testing testing..

Whenever i start painting an illustration i keep a strip of paper beside me to test and prepare colours before i paint it in. The last illustration i made was so colourful that even the strip looked pretty by the time i finished! 
I added a little me on top to finish it off!

letters are fun!

I took a break from drawing on postcards and drew on an envelope instead.
I love writing letters and drawing on brightly coloured envelopes. 
Letters make separation fun! :)

birthday yay!

Tomorrow's my birthday! 
Yay!
I'm going to be celebrating in Diu, a little beach town.
It's going to be a day of sun, sand, fried fish and beer!
Woooooooooooo! :D

Beaten Black and Blue

This is one of the illustrations i made for a short story from a collection of stories by children, for children. The book is called 'By Us, For Us' and is being published by Katha. (check them out!) 
It is another story form the same book in my previous post.
This particular story is called 'Beaten Black and Blue' and is about one politician's suitcase that saves India from the clutches of his corruption.
It's a lovely story. Do buy the book if you see it!
(click on the image to see more detail)

Rover the dog

This is one of four illustrations i made for a short story. 
It is part of a collection of stories written by children, for children, and illustrated by various people. The book is called 'By Us, For Us' and is being published by Katha.(Look them up!)
The book is being launched on the 29th and i'm extremely excited!
The story I illustrated is called Rover the dog, and it is a sweet story about Lila, who can't find her dog, Rover anywhere. She searches high and low and then finds him in the most unexpected place!

Do buy the book if you see it!

one of those days

It's one of those days.  
Everything seems wrong, just, wrong. 
When nothing you do makes you feel better. 
All you want to do is sit in the corner and cry.

twitterer

My friend, Kalapi, had asked me to create an avatar of him for his public profile on Twitter. After making a few drawings, I sent him the final one along-with a scan of all the doodles around it. To my surprise he ended up using most of them! 
I dislike twitter but i feel like visiting his profile just to see my drawing! :)

Shilpa

Another book-converted-into-monster book, and oddly, my first female monster. (I've been neglecting gender equality!) 

She's on her way to party. 

Female monsters have busy social lives you know.

Also check out my friend Karno's monsters! 

I think Ramola and Shilpa would have been very good friends.

sabhabathi

I converted another book into a monster. This one is called Sabhabathi. 
You can call him Sabby for short!

I quite enjoy converting my books into monsters. 
I think i should make it a ritual.
You can see my first monster-book here.

dinesbhai

I'm on a monster roll!

It occurred to me recently that i have been in Baroda for over 6 months and i've become quite fond of both the place and Gujarati people! High time then that i make a gujju monster, isn't it?

Meet Dineshbhai.

He's a sweet and rather shy guy. 
He's the silent type.

He's gujju (obviously).

His favourite 'snakes' are kites, preferably sweet ones! :P

The photograph, unfortunately, is not mine, only Dinesh is. I drew him on a postcard i picked up in Ahmedabad.

halloween horns

This halloween my friend wore an awesome pink wig with horns. 
I want one too!

flipkart

I am absolutely, totally, head-over-heels in love with flipkart! I love how books i can otherwise never hope to find arrive so deliciously packaged at my doorstep! My wishful wishlist is (as expected) just about endless and my obsession with it is bordering on unhealthy. I check it every single day and it takes me all my willpower to move my cursor away from that tantalising Buy Now button.

me h.

petite éclairs

Nowadays, I seem to swinging from drawing to cooking an awful lot. 

My most recent adventure with the oven was petite éclairs. They weren't actually supposed to be petite, i couldnt find the right nozzle size so they ended up mini, but they're tasty anyway! (and they sound fancier when i say petite éclairs! :P)

Turns out eclairs are quite easy and fast to make. Unfortunately, they're even easier and faster to eat! This lot lasted for about 10 minutes before they were gulped down. 

As you can see, my brother enjoyed them quite a bit! :)

garba

This is how i garba.

postcard 10: home

There is something extraordinary about the beach. It's so calming. No matter how sad, angry, unhappy i feel, a quiet hour at the beach with the salty sea breeze and the sand between my toes make me feel at peace.

I was flipping through my log recently and found a forgotten doodle. I really ought to have put this up a very long time ago! 
For Easter last year my friend Vishnu gave some of us the most delicious chocolate bunnies to eat. Over the next few weeks our fridge was littered with headless, butt-less and various other parts-less bunnies. I figured their conversation in the recesses of my fridge went something like this.

This is what the actual chocolate bunny looked like.

 

You can see the bunny Aaju received, here.

postcard 9: metamorphosis complete

Finishing off what i started!

postcard 8: *cough

Asthama problems. Several month's worth of dust accumulated around the junk lying in my room finally got to me. 

My lungs were complaining. :(

stamp tramp

stampFor as long as i can remember i've loved rubber stamps. When i was a kid i would steal my dad's office stamps and ink pad and stamp them all over my books (and an occasional wall).

Recently, (joy oh joy!) Kalapi made me one as a gift. 

It is awesome.

(Most available surfaces in my room are now stamped with my name.)

postcard 7: filters

I bought my Gujarati friend (and myself) a set of lovely tamil stainless-steel coffee filters. 

I even got his initials inscribed on it. 

He seemed pretty pleased with my gift! :)

postcard 6: cheers! *hic

Celebrating my father's 55th birthday!

postcard 5: de-moustaching

There is a woman in chennai whose hands are like magic with those nerve-wrecking parlour-processes. So when i know there's a visit coming up i let my moustache build to record breaking lengths in the comfortable knowledge that she's going to make me look beautiful again.  
Painlessly.

a hop, skip and jump

I've always wanted long hair to play with.

postcard 4: retail therapy

Spent the day shopping.
Hurray for retail therapy!

postcard 3: raindrops are falling on my head

There's something mesmerising about the rains.

postcard 2: library madness

If Baroda has one flaw, it's the lack of a good library. Which is why i broke into a spontaneous jig of joy and skipped around like a lunatic in my chennai library (stunning the other innocent and rather apprehensive customers).

The librarian didn't even blink though. He's gotten used to it.

*sigh. Books are delicious!

postcard 1: the heat was hot

Recently, i got the chance to spend a few days in my hometown, Chennai. 
Chennai is hot, humid, eternally muggy and my favourite city in the world! However, after my family moved away, opportunities to visit have become precious and far between. :(
While i was there this time, i decided to document my trip by creating, at the end of each day, a postcard of the event that stuck out most in my mind.
I am now left with 10 postcards summing up my trip (that i shall now put up in order received).

The heat in Chennai was very hot. :I

cookies are meant for seeing

After the long spell of collecting cobwebs that my blog has been forced to endure i've decided to start with something sweet. And edible.

I'd been doodling and eating an awful lot lately so i struck inspiration one day and decided to combine the two into one pastime.

The following (with generous help from my mum in the baking process) is what resulted.

The type cookies are with the help of typogeek Kalapi (by 'help of' i mean i started making a few letters, gave up half way and let him convert the wrecks into pretty type)

We then had a complete ball icing the cookies and messing up my table. 

After several hours of applying and eating colourful icing though i couldnt look at my finished cookies in the eye let alone eat them so they were duly munched up by my brother. :(