New Year Resolutions – Need Help? 10 Suggestions from the Caricaturist.

This is the time when all smart people buy new diaries and write their New Year Resolutions in their best handwriting. This post is for the Resolution Drafters of the world. I wish you all a very Happy New Year in which you are able to keep all your resolutions (or at least most of those that matter.)

Here’s a list of possible resolutions that you could add to your Charter of Resolutions.

You could resolve to:

1.    Give up smoking! (once again, and hope that you’ll be able to keep this resolution for more than two days.)
2.    Make your current, ex! (And ensure that you do it just once in the New Year.)
3.    Find a New Job! (Which you’d realize becomes an old job before the year ends.)
4.    Love your spouse as much as you love your dog…or cat (and fail. Because you’d realize that this is an impossible-to-keep resolution.)
5.    Not become depressed. (Not even trying to figure out ways to contain your depression.)
6.    Give up drinking (Same as “Give up Smoking.”)
7.    Lose weight (for a fortnight, and then gain double back.)
8.    Make up with your Mother-in-Law (by sending her a card sprinkled with itching powder.)
9.    Get your first book published (and not mope when you sell three copies – bought by your mom, your sister, and your dog.)
10.    Make no more resolutions that you can’t keep!

The good news is that this List of Resolutions is re-usable! You can use it again in 2011, 2012…and so on. It’s got a forever shelf life 🙂

Wish you a Happy New Year 2011!

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Art Philosophy – The 4 Types of Artists – Classification and Explanation

Once again, a personal post for friends old and new. Others who’ve reached this blog through searches/recommendations might be more interested in the Caricatures Gallery, the Story-in-the-Caricature Blog Carnival, or the book “How to Draw Caricatures – The Evolution of a Caricaturist.”  You are welcome to click the respective links and explore the site. You are also welcome to read this post, if  you have the patience:)

On December 11 2010, this blog completed its first year, and the funny part of the whole deal was that I forgot, and I didn’t make a post. Now if this isn’t a sure sign of dementia setting in – what is? But seriously, I am bad with remembering dates. I don’t know when but somewhere in my journey of art, I learned to present my forgetfulness as a trait common in artists. I realized that people suddenly became more forgiving when they realized that I could draw and paint too. Guess they thought to themselves – we’ve got to carry those artist types around – because who knows one of them might turn out to be a Da Vinci, a Van Gogh, or a Picasso!

Personally, I’d want to be Da Vinci or die unknown. (If I sound like I am suffering from megalomania, please put it down to my being an artist.)

But…am I really an artist?
I mean what makes you an artist?
And…if you are an artist what kind of artist are you?!

Well. There are the following types of artists (and I speak of artists not artistes!)

1. The Starving Struggling Artist
2. The Made-in-his-Lifetime Artist
3. The Posthumously Great Artist
4. The Richie Rich Artist

The Starving Struggling Artist or the SS Artist!

This is the most commonly found species of artists in the world. The Starving Struggling Artist is characterized by his impractical dream of making it big without paying attention to the theory of probability (which obviously he can’t as he’s shied away from Mathematics and Logic all his life.)  I ask the left-brained readers, if about 100 artists have made it big from a pool of 500 million (approximately) what is the chance of a random artist making it big? What would your answer be? Come on. Be honest. Tell us.

In my opinion, this kind of artist is worse-off than the unfortunates who walked the streets of London during the time of Jack the Ripper!

The Made-in-his-Lifetime Artist or the ML Artist

This artist is that 1-in-5 Million artist who we talked about earlier. The Made in his Lifetime artist is either smart enough to know what’d really catch the fancy of the buyers or who is lucky enough to display the right thing at the right place at the right time to the right audience. Note that you seldom come across this kind of artist. They are conspicuous by their near-absence.

The Posthumously Great Artist or the PG Artist

You know this kind – don’t you? The best example of course is Van Gogh. Remember that he was once a Starving Struggling Artist who went crazy and chopped off his own ear. Van Gogh created work that Da Vinci wouldn’t have allowed in his studio – yet after his death, he managed to become famous! Now to be a Posthumously Great Artist you need to be able to pull some strings up there. It’s my belief that most of the Starving Struggling Variety of artists have a pure heart and so they end up in heaven – but I also think that up there, they continue being their non-diplomatic selves lost in their own dreams of making it big in their next life – and so they don’t pull the right strings. Hence they don’t become posthumously famous. The point to note it – if the artist has a family and a couple of good-for-nothings, then such posthumous fame can come in handy…otherwise, it’s all wasted effort!

