My gym shoe misses the gym.
Showing posts with label sketches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sketches. Show all posts
oh, right, Mother's Day...
I made this picture of my mother from a photograph taken before her marriage, in 1948:
I used an old book page, with very soft paper. I had made the background before painting her face -- it's not that I made her orange and green and polka-dotted deliberately. I loved her, anyway.
I used an old book page, with very soft paper. I had made the background before painting her face -- it's not that I made her orange and green and polka-dotted deliberately. I loved her, anyway.
Stars and Stripes
I've inaugurated the watercolour book which I showed off in the post just before this one. I wanted to paint something without a plan, to watch the colours and learn from them, to get away from what I usually do. I began with a star and let it grow.
January Sketches
I've been filling up my new sketchbook (see the post below this). The papers are of different sizes and varieties, which is more interesting than my usual one-size-fits-all books. I didn't bind in any watercolour paper; but that means that I'm using different media from those which I'm most comfortable with. Which is good.
The first page is small; I did a simple collage, for a title page. You can see two more pages behind it.
Left: two clay birds which live on a table in the drawing room. Right: I saw the Hindi film Dabangg (and liked it. Great music!).
Left: A friend brought a bunch of rajnigandha (tuberoses). Right: Sheru, a beautiful dog who died; and a Puppy brand matchbox.
Left: Collage over a scribbled sketch of mine, which was already on the page when I bound it into the book. Right: a teak root sculpture.
Left: I bound a small book wih pockets for receipts. Photographs of the book with notes. Right: a small page with a stencilled flower. Some text to come later.
Left: the other side of the stencilled flower. Right: a shower faucet that suddenly gleamed at me, all lights and darks, and complicated shapes, positive and negative.
The first page is small; I did a simple collage, for a title page. You can see two more pages behind it.
Left: two clay birds which live on a table in the drawing room. Right: I saw the Hindi film Dabangg (and liked it. Great music!).
Left: A friend brought a bunch of rajnigandha (tuberoses). Right: Sheru, a beautiful dog who died; and a Puppy brand matchbox.
Left: Collage over a scribbled sketch of mine, which was already on the page when I bound it into the book. Right: a teak root sculpture.
Left: I bound a small book wih pockets for receipts. Photographs of the book with notes. Right: a small page with a stencilled flower. Some text to come later.
Left: the other side of the stencilled flower. Right: a shower faucet that suddenly gleamed at me, all lights and darks, and complicated shapes, positive and negative.
Things Seen in (a Hotel in) Bangalore
A butler in the club bar
Sunlight picked out these leaves and made them burn with green flame - in the small back garden of the suite
Tablescape
Raat ki raani (night queen) - though it was bright morning when its flowers shed their fragrance on me.
Excavations
I was roaming around the house aimlessly, wondering what I should be doing, and suddenly I saw it as if I were a visitor. When you pass through the same rooms everyday, their contents are hardly visible, a white-noise hum. The indistinct background of a dream. Turn on a light switch, and things pop into view. That (object)! How long has it been lying there?
My paper stash! I must throw it all away. Seize the moment! I reach to clear the shelf, and almost before I know what my hands are doing, I am folding papers into signatures, punching holes, hunting for the waxed linen thread. I sew graph paper, wrapping paper, opened-out envelopes together, and make a book.
R's photographs are lying all over the house. Boxes of enlargements, envelopes of negatives. In a plastic shopping bag I find faded 2x3" prints, outtakes. Their blandness is mysterious: I feel obliged to look long enough to find meaning in them. I glue a few into my book.
I can’t sleep. At 3:00 a.m. I come downstairs to get some writing paper. As I pass through the atrium I hear a splash. In the fish pond, concentric rings of water are lit by the moon. A dull brown fish has made itself known. Usually they are silent, gliding along their underwater paths. They eat puffed rice and mosquito larvae, and survive. I feel a pain in my chest, as though they were very dear to me.
I draw Julius Caesar, his stone face split down the middle as if struck by lightning, and then other statues. Repetition is order is harmony. Their blank gaze is soothing: they are not interested in my nooks and crannies.
Should these water buffalo vertebrae, which I picked up off the ground from some land we had once, still be on that table, fifteen years after I casually dropped them there?
And those chairs in the hallway! Only crazy people would not have discarded them long ago – their foam collapsed, home to generations of lizards, whose miniature broken ping pong ball eggs we sweep up from time to time. Can I point my finger and dissolve them into atoms?
