Creativity Carnival: Faces

Dear blogger friends,

Welcome to the fifth edition of the Creativity Carnival.

This has been a busy and tiring month for me, but I’ve loved creating the cue-arts for the carnival. I wait for Fridays. After spending the whole week reading your wonderful takes on the previous week’s cue-art and thinking of what I’d be creating next, I spend my second half of Thursday or the first half of Friday drawing that week’s cue-art for you. I draw for a story or a poem that I’d like to read; I draw for a picture that I’d like to see; I draw for an experience that I’d like to share. And it makes my drawing that much more meaningful for me.

I loved reading your interpretations of the gun-art. You wrote poetry that tugged on my heartstrings; crafted stories that catapulted me into a different time and world; and drew comics that made me laugh.  This week, among the wonderful responses on the Gun Carnival, I discovered a story and a poem – I marveled at how well the story “Hidden Murder” by Ruth Lakes  connected with the cue-art. The poem that touched my heart was  “Adieu…” by RS.

I’d also like to thank Stu for her post. If you want to visit the sites of the bloggers who have participated in the previous 4 carnivals, please click “Roll-up (Creativity Carnival Round-up Links.) on Stu’s blog”

 

My Cue-art for this week isn’t an object. It’s a concept. There’s a mystery in it, which you can unravel at your leisure. As always, this artwork belongs to you this whole week.

 

The Rules are Simple.

1. Your cue is the artwork above.
2. You have a week to get creative and make a post that connects with the cue.
3. You are welcome to do anything creative with the cue. Here is a list of possibilities:
   • Write a Story (tiny/short/long…whichever works for you. A tip: Shorter Stories, more reads.)
   • Share an Anecdote
   • Write a Poem
   • Draw a doodle
   • Paint a picture
   • Some other creative craft that I can’t think of – but it must explore and even extend the portrayal in the artwork.
4. Include the cue-art in your post.
5. Link back to this Creativity Carnival Post so that a ping back is registered. It will help other bloggers (including this caricaturist) can visit your post, like it, love it, and comment upon it.IMPORTANT:

1. Links to the pages and the home-page of a blog don’t result in a ping back.
2. Links created through an image (linking an image to a post) don’t create a ping back. (Thanks, Meghan.) 

For more details (mostly superfluous) please visit the Creativity Carnival page here.

Do tag your posts “creativity carnival”. So if you start following the tag, you’ll find the newest carnivals in your Reader.

I will look forward to visiting your blogs 🙂

And now – what inspired me to create the gun-art and what that picture means to me.

About The Gun.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Nancy, bought a new gun. We were talking and she brought the gun out and we talked about it. For some inexplicable reason, an image of an engraved gun that I had seen somewhere, flashed in my mind. I asked her if she remembered such a gun and she said that it must have been a Colt. Now those guns were things of beauty. They weren’t just machines made for killing – they had a certain vanity associated with them. Right then when we were talking, I decided that I wanted to draw a gun.

But a lone gun has no story, except that of death, and a death without reason doesn’t inspire a story, nor a poem or a piece of art! A death with love at its heart; a death with revenge at its core; or even a death brought about by jealousy or greed – those deaths give us stories and poetry; art and drama.

This is the story of the birth of the cue-art “The Gun.”

I’ll look forward to your take on this drawing 🙂

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Creativity Carnival: The Gun

Dear storytellers, poets, artists, writers, bloggers,

Welcome to the Creativity Carnival.

Thank you so much for your wonderful response. I loved your interpretations of the Mystery Chest so much that I visited many of the posts twice. I want to mention a response that’s going to stay with me for a while. It’s a short-story by Lydia, which you can read on her blog here.  For other fabulous responses please visit the Mystery Chest post.

 

This week’s cue-art is a little different. After the nostalgia of the pocket-watch, the romance of the bell, and the mystery of the chest…this artwork might appear somewhat…dark. For this whole week, this gun is yours. Handle it with care. I’ll share my reason for drawing this gun with the next Creativity Carnival post.