The Richie Rich Artist or the RR Artist

When you are born with either a silver spoon in your mouth or a strong social network through your parents’/spouses’ connections, then you are a Richie Rich artist. Then you don’t really need talent to become famous. Such people become artists because they’ve got to do something with their time – and there’s really nothing that they “need” to do. You can teach your dog to pick up the brush and color the canvas – and you’d have a masterpiece selling for a million dollars! Then of course, you can take the limelight away from your dog and bask in it, as you pose in front of the canvas. This of course is a very common way of achieving some degree of fame, which isn’t all that bad – right?

So am I an artist?
I don’t fit into any of the above – and so I am not an artist. But the good news is, there’s no law against people calling themselves artists, and there’s no law against blowing your own trumpet (whatever that means) – and so…even though I may not be a starving struggler, an unbelievably lucky person, a dead artist with god on her side, or even a well-connected rich kid – I still have the right to say that I am an artist.

And being what I am, one day I might wake up and exercise that right – just like that…and again put my quirkiness down to my being artist!

The Megalomaniac speaks again…
If you can determine where I contradicted myself, you’ve won yourself an opportunity to write a guest post on my blog:-)

Caricature/Cartoon Sachin Tendulkar – The Legend of Indian Cricket – One of the World’s Greatest Batsmen!

Presenting Sachin Tendulkar, possibly the Greatest Batsman in the history of world cricket. He is the only one who has ever made a double century in an ODI (One Day International)!

The Little Master (the title earlier used for addressing another cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar too) or the Master Blaster has been called the second greatest Test Cricket Batsman (after  Donald Bradman) and also the second greatest ODI batsman behind Viv Richards! (Source: Wikipedia here.)

Sachin Tendulkar’s Eye-popping Cricket Data:

• First Player to score 50 centuries in International Cricket.
• Scored most runs in Test Cricket.
• First Player to score 10,000 runs in ODIs

This of course is just the tip of his colossal cricket records iceberg.

Sachin Tendulkar’s Crispest and Shortest Biography on the Web:

Sachin was born on 24 April 1973, in Mumbai, the most populated city of India. (That he found space to play cricket amazes me.) He trained under Ramakant Acherkar, who was a superb motivator and would’ve excelled as a Motivation Guru (akin to Shiv Khera) – but then who am I to question his choice of career. Reverting to Sachin, who was acknowledged as a child-prodigy (luckily, and not as a product of voodoo, as it often happens with child-prodigies) was given a pair of pads by Sunil Gavaskar.

Unlike most sport celebrities, Sachin didn’t mess up his life by marrying a model or a film-star, instead he married a pediatrician Anjali (the daughter of a Gujarati businessman – who says that a Sportsman has to be born without any financial acumen?)

Read a slightly longer biography of Sachin here.

Interesting Infobytes about Sachin:

• When the Little Master was little, his coach (same gentleman who didn’t become the motivation guru) would place a coin on the stumps of the wicket and Sachin would get the coin if he stayed on until the end of the session. Sachin won 13 such coins (and so now on – never call thirteen an unlucky number – do you read me, dear readers-o-mine!)
• Sachin is 5 ft 5 inches tall (?) What? That isn’t tall? He’s two inches taller than me – and I am TALL!
• Sachin topped the list of Income Tax Payers in Indian Cricket, in 2009.
• Sachin asked for a Duty Waiver on his Ferrari

Sachin’s Cricket Career:

Well…I am not too much into cricket – but I know that Tendulkar’s rise brought on the golden era of Indian Cricket. He wasn’t too successful as a Cricket Captain but he had the grace to accept his failing. Around 2003, Sachin’s career peaked out. In 2004, he also suffered from a Tennis Elbow, which kept him out of the game for a long time. In 2006, his popularity took a dip when he could managed only a single run off 21 balls against England at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

Sometime around 2007, he staged a comeback.

A Famous Quote about Sachin:

“Cricket is my religion and Sachin is my God”

Sachin Tendulkar’s Honors/Awards:

Among others,

• Padma Vibhushan
• Padma Shri
• Khel Ratna
• Arjuna Award
• Honorary Group Captain by the Indian Air Force (Does he get the benefits and is he eligible for the pension too?)

Sachin Tendulkar, the Doll of Advertisers:

Among others, Sachin has done ads for:

• Pepsi
• Aviva
• Adidas
• Toshiba
• Colgate Palmolive

Sachin Tendulkar the Batsman and Shafali the Caricaturist:

(Building connections where none exist.)

• Sachin writes with his left hand and bowls and bats with his right.
• Shafali writes with her right hand and draws and paints with her left.

What?! I didn’t say anything.

