Still here…

but busy as a bee…

Any thoughts on who I should be sketching next?

The following are currently on my interest list:

• Oprah Winfrey
• Leonardo DiCaprio

You are welcome to leave your suggestions:) And of course, your stories for the Blog Carnival too…I’m dying to read some interesting original fiction. (The newest story can be read here.)

And Oh…if you are an Indian (or if you love India) you should stop by my friend Gorakh Nath Ji’s Indian Fiction and Humor blog.  He’s dead but more spirited than many of the living. If you are an Indian and a woman – find Vicky on his blog and follow him (don’t ask me why…discover it yourself!)

Meet Gorakh Nath Ji:

Find him at: http://karelasplit.wordpress.com

Smile away, even if you don’t DRAW to SMILE!

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The Trump Card – A Story by Oorvi for the October Blog Carnival!

This is Oorvi’s entry for the October 2010 Story-in-the-Caricature Blog Carnival. I am publishing it here because Oorvi is between blogs:) I shall link it to her new blog when she gives me the go-ahead for it. You can leave your comments for the story here.

Another story that this caricature has inspired, has been written by Barb. You can read the Story “Robin & Beth” here.

The last date for the 5th Story-in-the-Caricature Blog Carnival is October 31, 2010, so if you are planning to invite us into the world of your imagination, please find your notebook soon:) Read the Rules for Participation here.

The Trump Card!

(A Short Story by Oorvi)

The Day they read the Will

“This is impossible! He doesn’t have a brother,” Rita shrieked. Her shriek changed into a gasp of surprise as George’s twin Matt walked in. Matt had the same eyes, the same nose, and the same height as George, however, he was thinner by at least 20 pounds, his brows weren’t as bushy and he sported a beard. He also looked muscular and tanned, which George never did, at least not in the last eight years of her marriage with him.

Matt smiled and bowed to her. After all, Rita was his brother’s widow, and who his brother had left nothing except the clothes on her back and the paltry sum that they had in their joint account. Even the palatial house, in which she lived now, had been left to him, along with everything else that George owned. Matt was now as rich as George was when he were alive.

Rita couldn’t understand it at all. What had gone wrong? She knew that George had willed it all to her. She was sure about it. He had done it a few months before his death, and in those months, she had given him no reason to change that will. And to leave it all to this brother of his, who he never even talked about. But then the solicitor told her that after their parents had divorced, Matt’s father had taken him to live in India – and the brothers had met only a handful of times – and never after they had grown up.

But…it still didn’t make sense to Rita.

—–ooo—–

Flashback – The Night George Died

George leaned back in the plush seat of his chauffeur-driven sedan, and closed his eyes. Whenever he came home late, he made it a point to bring flowers for Rita. She loved flowers, and he loved her more than anything else in the world. As the sedan turned into the driveway, George opened his eyes, and looked past the trees, beyond that expanse of grass, and into the French-windows of his house. In the distance, he could see Rita waiting for him. His heart swelled with love for her, and a smile spread on his face. She was going to love the surprise he had for her tonight.
“Sir, we’ve arrived.”
His chauffeur’s voice broke his reverie.

Rita was there, arranging the dinner table and looking ravishing in her wine-red off-shoulder gown, with a single strand of pearls gleaming around her lovely neck. She deserves the world, he thought as he took her into his arms, before going in to change into his evening dress.

Rita had planned a quiet evening after dinner – some wine and music. The setting was just perfect for what George wanted to tell her. That evening, he didn’t want to talk business, and he didn’t even want to drink the wine. He was drunk on her beauty and all he wanted to do was tell her about the cruise that he had planned for just the two of them.

Rita however, wanted to talk business, and he put it all down to her love and concern for him. She didn’t trust Steve at all. Steve had joined his company around three years ago, and he was younger to him by at least a dozen years. Steve was also extremely good at cutting the bureaucratic red tape and so George valued him a lot. Though most women found Steve attractive, Rita disliked him immensely and she didn’t trust him around George. She always thought that Steve was never as good as he made himself out to be. In fact, they didn’t get along at all.

So they sat and talked, and so George never got around to talking about the surprise that she had for her.

–

His head felt heavy, and his limbs felt cold and numb. He could hear Rita’s voice floating in from the other room, but it appeared to be coming from a place faraway. He tried to call out to her but he couldn’t – his voice failed. With a lot of effort, he turned his head to see the clock. It looked hazy, but he managed to figure out that it was about two in the morning.

Gradually, consciousness returned to George and Rita’s voice became clearer. She was talking to someone on the phone. He tuned himself in.

He is dead! I am scared! Just come up to the house.”
…
“We’ve got to move fast and remove the body. This is the most important part of the plan.”
…
“Don’t worry about it. I know what’s there in his will. All of it comes to me – to us, I mean. And as it was an overdose of his own medicine, even if it comes to postmortem, they’d never learn the truth.”