The Rules are Simple.

1. Your cue is the artwork above.
2. You have a week to get creative and make a post that connects with the cue.
3. You are welcome to do anything creative with the cue. Here is a list of possibilities:
   • Write a Story (tiny/short/long…whichever works for you. A tip: Shorter Stories, more reads.)
   • Share an Anecdote
   • Write a Poem
   • Draw a doodle
   • Paint a picture
   • Some other creative craft that I can’t think of – but it must explore and even extend the portrayal in the artwork.
4. Include the cue-art in your post.
5. Link back to this Creativity Carnival Post and then click on it so that a ping back is registered and other bloggers (including this caricaturist) can visit your post, like it, love it, and comment upon it 🙂

For more details (mostly superfluous) please visit the Creativity Carnival page here.

Do tag your posts “creativity carnival”. So if you start following the tag, you’ll find the newest carnivals in your Reader.

I will look forward to visiting your blogs 🙂

And now about the mystery chest that found its way into your hearts.

About The Mystery Chest

The concept of a mystery- or a treasure chest have always intrigued me. When I draw a picture, I usually have a story or at least a setting in mind. This is why you don’t see just one object in the image. You see other objects too. For instance in the mystery chest, you see an open locket with two portraits, a star-fish, some gold coins, and…something that nobody noticed. The Cryptex. It’s not easy to recognize a Cryptex, especially if you haven’t read/watched the DaVinci Code. It’s rumored to have been developed by Leonardo Da Vinci. So the mystery chest was indeed a treasure chest – and the Cryptex contained a coded message, which could be anything that your imagination would want it to be 🙂

I’ll look forward to reading your posts and visiting your blogs 🙂

Creativity Carnival: The Mystery Chest

Dear storytellers, poets, artists, writers, bloggers,

Welcome to the Creativity Carnival.

Here’s this week’s cue-art 🙂 As always, I’ll share my thoughts about this cue-art next week. This whole week, this artwork is more yours than mine. Save it to you computer/mobile device and do something creative with it. Tell a short-story or narrate an experience, write a few lines of poetry, draw or paint something inspired by it…and then share it with the world.

 

Here are a few easy rules 🙂

1. Your cue is the artwork above.
2. You have a week to get creative and make a post that connects with the cue.
3. You are welcome to do anything creative with the cue. Here is a list of possibilities:
   • Write a Story (tiny/short/long…whichever works for you. A tip: Shorter Stories, more reads.)
   • Share an Anecdote
   • Write a Poem
   • Draw a doodle
   • Paint a picture
   • Some other creative craft that I can’t think of – but it must explore and even extend the portrayal in the artwork.
4. Include the cue-art in your post.
5. Link back to this Creativity Carnival Post and then click on it so that a pingback is registered and other bloggers (including this caricaturist) can visit your post, like it, love it, and comment upon it 🙂

For more details (mostly superfluous) please visit the Creativity Carnival page here.

Do tag your posts “creativity carnival”. So if you start following the tag, you’ll find the newest carnivals in your Reader.

I will look forward to visiting your blogs 🙂

About the Bell

The bell was inspired by a bell that hangs in my terrace. In fact, I sat a few feet from it and drew it – but I changed the context a little. I also added that little spider, because for me romance and thrill can’t exist without each other. A bell symbolizes a call for anyone, for someone. It could be used to establish a connection between two people or even between two worlds. The creeper that you see in the artwork is a stylized representation of honeysuckle – and the spider at the center of the web, waits patiently for the bee to arrive. Beyond the apparent symbolism of the bell, exists the more mundane concept of the food-chain.

 

 

Creativity Carnival: The Bell

My Dear Super-awesome Fellow Bloggers,

Thanks so much for participating in the first Creativity Carnival – The Pocket Watch. I don’t know if it was a smashing hit by general standards, but by mine, it definitely was 🙂 I loved all your creative gems – they were super-awesome.

