Guest Post by Barbara G. Tarn – The Writer-Artist shares her experiences on Creating and Publishing Comics.

My blog is honored to present this guest-post by Barbara G. Tarn. Barb is a fantasy writer and artist who loves to create new fantastical worlds. While there are writers in this world who dabble in art, and artists who dabble in writing,  she’s good at both. Every once in a while she brings her two skills together to write graphic novels and comics. In this post, she discusses her evolution as an artist and an author. This post is a glimpse into a self-taught and self-motivated person, who often inspires me to stay true to my course. I’ve always admired people who have the courage to charter new paths and discover new destinations, despite knowing that the beaten path offers comfort, ease, and security. Barb’s courage is all the more exemplary, because she walks her chosen path with a smile on her face and because she can laugh at stuff that could leave a lesser person, bitter and disappointed.

My Dear Readers,

I welcome Barb on my blog. I recommend that you visit her blog at CreativeBarbwire.WordPress.com and follow it. She blogs quite regularly. If you are writer or an artist, or just someone looking for a spark of inspiration, you’ll love her posts.

The Self-taught Creative

by Barb

I’m self-taught and proud of it. Yes, I went to school (up to the Italian equivalent of high school), I attended an illustration course (and failed the second year when we started using brushes), but then I started working in the most un-creative environment possible, and most would have forgotten their dreams and dropped the pen and the pencil.

I didn’t. I know I’m not a talented artist – if I were, I’d be an illustrator or a comic book creator by now. I didn’t go to art school, so my hand can never do what I see in my head, sigh. I love realistic styles, but I can’t draw them, so I had to find my own way.

I kept drawing because I enjoyed it. It’s the passion that kept me going, both for writing and drawing. I did illustrations for most of my stories, started many comics – improvised, so I kept going until I got bored – and especially when I was in my teens, I mixed prose and art: if I couldn’t draw the scene, I’d just write it down.

I slowly specialized in fantasy settings. I love the Middle Ages, so I have plenty of pictures of castles and books on clothes to get some inspiration. I still can’t draw animals, so my characters tend to travel on foot or through magic spells. And I keep experimenting.

I’ve become proficient at tracing from pictures (so I do portraits of celebrities to decompress from writing and drawing and life), but regarding comics and graphic novels… well, I went through many changes. I also learned to do a sort of script to make sure the story unfolds in a correct number of page, that fits print publication (my first complete comic had 21 pages… what was I thinking I’d put on page 22? An illustration? An author’s note? What?) – although this is less important now with webcomics and ebooks.

A little history: I grew up in France with their varied world of “bandes dessinnées” for all ages and tastes. But I also read Donald Duck stories (always hated Mickey Mouse, LOL) and the Peanuts and Marvel comics – and in the 1990s we had the manga invasion. So my style started “realistic” (like comics), went through a manga-like stage, then settled into something a little more personal – between The Peanuts and a comic book (if you can find one without overmuscled superheroes, that is!).

This was best expressed in Fleur de Lys, which I hope to scan and upload soon. On that one I even did my first attempts at coloring with Photoshop (although I will probably publish it in B&W, as some e-readers are still B&W only, like my Kindle).

The whole evolution can be seen on Mercenaries?! - when I finished it in 2002 (started in 1997), I started redrawing and coloring it because I couldn’t let those characters go. Mercenaries?! is 500 pages and if I republish it (it was a photocopied fanzine that sold 10 copies at Italian comicons in the late 1990s), I’ll have to figure out if I should use the new beginning – having a drop in quality after about 20 pages – or do it in chronological order with the new color beginning at the end or in a separate booklet.

Noticing how inking sometimes “ruined” the pencil, I did one comic in pencil, then with Photoshop made it look like ink by toying with the levels and then colored it (Lady Ice on Smashwords free B&W downloadable version and on Facebook online color version).

My current graphic novel, S.K.Y.B.A.N.D, is the next step – it’s all in color from the beginning (check the WIP post on my blog)! It has pages in prose with an illustration next to it (for those long conversations when not much happens) and, like Lady Ice, it has a more realistic style, as the Fleur de Lys style is more for humorous comics and this is a serious (and adult-oriented) story.

 

I reduced the frames number to an ideal 9 (maximum, can be less for opening scenes). I use a European sheet format (A4), which means it would look weird on an American comic book. And I’ve gone back to inking on paper and then coloring on Photoshop. But it’s taking me a long time to finish (three more chapters to go) because it comes after the prose writing and I’m not sure I’ll do another afterward. Well, maybe another funny one like Mercenaries?! and my personalized style, who knows.

Like everything else in life, it takes passion, practice and patience. If you don’t think you can write the story, partner with someone who can. If you can’t draw, find someone who can – I’d love to do some sci-fi or contemporary comics, but I can’t draw technology or even a car, so if anyone would like to try working with me, let me know. I had some good and some bad experiences working with artists, and enough time has passed since the last very bad experience, so I’m willing to take another chance.

Schools might be good, but if you don’t have the passion to keep going, you’ll never make it. You need to dream big, but keep realistic expectations. If you’re naturally talented (not like me), you might find a job at a publishing house (Marvel, Disney or their equivalents in your home country). Or you can do a web comic, or publish an e-book.

Just don’t give up. And keep learning and experimenting and mostly having fun. If it becomes a chore, it’s time to quit. Happy creations, and thank you Shafali for having me again!

_____

Barb on this blog

Barb on DeviantART

Barb on Facebook

Barb‘s blog

The Caricaturist faces the love-assassins and beats her Rival-in-Love!