George closed his eyes. The pain that shot through his heart made him dizzy again. His wife had tried to kill her, and she said something about a plan to dispose his body off. Suddenly the whole evening and the spell of unconsciousness began to make sense to him. He realized that he wanted to know more…and so he decided to play along. But who was the man on the other end of the phone?

–

“Steve, he’s dead. We don’t need to tie him up. We need it to look like an accident!”

That’s a smart woman, Steve. Listen to her, you moron, thought George. They were on the riverbank, in his car.

“Okay…okay! But what about the car?” Steve was just a pawn; Rita, his beautiful and intelligent wife, was the master strategist.

“We are going to put him in the driver’s seat, and the push the car into the river. It’ll appear as if he drove the car into the river… after he got drunk and fought with me.” said Rita.

Under Rita’s deft management, the deed was done, and the car with George in it, was safely deposited upon the riverbed. George’s consciousness had returned completely by this time; he got out and swam to the other bank. While he sat on a rock, waiting for his breath to even out, Rita and Steve drove back to his house. As he sat there, watching the lights of his wife’s car recede into the distance, he made his plan.

—–ooo—–

The Day they read the Will

George smiled as he looked at himself in the mirror. He was a new man. The pot-bellied, stressed-out George who looked like an albino fish was gone. Here was the new George – lean, tanned, athletic, and young! The last year had been good to him. Changing the will and his identity wasn’t difficult at all. Despite the strong circumstantial evidence, they couldn’t declare him dead for almost an year, as they couldn’t find a body! An year was a long time for him to straighten up the matters. He couldn’t have planned it better.

George turned and looked out of his hotel-room window. Across the street stood the eighteen-storied building of his erstwhile competitor, Cureall Drugs. For once, their unethical practices had saved a live.

He turned back and smiled at Matt in the mirror. This is who he was now, and who he wanted to be all his life.

—–ooo—–

(Author: Oorvi)

Caricature/Cartoon – The Angry Young Man of the Indian Film Industry – The Great Amitabh Bachchan!

I had been thinking of drawing the caricature of Amitabh Bachchan ever since I began this blog some ten months ago, but I didn’t because I couldn’t decide which version of Amitabh should grace this space. The young Amitabh who I grew up with, or the older and the currently popular Big B! I vacillated. I got my references in order for both – and waited.

For reasons unknown to me – I can’t connect with Big B. He isn’t the Amitabh who we talked about when I was a child – Big B is a father and an exemplary one too, who sits with his son on his lap so that his halo blinds us into believing that his son too has got one; he is a patriarch trying to put together an inheritance for his next twenty generations; he is an anchor of a very serious show built around the middle-class dream of becoming a millionaire – Big B is different from the Amitabh of my childhood.  I loved his image of the angry young man, the young and emotional persona that swept the entire country off its feet in the 70s and 80s! If that young Amitabh wasn’t there, Big B, Abhishek Bachchan…and all the rest of them wouldn’t be!

I present, with my respect, regard, and love, the caricature of the legendary Bollywood hero, the Great Actor  of the Indian Film Industry – Amitabh Bachchan, in his young Avatar!

Amitabh Bachchan – During his “Angry Young Man” Days!

Here’s a short biography of Amitabh Bachhan.

Amitabh Bachchan’s Shortest Biography on the Web (which still is long enough!)

Amitabh Bachchan, was born on 11 October 1942, in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. His father Harivansh Rai Bachchan was a Hindi Poet, who was as modern in his ideology as he was in his poems. Long back when the caste system still ruled the roost in India, he got married to a beautiful Sikh girl called Teji, and their union resulted in Amitabh and Ajitabh! Harivansh Rai Bachchan was a Shrivastav, who used Bachchan as his pen name, which became extremely popular, and so the family decided to adopt Bachchan as their surname.

Amitabh, unlike the scions of the affluent and the influential didn’t study at Oxford or Harvard, because he probably was born before Harivansh Rai Bachchan had reached the pinnacle of his success. Thus, the Kirorimal College of Delhi University can boast of being his Alma Mater! Three Cheers for KMC at DU.

Now young Amitabh tried to work for a shipping company run by birds – but his Mom Teji Bachchan possibly told him that he was made for bigger and better things. Young Amitabh decided to give acting a shot in 1969 and debuted in Saat Hindustani (7 Indians! Wow…and all of them in the same movie! No wonder that the movie didn’t do great at the box office. If you are reading between the lines…there’s nothing…honestly.) However Amitabh ended up with an award!

Then onwards, there was no stopping the tall young man with those smoldering eyes and with that deep baritone voice. In 1973, came his biggest success – Sholay (The Violent Sparks of Fire)! By this time, Amitabh had established his Angry Young Man image completely. His fans were beginning to copy his hairstyle, his dance moves, his dialogs, even the angry look in his eyes! Amitabh was fast becoming a phenomenon in Bollywood.

