Barb

Barb, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

When you are new to a place, the first person who welcomes you decides whether you will be Family or remain a Stranger..

It was overwhelming when I was packing to come to the US for my assignment. I was glad that Manu was already here, and I was joining him at the same location.

When I joined work that first Monday, Barb introduced herself to me as my Team Lead. She was was the first American I got to interact and work with as soon as I landed here. Right from the first day, she made me feel right at home here.. The rest of my team was as friendly as well... I will always remember them as wonderful people..

I Remember You Barb... and thank you!

Mani Thatha

Grandpa, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

This is my Thatha..

.. My first one for 'I remember you'..

I lost Thatha to cancer, when I was still in school. But I still think of him and seek his grace, with the other elders of my family, whenever there is an important day and whenever I say thanks for my life..

Prasanna and I used to think that he resembled Ashok Kumar of Bollywood., but with his sense of humor he would sometimes say that we call him Amzad Khan instead (he was a villain..)!

I remember hot summer days star gazing up on thatha's terrace, with Amma, Appa, Sridhar Mama and Gomathy Chithi, when we had a current failure..! He used to be the stylish grandpa - loved to dress himself up in a blazer, tie, shirt and trousers. His English was lovely though his Hindi was better not spoken about. When he traveled to Russia, I was one proud granddaughter!

I remember you, Thatha... You know I always do...!

Figure drawing

..from a figure drawing class that I attended, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

I learnt so much from that workshop, I am glad I joined that..

Moonlight

Moonlight, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Tomorrow is a Full Moon night..

Last month, on full moon, the view from my window was so pretty, I had to capture it in my journal.

A month now and the tree doesn't have a single leaf on it! I think it will look spooky with just those dry branches reaching into the moon's aura!

Buddy's Pizza

Buddy's, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

To continue with my Library Sketch, I had stepped out packing in all my plein air gear to go to the library, but didn't find the sunlight and the shadows.. The colors around don't seem the same on a cloudy day.. They look even more muted on a rainy day!

So last week, I headed to Buddy's Pizza instead, since I had been attracted by how the light on the sign shines in a gloomy day.

I have, for some time been trying to understand how you can reproduce the light effect of a neon sign; on a sunny day, the light hardly ever catches your eye!

Very recently, I had the chance of reading James Gurney's "Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter", and that's where I discovered how you can show that. So I just went ahead and sketched this one. I think the book should be put in the artists painter's list of essentials.

After painting it all, I took a photograph of the building from my car so that I could see what was different about the sign in the photograph versus what I painted.. I feel the sign came out better in the snap than the sketch though... 

Too bad, I composed the sketch wrongly. And the camera doesn't do much justice to the colors either!
Next time, I'll just draw the lights close up, rather than the entire building...!

Plein air painting at the Library

Plein air painting at the Library, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

The Auburn Hills Library is a beautiful building .. I have kind of always wanted to paint it, photograph it or something.. This is a plein air painting study of the library that I plan to work on over 3 sittings of about an hour or so.. That is all that I can afford at one time..

So yesterday, after dropping Tanush off to his pre-school, I drove down to the library and parked near the spot where I had parked last week to draw the pencil sketch of the building. I didn't get the same spot, but got space 3 spots away. That was ok.

I painted for 2 hours..

Then I was so hungry that I had to drive back home, only to be reminded that I had cooked nothing! So I cooked up a quick oatmeal with fruits and nuts for lunch.. I wasn't very pleased with it though, especially with wanting to eat nothing sweet.. I still have this weird taste in my mouth from the cold and sore throat that I had last entire week. But thank God for the good nutritious food..!

I just hope tomorrow I get the same parking spot as I did last week..

Hairstyles!

Hairstyles!, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Manu has been growing his hair for a while now. He was trying to imagine what style would suit him the best; if he should go about growing it any further at all.. He was all set to go out for a hair trim and suggestion, when he remembered that there are softwares that sometimes superimpose a hairstyle on your face and suggest what might suit you!

But I know, the softwares out there wouldn't make a good copy of you to suggest hairstyles. And their hairstyles are usually pretty impractical if you don't have the texture that they show you..
So I offered Hubby that I could sketch his face and put some imagined hairstyles on him.. I used the same pose for some time, and then decided to try out a couple more faces... It was a totally creative evening!

Rewards?
1. A fun filled evening of laughter
2. Tanush recognizes all of them as his dad (that's the authenticity certification that I trust!)
3. Manu dropped the idea of going in for a cut, and tried swish swashing his hair at home.. He liked what he made!
4. He sports one of these hairstyles!

Stunned

Stunned, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

She sat there stunned for long enough to let me sketch her and color her too.