Hi Folks,

I’ve been missing. I know that there’s no point telling you where I had been, because you’ll snigger and say, “Oh yeah? Really?” But then that’s something that I’ve been hearing all my life, for everything that I ever do, so…go ahead and snigger. I’ll tell you exactly where I was – you may do what you please.

I was, my friends, in the beautiful land of Love and Romance. I was in a place where the trees had leaves and flowers had petals that were shaped like little hearts; where love-notes and beautiful pink envelopes rained from the sky, and where a sweet little dove took my love-messages to my sweetheart.

But then you know that no fairy tale is ever complete without a villain, and so there was a villain too. This woman, my rival in love, was a beautiful witch who wanted to win the affection of my sweetheart! Now any cartoonist or caricaturist will vouch for the veracity of this convoluted statement o’mine – “It isn’t easy for us artists to find someone who’d love us. Oh, we fall in love at the drop of a hat, but to have our love reciprocated is a mammoth task. I mean, who in his right mind would fall in love with an unkempt, shabby person who buys dresses that are at least four-sizes too big, and whose lone lipstick also doubles as highlighter?”

So, when this beautiful but unethical witch fell for the only guy who had ever tried to look beyond my hopelessly wild exterior, into my sweet though slightly critical soul – things got slightly out of hand. She had money, you see. Tons of gold and silver, and so she recruited these love-assassins to stop me from writing to him! But then, I am not the kind who gives up easily, especially in the matters of heart. So I fought back. I fought this long war, which was made of 54 battles; and in the end, I won!

You don’t believe me, do you?
I can see you sniggering. You think that such a place doesn’t exist. You think that the Land of Love and Romance is a figment of my imagination? You think that a caricaturist cannot compete with a beautiful witch, and win the game of love?
I’ll tell you more about this place when we meet next. By then, if the witch has given up, and my love is returned, I will make those caricatures that I promised I would.

My New Year Resolution – Keep my resolutions!

———- Warning Begins ————

This is a personal post, and it will be of no interest to most of my visitors. I request you to skip it and find more interesting stuff in my Caricature Gallery here I apologize for not having updated it recently, still you can find about 80 caricatures there, and that will hopefully make your visit here a success.

———- Warning Ends ————

The Post begins….

Without spinning a long yarn, I’d like to come straight to the point of this pointy, caricaturist-bashing post. (About the caricaturist-bashing bit, you’ll have to read between the lines.)

My Resolutions for the year 2013, in form of fluid and subjective thoughts are as follows. The corresponding measurable objectives would appear in my diary, because they’ve no business flaunting themselves on a caricaturist’s blog.  Note that intellectual and practical stuff is bad for the caricaturist’s image.

1. I’ll write a lot more. (How much more? Well that’s the part that goes into the diary that I haven’t yet bought, because I’ve been terribly busy drawing non-caricature things.) At this point, I must direct you to the source of my inspiration, Ms. Barbwire who writes so much and yet blogs so regularly. She makes me wonder whether she’s got a magic wand that she’s spun out of her imagination, quite like her stories!

2. I will post more caricatures and cartoons on this blog. (How many more? Last year I made an average of one post a week, and if my memory serves me right, I must’ve posted not more than 1 caricature/cartoon a month. That puts me at the nadir of the performance barometer. So, its got to be substantially more – actual figures go into that diary that I haven’t bought yet.) For achieving this, I must get a new scanner, so I will.

3. I will visit more blogs. I seldom visit another blog. Recently, I’ve started looking at the new posts section in the WordPress Dashboard, and I have also visited a few blogs. Unfortunately, this is like looking for a needle in a haystack. So, if you are an artist, a writer, a teacher, a student, an engineer, or a scientist, or anyone else who writes regularly, who think they’d want a caricaturist lurking around on their blog, do leave your address in the comment section. I’d love to find more blogs to follow.

4. I’ll try to be more polite to people who irk me. This’s going to be the toughest resolution to keep. Those who are burdened with an artistic temperament are seldom polite when they should be – they are only polite when they want to be. Now, this is something that I need to really learn before I die. (Here’s an idea for a post: “Ten Things to Learn before your Die.”)

5. I’ll draw more so that I smile more (The details, of course, will be written in my diary, in longhand, and signed with one of my many artistic signatures.)

I think five resolutions are enough for me to try to keep. Please leave your inspirational remarks and share your concern about my mental health – I am really falling apart as my multiple personalities are fighting with one-another to get the lion’s share of my time. I won’t mind some help here, and yes, I promise to be “polite.”

PS: If only, if only, if only I’d do a read-through before pressing the Publish button! But I won’t…because then I won’t be me. (shuffle…shuffle. !!!That was someone dejectedly shuffling away.)

Happy New Year 2013 – May this Year be different…

May this year surprise us by not bringing us news that makes us cringe and cry, that makes us feel sad and hopeless, and that makes us wonder whether the planet that we inhabit isn’t really turning into hell.

I wish that in this new year:

The politicians keep their promises,
The terrorists drop their guns,
The rapists are brought to justice,
The psychos get help before they murder innocents,
The religious fanatics turn rational and moderate,
The war-mongers lose their blood-lust, and
The fraudsters lose their greed!

and that everyone  finds happiness, health, and love.

Wicked dogs don’t want to work, and a depressed pretzel watches as Nike Women just do it!

When the Caricaturist was stuck inside her computer for three long days and three long nights, she spent most of her waking hours interacting with her files and folders. While there were many files that had to be “exterminated”, there were some that were saved. One of these files had some funny Search terms that had brought people to my blog in the past six months.