Sometime around the late eighties, when Amitabh was shooting for Coolie, he was injured. With that almost fatal injury, he turned somewhat pessimistic. One thing led to another (as it always does in my posts,) and Amitabh disappeared from the scene for almost a decade. However, the new century brought about a change in the Bacchhan family’s fortunes. It began with Mohabattein in which he worked with Shahrukh Khan. In the same year, he also appeared as the host of the TV Show “Kaun Banega Crorepati” (the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”).

His most recent success was Paa, in which his son Abhishek played his father, and for which he won the National Award for Best Actor.

Amitabh Bachchan – Interesting Infobytes:

• Amitabh could’ve been called Inquilab (Revolution) had his name not been changed to Amitabh. I wonder whether his name would’ve changed his fortune.
• Amitabh and Jaya (his wife) worked together in a movie called Guddi, before they got married. There’s about a 14 inch difference in their heights.
• Amitabh has been romantically linked with the beautiful Bollywood actress Rekha (his co-star in Silsila.)
• He is the first Asian actor to have his wax model at Madame Tussaud’s
• His most common screen mom was Nirupa Roy.
• His most common screen name used to be Vijay.
• He was awarded the Hottest Male Vegetarian Award by PETA.
• Amitabh Bachchan’s family has not one but two legends – Amitabh and Aishwarya, his daughter-in-law!

A List of Amitabh Bachchan’s Films:

1. Saat Hindustani
2. Anand
3. Reshma aur Shera
4. Guddi
5. Zanjeer
6. Abhimaan
7. Namak Haraam
8. Roti, Kapda, aur Makaan
9. Chupke Chupke
10. Deewaar
11. Sholay
12. Kabhi Kabhi
13. Amar Akbar Anthony
14. Trishul
15. Don
16. Muquaddar Ka Sikandar
17. Mr. Natwarlal
18. Do aur Do Paanch
19. Lawaaris
20. Silsila
21. Yaraana
22. Kalia
23. Satte pe Satta
24. Namakhalal
25. Khuddaar
26. Coolie
27. Sharabi
28. Shahenshah
29. Mohabbatein
30. Baghban
31. Black
32. Sarkar
33. Nishabd
34. Cheeni Kum
35. Paa

(This, of course, is a partial list of his movies, but I guess it covers the collectibles!)

• You can find the Complete List of Amitabh Bachchan’s Films here.
• Find the List of Amitabh Bachchan’s awards and nominations here.
• Find Amitabh Bachchan/Big B’s Blog here.

Learning to Draw Caricatures – 5 Important Tips for New Caricature Artists

UPDATED: Jan 08, 2014

 “Evolution of a Caricaturist – How to Draw Caricatures”  is now available as an eBook on Amazon’s Kindle Store. 

Click the Cover Thumbnail to view the book.

Kindle eBooks can be read on all devices; all you need is a Kindle Reader App which is available as a free download from Amazon. If you have a non-Kindle reading device (for instance, an iPad/iPhone or any other tablet/Smartphone,) you can visit the following page to download the Free Kindle Reader app for your device.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000493771

—————————————-

If you are a budding caricaturist, here are a few tips to help you reduce the gradient of your learning curve.

1. Find at least half-a-dozen pictures of the subject (the person you want to caricature.)
2. Study the features of the subject carefully and try to identify the deviations from the normal.
3. Remember that the deviations could be in size, shape (form), or both, so look for such deviations.
4. Don’t ever kill the look in those eyes!
5. Play a Secret Game – When you look at people, see their Caricatures!

So what do these tips mean? Let’s find out.

1. Find at least half-a-dozen pictures of the subject (the person you want to caricature.)

This is important. A caricaturist can’t work with just one picture, while a portrait artist often can. The reason why portraiture is easier is because it involves copying the subject’s features – if an artist can copy the features exactly, likeness is automatically assured. However, a caricature artist needs go further and achieve the twin objectives of:

• exaggeration
• likeness

Thus, a caricaturist needs to begin by first studying the subject’s features from different angles, and in different light conditions. If the subject of your caricature is a performer, there’s a good chance that his or her face is made to look different through makeup and at times even through the use of certain props. All this would make it difficult for you to figure out the exact shape and size of the facial features, if you studied only one picture…so find as many as you can, and lose yourself into those lines and creases!

2. Study the features of the subject carefully and try to identify the deviations from the normal.

While a portrait artist lives on his ability to reproduce the facial features faithfully, a caricaturist thrives on his capability to exaggerate the deviations from the normal. If we all were given a standard set of features by our maker, caricaturists wouldn’t exist. We exist because we have a keen perception, using which we can determine those facial features that:

• make a face unique
• deviate considerably from the ideal face.

3. Remember that the deviations could be in size, shape (form), or both, so look for such deviations.

Select the top two or three features that deviate most from their normal size/appearance. Close your eyes and try to visualize the following faces – then note down 2-3 features which you’d like to exaggerate in their faces:

• Abraham (Abe) Lincoln
• Morgan Freeman
• Michelle Obama
• Tom Hanks

Done?

Now view their caricatures here. What’s been exaggerated? Do you think that the exaggerated features match the list of the features that you’ve created?
Note how the noses of Morgan Freeman and Tom Hanks, and the Hair of Abe Lincoln and Michelle Obama have been exaggerated not only in size buy also in shape!

