Maharaj Kathak. Stencil and collage.
The Last Day of the Year
The last day of the year. In the morning I walked in the hotel gardens. The air was cool, still, damp from rain in the night, almost no one stirring. A brown rabbit left the brick pathway and moved into the base of a row of shrubbery. A bird flew up – black, with a blur of russet wings, reminding me of a sad-eyed, perhaps larger bird I had seen once years ago, in Goa.
Yesterday I tried to take pictures of an after-party scene: a row of covered chairs, arranged as if in spectral conversation, tawdry in sunlight, with a burnt candle and discarded flowers. In my mind I sang
So, quiet, endings, and a song, on the last day of the year.
Listen to The Party's Over.
Lyrics:
Yesterday I tried to take pictures of an after-party scene: a row of covered chairs, arranged as if in spectral conversation, tawdry in sunlight, with a burnt candle and discarded flowers. In my mind I sang
The party's over, the candles flicker and dim... (lyrics below, from here)But my camera saw only this:
So, quiet, endings, and a song, on the last day of the year.
Listen to The Party's Over.
Lyrics:
The party's over, it's time to call it a day
They've burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It's time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up
The piper must be paid
The party's over, the candles flicker and dim
You danced and dreamed through the night
It seemed to be right just being with him
Now you must wake up, all dreams must end
Take off your makeup, the party's over
It's all over, my friend
The party's over, it's time to call it a day
They've burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
Now you must wake up, all dreams must end
Take off your makeup, the party's over
It's all over, my friend
It's all over, my friend
The Inner Life of Things: Road Roller
Some inanimate objects seem full of character, to have a kind of machine-consciousness. I felt like that about this small road roller, which I photographed in Coonoor, in the hills of south India.
I altered the photograph with a Lomo tutorial, and copied the background from a Soviet propaganda poster.
fonts: Kremlin, tahoma
elements from designerdigital.com:
Katy Pertiet roughed up solids finest paper pack
Anna Aspnes finding my way fotoframe
I altered the photograph with a Lomo tutorial, and copied the background from a Soviet propaganda poster.
fonts: Kremlin, tahoma
elements from designerdigital.com:
Katy Pertiet roughed up solids finest paper pack
Anna Aspnes finding my way fotoframe
5 paise
I 'saw' the cover of this book in my mind's eye as I was walking up on the flat roof of our house one evening: 5-paise coins in a harlequin pattern. My late, thrifty mother-in-law left a bag of coins behind. The smallest denominations have all been demonetised now, as inflation has taken their value away. But I like their varied shapes.
Making a little book like this -- 4.5" x 6.5" -- doesn't take much time, but I like to think lazily about how it should be, and how to go about it; to anticipate.
I cut the covers from an old book, and folded the pages. I used various inkjet papers in white and neutral colours. There are six sections/signatures. I painted, collaged and numbered the first page of each one. The third signature has an Urdu number 3, just to give the person turning the pages a little surprise, and a photograph I took of Badshahi masjid in Lahore. The Urdu text is a recipe for egg-and-tomato pulau, because I didn't want to tear a page out of a book of poetry.
I measured and punched holes, put eyelets in the covers, washed the coins and glued them on. Then I kept everything ready in a small basket -- covers, paper, curved needle, waxed linen thread.
Sewing the book took about 15 minutes. And now... what? It waits.
Making a little book like this -- 4.5" x 6.5" -- doesn't take much time, but I like to think lazily about how it should be, and how to go about it; to anticipate.
I cut the covers from an old book, and folded the pages. I used various inkjet papers in white and neutral colours. There are six sections/signatures. I painted, collaged and numbered the first page of each one. The third signature has an Urdu number 3, just to give the person turning the pages a little surprise, and a photograph I took of Badshahi masjid in Lahore. The Urdu text is a recipe for egg-and-tomato pulau, because I didn't want to tear a page out of a book of poetry.
I measured and punched holes, put eyelets in the covers, washed the coins and glued them on. Then I kept everything ready in a small basket -- covers, paper, curved needle, waxed linen thread.
Sewing the book took about 15 minutes. And now... what? It waits.
Horsies
The inner life of things, scrapbooking division. These horses are pensive, but ready to do their duty.
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.
A Watercolour Book
Someone gave me a pretty wedding invitation; the paisley motif on the front inspired me to make a little watercolour book:
Coptic binding, with eyelets
The inner cover paper was cut from wrapping paper
The paper is Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. watercolour paper. The book is 6 1/2" x 9"
Coptic binding, with eyelets
The inner cover paper was cut from wrapping paper
The paper is Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. watercolour paper. The book is 6 1/2" x 9"
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.
Special Double Extra Thick
I felt the urge to bind a book. I wanted it to be fun, and to allow mistakes. I collected an assortment of papers, in different sizes and shapes. Some of them had my sketches on them, some were printed; most are blank.