Here’s this week’s cue-art 🙂 Saying anything more would be wrong, so I’ll refrain from it. Instead, I’ll talk about last week’s cue-art, The Pocket-Watch, but after I’ve introduced this week’s cue-art, The Bell.

 

The Rules are super-simple 🙂

1. Your cue is the artwork above.
2. You have a week to get creative and make a post that connects with the cue.
3. You are welcome to do anything creative with the cue. Here is a list of possibilities:
   • Write a Story (tiny/short/long…whichever works for you. A tip: Shorter Stories, more reads.)
   • Share an Anecdote
   • Write a Poem
   • Draw a doodle
   • Paint a picture
   • Some other creative craft that I can’t think of – but it must explore and even extend the portrayal in the artwork.
4. Include the cue-art in your post.
5. Link back to this Creativity Carnival Post and then click on it so that a pingback is registered and other bloggers (including this caricaturist) can visit your post, like it, love it, and comment upon it 🙂

For more details (mostly superfluous) please visit the Creativity Carnival page here.

The other suggestion of tagging our posts “creativity carnival” did well with the previous carnival 🙂 If we tagged our posts “creativity carnival” we could follow this tag in our Reader too. I’ve already tagged this post and will be tagging all my weekly carnival posts with “creativity carnival” tag. So if you start following the tag, you’ll find the newest carnivals in your Reader.

I will look forward to visiting your blogs 🙂

How the Pocket Watch happened?

I had drawn that pocket-watch because the concept of time intrigues me. I often wonder who must’ve first thought of it and how difficult it may have been for humans to have reached at an understanding of life as a finite span of time. For me, the broken glass was life interrupted; the time in the watch was the opposite of a smile (10:10 vs. 3:40.)

 

Caricature-Cartoon: Carly Fiorina Leads in the First Debate.

Carly Fiorina’s Caricature Finally Leaves the Attic 🙂

Cara Carleton Fiorina or Simply Carly Fiorina has emerged a winner in the first Republican debate of today. Others who shared the stage with her were Bobby Jindal (Yes, the unhyphenated American,) Rick Santorum (with secrets and secret compartments in his closet,) Rick Perry (the bespectacled Bush-istic one,) George Pataki (Gosh! I wish I knew more about him), and Lindsey Graham (the lonely gentleman whose phone number was given out by Donald Trump).

While all these other gentleman have a lot of political experience on their side, Carly Fiorina has overcome substantial odds in the past. I’ll tell you about the insurmountable odds she surmounted, but in a minute.

First I must present the subject of this post:  Carly Fiorina’s Caricature.

Carly has been a top-shot in the corporate-pot, but the only other time she tried to get into the political-garb, she failed. It probably didn’t fit.

From what I read and hear, it’s possible that some of the other candidates who participated in the debate, Rick Perry in particular, was charmed by Fiorina’s good manners, her quiver of polished arrows, and her corporate background (which is dotted by at least one stark failure.)

Here’s a quick overview of the corporate journey undertaken by the only Woman Republican Candidate vying to be the President in 2016.

• Carly started as an executive at AT&T (See? She started just like you and me.)
• Then she was the CEO of HP from 1999 to 2005. (See? This is where she could do what you and I couldn’t.)
• Next, she spearheaded the merger between HP and Compaq (and that is the reason I could never get a new battery for my first laptop (a fantastic Compaq machine.) (I think I’ll pin the blame on her.)
• Then, she laid off 30,000 American workers. (I guess she did, because the HP mini that have is an abomination…and despite the company still being in business, their distribution is atrocious – and getting it a new battery for my mini took me a couple of years.)
• She was still the head of HP when in 2005, HP’s stock had dwindled to half its value.
• Finally, HP woke up and filed a mercy-petition with Carly. She obliged and resigned.