Pookalam

Pookalam, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Tanush does all his work with pride! He helps me with pride! And then announces it to everyone with pride. I have to give it to him though - he does a very good job most of the times.. He decorated the Onam Pookalam outside our house and then when the guests came home, he happily announced, "I did it! I made this..!"
The next day, my parents on Skype got the same information.. so did Manu's parents. through phone..

Moon Aura

Moon Aura , a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

The sun had almost set.. There was still a cool blue in the sky.. The stars were nowhere to be seen - it was cloudy. But the white clouds looked pink in the evening light, and for some time the moon wore a pink ring on itself!

Camera

This post was still in Drafts!! Well, I release you dear post! Go shine!!

Drew this and the next one while listening to Manu speak on the phone with a friend...

What have you read

I got the following list from another blogger - - and thought I would go through and check to see how many I have read. There are many books on this list that I plan on reading and a few that I will not, namely that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. I saw the movie and that was enough for me.

So how many books on this list have you read?

The BBC says most people will only read 6 of these 100 Books.Instructions:Cut and Copy the list into your notes... then...1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. (remove other persons X's)2) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (tried reading through it...)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams XX
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle XX
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

(I have reads hundreds of other books not even listed. I marked more than one X on some because that is how many times I have read them.)

Golden glow

Golden glow, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Mmmm! Fall colors...! The whole room used to be filled with a golden glow for most part of the day, when the light passed through this tree to fill up the room. And that was just a couple of days ago..
.. Now it is 60% empty as I upload this picture,, Winter is on its way here!

Rainy ground

Rainy ground, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

I tried painting a rainy scene with wet ground. It was raining heavily when I started with the sketch. By the time I started to paint the car, the rain had stopped, the road had already started drying.. And then the sun came out while I was painting the car! All in just about 20 mins!

Hands and handsfree

Hands and handsfree, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Tanush sometimes holds our chin and says "So sweet". Sometimes he'll say in his baby tone and voice "Very good Amma"
Tanush has been doing so many things that I wish I could record.. Just picking out some random ones with the time that he gives me to note them down...
How I wish I could record all the small cute anecdotes that we all share in life...

Faces

Faces, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

.. what do YOU do while you wait for your chance to get your hair cut?

Housetop

Housetop, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Not so long ago, I never thought this view was interesting enough even for a 5 min sketch; now I want to draw this same view 3 times a day, on rainy day, on sunny day, at night, with pencil, with paint............
My time doesn't allow me all that luxury, though I may make one by nightlights...

I tried the variegated painting approach at the lower edge of the painting, so that the focus is directed at the house-top.

Happy Friday!

Have you ever been drawing sick? I am going through that one now! This is the second time I have been drawing sick after the one during my first and only week at School of Planning and Architecture. That time, I knew I had grown sick of drawing because there was suddenly just too much drawing being done, and there was no more relaxed time to to fill up with Math or Science... And that, I thought, was an indication that I wasn't meant to do so much Drawing! I am a Science person, you know?! What a wrong judgement!

After that I realized that I grew sick of almost everything, when I overdid it - either because I needed to (project driven), or because I was hard on myself (like a marathon cleaning..!) Well, everyone did grow sick.. End of the day, anyone who's just been doing one single thing throughout the day, would grow sick of it! I understood that you just had to chill for some time and you could come back to what you were doing with renewed energy! If only I had done this, that time, 12 years back, I would have been an Architect now! Or something related to Art!!!! :)

Well, but until, my sickness goes away, I'll post these old posts here!

Thank God for Friday! I shall eat a Non-Indian meal sometime today.. I always make an International meal for Friday. Either the breakfast, lunch or the dinner (or all three) would be 'International'. I mean non-Indian..

Foliage study, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.Here's a Foliage study.. and it is a bad one!! I sat there plein air, trying to figure out how to render this one.. Do you do the background first, or are you supposed to color the foreground? With watercolors, I felt that the dark background should be done after I drew all the delicate leaves.. But it came out like this.. Maybe I just needed to spend some extra time on it!

Orchids study - background changed

Orchids study - background changed, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

I changed the background from a monochrome purple to brown and green. The scan is bad, but that's the contrast that is on the real painting.. So I feel that it needs a darker shade of brown and a stronger wash too.. Here, I left a bit of purple there to see if a variegated background color would look better or a solid one! It doesn't seem to work - not with the purple anyway!

Orchid Study

Orchid Study, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

This can be called as the phase two of the Charcoal study of Orchids that I had put up some time back. It is not intended to be the final version. I am studying it still.. I thought that purple would make a good background, however, it has started looking somewhat monochromatic! So I may change the color of the background.

American Goldfinch

American Goldfinch, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

I found out what they are called, after I clicked them, then drew them and colored them. These cute little birds are regular visitors around our apartment... They fly so fast and yet so gracefully, it is calming just to watch them glide up and down, around their partners.. I hope that's a partner dance and not a war dance; it is too beautiful to be a war dance.. They make a sharp yet not shrill musical tweet..

