Pure joy :)

The first of many!

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 22:12:00 +0530

I’ve always wanted to draw my own comic book, having been fascinated with all kinds of sequential art for the longest time…god knows what prevented me from just doodling some panels and filling up a page :)

But here’s the first serious attempt at writing and illustrating my own stories! Yaaaay! This was part of our ‘Elements of Moving Image’ course, which was possibly the most fun (and learning!) I’ve had at NID.

I’ve managed to keep fiction-writing at bay thus far, so let’s just call this story something silly and cute and whimsical, with a partly autobiographical little girl, a craft book, imaginary worlds, and a tiny love story thrown in for good measure :)

For now it’s just the first six pages…but it moves on to a happy ending, guaranteed :) I hope to finish it (with a little digital colouring, since I haven’t tried my hand at that yet!) by the end of semester.

Below are the spreads (low-res) for an idea of how the connected pages look:

I’m beginning to think that comics/graphic novels are what I want to draw for the rest of my life. Or at least dedicate to them a big chunk of my career…whatever that’s going to be :) This was too much happiness to just let it be a one-off thing. Here’s to many more!

Visualizing Larkin

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 19:33:00 +0530

There were lots of fun exercises as part of our ‘Word and Image’ course, but what I loved most was having to visualize a poem of our choice…something about giving form to an abstract idea seemed like a good challenge.

I picked Philip Larkin’s ‘Wants’, a long-time favourite:

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone
However the sky grows dark with invitation cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.

Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites
The costly aversion of the eyes from death -
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.

To me the poem was an ode of sorts to solitude and death, against the superficiality of everyday life - what you choose to see and what you keep averting your eyes from. Grand themes indeed :) And I love the way it goes back and forth across them, so I came up with a booklet that tried to capture that movement…

The translucent paper with bright motifs is meant to work against the stark white-on-black below, going ‘beneath’ and ‘beyond’ to be read on two levels, turning each page back and forth.

I illustrated each line of the poem with two sets of minimalist icons to represent both layers of meaning…the balloons, for example, turn into sperm on the lower level; the family photograph morphs into a single person within the frame. I wish there were better images, but I hope you get the idea :)

It ends with a heartbeat and a flat-line. The whole booklet was made circular to imitate eyeballs, because I thought the idea of the eyes averting death was quite a strong metaphor.

Hopefully I can get this printed on proper paper and make it a decent-looking booklet! But for now it’s a small hand-made treasure :)