The Picture of Oscar Wilde – Caricature, Portrait, Reflection?

A few hours ago I finished reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” the second time. When I had read it the first time, I was too young to understand the complexities the lie under the surface of the story.

In the preface of the book, Oscar Wilde says:

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

Reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” after having read about Oscar Wilde’s own life, made me reflect on the character of Dorian Gray representing Oscar Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas in form and personality, but in his need to experiment and “feel” life, he appears closer to Oscar Wilde himself.

Despite my current pre-occupation with a deeper and more profound expression of art, I found myself caricaturing Oscar Wilde as a reflection of himself. I think that “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” lies on the cusp between realism and romanticism – and presents Wilde’s internal conflict not only about his sexual identity (for which he was arrested) but also about his leanings toward aestheticism.

Thus, I see Oscar Wilde as Dorian Gray, the Caliban who doesn’t want to see realism (his own aging portrait,) and who is tired of romanticism (the ideal forever young face that he has – because he knows that it’s unreal and not his own.)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I present to you the picture and reflection of Oscar Wilde in the half-truth of Dorian Gray.

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Freud’s Cartoon Analyzes Sherlock Holmes’ Psychology while Vladimort, Salman Khan, and the Psycho-Lady Rock and Roll in the Antechamber!

Every couple of months, I look at the searches that bring visitors to my blog, and being the unfeeling brute of a caricaturist that I am, I end up ridiculing the ones that I don’t understand. It’s the classic case of the fox that ended up ridiculing the grapes that she couldn’t reach. So, here I go…

vrrrrroooooom….

1. types of artists

I thought there were four-types – Starving, Dying, Dead, and Rich, and so I wrote about them. While some readers thought that my classification was dead-right, a few felt that I was one bitter artist with tons of venom inside me. Now if a caricaturist didn’t ridicule stuff, who would? President Obama or Chancellor Merkel? So if you are looking for The 4-Types of Artists and you have the ability to digest the venom that I’ve spewed in this book, go ahead, download it Free and wonder why you ever decided to play the high-risk game of becoming an artist.

Click to download in a format of your choice.

2. sherlock holmes psychological analysis

I am not sure I know what you are looking for. The psychological Analysis of Mr. Holmes himself, or the methods of psychological analysis employed by Mr. Holmes. I can help you with the first, but not with the second. I think Mr. Holmes was an artist with a scientific mind, quite like his creator. (Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle was a writer who was a doctor.) Perhaps Dr. Doyle created Mr. Holmes with a missing corpus callosum and so his equally powerful brain-halves were always in sync. While his right brain made him intuitive, creative, and musical; his left brain made him logical and analytical. Together, his abilities and his idiosyncrasies transformed him into a social disaster.

But then you could’ve been looking for the psycho-analytical methods that Mr. Holmes used to solve his cases. If so, I’d recommend that you gave up the search. It isn’t easy to decipher crazy geniuses, especially of the fictional kind…and even when you succeed, you’ll not have Dr. Watson building real-life situations around your incredible talent and impeccable methods.

Mr. Holmes….

3. vladimort cartoon

I think there’s a demand for a cross of Vlad the impaler and Voldemort (Oops! I named him – I named You Know Who! But wait…isn’t he dead already? I think he died in the seventh book of the Harry Potter Series. Oh God! I’ve lived in that world for so many years that I can’t bring myself to believe that Voldemort’s horcruxes were destroyed by forever-wronged yet forever-loved Harry Potter!)

Let me not meander. If you are a writer hoping to make it big one day, here’s the idea of the decade. There’s this villain who is as evil as they get (Vlad and Voldemort rolled into one) and there’s this sweet young guy or girl carrying the responsibility of ridding this world of evil. Once you are done writing and then done getting it to the agents, and then done getting agents to reading it, and then done with a publisher publishing it, and then done getting it famous – I promise to caricature your villain Vladimort and present him on this blog. In the meantime, I’ll stick with the heroes. Here’s young Mr. Potter for you 🙂

4. caricature of salman khan

Thanks for the reminder. I’ve been thinking of drawing Salman Khan’s caricature for the last two years, but I haven’t gotten around to actually making it. In these years, Salman Khan has been doing his best to make me dislike him. He’s called women younger than him “Aunty” (all because they don’t gym-out five-days a week as there lives don’t revolve around biceps, six-packs, and washboard stomachs,) and he has trashed Vivek Oberoi’s career (because his ex-girlfriend Aishwarya used Vivek as a bait)! I can understand “accidents” and “impulse-actions” but I can’t understand studied malice. So, Salman’s Caricature still appears at the bottom of this Caricaturist’s To-Do list.

5. caricature adam et satan

Interesting!
Dear Searcher, do you realize that you are looking for one guy and not two? Adam is Satan…and every once in a while Eve too is. Satan doesn’t live outside of us, nor does God. They live within us. God pulls us towards good and Satan towards evil. When Satan begins to dominate Adam, you get a James Holmes, an Adam Lanza,  a Ted Bundy…and of course, an Adolf Hitler!