Here are some that I thought I must share with my sweet readers. I’ve added my first reaction to the term along. You are welcome to share yours

Search Term 1: Caricatures of wicked dogs

Huh?! Wicked dogs?  Really? Wicked DOGs? WICKED dogs? I don’t know of any, and I’ve known more dogs than humans. Excuse my brutal honesty, but wicked is an adjective that applies exclusively to humans. So, dear searcher, I am not sure if you’ll ever succeed in your quest. Even if you are able to find a caricature of a so-called wicked dog, I assure you that the subject of that caricature never existed – and so, such a caricature would be a work of fiction.

Search Term 2: Don’t want to work cartoons

Now this searcher has my complete attention. “Don’t want to work” is the stable human state. You know about stable states, don’t you? “Want to work” is the exact opposite state of “Don’t want to work,” and unfortunately “Want to work” a highly unstable, extremely volatile state to be in. If a person stays in “Want to work” state for too long, he or she might become explosive. I hope that this searcher succeeds in his or her quest of truth.

Search Term 3: Justin Beaver

Yep! Justin “Beaver”. It’s so much more meaningful than that other surname that he uses…Bieber or something.
Beaver, according to this Wikipedia entry here is: “a primarily nocturnal, large, semi-aquatic rodent.” Makes a lot of sense, especially to the Crabby Old Farts. While I am not sure about the “large” and the “semi-aquatic” part, I’d accept “nocturnal” (as it applies to everyone connected with the music industry) and “rodent” (check out his hair!)

Search Term 4: Depressed Pretzel

An oxymoron. I can’t believe that a pretzel can actually be depressed. This search term doesn’t make sense to me – unless the searcher was in fact looking for my Toony Pretezel about Loneliness and Depression. Hey Presto! Here’s the said Pretzel!

Search Term 5: Nike women just do it!

I disagree. I think Nike women are a lot more discerning. They don’t just do it…they do it properly. But what would I know, I am an Adidas woman. Nike women are welcome to comment.

Search Term 6: How to draw someone holding a pencil in mouth

Easy! Draw someone and then draw a pencil in his mouth!

Search Term 7: Handsome Caricature

Hmm… Let me see. A handsome caricature…? I think I should point you to my Caricature Gallery. All my caricatures are handsome enough… at least they look handsome to me. It’s the same old reasoning that makes the Rhino-mom think that her baby rhino is the cutest kid in the universe…if you catch my drift.

Search Term 8: Brainy Kid Cartoon/Studious Girl Cartoon/Genius Caricature

Hah. You are looking for portraits…not cartoons or caricatures, my friend! Just get a photograph and you are done.

Search Term 9: Handsome Indian Men Naked

How many times do I have to tell you, my dear searcher o’mine blog? For Indian men, handsome and nakedness don’t go together! In fact, handsomeness and Indian-ness seldom goes together. We are some of the smartest people on planet Earth (and we are smart enough not to let people know that we are,) but we aren’t really “handsome” or “beautiful” – and we aren’t talking about the exceptions who prove the rule. (One exceptionally creative Italian lady would like to mention a few names here. She will try her best to discredit me, but then I ask her – has she seen those “handsome” India men naked? Ever?)

Search Term 10: Indian Nudes

Oh, c’mon! The only Indian artist who had the guts to have herself photographed naked and then paint some naked self-portraits was Amrita Shergill, and she couldn’t have done it if she were a commoner or even completely (and I mean it in the genetic sense,) Indian. Her mom was French, and Indians are quite forgiving of the lapses by semi-firangs (semi-foreigners.) And yet, something drove Amrita Shergill to commit suicide at the young age of 28.

 We have come a long way since then…my friend. Now we don’t even dare to think of doing “terrible” stuff like that. Stay safe, my friend, stay safe!

For some inexplicable reason, if you are interested in reading more SEO Humor (humor? Really?) posts, here are four other loony posts that I made in the past.

• Some More SEO Humor and… Who is Shafali the Caricaturist?
• Shafali Hitler shares Some More SEO Humor!
• Shafali’s Cartoon, A Football Rat, and Handsome Indian Men – Some Long Tail SEO Humor!
• A Depressed Woman Sketches a Cartoon Tongue Walking on Blood.

I’m lost…can’t find myself. Last I remember, I was in one of the “Hidden Files”…

The Caricaturist has gone missing again. She needs to geo-tag herself, she needs some meta-data on her dress, she needs to make herself searchable; or she’ll lose herself so completely that she’ll never be found again!

This is what happened – as I remember it, and unlike always I am not exaggerating.

The time was 9 in the night. I had been working on the computer since 6 in the morning. (Of course, I took the much needed breaks of both kinds. Now what kind of unasked question was that?!) Now, you’d expect me to be tired…to be falling down on my keyboard, slipping off my chair, typing bad four-letter words instead of nice four-letter ones (yep! the nice ones! Did you ever hear of the four letter word called “love”? Now replace that with “work”! You see what I mean? They don’t get any worse.)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I was peering into the screen trying to figure out who was actually making the text blurry – my computer or I, when it happened. My computer screen exploded into a riot of colors that began to swirl and twirl, opening up a sort of tunnel, which had a sort of light at the end. Now, most tunnels that I encounter these days have absolutely no light anywhere – they are dark, damp, and dingy. So I was mighty pleased with this particular tunnel, and I jumped right into it.