4. Don’t ever kill the look in those eyes!

I’ve seen a lot of caricaturists create excellent caricatures with beautifully crafted and realistically painted features – but with eyes that see nothing, say nothing, and do nothing! Eyes are the windows into a person’s soul…don’t shut that window. Never exaggerate the eyes to the point when they begin to look unreal. Don’t exaggerate the eyes unless you really have to – unless you are really confident of your ability to retain the expression while you manipulate them.

5. Play a Secret Game – When you look at people, see their Caricatures!

I don’t want to explain it because people might stop wanting to meet me – but if you want to be good at the art of drawing caricatures, you really need to transform your eyes into that magic-prism!

And of course, if you are interested in learning how to draw caricatures, I’d recommend “How to Draw Caricatures – Evolution of a Caricaturist“. (Updated: January 08, 2014.)

1. The book is expected  on the App Store – shortly 🙂 The book shall follow an interactive format. You can view the basic content outline at the above link.
2. It simplifies caricature-drawing and presents it in the form of a process, which if followed, could help you learn and master caricature-drawing in a very short time.
3. You can signup for an email notification, which will be sent whenever it becomes available on the App Store.

So, if you’ve got your sketchbook and your pencils ready, what are you waiting for?

DRAW to SMILE!

Another Important Update (October 06, 2014)

If you are a hobbyist and would like to create funny caricatures, or if you want to try out the principles outlined in my book Evolution of a Caricaturist, you can check out the Free Caricature App for iPhone and iPad –  Toonsie Roll, which has been developed under my expertise and guidance. The App will become available on the App Store soon, but if you’d like me to drop you a line when it becomes available, please use the contact form given here.

Caricature/Color Portrait – Rihanna, the R&B Singer!

Presenting…
Rihanna, the Barbadian Songwriter and Singer, who blends Rhythm and Blues, a genre of popular African American music that originated in 1940s, with Caribbean music!

Rihanna’s biography:

Rihanna, 22 now, was born in Barbados on February 20, 1988. An year before the release of her first album, she moved to the US. Rihanna began singing when she was barely 7. She had a troubled childhood because of her father’s drug addiction and later the divorce of her parents.

Rihanna formed a girl-band with two of her classmates, at the age of 15. It was around this time that she was discovered by Evan Rogers, the music producer. In about an year’s time Rihanna’s demo was ready and she had moved to the US with Rogers and his wife.

Her debut album Music of the Sun received mixed reviews – it was her second album “A Girl Like Me” which truly launched her in terms of numbers, yet even the second album didn’t please the critics. (What I often wonder is – why we’ve got the critics at all? I think that for an artist, writer, or performers – what matters is the verdict of people…Rihanna’s case proves my point.)

Rihanna however wasn’t in a mood to let the critiques stop her, and so with her third album she decided to change her image. (Image makeovers are extremely important – when things aren’t working out – shock people.) This was also the time when Rihanna dyed her hair black (from brown?) and changed her persona. This album had a song “Umbrella”, which became the worldwide No. 1 hit, and which also featured the American Rapper Jay-Z. Thus began Rihanna’s awards journey – and by 2008 Rihanna had become famous!

2009 wasn’t a good year for Rihanna as she made news as a battered woman who had been beaten up black and blue by her boyfriend Chris “Brown” (Christopher Maurice “Chris” Brown – who is a singer too)! (Chris says that he grew up in a family with domestic violence – but then that can be no excuse for beating anyone up, especially someone you say, you “love.”) She’s currently in a relationship with Matt Kemp.

(Recently, the image of Rihanna’s battered face has become the subject of a fresh Police Probe. )

Other Things About Rihanna:

• She idolizes Madonna and Mariah Carey, and everyone else, including Janet Jackson, Beyonce Knowles, Celine Dion…and so on and so forth. It helps to be on the good side of everyone.
• Her music is influenced by Caribbean Music.
• Her dressing style is considered some what vulgar by many!
• Rihanna’s got numerous tattoos, including a Sanskrit prayer on her hip – now that’s what I’d like to read…really:) I think Rihanna’s hip (tattoo) should motivate many young people to learn Sanskrit. Thoughts?
• Rihanna’s philanthropic efforts relate to children. (I’d recommend that she includes Battered-wives Rehabilitation Programs in her list too.  Women really need to woken up!)

Her Albums:

• Music of the Sun
• A Girl Like Me
• Good Girl Gone Bad
• Rated R
• Loud

Other Links:

• TMZ Gossip
• Rihanna is nominated for Best Song, Best Pop Artist, and Best Female Artist – MTV Awards 2010!

 

Caricature/Cartoon – John Lennon of The Beatles!

Presenting John Lennon‘s Caricature!

I wonder why I wrote and sang “Imagine No Possessions”?