6. sigmund freud cartoon dreams

Sigmund Freud’s Cartoon must definitely dream for if it didn’t, how would Freud go about analyzing those dreams. Freud’s caricature is one of my favorites. Check it out here.

I know what you are thinking.

7. rock and roll cartoons

I love these, and thank you for searching 🙂

8. viking caricatures

Thanks for the idea. I’ll make one 🙂

9. learn to caricature like Mario Miranda

Don’t. Don’t learn to caricature like anyone. Learn to caricature and develop your own style and methods. Study the methods employed by the Greats, but don’t caricature like they did. Why? Well, for two simple reasons. 1. You’ll deviate from the way you draw and paint – you’ll change your natural style and end up with a contrived style…and be assured – contrived styles look contrived – they never look natural. 2. People will look at your work and see the reflection of Mario Miranda’s work or Ajit Ninan’s or even Uderzo’s!

So, learn to caricature. Period. 🙂

Here are the caricatures of Mario Miranda and Ajit Ninan, caricatured like Shafali 🙂

Mario Miranda (1926 – 2011) with his characters.

10. psycho lady cartoon

Check out my avatar 🙂

11. cute husband with nagging wife

Oh yeah! Cute Husband with Nagging Wife! This search smacks of chauvinism, it reeks of gender-bias, it…it…it makes me gnash my teeth and sharpen my claws; it makes me want to sketch a cute wife and a nagging husband – just to spite every chauvinist out there!

12. titanic merkel

She is indeed the Titanic Merkel, isn’t she?

She’s also Merkel the Dragon-slayer!

13. one direction caricature

???
I am sure this has a deep meaning. I just don’t know what. Let me try.

• It could a coded love-message sent to me by my long-lost college sweetheart.

No?!

• It could be a caricature of a person looking for directions.

No?!

It could be…
OK. I give up. I’ll stay with the love-message interpretation, then. Now let me check if I’m Mensa Material.

14. shafali.wordpress.com/shafali’s caricatures/evolution of a caricaturist!

Thanks folks. You were looking for my caricatures and you reached the right place. You’ve been my top-searchers for the last quarter and I really, truly appreciate that my caricatures have been the objects of your attention.

I appreciate your visits. Keep visiting – even though I may pick your search term and caricature it 🙂

Adam has got his priorities right – Eve waits in queue while the Devil tries to figure it out!

You know something? We’ve found a solution to the problems of the world!

What solution?!

Here’s a clue.

Adam, Eve, and the iPad (Pen and Ink Drawing - Original Size: 12" x 12")

And I am not exaggerating…no Sir, I am not.

• When I go for my morning walk, I often see this couple (if you could call them that) walk together in complete silence – both plugged into their respective iPods.
• When I visit restaurants, I see pretty girls batting their eyelashes, patting their hair in place, fixing their make-up; all so that they could catch the attention of their boy-friends, who appear to be happily lost in their iPhones or iPads!
• And now, they tell me that Apple has reported that they’ve sold 3 Million iPads ever since they launched it on March 16th (and it’s not even two weeks since!) Whoa! I guess many more Eves would be playing second fiddle to the iPad – right?

In my opinion, if every man on earth could be given an iPad, we should be able to tackle the population problem, which is the root of all our other problems! You get my drift?

(Women? They buy iPads for sure, but they’ve got their priorities mixed up – I mean why must I want to cook dinner and not play a game on my iPad? Go figure!)

Caricature/Cartoon of a Musician – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!

Mozart, they say, was a musical prodigy. Even before he was five, he could play the keyboard and the violin, and he performed in front of the Royalty. Obviously such performances today will lead to protests by various organizations that safeguard the interest of children…so it was good that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756 and not in 2006. With that little detail out of my way…
I present the caricature of the wigged musical genius, Mozart.

Mozart’s Biographical Sketch by the Caricaturist (Obviously exaggerated):

Mozart was born on a cold wintry morning in the January of 1756, in a place called Salzburg. Mozart was born with the musical gene riding his y chromosome, which he got from his dad. Incidentally his dad also had the right connections (he himself was in the court orchestra,) and a teacher of music. With the right genes, the right guidance, and the right push, it wasn’t long before Mozart and his sister made their first court appearance as child-prodigies.

It wasn’t that Mozart’s childhood was a bed of roses. I can imagine a three-year old being tutored by his dad, and a six-year-old being made to perform in front of the royalty – it sends a shiver down my spine! I am glad I wasn’t his sister, who went through a similar ordeal.