The practical ones among you would expect me to end up in a hospital, with my head bandaged up and me being nursed back to health by a Tom Cruise look-alike nurse (No! NOT Ben Stiller look-alike…no way – not even in your imagination would I be nursed back to health by Ben Stiller look-alike.) The more imaginative readers would expect me to find light and be happily ever after.

How pleased am I to tell you that both of you are wrong. The moment I landed in my computer, the light at the end of the tunnel vanished. I looked to my left and then to my right, and saw that bits and bytes were zipping and zapping up and down…and the whole place looked as busy as hell. Before I could make sense of it all, a byte zoomed in near me, picked me up, flung me on his shoulder…and banged my head against a passing zip file.

I’d have immediately lost consciousness, had curiosity not forced me to keep my eyes open. The byte who was carrying me, glided past many different folders. I saw my favorite software applications and I saw their less favored cousins. While Photoshop and Flash proudly displayed their six-packs that they got through their rigorous work routines, all those other applications looked like they could use some work. They lounged, they loitered, and they had all put on weight. Illustrator, in particular, looked like a bum; beer-bellied with a week’s worth of stubble! Not their fault, I thought and made a mental note of it.

While I was taking it all in, the byte who was carrying me, missed a step; and I saw myself flying into the No Fly Zone!

With a soft thud I landed on a file. I looked around and saw rows after rows of files after files. The file on which I landed opened up and swallowed me. I realized that I’ll never be found again – because I was in one of the hidden files.

I have painstakingly encrypted this message in one of the icons on your desktop. The icon automatically sends a message to your browser and forces it to display this message on my blog. So, if you are reading this…please HELP!

Robin Williams coming up…as soon as I am able to find my bearings.

No, I haven’t disappeared. I am suspended in the ether. I am invisible to you perhaps, but I am able to see everyone and everything. The only problem I am faced with is, I do not know my coordinates. I need to find them soon and return to my visible form…the form that can hold a pencil and complete Robin William’s caricature/portrait and post it here. I call it a caricature/portrait because it’s a portrait that’s closer to a caricature. It couldn’t bring myself to exaggerate his features beyond a point, because I like him a lot

So…ladies and gentleman, await the arrival of one of the best actors of Hollywood on this blog!

My forgotten Facebook page gets a face.

I’ve had a Facebook page for many months now. It had been languishing in want of attention, until now, when I suddenly remembered its existence.

I really don’t know why I had created it in the first place. It had the my name on it (and I guess your pages can be named differently,) and it looked really drab. So I decided to rename it as Shafali’s Caricatures (what else?) and I added a cover picture with some of my caricatures to its timeline.

So that I am no longer mistaken for some high-flying executive (there’s another Shafali Anand in the cybersphere and she’s some journo or writer,) I must make it clear that while I am a joker of sorts and I can fit into many roles, I am definitely not an intellectual – so please don’t mistake me for one. However, whoever you may come looking for, if you want to press the Like button on my page, I won’t deter you from it.

But if you really like my caricatures and cartoons, and you really want to like my page on Facebook do click here.

I would like to excuse myself now as I  am very tired and the lines on the monitor are beginning to appear blurrrred…….

byeeee thennn.

S

Lost Caricatures and a Mutating Caricaturist!

I haven’t been able to settle down enough to sketch new caricatures, and I’ve lost those that I drew last month – and this, my friends, is the reason why there’s been no new entry in this web-log.

I have been terribly busy too. Doing what, you may ask. Honestly, the answer lies in the fact that the caricaturist is mutating. She’s changing into what she used to be a long time ago – a normal artist and a graphic designer. Those were the days when she hadn’t grown these thorns of sarcasm and ridicule, which differentiate a caricaturist from all other kinds of artists.

There’s a bit of good news with all the pain associated with this mutation, which is that the over all result of it is that though I am turning into a graphic designer I haven’t left the caricaturist behind. In fact, I have added another personality to my already complex personality matrix, and found a new set of tools. My current project makes me work day and night…and this has been the case for almost two months now. Right now, I am just hoping that my audience likes my work, and that the project is a success – and so I am typing this post with my fingers crossed.

I promise to either find those lost caricatures or create some new ones, and return to meet my cyber-friends

Until then and then forever  DRAW to SMILE!

 

Those forgotten caricatures…

Dear Friends of this crazy caricaturist,

My guilty conscience is arm-twisting me into making this post, but then just as what you say when a gun is being held to your temple is always the truth, so is this statement of apology, and the contents therein.

I’ve got those caricatures (Keira Knightley etc.) sketched and ready to be launched remorselessly on my poor unsuspecting visitor, but I haven’t posted them yet. Why? Because this caricaturist isn’t happy being a caricaturist, she wants her caricatures to tell stories. So when she draws this caricature of Robert De Niro or this caricature of Stalin, she isn’t happy. She wants to create something like this caricature of Morgan Freeman or this caricature of Hitler!

Shhhh…listen up. Someone’s whispering bad-somethings about the caricaturist.

Alter-Kreacher: Nasty, nasty caricaturist… with tons of gender-bias! She isn’t bothered about her male visitors at all or she’d also mention this caricature of Pamela Anderson – the only one she’s made that can make a feeble attempt of tickling her male visitor’s fantasies.

Shafali the Caricaturist: Disappear, you snake! Go sink your poisonous fangs somewhere else, or the caricaturist will use an 8B to blacken them out! This caricaturist is completely aware of the viewing needs of her male visitors! She has drawn another caricature that’s bound to make the male visitors do a double-take, though she’d advise caution. Remember the caricature of Sarah Palin?! Now go kill yourself.