I took covers from two old books and cut them to size. I usually cover them with paper or cloth, but this time I left them as they were.
I bound it with Coptic binding, and used eyelets for the first time. As a bonus, the back cover came with a cobra.
It felt like a good thing to do, at the beginning of the year.
January 2
Leaf-dappled sunlight on a fountain: visible / invisible. Quickgold / quicksilver. Fall / strike / rise. Catch me if you can!
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.
At Elliot's Beach
We had coffee near Elliot's Beach in Adyar. I saw these things:
The Motorcycle Seat of Broken Dreams
Braque-ish colours
Demonic Possession
Kiss of Dawn
I was going through old papers, and came across these photographs, the first R ever took, as a boy, using a borrowed box camera. As it happens, when I was a child my mother gave me the box camera she had used as a child - seeing these photographs I groaned at the thought of my own efforts:
Two of his photographs were published in Navroz, a Parsi magazine based in Calcutta, in 1953, with an article about Darjeeling. When he went with a posse of his classmates to collect the promised payment of Rs. 5, they were told that they should go away, and be happy that he had gotten his pictures in print at such a young age.
R entitled his picture of Tiger Hill "Kiss of Dawn"; but because of his strong Gujarati accent, his friends heard it as "Keys of Dawn." It was only when they saw the name in print that they realised what the name really was. Apparently no one wondered what "Keys of Dawn" might signify.
(Photographs by Ramesh Gandhi -- his website: www.rameshgandhi.com; his blog: http://rameshgandhi.blogspot.com)
"Kiss of Dawn" -- Tiger Hill, Darjeeling (1948)
Burmese Pagoda, Eden Gardens, Calcutta (1948)
Gandhi Statue from window of the police chowki,
Juhu, Bombay (1953)
Juhu, Bombay (1953)
Two of his photographs were published in Navroz, a Parsi magazine based in Calcutta, in 1953, with an article about Darjeeling. When he went with a posse of his classmates to collect the promised payment of Rs. 5, they were told that they should go away, and be happy that he had gotten his pictures in print at such a young age.
R entitled his picture of Tiger Hill "Kiss of Dawn"; but because of his strong Gujarati accent, his friends heard it as "Keys of Dawn." It was only when they saw the name in print that they realised what the name really was. Apparently no one wondered what "Keys of Dawn" might signify.
(Photographs by Ramesh Gandhi -- his website: www.rameshgandhi.com; his blog: http://rameshgandhi.blogspot.com)
I commune with my weeds
It was raining when I came downstairs. The air was beautifully cool. I don't go into the garden very often: I look at greenness from inside. Heat and insects usually defeat me. Rain is a sound first, and then a picture, framed by windows. But this morning I was so entranced by the changed air that I unlocked the door and went out to the verandah.
I heard rain, and one cat, plaintive - in heat? hungry? A few subdued crows.
We haven't had a gardener for several months, and weeds have elbowed out the grass between the walkway stones. They have become beautiful in their variety and, in the saturated air, intensely green.
My thoughts have been so inward lately, it was a delight to look and listen without the pane of glass in between; to move outward into a simple space: a ragged green garden. I sat in a cane chair drinking coffee, and wrote a little, by hand, with a pen, on paper.
I brought out my camera and took pictures of the weeds. I wanted to lie on my stomach and shoot them from ground level, so that they would look like thick jungle; but the ground was sodden, and I was afraid for my camera. I decided to wait until the rain stopped and try again. But an hour later I saw that the new gardener, who began work today, had decided for all on his own that the very first thing he should do was to clear away all the weeds: he scraped them down to bare dirt.
This is their memorial, until they spring forth again.
I heard rain, and one cat, plaintive - in heat? hungry? A few subdued crows.
We haven't had a gardener for several months, and weeds have elbowed out the grass between the walkway stones. They have become beautiful in their variety and, in the saturated air, intensely green.
My thoughts have been so inward lately, it was a delight to look and listen without the pane of glass in between; to move outward into a simple space: a ragged green garden. I sat in a cane chair drinking coffee, and wrote a little, by hand, with a pen, on paper.
I brought out my camera and took pictures of the weeds. I wanted to lie on my stomach and shoot them from ground level, so that they would look like thick jungle; but the ground was sodden, and I was afraid for my camera. I decided to wait until the rain stopped and try again. But an hour later I saw that the new gardener, who began work today, had decided for all on his own that the very first thing he should do was to clear away all the weeds: he scraped them down to bare dirt.
This is their memorial, until they spring forth again.
West End Window
I love windows. I love old, untended buildings. I loved this window and this building, and painted them from a photograph which I took last year in Bangalore. While I painted I listened to songs by Kabir. Everything came together in my mind, though of course, the painting is full of flaws. It was a good learning experience. Ramesh Gandhi gave me valuable colour advice when I needed it. So there it is.
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