And what do you see up there? That was a dragonfly pair.. and their mating dance midair! We had stopped to sight some deer.. and that's where we saw these guys! I have never seen (maybe noticed) such amazing wonder works of nature!

Introducing.... My Sketchbook

Ready to be painted on..

New sketchbook meets my old sketchbook :)

Ah! My sketchbook is ready! Here is my new friend.. All hand bound – with some favorite cover papers. The whole binding journey was interesting! You would already know if you have ‘read’ about what I am up to these days and how I stumbled into an interesting bookbinding site.

Why did I decide to bind one? Hmm, because I was tired of looking around the house for one of the many sketchbooks I am using, because I didn’t have the right media at that time! I’ll pull out watercolor and then go looking for my watercolor sketchbook; or have just pen and wouldn’t want to waste a watercolor page with pen marks on it!

And because I was so totally in awe with the sketchbooks that other artists bind! They look so so yummy! I just had to try it!

I totally recommend anyone who’s been eager yet unsure of binding their own books, to just take the leap! It is not overwhelming – not at all if you do what I did. I combined steps from 2 different places and went ahead. And some reading of binding experiences by other artists through the last few months only helped me make some good choices.

Here’s what I did to get this book up:

What all did I use:

1.       Paper (or different papers) of your choice

I used

Drawing paper

Bristol paper

90lb watercolor

140lb watercolor

2.       Patterned/Colored Paper – For the cover of the book. I went by Dani’s suggestion (from Dani Draws) and bought some scrapbook paper. I used a construction paper strip for the spine.

3.       Heavy board –  from the back of a couple writing pads that were going to the trash anyway!

4.       Glue - Regular white glue

5.       Brush to apply the glue.

6.       Needle – Regular stitching needle

7.       Thread – I used thread from a new dental floss. Or you can use a strong regular thread with beeswax applied on it. I didn’t want to go through all that trouble with no idea what each thing was – but I read from one of the other artists that a dental floss works well since it is strong!

8.       Knife for cutting paper

9.       Cutting board – a must

10.   Ruler

11.   Awl / thumbtrack to make holes.

12.   Ribbon – optional; for a bookmark or so.

13.   Elastic band – optional; I didn’t use it – it can keep your pages together when you are drawing.

14.   Paper towels for wiping excess glue.

Method

I am just going to lead you to the sites I referred to:
Moleskine Reloaded
Dani Draws
Artist's Journal Workshop - You have some interesting links under the topic 'Bookbinding and Lettering Resources'

1.       Book Block – Either site

             1. Cutting paper – Moleskine Reloaded

             2. Creating Signatures – Either site

             3. Punching - Moleskine Reloaded

             4. Stitching - Moleskine Reloaded

             5. Trimming – Dani Draws

2.             Cover

             1. Cutting cover board

             2. Cutting Spine board

             3. Cover paper

             4. Spine paper

             5. End paper

             6. Gluing

3.             Putting them all together

Note: I followed the instructions given in Dani’s page for most part of the binding.  It is explained in a simpler fashion compared to some other sites that I had visited. She has some good pictures to support her steps too. So I cut my paper and created my signatures.  But I got confused when I came to the stitching steps. So I followed Moleskine Reloaded for the steps Punching and Stitching. There you have a lot of detail in explanation. Am I contradicting myself? Well, I needed some detailed explanation when it came to stitching the pages. But only for that.

I came back to Dani Draws for Trimming and the rest of the steps.

End papers

Ribbon bookmark

Sketchbook

Pages

Closing end papers

Good choices

1.       For the sake of simplicity, I just took papers of the size and bent them into half. I didn’t bother with making them into a 5X7 or so sized paper. This is only my first sketchbook after all!

2.       Kept it simple – bought nothing costly or fancy. Used paper that was there at home.

Bad choices

1.       Started with no cutting board but a soft board. In no time, my table was marked with a couple of scratches!

Hope it was all helpful :) and hope you enjoyed reading through it!

A Day to Ourselves..

Flickr: My first charcoal attempt.. I tried this one as a pre-sketch for a value study. I would like to try out a watercolor of the orchid.

I am looking forward to tomorrow. Tanush has his daycare and Manu has taken the day off for his physical examination.. So, barring the physical he has for most of the morning, it's going to be a day with each other. A long time since we had a day to ourselves.. Manu had taken a day off a few weeks ago, when Tanush had his daycare - but that day was to attend to some of our other errands - getting Tanush's documents done and some shipping and shopping errands. And before we knew, the whole day was gone and we were heading towards Tanush's daycare to pick him up.