In 1773, when Mozart was 17, he got the job of the court musician at Salzburg. Unfortunately, job-satisfaction evaded him. He also thought that he wasn’t paid well. Obviously then, he did what anyone would do in his position, he floated his resume in the market. In 1777, Mozart had enough of Salzburg. He resigned and moved to Paris. Unfortunately, nothing worked out for him and he fell into debt. His dad however was one of the sweetest dads ever (quite like the Bollywood Star Amitabh Bachhan, who did everything to establish his son in Bollywood,) and he found a job for his son,…once again in Salzburg – the place Mozart didn’t want to come back to. But he did – and then gradually the wheel of fortune began to turn for him.

Mozart’s Love Life:

1. Mozart’s first love was a singer called Aloysia, who lost interest in him while he was struggling all over Europe. (Women – bah!)
2. After Mozart had established himself in Vienna (1781), he took up accommodation with a certain Weber family. One thing led to another and it wasn’t long before Mozart and Constanze (one of the daughters of the Weber family) became an item.

As it happens with most artists, Mozart too suffered a lot many ups and downs in his career.

Other Stuff about Mozart:

• There’ve been rumors that Mozart suffered from Tourette Syndrome.
• Mozart loved to play practical jokes on people. As Mozart preferred off-color humor (called scatological humor – be careful while clicking the link…it’s got some off-color stuff), people who were the butt of his jokes weren’t too pleased with him.
• He also played Billiards and kept pets.
• Mozart did become a Freemason sometime in the 1780s.
• Mozart loved to dress-up (check out the frill in front of his coat, and that neat little bow on his wig.)

If you are the musical kind, you may want to check out Mozart’s Music here 🙂

Caricature/Cartoon Mark Twain -The man who crafted the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

“Mark Twain” was born on February 3, 1863 – in Virginia city, when he first signed his name as Mark Twain, instead of Samuel Langhorne Clemens the name he was given upon his birth on November 30, 1835.

I am happy to present the caricature of Mark Twain, the man who is often called the father of American literature. Perhaps he’s best known for his work “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Kept them guessing about that autobiography for 100 years! It should sell well. Nothing fuels the sale of a book better than a tiny bit of curiosity arousal.

A Short Account of Mark Twain’s Life (A biography?)

Twain was born the seventh child of a merchant in Missouri. In those times, about a 150 years ago, it was common that many children didn’t survive their childhoods – four of Mark Twain’s siblings didn’t.

While going through Twain’s biography, I was shocked to discover how chequered his career was and how he was unsuccessful at most of the things that he tried to do – except of course, writing – and the fact that he didn’t write professionally for a very long time.

Twain began working when he was 18 and his first job was that of a typesetter for a newspaper called the Hannibal Journal. As it often happened in those days too, family ties helped when it came to finding a job. This newspaper was owned by Twain’s brother Orion. For the next four years, Twain educated himself through the public libraries.

For reasons that I can’t fathom, Twain returned to Missouri and became a riverboat pilot. Why? If I were to make an intelligent guess, it could’ve been because the pay was good, or even because the job was just right for the adventurer. I don’t know. Perhaps he’s left a clue in his autobiography.

Twain must’ve realized that as a writer it would be difficult for him to get paid for his work. Well, I guess Twain must’ve also felt indebted to his elder brother who gave him the typesetter’s job, so he thought that he should do the same for his younger brother (one act of nepotism begets another) and so he convinced his younger brother to become a steamboat pilot too. Unfortunately, the younger brother died in a steamboat explosion – Twain thus, lived with regret the remainder of his life.

Anyway, Twain continued working as a Steamboat pilot until 1861 – but he couldn’t stop writing. However, he first won national acclaim in 1965, when his humorous short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” was published in a New York weekly. (I guess one needs to be proficient in English to understand the story – because I couldn’t.)    

Twain married at the age of 33 and remained married for 34 years to the same lady (Olivia) until her death. (Those were the good old days.)

Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Twain wrote his autobiography (part fiction and part facts) and then didn’t allow it to be published for a 100 years. It was eventually published in 2010 – a 100 years after his death. Read a review of his autobiography and the story of its publication.

Mark Twain’s Premonitions

Twain was an extremely intuitive man. As the paranormalists would tell us, the artistic kinds are extremely vulnerable to stuff like “looking into the future”, “talking to the dead”, and other things tagged spiritual. So Twain foresaw his younger brother’s death a month, and his own, a year in advance. I wish he had said something about the Apocalypse too, but I guess he didn’t or Hollywood had made a movie about it.

In 1909, Twain said,
“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.”

Mark Twain’s Writings

Twain’s most famous books were written during his later years. Some of these are:

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876),
• The Prince and the Pauper (1881),
• Life on the Mississippi (1883), and
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) !

You can find the complete list of his books here and also here.

Twain’s Undoing

Mark Twain would’ve been a billionaire had he not been squandering away his fortune in the pursuit of science. The gentleman with the mustaches was in love with technology – and he always thought that technology would make him rich. He invented a few things, he made friends with Tesla (Remember that arcane thing called electromagnetism?) hoping to pick up a few things from him. Twain even invented a typesetting machine – but it all came to a naught. Rather, it robbed him of his earnings from writing and he went bankrupt!