What does she do now?
I guess a lot of things – but she mostly involves herself with charity and works for the betterment of women. The caricaturist in me would like to work backwards and say that long ago she knew that she’d one day be running for the President of United States and she was gradually getting her heeled feet accustomed to her new running-shoes.

 

Blogging, Events, and 5 Easy Ways of Staying in Touch :)

My blogging life has two distinct phases. The Pre-blogging101 phase and the Post-blogging101 phase. The post-blogging101 phase has helped me make new friends, brought new followers for my blog, made me follow new blogs, correct the numerous error of my blogging-ways, helped me discover new blogging events, and given me a reason to organize the Creativity Carnival. That’s a huge takeaway for a 21-day mostly informal course. There’s no denying that it was a challenge to stay on course, and yet many of us managed to finish the race.

But there still is a challenge that looms large. It’s a bigger challenge than finishing the course. For the course was finite and had a definite end in sight. The other challenge is to continue blogging – and blogging, as we learned, isn’t about making posts – it’s about connecting too.

So how do we stay connected in the Post-Blogging101 world?

Here are:

5 Easy Ways to for Bloggers to Stay in Touch!

1. Use tags Smartly:

Before Blogging101, I was tag-ignorant. I’d use tags and I’d gun for quantity instead of quality. Now I know that for the WordPress Audience, following rules will yield best (better?) results:

• Make sure that the sum of the number of categories and the number of posts never exceeds 15.
• Use specific yet generic keywords. So if you want WordPress bloggers to arrive at your blog, “drawing” is a better keyword than “pen and ink portrait art.”
• Use specific keywords as a group. For instance, if you want to connect with bloggers who took the Blogging101 course in July, use the keyword “blogging101july2015.” If all or many of the group members use this tag with their posts, and they also follow this tag in their Reader, there’s a good chance that they’ll all stay connected.

2. Use Reader Effectively:

Reader allows you to do the following:

• Read posts from the blogs you follow – all in one place, in the chronological order of their posting.
• Follow tags of your choice – You can add them (even remove the ones you don’t want anymore) and when you click one of those tags, the Reader will show you  Wordpress posts that’ve used that tag. Some of these could be specific tags that your group has decided to follow, others could be generic ones (such as, “drawing”, “writing” etc.) The generic tags will help you connect with new bloggers with similar interests.

3. Connect on other Social Media:

If you are an avid tweeter, you may want to follow your favorite bloggers on Twitter. If you are on FB perhaps you may want to connect on Facebook. Fellow blogger Carol Moulin has started Cafe Blog here. It’s a closed group, so when you send a request, Carol will have to approve it for you to become a member. I just joined, and I think it’s a great place to find new blogger-friends – read their posts, and invite them to read yours.

4. Participate in Blogging Events.

All of us know about Daily Post and the two main challenges that are hosted there – The Weekly Photo Challenge and the Daily Prompt. The idea is to choose a couple of blogging events and start participating…of course, based on the nature of your blog. Then there is listing of various blogging events, where you can also see our very own Creativity Carnival too (though it’s listed under Photography and Visual Arts – where it doesn’t really belong …)

If you want to explore the Creativity Carnival you can just click the following image.

Wondering how events help you connect?
Many bloggers participate in an event and when they do, ping backs are registered on the event-page. Participating bloggers are generally interested in finding out what others posted on a particular prompt or topic. This helps us build connections.

My personal opinion is to stay with one, two, or maximum three events of your choice for a while. It will nurture the connections you build, and will help fortify the expectations of your visitors.

5. Connect through email:

I am sure that in the course you’ve met a few people with whom you’ve really felt comfortable talking. Perhaps you’d like to email them. Remember that email is more personal than a comment – so if you don’t receive a reply, don’t feel bad. Perhaps the other party isn’t interested in a personal connection. Leave it there, don’t sulk, don’t unfollow, and please don’t ask why. Friendship is a two-way street.

If you can think of any other ways…let us know your thoughts in the comments 🙂