Alter-Kreacher: <shuffles away mumbling.>

(I’d like to thank Ms. JK Rowling for creating Kreacher and Warner Brothers for making the movie “Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix“, which I watched yesterday, and which inspired Alter-Kreacher.)

Now that Alter-Kreacher has gotten his much-deserved kick-in-the-butt, let me assure you that Ms. Keira Knightley’s caricature will be here soon, and so will be some others. It’s just that I am usually working on about 10 projects at a time, of which 2 are the food-on-the-table variety, and I end up giving priority to those projects. I know…foolish, foolish me. Did I learn nothing from Van Gogh? His methods couldn’t make him famous and rich when he was alive, but at least they made many others rich and Van Gogh famous, after he died. Wondering what I am talking about? Read, “The 4 Types of Artists – Starving, Dying, Dead, and Rich!“

I’ll return soon…

 

 

 

 

 

Sinister-handed Lefties are the Smarter Lot – A Case for the Left-handers!

The Boon of Left-handedness

Left-handedness is a trait that makes you special. Among the right-handers, a left-hander is the center of everyone’s attention. Secretly, every right-handed person wishes for the boon of left-handedness, because it makes one special…in whichever way.

So, if you were born left-handed, rejoice. Because people around you envy the fact that to look different, all you need to do is be yourself. Those right-handers also envy you because you are smarter, more creative, and infinitely more interesting than them, but then this too is something that they’d never confess to you, ever.

The data-squirrels have sacks full of data suggesting that the lefties are:

• Smarter (They’ve got a disproportionately high incidence of lefties among Nobel Prize Winners, Writers, and Painters.)
• Better at sports (Many lefties are fantastic sports persons – perhaps because their left-handedness surprises their opponents.)
• Better Earners (Among the educated, lefties earn more than their right-handed counterparts.)

Yet, the left-handers of the world have been called names. They’ve been called sinister-handed, southpaw,  cack/cacky-handed (clumsy) Why? Because every damn thing ever made was made for the right-handed people, and the lefties appeared obviously “clumsy” when they used them. I wish there were a place where everything was made for the left-handed people, and then a few right-handed, “dexterous” people were let loose in it. I’d like to see how they continue to remain dexterous!

Nevertheless, the left-handed people do a good job with these right-handed instruments, because they have better visual sense and the ability to analyze space. I agree that it’s a freaking pain to cut fabric using the scissors manufactured for the “dexterous” majority (and, trust me, it’s a bigger pain trying to find a pair of scissors for the left-handed,) yet the lefties will give you a straighter cut than most of your right-ies.

Some of the lefties are ambidextrous, which means that they are able to use both their hands with equal efficacy (well, according to this link, ambidextrous also means – deceitful and bisexual – do you see how the right-ies try to bring us down at every available opportunity?) The ambidextrous appear magical to the normal, rightly-gifted lot…and magic is more often feared than revered. This makes the ambidextrous lot angry, but there isn’t much they can do about it. So they go into their shells to save themselves from those wide-eyed, crazy looks that they get, and they hide themselves from the world.

The fact that I can draw with both hands at the same time, the fact that I can write in reverse without ever practicing it, could’ve been a normal thing for me; but when I was in seventh grade and  stupid enough to demonstrate it in front of my friends, I lost them because their parents thought that I was a witch. And so I kept it hidden, but every once in a while when I get lost in an idea, I start using both my hands to draw it out. Yet the moment I catch myself in the unspeakable act of allowing my sinistrality (note that it isn’t even a proper word) to work together with my dexterity, I stop to look around and check whether anyone’s watching me. Wonder why people don’t give that funny look to themselves when they type with both hands, or when they swim using all their limbs.

I spent a long time worrying about hiding my weird writing and drawing habits, and now I’ve reached a point where I don’t care anymore, especially because these sinister abilities didn’t harm me in any way.

Here’s something for people who worry about their kids being left-handed/mirror-writers.

I survived and I survived well.

Without going into irrelevant details, here are some facts about this woman who masquerades as the caricaturist:

• I’m good at Math and Physics. I studied Engineering and then worked as an engineer.
• I successfully competed in many national entrance exams, and I even topped one of them.
• I can read, write, and speak two languages, and I can learn the script of any language almost overnight.
• I can draw better than many and I am not clumsy at all (but don’t put me behind the steering wheel or I’ll drive you right into the oncoming traffic).

Yet,

• I can’t understand or appreciate music at all, nor can I recognize voices beyond those of my family members. (I don’t really miss it.)
• I am left-handed, but I learned to write and eat with my right hand. (Not bad. Righties may try doing the opposite and see how easy it is.)
• I am less practical than about 90% of the human race. (That’s what makes me an artist )
• I am straight. (not a great loss, I think. Read this.)

Do you see?
If you are a lefty or a parent of a lefty, there’s no reason for you to worry. You (or your child) are gifted.

Before I end this post, here’s a quote that I read on a t-shirt (and so I don’t know who wrote it, but whoever did – thanks. I also found a link with many more quotes about left-handedness and added it here.)
“”Everyone is born right-handed…but only the greatest overcome it.“

and yes, there’s a World Left-Hander Day. It’s August 13th (and no, it’s not a Friday.)

Some More SEO Humor and… Who is Shafali the Caricaturist?

Dear Readers of all varieties (quick, fleeting, or lingering; medium, rare, or well-done; well-read, well-meaning, and curious,)

Once every few months, I sit down and scroll through the searches that’ve brought people to my blog.