As far as I can think of, there is really nothing on the plate for tomorrow - yeah, barring that doctor's appointment.. Thinking of that took me back to our days together in Bengaluru (it was Bangalore then). Not the ones immediately after our wedding; the ones when we used to hang out together, but we weren't really a couple yet! Why those? I don't know.. We knew we liked each other - YES, but we wouldn't be talking about it. We would meet up, go to Landmark or some place, where Manu would listen to the samples of his favorite music or something, and I would always be hanging out in the stationary section. Or we would meet up at a juice joint with another common friend Leya.. Or we would be walking up and down in MG Road just yakkety yakking about our work, want-to-studies, common and uncommon friends and the local food.. He was always a movie fan, I was always not! So we wouldn't go to the movies together always. The non-couple couple days!!

We still love to take quick walks - if we get a chance anymore. I don't know what we plan to do for the day - whether we would hit a movie theater together, or spend the day outside - him with his camera and me with my sketchbooks, but I am really excited about tomorrow. 

Learning Perspective

Learning Perspective, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

I have been looking for a good book on Perspective Drawing. I picked up 'The Art of Perspective' by Phil Metzger from the library. I found the book easy to understand - very straightforward and well explained. Metzger has put in demonstrations in different media to explain different types of perspective. I feel this is a great book for anyone who wants to understand how to implement laws of perspective in his art..

I followed the demo instructions in the book and just copied his demonstration. This is just the first exercise. I am looking forward to the next exercise...

Eggplant

Eggplant, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
..today, she is a budding fruit.. when I drew her, she was a lovely flower.. waiting for the eggplant..

It is a delight seeing the garden bloom and then change into little fruits and then they change their colors. Tanush and I keep track of the growth of the couple of plants that we have potted in our patio.. Strawberries have bloomed too, and soon we are going to be eating some of them - that is, if Tanush doesn't squish them before we harvest them!

Geese in my backyard

Geese in my backyard, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

One of the best views from my patio is these geese coming around every summer end.. in search of some bright sunlight.. They'll come in big groups and families and will bask around pecking at the grass.. They'll move with the sunlight until the shadow falls over the whole area, and then they'll fly off retiring for the day..

They'll be back again, the next day.. Until the whole of fall! Such a cheerful sight..

A Wonderful site for binding books...

.. and some more papercrafts..

Yes.. I am binding my own sketchbook! And I am pretty excited about it!!
But, this post belongs to someone else..

I was digging around to fill my artist's well, and I landed at this wonderful page called 'Stamphenge' by Jean aka “Kwen”/Queen of Inkland today. I am so glad I did, 'cause it has a wealth of information on papercrafts and bookmaking! Such a co-incidence that I had to stumble upon the site when I am binding my first sketchbook! I was looking at the accordion paper sketchbook construction, and here were 1000 other lovely book folding and binding ideas smiling back at me! Check out this page on making Minibooks for yourself!

Some books described there are so pretty, it just made me want to write poetry all over again! Did I just re-discover another part of me that went hiding into shadows? I went back to my eighth grade days when I started writing poems.. and when did I write my last one!? Where are they!? Are they still around or have they gotten thrown away!? I don't really know!!

Thanks Jean, for making a page like that. I especially loved going through the Explosion Box and Flag Book (where there are pictures of two little hands attaching the flags to the book; how cute is that..)! I have bookmarked the site for myself! :)

(Continuing with the update about Guess what I am up to now... I have just glued it all together, and am waiting for the end product - will be ready by morning... :)

Ah! My very first handmade sketchbook, with different papers like I would like for now!)

Guess what I am upto now..

Makes me think...

Makes me think..., a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

... sometimes I go into this mode of "Am I doing anything important!? I am no longer getting a cashcheque home.. at least for sometime more... And I still haven't made a selling of any art piece of mine...Am I not wasting my life away?"

And then I remember - with the current scenario, I can't do much; but with whatever time I have, I do a lot more than many!! :)

Oh, and I like my changed color co-ordinates for my blog.. What do you think!?

Class

Class, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

I warmed up with this sketch to start working on a (then) new drawing.. Tanush is now totally comfortable with his 'school', though, those days he would just stand around with his stuffed dog, Scout..

He likes to see this sketch, and recognizes that it is his school.. and then he points out to himself in the picture..!

A journal entry

Morning bed hair/ Dad and Son, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Sometimes I just draw anything!!!
Morning bed hair while Tanush was brushing.. and dad and son here, relaxing..

Graduating!

Graduating!, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

Well, couldn't stop myself from drawing it.. and now couldn't stop myself from posting it... You can hold back on something that's an important part of your day, only for so long!
(BTW, did you notice Tanush's dumbbells?)

Kai for JKPP

Kai for JKPP, a photo by teshionx on Flickr.

.. starting with my digital painting explorations... rough, refined and final sketches all done digitally...

Ref photo here