Twain’s Whims

Mark Twain left instructions that his autobiography shouldn’t be published until 100 years after his death. Read about this whim of his in this News-story here.

Twain’s Affairs

Well…it’s said that he had become “extremely” close to Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who had become his secretary after his wife’s Olivia’s death (check out some interesting facts here.) However, in his final years he had begun to feel that Ms. Lyon was a “slut” and that she was after his money. (Now anyone with even an iota of common sense would know that a young woman – okay middle-aged even, would be attracted to a seventy-year old man only if he had money. Ever heard of a rich young heiress falling in love with a seventy-year old beggar?! )

The Caricaturist’s Hitlist… Across Time:)

A Happy post across time:)

Writing to you from 1961. It’s the America of John F. Kennedy’s time and everything appears to be as it should be. Last night, I prepared a short list of people whose caricatures shall be posted on this blog very soon:)

Here are they:

• John F. Kennedy – (Created and Published: September 09, 2011. Click here to View.)
• Sigmund Freud
• Joseph Stalin – (Created and Published: September 16, 2011. Click here to View.)
• Galileo Galilei
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Mark Twain – (Created and Published: September 22, 2011. Click here to View.)

I haven’t decided the order yet, nor have I decided not to add more names to this list. I want to stay in the past for as long as I can…and so there may be a few more.

See you soon with a caricature from the past!

Caricature/Cartoon – Harry Potter the Boy who Lived and Changed the World of Fiction!

Presenting the caricature of Daniel Radcliffe as the Harry Potter I liked. I don’t think that Harry Potter needs an introduction. We all know who he is. The boy wizard, the boy who lived, the wizard who defeated Lord Voldemort…but wait a minute.

Who’s Lord Voldemort?

1. An avatar of Osama Bin Laden
2. A reincarnation of Adolf Hitler
3. Eidi Amin in disguise
4. All of the above.

In the estimation of the witches and the wizards of the world, he is all of the above and more.

But wait. We are losing our focus here. This post is about the famous Harry Potter and not about the infamous Tom Marvolo Riddle or Lord Voldemort. So here’s Harry’s Caricature 🙂

Ah... I knew that the world will never have enough of me! They need Pottermore! What was that spell... Hermione? Oh...I remember now - Potterdom Morem!

About Harry Potter

So let us talk about Harry now.

Harry Potter, the character who took the world of fiction by a storm, was conceived in a train compartment. Yes he was. His literary mom JK Rowling (or Joanne Kathleen Rowling), who was fighting off penury with some financial help from the Government, thought him up while traveling in a train. This British lady envisaged a character that took everyone including its creator by surprise. She imagined an orphan boy with magical powers, who despite his shortcomings (weak eyesight, small stature, young age, average grades, mediocre looks…and so on) won his reader’s hearts.

Harry’s celebrated success as an icon makes me wonder whether we actually want our heroes not to be too heroic, because heroism makes them different from us?

I should fall off my chair upon hearing that you haven’t ready even one of the seven books…and so I will not add a Spoiler warning here.

Without the archaic further ado, let me begin with the theme or the core premise of the HP series:

The Core Premise of Harry Potter’s Wizarding World

If you haven’t read any of the HP books, you’ll find it difficult to visualize the interactions of the magical world and the human world, because they are interwoven. In fact, the wizarding world exists alongside the normal world, and the core premise is that this overlap is kept carefully hidden from the muggles (the non-magical beings,) so a lot of people amongst us might be witches and wizards; in fact, I could be a witch for all you know.

Harry Potter – A Quick Biography of a Fictional Character

The first book introduces Harry as a wailing infant (I am not sure about the wailing part – but it’s reasonable to assume that any infant would begin to wail when discovered by the likes of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. He spents the first decade of his life in the human or the muggle world, but later pursues his education in magic at the Center of all magical learning, Hogwarts. Most of his adventures are set in Hogwarts however, Harry is also found in various other magical places, for example the burrow where the Weasley’s live and where Harry is fawned upon by Mrs. Weasley, who is his best friend Ron‘s Mom.

Harry prefers Hogwarts to Privet Drive – as it’s at Hogwarts that he makes his first friends, and learns the truth about his parents. In the first book, “The Philosophers/Sorcerer’s Stone,” Harry first meets Lord Voldemort, his arch-rival, the villain, the sicko who killed Harry’s parents with an unforgivable curse, and who now wants to kill Harry. Why? Because his curse couldn’t kill Harry when he was a one year old infant as his mother died to save him.

The remaining 6 books contain Harry’s adventures at Hogwarts, at the burrow, and elsewhere. Each book ends with a fight between Harry and Voldemort, who wants to kill Harry and use his blood to return to power. The last book, however, kills Voldemort and shows that Harry is leading a normal life with his wizard wife and kids.