Here are just a few of these terms.

Humorous Women Cartoons

“Humorous Women” Cartoons? I’ve told you earlier and I tell you again. Women aren’t built to be humorous. When God’s engineers were busy  putting women together their operations were sabotaged by Men (who by the way, were already built and ready to be launched.) The men stole the vial that contained humor and replaced it with another vial that contained the potion of tears. That’s why women cry and men laugh (often at the same time.) Got it? So stop searching for humorous women cartoons. The only humor we’ve got is of the sooty black kind.

Cartoon Nazi Girl Angela Merkel

So which part confuses you? Nazi or Girl? or Angela Merkel?

Beautiful Pic Men Caricature

Did you mean Pacman? or Pokemon? If you meant Beautiful pictures of men…I am sorry, dear – but you are looking for something that can never be. No? Okay…then I have the right image for you, I think.

Ghost of you(r?) my chemical romance sketch:

Chemical Romance?
Really?
Please postpone the romance until you are out of the Chemistry Lab. I beseech you. There’s never a more dangerous place to get mushy (umm…wait. Perhaps there is. How about the Forge Shop? Imagine that one of you is holding the sledge hammer and the other person is struggling to hold the red-hot iron piece using the tongs! PS: Don’t assume this happened with me because it didn’t or I’d not be here warning you against it.)

Cartoon Sketch on Sports of Shafali

Shafali doesn’t play sports, so this has to mean something else. Perhaps a sketch of a sportsman by Shafali. I hang my head in shame. I’ve done only a few sports caricatures, but you can check out Troy Polamalu, Tiger Woods, and Sachin Tendulkar.. An unlikely combination – but that’s all I have on this blog right now. Sorry.

Pakistani Caricaturist Cartoonist

Now this is important. I am an INDIAN Caricaturist Cartoonist.

Caricature of Women with Mustaches

Ho, ho, ho! hee, hee, hee! Tee, hee, hee!
Gone are the days, Sir, when you could see women with mustaches. With Laser hair removal techniques, every woman’s upper lip is as smooth as a baby’s! Why mustaches? Women today have no hair anywhere except on their heads and in their brows (OMG! what did I just say? I am going to be killed for giving this secret away.) But it gives me an idea… a real good one too Thanks.

And finally…

The questions that have been asked many times during the last two years, but are being asked more frequently these days.

Who is Shafali the Caricaturist? Who is Shafali the Cartoonist?

Shafali is an artist with a temperament. Let me begin this information capsule with a quick demonstration.

I am a woman so I am not Mr. Shaf Ali. When anyone calls me Mr. Ali, I get my knickers in a twist, my eyebrows in a knit, and my arm in a splint! Shafali is a the name of a beautiful flower that’s offered to Lord Shiva and is called Shivli (Shiva’s friend) in Assam and Shefali in Bengal. While my name is Shafali, I’ve learned to live with people addressing me as “Shefali” in their emails and snail-mails – at least they don’t change my gender. One should be thankful for small mercies.

More…

I like to read, write, and draw. I love dogs, cats, and squirrels. I am selectively ambidextrous and can reverse-write with the same ease with which I write normally. I am good at both manual and digital drawing and painting, but I gravitate towards black and white drawing because it’s faster

Oh..move away and stay there! I can feel that wave of temperament wash over me again…

…And to those men who keep asking me about my age, all I have to say is – if you could ask that question, you weren’t brought up to be a gentleman; and my Grandmother would revive herself just so that she may put me under house-arrest for talking to you. And you must disappear before she comes back or I won’t be responsible for what happens to you!

(Psst…she once set her two dogs on a young man who had the temerity to send me a card…I am just say’n…)

MIB 3 – Men in Black vs. Men in the Back Row a.k.a the Crop of Alien Engineers

Here’s the story.

I watched MIB 3 (that is Men in Black 3). The stress that I put on the word “watched” is deliberate. It is to emphasize that the four engineering students who sat in the row behind me talked so much that I couldn’t hear what Will Smith said to Tommy Lee Jones, nor what Josh Brolin (the younger and more talkative agent K) said to Will Smith…at least during the first half of the movie.

I am curious.

These engineering students (their loud conversation would have me believe that they were studying engineering in one of those zillion weedy engineering colleges of the seedier kind, that have been mushrooming around the country at the rate of 1 college a second.)

This group of Fantastically Foolish Four was there spending money on a movie that none of them understood (yes, I say this despite knowing that there isn’t much to understand in it,) and that they didn’t know anything about (what’s there to know, any way.) The concept of the MIB movies was completely “alien” to them, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why they took the last row tickets, sat there for 102 minutes in the dark, if all they wanted to do was giggle (yes, I know girls giggle, guys guffaw – but these guys were experimenting with some sort of role-reversal..don’t ask me why.)

I am not being mean. I am just curious.

While I know that in their kind of engineering college, no engineering is taught; and while I also know that if the education ministry has its way the IITs would soon follow with their crop of half-witted endlessly-giggling students bunking classes to go to movies that they don’t understand – yet, I am not being mean. I just want to know why four guys want to sit and giggle in the last row of a dark auditorium?!