The big copper water vessel, those pinecones from the hills. That brass thing from Thailand that someone gave me, I never even liked it much, but here it is. Too many books! Too many dishes! I'm sinking, I'm about to disappear.
The utility room! so full of old newspapers, bottles. I must call the scrap man with his cycle-cart. But first I pull out some torn paper, and glue it in.
Okay, I'm feeling calmer now. I’m listening to a cheerful Hindi song, with a chorus which means approximately, "You bastard, you're finished! You've had it!" It's so incongruous with the bouncy music that it makes me smile. I'm drawing and singing along under my breath -- 'tu saala kaam se gaya!' The house is still a mess. Never mind.
My paper stash! I must throw it all away. Seize the moment! I reach to clear the shelf, and almost before I know what my hands are doing, I am folding papers into signatures, punching holes, hunting for the waxed linen thread. I sew graph paper, wrapping paper, opened-out envelopes together, and make a book.
R's photographs are lying all over the house. Boxes of enlargements, envelopes of negatives. In a plastic shopping bag I find faded 2x3" prints, outtakes. Their blandness is mysterious: I feel obliged to look long enough to find meaning in them. I glue a few into my book.
I can’t sleep. At 3:00 a.m. I come downstairs to get some writing paper. As I pass through the atrium I hear a splash. In the fish pond, concentric rings of water are lit by the moon. A dull brown fish has made itself known. Usually they are silent, gliding along their underwater paths. They eat puffed rice and mosquito larvae, and survive. I feel a pain in my chest, as though they were very dear to me.
I draw Julius Caesar, his stone face split down the middle as if struck by lightning, and then other statues. Repetition is order is harmony. Their blank gaze is soothing: they are not interested in my nooks and crannies.
Should these water buffalo vertebrae, which I picked up off the ground from some land we had once, still be on that table, fifteen years after I casually dropped them there?
On the way to the car, bones:
White shards half-buried. Old news,
not enough to make a whole of anything.
And those chairs in the hallway! Only crazy people would not have discarded them long ago – their foam collapsed, home to generations of lizards, whose miniature broken ping pong ball eggs we sweep up from time to time. Can I point my finger and dissolve them into atoms?
The big copper water vessel, those pinecones from the hills. That brass thing from Thailand that someone gave me, I never even liked it much, but here it is. Too many books! Too many dishes! I'm sinking, I'm about to disappear.
The utility room! so full of old newspapers, bottles. I must call the scrap man with his cycle-cart. But first I pull out some torn paper, and glue it in.
Okay, I'm feeling calmer now. I’m listening to a cheerful Hindi song, with a chorus which means approximately, "You bastard, you're finished! You've had it!" It's so incongruous with the bouncy music that it makes me smile. I'm drawing and singing along under my breath -- 'tu saala kaam se gaya!' The house is still a mess. Never mind.
The Inner Life of Things
When I drew this, it was metal; but my drawing seemed alive - not 'human', but 'animal' -- a streamlined relative of a pony perhaps, ready to nod its head at me. A little awkward, but good-natured. Thus we infuse ourselves into the things we produce.
Waking Up
I had left this blog behind, but my sister kept telling me that I should return to it, and how could I refuse her. Let's see how it goes. While I am putting the key in the ignition, releasing the clutch, etc., I can be found on Twitter:
In its first incarnation, this blog was focused primarily on my life as a foreigner (American) living in India, and on Indian arts and culture. I'd like to be a little looser now, and to throw in a few sketches and this and that. Nothing fancy.
So. Onward.
In its first incarnation, this blog was focused primarily on my life as a foreigner (American) living in India, and on Indian arts and culture. I'd like to be a little looser now, and to throw in a few sketches and this and that. Nothing fancy.
So. Onward.
Some Faces
Trying to do a better job of drawing faces -- from photographs, in my new gray-white paged sketchbook:
(late) Kishore Kumar, one of the greatest popular singers in Hindi
Dilip Kumar, the ultimate tragic hero in Hindi films when my husband was a boy.
a young girl, drawn from the newspaper
A Maharaja of Patiala, from an old photograph. What a beautiful face -- more beautiful than my drawing. And dripping with jewels. The way one imagines a Maharaja should be.
(late) Kishore Kumar, one of the greatest popular singers in Hindi
Dilip Kumar, the ultimate tragic hero in Hindi films when my husband was a boy.
a young girl, drawn from the newspaper
A Maharaja of Patiala, from an old photograph. What a beautiful face -- more beautiful than my drawing. And dripping with jewels. The way one imagines a Maharaja should be.
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