About JK Rowling

JK Rowling – Love, Hate, Criticism, & Jealousy

JK Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter is possibly one of the richest women in the world. Her rags to riches saga has made many writers wonder whether they too have that x-factor in them. She’s spawned all kinds of feelings among people. Harry Potter fans hang on every word that falls off her lips (or her pen,) while her critics attempt to establish how staid and prosaic her writing is. With jealous unsuccessful authors sitting on one end of spectrum and with starry-eyed readers on the other, Rowling is comfortably settled with Millions (perhaps, Billions) of Dollars. I think she deserves everyone of those Dollars. She’s got an extremely powerful imagination, and she knows how to tell a story – these are the two things that matter the most. You can write the most decorative prose, use the most vivid metaphors, and churn out pages after pages of content – but if your content doesn’t tell a story that sets the reader’s imagination on fire…you won’t sell.

But then I am not a literary critic, so you can toss the above assertion out of the window, and move on 🙂

JK Rowling – A Short Biopic!

Here’s a quick biographical sketch of JK Rowling.

Joanne (who later acquired the pen-name JK Rowling) was born on July 31 1965, in England. She had begun to write early (as it happens with most writers, artists, singers…who make it big. They start real young. We can’t say the same about the surgeons and engineers; however, the politicians, I hear begin to play politics as embryos!) and the first story that she wrote was about a Rabbit called Rabbit. Thankfully, she decided to call the boy who lived, Harry; instead of calling him “a boy called boy” and we shall remain eternally grateful to her for it.

Harry had first introduced himself to her in 1990, and it was then that she had begun the write the first book. However, one thing led to another, and Rowling saw the darkest time of her life in the next four years. Her marriage had failed, her mom died, and she was on welfare (also known as Benefits, dole…etc.) In 1995, she finished the manuscript for the first HP book, but alas, what happens the every eventually successful author happened to her too. Her agents submitted the manuscript to 12 publishers and they all gave it thumbs-down (Possibly for the very same reasons that those green-eyed critics of hers use to malign her.) But then Rowling’s stars found that once-in-a-million-years alignment, and she was given a measly sum as an advance by Bloomsbury. (Now that should teach me not to crinkle my nose and wrinkle my eyebrows at the peanuts that I am offered for my work – but did I ever tell you that I never enjoyed the process of learning?)

Well…I guess I am done with the most interesting part. A talented person needs just one success, and with that first book, Rowling got hers. She had the talent to weave stories and build characters, places, and events, and so every new book that she published became a bigger hit than the previous one.

You know the rest – right? If you don’t, then you should check out this link at Wikipedia:

Here are the 7 books in the Harry Potter Series (Source: hp-lexicon.org)

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s in the US) Stone
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

More of Potter at Pottermore?

Right now the world is waiting for PotterMore!

What is Pottermore?

Well, I think that it is an Online Community RPG (Role-playing Game.) Why? Read my reasons here.

Why Pottermore?

Frankly, I believe that Warner Bros., couldn’t afford the dampening of interest around Harry Potter. They still have one last movie (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part II) to profit from and they have a lot of merchandize sales to make. Because they need to keep the hype alive, and because they want the Potter fans to be clamoring for something again, they’ve decided to launch PotterMore! Look at the hoopla around it. Don’t you think that we’ve gone back into that lost era of new HP launches? Everyone’s talking about Pottermore – aren’t they?

But then, for us Potter fans, that doesn’t change a thing – does it?

Before I end this post, here are some popular Potter Fan Sites:

• MuggleNet
• The Leaky Cauldron
• Harry Potter Lexicon
• Harry Potter Wiki
• Harry Potter Fan Zone
• Accio Potter

Alohamora Pottermore!
(Find the list of spells here.)

POTTERMORE UPDATE – NEWS!:

About an hour ago, Pottermore.com was launched with a video of JK Rowling talking about Pottermore being an online reading experience for the Potter-fans. The books will also be relaunched as e-Books. The Potter fans will also be re-building the same stories alongside. Rowling also said that she’d be contributing the info that she had been hoarding for her readers…

All-in-all, a disappointing launch for me – but I guess, there are other more loyal fans who appear to be very happy with it.

Let us wait and watch…once again.

Caricature/Cartoon – Julius Caesar – The Roman General and Cleopatra’s first Roman Paramour!

Julius Caesar was born on the thirteenth of July, 100 BC – just about 2110 years ago. You know him as the guy from Shakespeare’s drama Julius Caesar, in which he dramatically cries out “et tu Brute!” before he dies; as the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra’s Roman paramour; and as the untiring pursuer of the fearless Gauls in the famous Asterix comics.

Here’s Julius Caesar with his Laurel Wreath and two butterflies auditing the quality of the wreath.

They use only the most tender leaves for making his wreath.