Cool Caricaturist – Lisa!

It’s high time that a woman caricaturist made an appearance on this blog. With great pride in the fairer, nicer, softer, prettier, and much more patient half of humanity; I introduce Caricatures by Lisa here.

I love her work for the ease and spontaneity of her sketches, and also her ability to bring the same raw energy to her color drawings. Among the women caricaturists that I’ve seen on the web so far, I’d say her work is possibly the best – but then I am not a Super-sleuth, so if you’ve got some intelligence on other women caricaturists, please leave their links in the comment section of this post.

I recommend that you visit her site here.
Also, visit her color caricatures gallery here, and her black and white sketches here.

My favorites are:

• Tiger Woods
• Angelina Jolie

 

Enjoy:-) while I find the Little Great Master Sachin Tendulkar and beseech him to make an appearance on my blog.

Announcement – Blog Carnival for Bloggers – Tell the Story-in-the-Caricature – December 2010 – Edition 7!

Dear visitors, bloggers made of matter as well as antimatter, and all other esteemed treasure-seekers,

The November 2010 Storytelling Blog Carnival was…well, to be honest…it had but one participating entry – so, you can’t even say that it was a carnival 😦

But let’s not worry about the past; let us charge into the future!

Here’s the caricature for the December Carnival.

What's his story?

Here are the Rules for the Carnival:

1. Write a story, small or big, about this caricature.

2. Publish the story on your blog, along with this caricature.

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

4. The festival ends at the midnight of December 31, 2010.

The Three Rewards for this Story Carnival:

1. All the story links added for stories published along with the above caricature, until the last date, will be published on this blog in January  2011, 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, and of course in the Carnival posts that I make through out this month.

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 absolutely no tolerance for pornography and abusive language and so any comment/story containing such material will automatically disqualify from the Carnival.

Let your creative juices flow…tell us your story 🙂

Caricature/Cartoon – Oprah Winfrey – The Rich Talk Show host who Oprahfied two Vacationing Mice!

After a long hiatus…presenting...Oprah Winfrey, the television host of The Oprah Winfrey Show, who is the world’s only black billionaire, and well…the most influential woman in the world.

So, you see…it was essential that we waited!

Post-Oprahfiction, the Mice realize that you don’t need your own money to get a tan!

Oprah Winfrey’s Shortest Biography on the Web (I hope so.)

Oprah was born on 29th January 1954, somewhere in rural Mississippi, a difficult place for an African American, even as late as 1950s. She had a difficult childhood – her mom definitely wasn’t the greatest moms in the world, possibly because she herself was a teenager when Oprah was born. Vernita, her mom was a maid who left little Oprah with her Grandmother Hattie Mae Lee. According to Wikipedia (where do you think I got about half my information from,) they were so poor that Oprah had to wear dresses made of potato sacks! Guess that was when she made up her mind to kick poverty out of her life.

Oprah’s miserable childhood wasn’t just the result of her potato-sack-clad poverty, but also the loose morals of her cousin, her uncle, and a “friend” of the family, who molested her. Oprah chose to run away when she turned 13, became pregnant at 14, and lost her child at birth. Finally, her mom sent her to the gentleman who she now calls her father (and who possibly is,) Vernon Winfrey. Her dad decided that she should study. Oprah was a bright and extremely popular student as a child. One thing led to another and she began to read news at the local black radio station.

Oprah’s popularity continued to grow and in 1983, she hosted A. M. Chicago. Within a few months, she had overtaken Phil Donahue, another media personality of great caliber. This was the time when The Oprah Winfrey Show was born.

Read Oprah’s detailed biography here.

Interesting Oprahbytes!

The Oprah Winfrey show drew its largest audience when Oprah interviewed Michael Jackson: 36.5 Million; David Letterman drew its largest audience when Letterman interviewed Oprah: 13.45 Million! Wow!

Oprah’s Personal Life

The glimpses of Oprah’s personal life can often be seen in her show. She’s suffered a good many lows in her life, including the time when her hair fell out completely (beware of getting your hair permed, if it could happen to Oprah, it could happen to anyone in the world,) and then her weight problem which was a result of her depression (no rewards for guessing who caused the depression – a man, of course. The point to note (and learn) is that in Oprah’s life, these could’ve been inflection points – but she pulled herself out before she was sucked into the whirlpool of depression.

Where is Oprah Now?

Just yesterday, Oprah received Kennedy Center Honors from Obama, along with the hero of her youth, Paul McCartney of the Beatles.

Comedian Chris Rock parodied the situation by saying, ‘No one deserves this award more than Oprah Winfrey, but no one needs it less,’ comedian Chris Rock said to laughter from the audience.

