the auuuugggh state of mind

well...

My diploma project has well and truly started now. Everyone is back, the founder director has given her speech and the starting flag has been waved. The race is on!

I was going through the copious notes and mind-mapping i had made in my log while ideating for my proposal and i came across this little sketch i made while i was getting frustrated. 

It pretty much sums up how i was feeling then. And i have a feeling there are a lot more of these moments to come!

say cheese!

Its a pretty late post but this was strawberry cheesecake me and my friend divya made in Baroda for a dinner we were going to have with our friend Kalapi.

Unfortunately, Kalapi got conjunctivitis at the last minute and could'nt make it to dinner. And divya being divya never came home to eat it! I hogged most of it and saved the last slice for the two :)

It was YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMM...!!!

You can get the recipie from my mum' blog - http://chittiskitchen.blogspot.com/

It's absurdly easy to make!
These are only two slices of the whole cake :) 

The cheesecake itself took barely any time to make. Once we were done, divya and i stuffed ourselves. We combined some biscuit base from a previous endeavour with coffee icecream and chocolate chips and sauce. 

Simple but delicious!

We washed our impromptu dessert with some pizza and lemonade. 

It was a fun day amidst all the diploma headache! :)

when work fails...

My mind was too cluttered to work so i tried to take some time off to experiment in the kitchen. Made a few tart bases. I kind of lost interest after that so i just topped it off with an enormous scoop of mocha ice cream and sauce. 

It tasted lovely despite the lazy improvisation. The crisp base complimented the cold ice cream beautifully.

*sigh...

It was definitely more fun than working!

just dessert

I've been trying to illustrate for quite a few days now but somehow i cant bring myself to sit down and do it. I finally decided that maybe i was trying the wrong craft. i decided to cook instead

Since all i seem to be doing these days is eat, i made some chocolate cake with some really sinful truffle icing to help matter along. 

I of course got liberal help from my mum, the expert, who probably would not have trusted me alone in the kitchen even if i wanted her to go!

my mum, using the rare opportunity of having someone else cook for her, and having a good go at the cake.

embroideries

I know i know. Its been forever since i posted anything. In my defence, i have been preoccupied, first with my pre-diploma, then my feet's rendezvous with glass and finally with finding excuses for why i've been sitting around on my bum and not doing anything. 

Now that the inactivity on my blog has gotten to me i have decided to put up my so called excuse for not doing anything.

I hope you have a strong stomach. It's not pretty :(

the morning after :(

 after two weeks of healing

Aritificial Intelligence?

a doodle i made while i was supposed to be working... i seem to be making a lot of these lately... :(

*sigh

Sometimes its hard to heal what lies beneath...

I've been feeling low the last few days :(

chai was here

Final images for the characters i made and posted previously.

coffee is a band-aid for the soul

taken for a ride

a random something

enter

toaster craze in context

These are the illustration laid out with the article. (For your information, the article isn't really about a toaster craze. It's an interesting article about a new generation of nature writers and about mankind in general moving away from nature)

ooooooooo! toasterrr!!!

Don't get scared! This is an illustration that i made for an editorial piece.
Click on it! It looks a lot better when you can actually see some detail!!

pressure

yea. ok. i know. I haven't posted for AGES. The workload in college has been enoRmous of late because i decided to be flighty and shift from course to course. It's an oddly bitter sweet feeling; being overloaded with work you like. Since i took such a long break i'll upload a few thing at a go now. I'll start off with an image of how i've been feeling (somewhat) this last week.

Tamil Pride :)

Apparently this is a really old video but i just saw it today and i simply could NOT stop laughing. If you're tamil and you haven't seen this yet, watch it NOW.

Blackboard

I've finally decided to put up some of my internship work. Last summer i worked with a publishing house called Tulika and helped conceptualise and subsequently illustrate a book for them. It's called blackboard and is now available in book stores in god-only-knows-how-many languages. (Please buy a copy!) These are 6 of 18 pages. To see the rest you can pick up a copy!! (or wait until i post them up out of lack of anything else to post)
You can buy the book here.

Gah.

I don't feel like working. I'm tired of college. All i feel like doing is running back home, which is now, unfortunately, in Baroda. Unfortunately, because it's Chennai i want to run to.(Don't mistake me Baroda's a beautiful place. I just prefer Chennai. You can't help but be partial to the place you've spent 13 yrs of your life.) Right now i wish i were one of these damn birds. Flying around in the sunset instead of staring guiltily at my computer screen updating my blog instead of working. :(



The picture was, ironically, taken in Baroda during a bird-watching jaunt with my mother.

Pavitra pin-up

I seem to have monsters on my mind for some reason. Pavitra here has a pin on the back of her head. Gruesome though that is, it makes her handy to attach onto my bag. :)

Admittedly these aren't the best pictures in the world. It's too late at night to take good ones, so i'll leave them for now and replace them soon hopefully. :l

Yakkity yak

AHA!!! I knew i MUST have something to post!
I made this recently as a header to put on top of the blog. I simply hated it as soon as i put it up :(
Im in the process of thinking of another one but till then i might as well put up my attempt!

lights will guide you home

Feels like i haven't put anything up on my blog for ages!
The impossible has happened. Not only have i started this damn blog, i've also gotten addicted to it. :(
Various possibilities for illustrations have been making jelabi patterns in my head for some time now but i simply haven't had the time to draw anything. However out of desperation to put something or the other up, here are some photos i took recently for a photo essay assignment in college.
I travelled to the city, alone, in the middle of the night to take these. To put it mildly it was a pretty eventful night. Me, my tripod and camera almost got run over, blown away, picked up, molested and arrested.

:) Needless to say, i had loads of fun!