A Short Biography of Julius Caesar

Caesar was born in a noble but poor family. His wasn’t a typical rags-to-riches saga, but he did have a tough life. At 16 he was heading his family, at 17 he became the high priest of Jupiter for which he had to break off his engagement and get married to another girl from a noble family; and then before he turned 21, he was forced to go into hiding because Sulla, the then dictator of Rome was weeding out the potential threats. Caesar’s mom’s family had to pull some strings to get him a pardon – after which Caesar joined the army.Only when Sulla died, Caesar returned to Rome.

Caesar came back poor and had to stay in a lower-class neighborhood (slums?) As he still had to put food on his rickety table, he decided to become a lawyer. One thing led to another (as it always does in stories that become too long to tell,) and in 60 BC he won the election and became a consul (whatever that means – if you know, please feel free to enlighten me.)

Caesar’s Personal Life

Caesar’s first wife Cornelia died in 69 BC. He then married Pompeia. She was suspected of having an affair with a guy who had a really complex name. the chauvinist Caesar didn’t approve of it at all – “Caesar’s wife should be above all suspicion,” he said in Roman – and divorced Pompeia. About 10 years later, he married Calpurnia to further his political career. Eventually, he discovered Cleopatra and he had an extra-marital affair with her.

Julius Caesar and Cleopatra

Cleopatra the ruler of Egypt met Caesar when she was already onto her second husband (who was also her younger brother) Ptolemy 14th!
(Wow! Those guys were super-creative when it came to naming their children…it must have something to do with the royal inbreeding program followed by the Egyptian royalty.)

Nevertheless, she decked herself up in a rug and met Caesar and they went for a long cruise on Nile – a lot of interesting things might’ve happened between them and some say that Cleopatra conceived Caesarion, their son, while they were bobbing up and down on the Nile. Though they say that J and C were crazy about each other, I’d say that Cleo was just trying to get some political mileage out of her relationship with Julius – or why would she land in Mark Antony’s lap the moment Caesar cried “Et tu Brutus”?

If you are completely nuts and you want to read more about JC and Cleo’s mushy love-life, check out the following two links:

1. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3329
2. http://www.suite101.com/content/julius-caesar-and-cleopatra-a224138

Caesar’s Relationship with the Gauls

Caesar’s relationship with the Gauls could be described as troubled at best (source: Asterix Comics:)) He had brought the whole Gaul under his control and converted it into Roman territory, save one tiny little village, where Asterix and Obelix lived. His army was scared of the two Gauls, because they had the magic potion that Druid Getafix used to fix for them (and as a child, Obelix had fallen into a cauldron of the magic potion – I hope that the potion had cooled down when he fell into it.)

Once again, to cut a long story short – you need to pick an Asterix comic to understand it completely…or you might want to get in touch with Albert Uderzo, who in my opinion, is the best comic book illustrator and cartoonist in this world.

Caesar’s Assassination

Caesar’s popularity and his re-election as the dictator of Rome for the third time in succession led to a strong wave of jealousy among the senators. About 40 senators stabbed him to death in the Theater of Pompei. With his death, the Roman Republic died to give way to an empire, with Caesar’s adopted son Octavian becoming the emperor.

I guess this is all that I want to tell you about Caesar…and his butterflies.

Julius Caesar Quotes

There two important quotes that should be mentioned here.

Et tu brute! : This phrase literally means, “You too Brutus!” You should exclaim “Et tu brute” when someone you trust cheats on you. For instance, if your dog bites you. This phrase should never be used when your politicians cheat you, because you’d be a fool to trust your politicians.

Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion: This phrase means, people who are connected to people who have an image to cultivate, should not have ghosts in their cupboards. Example:? (Can you see me scratching my head…I too would need a laurel wreath soon.) Please feel free to add an example to the comments section:)

Caricature/Cartoon of Monalisa and the truth behind her smile!

Presenting Monalisa who mocks you from a portrait drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. It’s possible that you haven’t heard of Da Vinci, but it’s almost impossible that you don’t know about Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile.
Here’s The Caricaturist’s rendition of the “Greatest work of Art” in the world.

What's behind that smile?

Countless historians have spent countless number of hours, days, and years, trying to answer two questions:
1. Who is Mona Lisa?
2.  What does her smile mean?

What everyone knows is that Monalisa is a portrait done by Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest artists of all times, who was really awful at completing his paintings. We’d never know how he motivated himself to complete this one but he managed it somehow. Monalisa won’t have become this famous if about 400 years of its being painted, a patriotic Italian won’t have tried to take it back to Italy, where he thought it belonged (forgetting completely that one of the many King Louis’ had bought it from Salai, the guy who had inherited the portrait from Leonardo da Vinci!) Anyway, Mona Lisa has lived in the Louvre Museum of Paris for most of its life and right now it’s better guarded and protected than the President of the US.

To cut a long post short, let’s quickly look at the possible answers to the two questions that many good people called art historians have spent the best parts of their lives, trying to answer!

Mona Lisa – Who’s she?

