Fifth Post

Trying to learn so many different forms of design, sometimes feels a bit like being drunk. You get a high that keeps you happy and carrying around a silly grin, and get the feeling that your friend has a twin he has never introduced you to. I guess currently, I am in that phase, where my head is reeling under the first few shots. The next one is about to come. It is approaching in the form of graffiti. Well not the highly exaggerated forms that we usually associate that word with. Nor is this going to make a statement that will turn me into a fugitive. It is a big illustration that I will be doing on a wall in Goa. And this is the first time I shall be attempting that. Come to think of it, this seems to be a good time to get tensed.

I think I will leave this here to soak in my tension to keep my senses on the edge. There goes the drunken feeling.

Fourth Post

Speaking about design, there seem to be two key factors. At least for me, there seem to be two. I am sure the number varies for others, but for me... two. Spontaneity and perseverance. Both words big enough for me to have to check their spellings through dear old google. But these two seem to work well for me in designing good visuals. Take these paintings from my not so distant past for example. I chose these based on the fact that, when I painted them, I don't think I really thought, as much as I relied on instinct. The thinking came when I had to persist in making the initial set of instinctive strokes into legible and something distinctive.

I read this after sometime and had to come back and edit it. Instinct, I believe takes over after a lot of practise. And even then, it becomes rusty when the practise, slacks. So that's a note for me. Practise, practise, practise.

Third Post

So in this quest to become an all round designer, there seems to be a very strong pull towards the comfortable. Whatever offers me comfort seems to be the first thing I immediately sit down to do. Sketching, day dreaming, clearing my nasal passages seem to be my areas of comfort. The bid to be a good designer shall not be fulfilled when ones hands are dirtied with snot balls. With this in mind, I pulled my finger out of my nose and decided to do the first thing that scares me. Watercolors.

Painting with watercolors feels like being in a thriller movie. As you put the colors down on the paper and they flow downhill, drying up as they do, the painter is rushing against time to merge them with the right colors and create a scene of perfect beauty and harmony. For an outsider, I am sure I looked like I was having an epileptic attack. 

Second Post

So I sit here fresh from reading an infuriatingly stupid mail. There comes a time when you are forced to question whether intelligence really did evolve in humans. And suddenly you realize even you are a human and the question is quietly put to rest. Neither the question nor the mail is really important in the current context, but the action taken to release the scalding heat built up inside, is. To convince myself that the brain really has some function other than making sure we breathe and walk on our two legs and not hands, I fall back on my one corner of solace. My sketchbook. Draw. Let the pencil off its moors. And cool thy fury, lest somebody shall have his undergarments pulled over their fair countenance. Here is what unleashed.

The ugly, violent and stupid place that the world is, there shall be more instances where the pencil shall keep the peace.