John Lennon’s Biography (Shortest on the Web?):

John Lennon was born on October 09, 1940, in Liverpool, UK. About 3 years after John was born, his father Alfred Lennon went away, only to return an year later when his wife would reject his offer to help the family financially. At the tender age of five, young John was forced to choose between his parents, and he chose to stay with his father, but unfortunately he couldn’t stay with him. Eventually he was brought up in a family that was made up of his four aunts and his mother. He was taken care of by his mother’s elder sister and her husband; and it was his uncle who brought him a mouth-organ when John was very young. His mom would play him Elvis Presley’s music and taught him to play the banjo.

John Lennon was never a model student, rather he was far from being one. He drew cartoons in class, mimicked his teachers, and was considered a bad influnce on other kids. When he was 17, his mom bought him his first guitar – some time soon after she gave John this wonderful gift, she died in a car-accident.

The Formation of Beatles:

Lennon was one of the founding members of The Beatles. It was three months after he had started the Skiffle Group, that Paul McCartney joined the band. Lennon was always considered the leader of the band.

Of course a lot happened before Beatles became a rage in the mid-sixties. In the late sixties, The Beatles, specifically Mr. Lennon managed to hurt the religious sentiments of people, by commenting “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink…We’re more popular than Jesus now – I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.” I’d call it a harmless self-glorifying sort of comment, which should be forgotten and forgiven (something that I am sure, almost all religions preach), but people began burning the Beatle records and Lennon was threatened too! This probably led Lennon into depression, who discovered LSD and then Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and both helped him in his introspection.

One thing led to another (must’ve, I am sure) and in 1969 he left the Beatles, and developed some degree of disenchantment with and also some animosity towards Paul McCartney.  For the next 10 years, Lennon went solo.

Read John Lennon’s  detailed biography here.

John Lennon’s Personal Life:

Lennon met his future wife Cynthia when he was 17, and they married 5 years later. However their marriage fell apart soon after when Cynthia realized that Lennon was in a relationship with Yoko Ono, the artist. They got married in 1969. Upon Ono’s insistence, somewhere around this time, his PA May Pang developed a physical relationship with John Lennon. Nevertheless, Sean Lennon was born to Ono after which John Lennon transformed himself into a house-husband.

John Lennon’s Other Talents:

Other than singing, John Lennon was also a proficient writer and painter, and other than the guitar, he could also play drums and  flute!

John Lennon’s Murder by Mark David Chapman:

Sometime in the October of 1980, forty-year-old John Lennon was shot dead by a psychopath (who refused to accept that he were one) called Mark David Chapman. Chapman claimed that he killed Lennon for his irreverence and also because of his double standards. According to Chapman, he was motivated by the book “The Catcher in the Rye” a novel by J. D. Salinger, and that he was sickened by Lennon’s song “Imagine no Possessions“.

Chapman said, “He told us to imagine no possessions, and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music.”

Chapman has still not been granted parole.

John Lennon’s Songs:

Find a list of his popular songs here

As always, thanks to the one and only Wikipedia!

Coming up Shortly – John Lennon – the Original Beatle!o

Artists are the often-lost-(and-seldom-found) people in this universe. We’d beat the scientists and the professors at any absent-mindedness contest with no preparation at all!  Here’s what happened.

I was all bleary-eyed, puffy-faced,  and red-nosed with all that weeping, crying, and throwing tantrums for anyone around to pick one or two, when in my mailbox, among those clones of freebooter emails,  I saw a contest announcement email for John Lennon‘s caricature. Now I don’t have that knack for entering art contests – not because I can’t draw, but because I can’t read the rules…and in my completely distraught state, which I just described to you, I couldn’t even read the name of the FaceBook group that had announced the contest!

So after I had painstakingly created the caricature, I posted it to the wrong group! (I rather liked this “wrong” group…it’s for ancient and almost extinct, non-digital artists, such as yours truly, so a shrink would possibly ascribe my error to some silly psychological principle of my seeing what I wanted to see…or something like that.)

The point is – now I am not motivated to find the right group anymore – and so I’ll bring that caricature to this blog, sometime today:)

Friends, this is one of my favorite caricature. It depicts Lennon in heaven, wondering why did he ever think of writing “Imagine No Possessions“!

Until then, then!

DRAW to SMILE!

PS: A Facebook friend just told me how I could enter it into the contest correctly – so I’ve done it…and as this group doesn’t mind my posting the caricature to my blog, I’d be adding it here as well…Yay!

Licensing Caricatures, Free Book, and Some Straight Talk!

Every once in a while, I feel like slowing down, taking stock, and talking:) This is one of those once-in-a-whiles.

The Beginnings of this Caricature Blog

I started this blog about 9 months ago – hoping that it would help me smile.  I began my art-journey as a traditional portrait artist, then I freelanced with a book publisher,  and then I did some work in the fantasy art genre for a couple of American RPG publishers – so there was a time when I managed to sell some stray bits of art,  but that was a long time ago – and it isn’t something that I truly relished.  The only good part was that I never had to do what makes every artist, every writer cringe – I wasn’t ever asked to do rework , except once – when after a couple of non-productive rework rounds, I chose to give up. Then for many years I decided not to publish my art – there was a phase when I’d refuse work, when I stripped away all my artwork from the web – in a nutshell, when I decided to give up.