My Take:

• Every girl who they asked out for a movie, turned them down (individually, I mean…and hope.)
• There’s no better way of bonding with the guys than to make everyone else in the auditorium miserable.
• Their Profs are handing out extra points to students who stay out of class (…and away from them. Frankly? If I were their Professor I would. But Internal Combustion Engines are out of fashion now – so I escaped that fate. Thank God!)
• It was a holiday for them and their parents didn’t want them in the house, so they were given a wad of black-money a kind of currency that’s abundantly available in the country) to splurge.
• They are planning to emigrate to the USA and they wanted to hone their language skills for a better TOEFL score (Does the TOEFL still exist? I guess it does or I wouldn’t have found the link.)
• Devil had set an Entrance Exam for them. If they could torture people in the theater, they could join the University of Hell (Do you see? Even the University of Hell has some standards!)
• It just struck me. Actually, they were preparing for the CET, which is going to replace the esteemed JEE, so that they could get into one of the IITs. Cracking sick-jokes about the MIB is what it takes to crack the CET…right? No pressure…Not at all…Sir!

Summing up:

The saving grace was that the hall was only three-fourth full…so when despite our request the four jokers refused to shut up, we found another place.

MIB 3 – Review:

It’s a good movie…worth-watching. Tommy Lee Jones has aged a lot, so they did a good thing by bringing in Josh Brolin as his younger self. While there weren’t enough new aliens, yet unlike the previous MIBs this one had a better storyline. If you are a fan of the Men in Black, you should definitely watch it. Just make sure there aren’t any alien men behind you – there are…believe it or not…some dialogs in the movie!

What has the Caricaturist been doing? – A Personal Post.

New Visitor – Please be warned.

While you are welcome to read this post, it mightn’t make much sense to you. This post is for those who know everything (well, almost everything) about me. They know about my excursions into parallel worlds and my tours into the past; they know that I remember most of my past lives in vivid details – especially the one in which I was born a dinosaur; and they know that I spend most of my time doing stuff that’s got nothing to do with making caricatures.

If you still want to read on, please don’t hold me responsible if nothing makes sense to you. 

——————————————————————————

What has the caricaturist been doing? Other than apparently “foolishly” refusing to accept the once-in-a-lifetime offer of having a designer clothing line based exclusively on her designs, deleting funny comments from septuagenarians who are more interested in her photograph than in her work, and annoying those who have her best interests at heart.

Well, she’s been:

• reading a novel called Isis Reach by David Elvar and wondering how the author came up with Shona Madoc, the beautiful and intelligent protagonist of this paranormal mystery, and whether he had some personal paranormal experiences that made the novel so interesting to read.
• wondering why Mark Zuckerberg‘s got mired in all the controversy that he’s got mired in, and how she can bring herself to believe what they say about him – he’s so young and he’s got an ultra-cute face – regardless of that bump in his nose. I know that my reason sounds flimsy, but that’s the best I can come up with.
• trying to make up her mind whether or not she should buy a couple of new floral skirts for the summers.
• booking her flight-tickets to Atlantis. On her last trip to the wonder-city, she had left her favorite mechanical pencil there, and she needs to get it back. Pronto.
• thinking why she needs to bother herself with drawing Keira Knightley‘s body at all? I mean, who’d notice?
• trying to engineer a clock that fits 48 hours in a day. If she’s able to do this, a hundred years from now, she’d be known as the Leonardo da Vinci of the twenty-first century.

Though there are other things that she’s been doing – but if the last one works out, they wouldn’t matter; so the super-optimist yet ultra-practical caricaturist now refuses to waste your time as well as hers, telling you about her other crazy pursuits.

That’s all for now, friends. I hope to return with Robert de Niro‘s caricature soon

The Caricaturist found her inspiration again…

brace yourselves – caricatures are about to invade your world!

I could list them out – all 10 of them, but then I’d kill the suspense – so I won’t.

I’ll just tell you this that last week I received a package that gave me a shot in the arm. What was there in the package?! Well, it had some drawings that I am going to cherish forever. But why did they inspire me? Ah, that’s a trick question – isn’t it? Okay. Here’s why. Because I looked at those drawings and thought that one day…perhaps in not very distant future, I’ll wake up into a day filled with the possibility of doing nothing but drawing. Those drawings made me want to draw. So, that’s exactly what I did. I woke up the next day, and I saw nothing but the possibility of drawing. I drew and drew and drew…until I had drawn everyone whose photographs I found in my reference folder.

Weird?

…Unbelievable?

…But true! Your caricaturist is back…figuring out ways to get herself killed!

And the end-note…to my idol in the world of cartooning. Thank you for inspiring me.

 

 

NEWS!!! The Missing Caricaturist was found fighting an invisible mutant spider!

I know you don’t believe my luck. I mean how could someone as normal as this caricaturist end up fighting a mutant spider of the invisible type?! Such things happen only in movies – don’t they? Well…I feared your disapproval so I came prepared with some other options that might sound more normal to you.

You could select from:

1. a deep sea dive that culminated in my getting stuck in an underwater crater, which connected to the super-duper city of Atlantis.
2. my journey into and out of (yucks!) a polar bear’s belly (this one really happened. You could read the details here.)
3. my being first selected and then being dumped…for running the race for the Republican Party Presidential  Primaries!
4. one of my caricatures getting mad at me for drawing him with a bigger than normal nose and a smaller than normal mouth…(Shia Labeouf or Edward Norton? Don’t ask. I don’t want to take any names and get into more trouble.)
5. I was shipped to Shutter Island where I met Leonardo DiCaprio and realized that I was merely a figment of his imagination.

So, which one did you pick as the most plausible explanation for my absence?