Honestly speaking, nobody knows. Here are some possibilities though.
Mona Lisa is:

• Leonardo da Vinci’s self-portrait.
• Salai, his buffoon-of-a-pupil and possible lover’s portrait.
• A pregnant Italian Noblewoman’s portrait (La Gioconda?)
• A poor unfortunate woman’s portrait.

Why is the woman (?) in the Mona Lisa portrait smiling? What’s behind that smile?

I guess this is a question that people have been asking ever since 1911 – the year in which Mona Lisa became famous because she was stolen.

Of course, interpretations abound; but here’s my viewpoint.
The “person” in the painting is smiling because:

• Leonardo da Vinci winked at him/her.
• Leonardo told a lawyer’s joke while he was painting.
• Salai, his pupil of a “special nature” told Leonardo a vegetarian joke (because Leonardo was a vegetarian) and he/she overheard it.
• Melzi, his other pupil of another “special nature” told Leonardo that Salai had finally made a recognizable portrait.
• Leonardo da Vinci didn’t realize that he had paint on his nose.
• The “person” was a man dreaming of a portrait of him riding a horse.
• The “person” was a woman dreaming of a portrait with jewels around her neck.
• The “person” was an alien wondering why Leonardo da Vinci couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be an engineer, an anatomist, a sculptor, a metal worker, or an artist…for artssakes!

And if these aren’t enough reasons for you to choose from, click here to discover what the experts have to say about Monalisa and her smile.

Amy asked me to leave the caricature untitled – so untitled it is. What in your opinion is the reason behind her smile?

Cartoon/caricature Sculpture in Polymer Clay– The Devil – Satire/Story – The Devil Wants Out!

Well…here’s my Clay Caricature Number 3 – The Devil (or the Devil’s son – if you go by the story that follows the picture.) You are welcome to view my previous sculpting efforts the Harlot here and the Bald Man here.

Caricature/Cartoon in Polymer Clay. Title: "The Horned Devil" Size: 2.25" tall x 1.5" wide x 1.5" deep.

The Devil Wants Out!

(A Tiny Story/Satire – by The Caricaturist)

He sat in his room watching Bedazzled – a Devil Movie from his Hollywood collection. His father, the Devil, disapproved of all but the Devil movies – so though he disliked them he didn’t have a lot of other options. Thankfully, he rather liked this particular movie – Watching Liz Hurley play the Devil was like seeing his dad in a gown…and he found it hilarious – the buttered Popcorn, the sexy Devil and the star-struck Fraser – all made his life seem a little worthwhile, but he knew that this feeling of wholesomeness would disappear the moment the movie ended – the movie just helped him escape his reality.

His reality was Hell. He was expected to take over as the CEO of Hell when his dad retired at the end of the century – and he really didn’t want to. He didn’t like his Job Description at all. Collecting souls, sorting them, meting out the right punishment in the right measure – all this was just one part of it… the glamorous part! The other part was recruiting help, managing them, overseeing them, auditing the processes…why, just the other day he had caught a minion accepting bribe for moving a promiscuous lawyer’s spiky bed near a harlot’s fire!

He’d swap his life with anyone’s… Liz Hurley’s, Brendan Fraser’s, even Jim Carrey’s – of course he’d love to be Paris Hilton and send her here in his place, but his puritan dad would kill him if it was discovered that he traded places with a woman – and then there was the obvious bottleneck – what did Paris know of sins, and sinners, and hell? Lady Gaga was another interesting possibility what with her meat dress and her devilish attitude – but then despite the controversy there was a good chance that she too was a woman – and he didn’t want to risk making his father go berserk.

Two years ago, he would’ve happily swapped with Barack Obama, but then being a brand new politician he was a novice in the matters of hell…and today, Obama were probably stuck worse than him! That won’t work. He wanted to swap with someone who had inherited a lot of wealth because inherited wealth would help him sin and sinning would make sure that he returned to hell instead of going to heaven, which of course was out of question! He was also open to reviewing potential swaps with people in power because power too made people sin.

So he thought and he thought,  until the movie ended – but he reached no conclusion. He wanted to do something else…he didn’t want to do what the eldest son always did – run Hell efficiently…

There had to be a way out – somewhere, if not in the present, in the past – there would be someone who had it in him – who he could swap places with! As he browsed through the recorded programs on the History Channel, he found his answer.

 

He was going to swap with Adolf Hitler!

 

 

——–(ooo)——–

Announcement – Blog Carnival for Bloggers – Tell the Story-in-the-Caricature – November 2010 – Edition 6!

Dear Visitors, Aliens, Occasional-stopperbys, and Everyone Else in this Beautiful Virtual world,

The October Carnival ended on October 31, 2010 – on a really low note (sniff!) I guess the drawing failed to get your creative juices flowing. But two brave-hearts persisted.

Here are their stories:

• Robin & Beth, a lovely romantic story with an unusual twist,  by Creative Barbwire .
• The Trump Card , an eye-for-an-eye story by currently Blog-less Oorvi.