Drawing is my Passion NOT my Profession!

I’d still draw almost every day – but I drew because I couldn’t stop myself from picking up a pencil (I have a couple of hundreds of those), until one cold December morning, when I saw this funny man in the newspaper. I dropped my comb and I sketched his caricature, which became the first caricature on this blog.  Creating caricatures for this blog has been fun, mainly because I don’t have to work with time-lines, and also because I can draw whoever I want to.  If I don’t want to draw someone, I just won’t draw him or her – and if I want to, it doesn’t matter whether that person is not a very popular guy. In art, I don’t like to do things that I am asked to do – I prefer to do what I want to. I don’t like to ask people to do things for me for FREE, because I value their independence and their time, and I expect them to value mine.

Do you Want to License my Caricatures for Commercial Use?

I’d like to say that with the growing popularity of your favorite blog, I am beginning to receive requests for free and paid work. I think I am doing enough for free (all the caricatures that appear on this blog are free for people to use in their non-commercial products, and the caricature book too is free, if you want to read it online.) If you want to make a few thousand copies of my caricatures and use them in your “commercial applications” they aren’t free at all. I’d also like to make a recommendation to the serious, well-intentioned people who wish to use the caricatures from this blog commercially, to be upfront about their organization, their intention – and if possible, NOT consider me their “vendor” even before I’ve reviewed their requirement. Be nice if you want to be treated nicely – Drawing is my love, not my profession. If you aren’t happy introducing yourself, you should find other artists – and sadly there’s a glut of out-of-work artists in this part of the world!

This may sound arrogant, but I can’t stop myself from writing this. I never thought to write it earlier but recently my mail-box isn’t entirely happy with the kind of emails that find their way there.

Sharing What I know for those who “Genuinely” want to Learn – My FREE Online Book – “How to Draw Caricatures – The Evolution of a Caricaturist”

Sometime  in January 2010, I also started writing “The Evolution of a Caricaturist” – A Book on How to Draw Caricatures. This book is almost complete with 10 out of its 14 chapters online. I’ve received some good feedback on this book and I have received an unofficial offer for its publication. I am still reflecting on how I should go ahead with it – but the fact that the 10 chapters that are currently online for this book have garnered about 22000 views so far (Don’t go by the numbers they show there – Knols have a funny way of updating data), tells me that there are people out there who are finding it useful. A big Thank You to all the readers of this book:) I promise to complete it very soon:)

Announcement – Blog Carnival for Bloggers – Tell the Story-in-the-Caricature – October 2010 – Edition 5!

Dear Readers, Visitors, Tourists, Treasure-hunters,  and Creative Bloggers!

The September 2010 Blog Carnival ended on September 30, 2010. Following were the stories that were written for the lady in the caricature.

Stories Written by the Authors:

• The Circus Comes to Town – A Short Story by Dewey Dewster!
• In Love with Melody by Oorvi
• To boldly go… by Viv
• Every job has it’s good bits by Ian

I thank all the writers who spent their time and taxed their creativity to come up with their colorful stories.  Thank You:)

Now, of course, is the time to unveil the caricature for the October 2010 Carnival. This caricature is different from the previous caricatures in two ways:

• It’s got two characters instead of one.
• It shows more pleasant (apparently) people.

So here it is…

What's their Story?

Don your thinking cap, get into your most comfortable clothes, and find a writing pad…tell us their story!

The Four Simple Rules for Participating:

1. Write a story, small or big, about this caricature (There’s no upper limit – you are welcome to write a thesis if you please:))

2. Publish the story on your blog, along with this caricature (A link to this blog would be appreciated, but it isn’t necessary.)

3. Leave the link to your post, as a comment to this post here.

4. The festival ends at the midnight of October 31, 2010 (Sunday.)

The Three Rewards for this Story Carnival:

1. All the story links added until the last date, will be published on this blog in the first week of October, along with the blog-address and a link to the About Page of your blog.

2. The blog addresses of the participating bloggers will find way into my “The Storytellers” blogroll.

3. We will also request all the story-writers to publish the links of other story-writers in a blog-post on their respective blogs. This will help the story writers find more readers – but of course, this would be voluntary.

An Important Note:

This blog has zero tolerance for pornography and abusive language and so any comment/story containing such material will automatically disqualify from the Carnival.

Are you a Storyteller?

Never written a story?
Why not start now?

Read the stories and connect with the authors of the previous Tell the Story in the Caricature Blog Carnivals here!

Amunet – The Harlot of my Dreams – Caricature/Cartoon – A Polymer Clay Sculpture and a Short Story.

Amunet – The Harlot of my Dreams

(A Short Story and a Verbal Caricature – by Shafali The Caricaturist)

The Year: 2020 A. D.