Anyway, the point is that I’ll shortly be back with more caricatures and…well more detailed caricatures…perhaps caricatures that have political stories to tell

Won’t make any promises as, so far, I haven’t been performing great on the promises front – not keeping too well – especially after that near-fatal battle with the oh-so-venomous spider – yet, watch this space for some cool new caricatures!

Valentine’s Day, Google Doodle, and a bunch of roses :)

It’s Valentine’s Day today. I happen to have spent two years studying at the most prestigious Fashion School of India (don’t ask me the why and the how of my being there – artists are crazy – and they do stuff that won’t make sense to any left-brained individual,) and it was there that I first realized that there was indeed a festival that celebrated love – an emotion that should be experienced to be understood. Unlike anger, sorrow, happiness, and many other emotions, love can exist without expression, but when expressed, it flourishes. This day is about expressing your love for another being…doesn’t matter how.

So that brings us to the Valentine’s Day Google Doodle, which plays a sweet animation, in which a boy tries to win a girl’s heart by giving her a rose followed by an array of gifts, but he fails – and then he realizes that it was really a lot simpler. All he had to do was skip a rope with her. He realizes that…

• He didn’t have to order a glass of wine worth $6000 (of course, there’s a diamond at the bottom of the glass),
• He didn’t have to gift her a car,
• he didn’t have to buy her an iPad or an iPhone,
• He didn’t have to buy her an apartment,
• He didn’t even have to buy her a teddy,
• or even a rose…

all he had to do was find out what she liked doing and tell her that he cared for her enough to understand her.

Yet it was all the way backwards for me today. Today, I celebrated my first Valentine’s Day.

We had gone to the market to buy regular stuff – a diary, a few folders, a couple of books, and grocery – but I, who wore a steel-plant helmet and would receive hand-crafted ceramic earrings made of refractory bricks from him when we had first met…today after spending two decades of his life with this cartoon girl and caring for her every day of their lives together, he gave her roses! We never celebrated this day, because we thought that being in love was celebration enough – but this Valentine’s Day shall remain etched in my mind forever, because when he gave me those roses, I realized that traditions become stronger when celebrated with symbols.

I wish all my visitors and readers a Very Happy Valentine’s Day

And yes, for the Love-Cynics…

Here are Romeo, Juliet, and the… … the extra!

A POA for the New Year…and some Birthday Wishes – A Personal Post…

…and so you may want to skip it. I heartily recommend that you check out the Caricature Gallery and if you are the reader-type you may also want to checkout my Verbal Caricatures (the eBooks.)

The first week of January is a wonderful time. It’s filled with fresh hopes and new energy, and for me it’s doubly so, as my Birthday too falls in the first week of January. I thought it’s time for me to reflect upon the journey of this blog and also to share my blogging plans for the year 2012.

The Journey so far…

I had started this blog on a foggy December morning. It’s only goal was to bring me some happiness, as I wasn’t really doing well – neither financially nor physically. The act of drawing had always brought me happiness and peace but I had almost never done art commercially…and caricatures – I had never done caricatures before I started this blog. In December, this blog turned two. It now has about 80 caricatures of different personalities supported by this caricaturist’s take on their lives, and it attracts a good number of visitors too.

I made some wonderful friends through this blog. I’d like them to know that I’ll always cherish their friendship. I am also working with two clients now – earning through art had always been my dream and I am now inching closer to my goal.

This past year, I also wrote a book, “The Evolution of a Caricaturist” which I published on Google Knol (a Platform that’d be put to sleep April this year), and which got about 55,000 views, earned me a Top Knol Author badge, and was appreciated by its readers.

Another addition to this blog was the Interactive Art Tutorial Section, which didn’t really get sufficient attention from me, as my job kept me busier than usual – yet, the these interactive tutorials were downloaded 2000 times in the last six months and I am hopeful that people liked them.

The Plan for 2012

• The plan is actually that this blog will retain its organic format. I will try not be tardy in posting to this blog and I will try to make at least two posts a week.
• In 2012, this blog will see more of color-caricatures and I may also do some political caricatures and cartoons.
• I am planning to do some How-to Posts that have been planned on the basis of some feedback that I received on the “The Evolution of a Caricaturist” book – for instance, how to do shading in caricatures, how to establish volumes in drawings…etc. I hope that my readers will find these posts helpful.
• I also hope to find a publisher for an expanded, more detailed, and more richly illustrated version of the book, “The Evolution of a Caricaturist.” I was approached for it last year, but things didn’t work out. However, if you are a publisher who’s interested in publishing the book, please let me know.
• And finally, I want to become a more active blogger. I’d like to visit more blogs, find bloggers who I’d like to read, and make some new friends in the New Year.

I guess that’s all

Once again, I’d like to wish everyone a VERY HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR.

 

 

Your favorite Caricature blog in 2011 – A WordPress Report received with a smile:)

The cute WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 150,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Thank you WordPress I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – I wouldn’t be blogging if it weren’t for WordPress.

A Happy New Year Wish for all my readers :)

My dear blog-readers, caricature-lovers, and also the occasional-visitors,

May your new year be filled with happy surprises and may it bring along love, lucre, and laughter

I would like to thank you for visiting my blog and for commenting on my posts. One of my New Year Resolutions should be that I’ll spend more time blogging and visiting the blogs of my friends…and I vow to put that resolution on the list, (when I get around to creating it). Oh…and while I am at it, I the Master Procrastinator, must also resolve not to procrastinate the task of preparing the list.

I know I am not making a lot of sense. It must be New Year’s Eve fever!

See you later…in the New Year!

H A P P Y     N E W     Y E A R !