The Oprah Effect and Oprahfication

And finally, if you could get those smart, cunning, difficult-to-impress marketers to speak of the Oprah Effect, you must really be something! Quoting from the Wikipedia entry on Oprah Winfrey, “The power of Winfrey’s opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has been dubbed The Oprah Effect” Then there’s something called “Oprahfication“, which is the act of making a public confession and being cured, in the process. Oprah thus, is almost a religious institution where you could make a confession and relieve yourself of your sins.

Now about the question that’s I can hear coming from the depths of your heart…

How much does Oprah Winfrey Earn?

Good question. Around 300 Million USD a year!

So…you know how much it must’ve cost me to bring her to my blog. Well, now that she’s here…go get Oprahfied!

November Blog Carnival Hits a Record Low with One Entry!

and the Caricaturist steps into the dark abyss of depression…HELP! SOS! Where’s the pulley?!!!

What will inspire them?!

The November Blog Carnival was a washout.  Here’s the only story that Romeo and Juliet could manage to wheedle out.

“The Love of my Life” a Short Story by the Canine Storyteller, the WiseK9 Oorvi.

This is the story of a modern day Juliet, her Romeo, and their servant Paris. The tale has a twist in its tail, which is natural because Oorvi’s own tail has a beautiful twist at its end.  BTW,  all those visitors who like my work might want to download the story in .pdf form too, as it contains a high-resolution, full-page image of the Colored Romeo and Juliet Caricature! I don’t do a lot of color (blame it on my aversion for time-consuming activities.)

But then there’s some good news too 🙂

1. Oprah Winfrey the Greatest Talk Show Host ever, and Sachin Tendulkar the God of Cricket are ready to make their appearance here. I am happy that they accepted my invitation. Right now, they are backstage, waiting for their cue to appear on the blog-stage and delight you. Amazing…isn’t it? Such famous people waiting for their turn to appear on my humble blog. Wow!

2. I, the renowned artist (yes, yes – go ahead…laugh all you want, but in my house everyone knows me – the picture above proves my claim,) known for her alacrity in matters of artistic workarounds that save time and effort, managed to push herself into creating her first pen-and-ink pet drawing. I’ve done pen-and-ink drawings before, but a pet, especially one who looks  like Albus Dumbledore is a very different and considerably formidable challenge. Every morning, I’d wake up wanting to do the drawing, but then I’d look at the sketch and think – what if I couldn’t?

I know no heavens would’ve fallen if I couldn’t…and I had the much easier option of reaching out for my color pencils – but I didn’t want to give in. This particular pet has a very special place in my heart and wanted to create what I had first thought of creating – a glamorous pen-and-ink drawing!

Yesterday, I drove myself to put the pen to the drawing…and then I just went on drawing! Then I set it on my table and moved back a few paces. Any artist would know that this was the time of reckoning – especially for a pen & ink drawing. You see, you don’t make corrections in these drawings because you can’t. So I moved back and looked at the drawing and the dear dog smiled back at me through his silky beard!

So, the Dungeon of Sloth is a thing of past. The payback to Oprah is done, and everything is back to normal 🙂

Can you Pull yourself up?! The Caricaturist asked and Confused herself.

Can you pull yourself up?

Imagine that you are sitting in a loop at one end of a rope passing over a pulley attached to the ceiling, holding the other end of the rope in your hand (please recall a similar dilemma, which our dear pathetic Romeo faced,)  The question is – can you pull yourself up? What’s your answer?

1. No way! Nobody could do that!
2. I can’t do it but I am sure that Schwarzenegger could.
3. I can’t but Keira Knightley could. (BTW, interesting picture on that link…the third when you scroll down – 99% of the women in this world won’t be able to wear that dress without making it look vulgar.)
4. I can but nobody else can.

What do you say?

I’ll share my personal experience. I was down in the dungeon of Sloth, waiting for the devil to send his minions to get me – so that I could burn in hell for my deadly sin when I had this inspiration. I thought that I’d shed sloth and confess my sins on my blog, and everything’d slide back to normal! So I tried to pull myself up and out…and I wore myself out the last three days trying to get out, but I failed.  Fortunately, just before the minions arrived, Oprah Winfrey came to me with a conditional pardon from Hell. I am under observation and if I don’t become lazy again, I might be a free woman again.

So, despite the complete lack of response for the Story Carnival, I am smiling:) I’ll post a caricature of the sad me soon, when I share my Story Carnival woes with you. In the meantime, I’m back on duty – Oprah wants a payback for her good deed:-)