Brice checked the machine once again. Everything appeared to be in order – but Brice wanted to be sure. On his last trip into the past, his time machine had developed some sort of engine trouble, and it had delayed his arrival back. Technically you could never be late in arriving back into your time as you could program the machine to bring you back as soon as you had departed – but when you spend 2 years of your time in the World War II Europe, trying to fix your machine, you age. Those worry-lines on Brice’s forehead weren’t there when he had walked into the time travel machine for that last trip!

So after Brice had ensured that the machine was in good shape, he stepped into it, set the time dial to 5:30 PM, July 1725 BC, and typed in the longitude and latitude of the place of his dreams. It was time of inundation; it was the time when the androgynous goddess of fertility Hapi rode the Nile and made the land fertile; it was also the time that he had been dreaming of, every night of the last three months – it was the time of Amunet!

—ooo—

The door closed behind Brice. It would take the machine about 3 minutes to reach its destination. Brice closed his eyes and memories from his dreams rushed to fill his mind. The beautiful almond eyes outlined with kohl, the full red lips, and the dewy freshness of her skin – the way he had been seeing Amunet all these months. He also saw the banks of the swollen Nile; and he almost felt the happiness that came with the flooding of the Nile. Brice was a time travel scientist, he wasn’t a historian; but that girl in his dreams made him spend hours of his time researching not time-travel, but the history Ancient Egypt. She had become his obsession, and he had to find her – and if he really did, he might even stay back in time…Love makes you do strange things.

A sharp beep told him that the time machine had arrived into the past, at his destination – the City of Thebes on the eastern bank of the river Nile. Everything was as he had visualized…except the landscape. What were they? Broken Chariot wheels?! The Hyksos had brought the chariots to Egypt, and they hadn’t arrived until 1700 BC! Something wasn’t right – but then everything else wasn’t a lot different from what he had seen in his dreams! He hid his time machine, and looked around…if Amunet were there he’d see her because nobody else could be as beautiful!

And then he saw her…on the steps of the ruins. The steps, on which she sat, looked like they belonged to the beautiful fountain that he saw in his dreams. It was the same place – and there she was – the same almond-shaped eyes, the same sideways glance…but she looked different with all that makeup! And her jewelry was mostly blue…Lapis Lazuli. He looked again. She sat there laughing, talking to drunken men, who’d pay her and then stagger over to one of the younger girls and…Brice could watch no more. He turned and ran, trying not to vomit – the girl who he had seen in his dreams was now the much older harlot who sat on those steps – she and all the other girls, wore the blue Lapis Lazuli stone on their foreheads or in their hair – he had read in the history text s that the law in Ancient Egypt required that the harlots announced their calling to everyone by wearing the blue stone on their foreheads.

Amunet, the Egyptian Harlot. A Polymer Clay Model – 3″ tall, 1.75″ wide, 1.5″ deep.

Brice ran across the fields towards his time machine. He couldn’t understand it at all. What went wrong? And then it occurred to him…the history books that he had read during his research and based his calculations on – were wrong! They were at least 25 years off the mark!

The time machine was still there. Brice thanked his stars, climbed into it, and reset the dials! He was going back to his home in the time-space – never to return!

—ooo—

The Year: 2025 A. D.

After his Egyptian fiasco five years ago, Brice decided to junk his job as a time-travel scientist and decided to become a computer programmer instead. Now he programs computer applications that drive people nuts by asking them for updates twice a day!

 

Special Thanks to:

• Nancy Johanson, Dewey’s Gram who inspired me to dabble with clay.
• Wilbur Smith my favorite author, who helped me time travel to Ancient Egypt through his Egyptian series.
• Oorvi’s Cameo who photographed the Harlot 🙂

Portrait of Gandhi – Pen and Ink Drawing of Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu) with Spinning Wheel

Mahatma Gandhi, or Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or Bapu was born on 2nd October, 1869 and so today, we celebrate Gandhi Jayanti.

I made this pen and ink sketch of Gandhi Ji today. (I don’t do pen and ink sketches very often, but after pencils, they are the easiest medium to use. Using a pen to draw is a little more challenging than using a pencil, because you aren’t allowed to go wrong when you use a pen:)! In this sketch you can see Gandhiji sitting behind a spinning wheel or charkha, reading from some papers that he holds in his right hand.

Mahatma Gandhi (Pen & Ink) Original Size: 10" x 7.5" on Cartridge Sheet

A few months ago, I had drawn this caricature of Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi – Just in case, you haven’t seen it:)

Ben Kingsley as Gandhi

That’s all for today…now I can go back to enjoying my holiday:)

Mahatma Gandhi, or Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or Bapu was born this day in the year 1969.I made this pen and ink sketch of Gandhi today. (I don’t do pen and ink sketches very often, but after pencils, they are

the easiest medium to use. Using a pen to draw is a little more challenging than using a pencil, because you aren’t

allowed to go wrong when you use a pen:)! In this sketch you can see Gandhi sitting behind a spinning wheel or charkha,

reading from some papers that he holds in his right hand.