Now if you are wondering why I am still keen on continuing the Blog Carnival, the answer is:  I have a lot of faith in my fellow bloggers. I know that there are many who are sitting on a gold-mine of talent (including some who’ve recently visited mine,) and that one day, I’ll come up with a caricature, which will make them want to write a fabulous story.

So, here’s the Caricature for the November Story-in-the-Caricature Blog Carnival, which I hope will inspire you to write:)

O Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore art thou?

The rules remain the same, but I am adding a new constraint.

Your story SHOULD have a Romeo and a Juliet, who are called Romeo and Juliet, respectively!

Here are the rules:

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

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 November 30, 2010 (Tuesday.)

The Three Rewards for this Story Carnival:

1. All the story links added until the last date, will be published on this blog in November 2010, 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 absolutely no tolerance for pornography and abusive language and so any comment/story containing such material will automatically disqualify from the Carnival.

Waiting to hear from you, O fellow bloggers! Tell us your story!

Cartoon/Caricature Gallery Updated with New Caricatures!

Hello Readers,
I’ve just updated the Caricature Gallery with the new caricatures that I had added to this blog in the past three months. You can view it at: https://shafali.wordpress.com/gallery/

I hope you’ll enjoy the new additions (including Lady Gaga, Russell Crowe, Oracle Octopus Paul, Einstein, among many others!)

And yes,
I’ll be posting the caricature of Kareena Kapoor, the darling of Bollywood, who is affectionately known as Bebo, very soon – and then you can tell me if she’d not look like Paris Hilton,  if she bleached her hair. They are sisters – I don’t know how – but they are! Ever hear of Atavism? I think that’s what’s at work here!

That’s all:)

Cartoon-Caricature of the Modern Romeo and Juliet – and my Meeting with Juliet!

Romeo & Juliet, one of the most famous plays that William Shakespeare, the great English Playwright wrote without using a computer, still continues to make us laugh, cry, post, comment, and… now even TWEET (Such Tweet Sorrow)! Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare is a timeless play, where the characters and the situations continue to change, but the story remains the same. What if, the characters tweaked the story a little?

The Caricature – Romeo & Juliet:

Here are our Romeo and Juliet, but unknown to Romeo, there’s mush flying out of the balcony as our modern tattooed and pierced Juliet tries to utilize her time more productively than her Shakespearean counterpart.

O Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore art thou Romeo?

And now…

A Verbal Caricature:

Our Modern Juliet looking resplendent in her tattoos, piercings, and purple hair visits the Caricaturist in her Dreams!

Now, my dear visitors, I shall make you privy to a secret. The Juliet that you see in this caricature – yes, the purple-haired tattooed beauty – well, she visited me in my dreams. I repeat our conversation here – verbatim.

Juliet (sizing me up): So you are the caricaturist who made this caricature?
I (displaying the artist’s pride in her work): Yes:)

Juliet: You don’t look like much – but artists never do. So, tell me – You really think I’d do that – kiss an idiot while I wait for my Romeo?
I (With my artistic features ruffled by her offhand judgment): Yes, Juliet. I think you would.

Juliet: That just tells me how naive you are!
I: Will you care to explain that insult, my dear!

Juliet: Do you think I am ugly?
I: Of course not – you look like a colorful box of candies…gift-wrapped in purple!

Juliet (confused – wondering whether it was a compliment or not): Hmmm. Okay, so you agree that I am beautiful and sexy?
I (not wanting to give in): What did I say just now?

Juliet (not willing to reason it out any further): So what makes you think that there’d be just one joker that I’d be smooching in the balcony?
I (with my eyes popping out of my head): You’d be smooching more?

Juliet: Smooching? What are you? Ancient or something?! You’ve got to be joking. I know the Romeos of my day – there’s no way they could ever climb a rope to reach the balcony, and even if they could, It’ll take them at least a day – So I’d have the whole day, and also the night! I don’t know about Shakespeare’s Juliet, but I’d be bored to death if all I did was kiss them!
I: Oh! I didn’t see it your way – so while poor Romeo struggles to reach you…

Juliet: Struggle? What struggle? It isn’t like I’ve switched my mobile off or something.
I: What’s with the mobile?

Juliet (trying to see if my hair were gray): There’s an obvious generation gap here. Don’t you understand, I’ll have to SMS the poor guy continuously – it’ll keep his morale up!
I: Oh, I though you weren’t interested in Romeo.

Juliet (assessing me): What are you, seriously. A moron? Of course I’d be interested in a Romeo. At the end of the day, I’d need someone I could trust to get me my cough drops and take me to the hospital when I am seventy! In the long run, every girl needs a Romeo!

And so, dear visitors, I realized how naive I had been when I drew this caricature. Nevertheless, what’s done is done. I’ve promised Juliet that someday I’ll make another caricature, which will be closer to reality.

Until then – you be the judge!