Add image

A few months ago, I had drawn this caricature of Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi – Just in case, you haven’t seen it:)

Add image

That’s all for today…now I can go back to enjoying my holiday:)

The Circus Comes to Town – A Short Story by Dewey Dewster!

Here’s the short-story that Dewey Dewster has written for the September 2010 Blog Carnival.  I think most of us found the September Caricature particularly “evil” – Dewey more so:) But if he could weave a story full of innocence and fun for the woman in the caricature, he’s nothing short of amazing.

So here’s the story that he wrote, and which he believes just doesn’t fit into his blog but which I think fits beautifully in mine, which is a Circus of Caricatures 🙂

The Circus Comes to Town

(A Short Story by Dewey Dewster of Love Those Wires blog)

There’s nothin’ like the fall with its changing colors. After the hot temperatures of summer, the weather finally cools off in the fall. We are actually gettin’ some rain now and we haven’t had much of that ferever.

The days are gettin’ shorter, the breezes are pickin’ up and the summer flowers are dyin’ away ta make room for the fall flowers to bloom. Bright orange pumpkins line the sidewalks outside of grocery stores, and beg ya ta just pick ’em up and take ’em ta the checkout lines. Ya can already see ’em sittin’ on front steps and peekin’ outta porch railings. They’re tellin’ ya that Halloween will soon be here complete with treat ‘n treatin’ kids goin’ from door ta door draggin’ bags loaded with candy. Attention dentists, yer customers are comin’ ‘n soon.

Along with the days of fall come the stories of ghosts and goblins…ya know the ones ya grew up hearin’ about from yer elders. The same stories that had ya on the edge of yer seat and afraid ta go ta sleep alone at night.

Well, Gram ‘n Pap were tellin’ us one of those stories the other night and we were just sittin’ there listenin’ intently. The story was a about a circus that was comin’ ta town back in the old days when strange creatures were paraded about fer everyone ta oogle at…. ‘n snigger at too. People who were way too tall ta be real……..too short ta be grown ups……..two people who were connected tagather…..just freaks of nature that were trying ta earn a livin’ and couldn’t do it any other way.

There was a man who ate fire….stickin’ burnin’ swords inta his mouth…….can ya imagine that…..’n not catchin’ on fire either ? ‘N a man covered from heat ta toe with hair…like a wild animal…..well, maybe not too wild…. but kinda like us…… cause we have a lot of hair…..all over our bodies.

So Pap was sayin’ when this circus came ta town all the kids in the neighborhood ran ta get tickets ‘n rode their bikes ta the fairgrounds ta watch the show. Everyone walked around with open mouths and wide eyes tryin’ ta take the whole scene in and not miss a thing. Well, the show was goin’ on inta the evenin’ and bein’ fall, it was gettin’ dark before it was over. Pap and his friends were standin’ by a stage …’n behind the stage was a curtin. There was a noise comin’ from behind that curtain ‘n it was screamin’ ‘n shoutin’ hysterically. Ya could hear someone cryin’ …..’n someone scrapin’ the floor with somethin’…..’n then there was just silence.

Why, ya could hear pin drop.

Pap ‘n his friends were wonderin’ what the devil was goin’ on and ventured ta take a peek behind that curtain. What they saw had the hairs standin’ up on the back of their neck and their hearts beatin’ wildly. There was a creature sittin’ in a chair….stiff as a board…….with a skull ‘n crossbones gracin’  ‘er neck and decoratin’ the tight bun ‘er hair was drawn inta. Her ears were pointed even more than Mister Spock’s….. ‘n ‘er eyes were dartin’ around from side ta side…..like she was lookin’ fer someone ta emerge from behind the closed door just behind ‘er. Why Pap said she looked like pure evil….a spawn of the devil…..fer sure.

Since they were just boys at the time, Pap and his friends wanted nothin’ more than ta escape that scene unscathed with their childhood innocence still intact but it was not ta be. Before they knew what was happenin’ the door behind the creature opened up and out fell a tall man…..taller than anyone Pap had ever seen. He was sprawled out on the floor with a huge knife stickin’ outta his chest and blood runnin’ from the wound stainin’ the floor. Pap and his friends rushed forward ta see if he was breathin’ ‘n saw a piece of paper clutched in his hand.

They pried the note from his fingers, unfolded and read it. What they saw made ’em laugh ‘n laugh til they had ta hold their sides ta stand up. The note read ” Welcome to the circus………you have been entertained today by the Peter the slender giant and Elsa the witch woman. Can ya believe that….it was all a show and they fell right inta the middle of it.

Pap ‘n his friends left the room as quietly as they entered it. They had a story ta tell now every fall when the leaves started changin’ colors and fallin’, the winds started pickin’ up and the days got shorter and shorter. They had somethin’ ta talk about around a campfire and on the way ta school….’n they could still see the frightenin’ sight of the witch-woman in their minds when they lay in bed at night tryin’ ta fall asleep. Yep, the circus has come ta town….come ta the big top fer yer thrills.