No Artist is Ever Morbid.

In the preface of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar Wilde says,

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

I’ve been drawing for decades. My earliest memories of drawing are from Kashmir. I was five. We lived in Ramban on the bank of river Chenab. In mornings, my mother would give me a bath, comb my hair, hand me a slate and sit me out in the porch so that I could get some sun. I could see the violently white waters of Chenab beating against the rocks that glistened as they reflected the morning light behind the green front yard that stretched between me and the river. I’m sure if the house was any closer to Chenab than it was, my mother wouldn’t leave me on the porch alone.

I would sit on the steps, wait for my Mom to bring me my breakfast (a fried egg and a glass of milk,) and draw. I wasn’t supposed to draw though. I was supposed to “write,” but I drew everything. The alphabet, the numbers, the steps, the flower, even the egg. (My mom used to tell me that when she asked me what it was, I told her that it was an “O” inside another “O.”)

So that’s where my artistic journey began – in a land that’s today torn by politics, terrorism, and separatism. The land that in my hazy memories is still the most beautiful place that I’ve ever lived in.

But I began this post with an Oscar Wilde quote, and I shouldn’t stray too far from what I intended saying.

I’ve been painting. Not caricatures, nor portraits – but I’ve been painting my consciousness. I don’t classify my art, mostly because I can’t. How do you classify a vision, a half-dream, a sub-conscious feeling so strong that it takes me by my spine and shakes me up…?

I don’t know if an artist can express everything – but as an artist, I attempt to capture those fleeting moments that scream with emotions. The violence of these moments, like the violence of Chenab, froths white and blue and red – and to express it, I need not just lines but colors – and so I sketch fast…the madness of those first sketches is so complete that the painting competes with the sketches to express it all… if it does it at all.

The galleries have long waitlists and it would be at least an year before my paintings are exhibited – until them, I remain their captive creator… until then, I also remain your absentee blogger, whose mind and heart never see eye to eye – but then whose does?

 

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Caricature Portrait – Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

A couple of days ago, I sketched this caricature portrait of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary to President Donald Trump.

This is a quick ballpoint pen sketch (I was driven to tint it a bit after scanning,) which happened between two bouts of writing madness.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the daughter of Mike Huckabee, who had also run for President in the last elections. I had done a full-page illustration of Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee for the Talk Business & Politics magazine (one that I like a lot,) and you can view it here 🙂

Some Brain-on-Vacation Doodling…

As a rule, I don’t publish my doodles. They should be found no place other than my to-be-shredded-in-the-future tray, and all the new ones should follow their brethren to the gallows. They aren’t pretty and they aren’t happy – and when has the world been kind to the ugly and the unhappy?

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to throw this one away, because it tells a story in which I once played a part.

I’ll let you read the story in these overlapping, untidy lines.

The Highborn Lady and the Golden-haired Girl (A Short Story and an Ink Drawing.)

The Highborn Lady and the Golden-haired Girl
(Fiction…hopefully.)

She looked down her powdered nose and peered at them. She hated them all. That she was forced to walk the same earth they did, was a fact that rankled all the time, oozing acid into her heart.

“Cretins,” she mumbled, then mused, “how could they have been created by the same God who created me?”

As she looked at them under the wavering light of the torches lit in the wall-sconces behind her, a thin smile crept over her lips.

She looked through the iron-bars into the dungeon from where the tear-stained faces of seven teenaged girls looked up at her silhouette, and wondered if she was an angel who’d free them from their misery.

Free them, she would. One by one. Her eyes moved from one scared face to another, evaluating them for a purpose of her own.

“The one with golden hair and green eyes,” she turned to the gaoler and said in her strong, stern, and clear voice.

A hushed silence fell in the dungeon. The cries stopped, and twelve jealous eyes turned to the girl with golden hair and green eyes. She was going to be freed tonight. Others will remain. Right now, they were all the same, and she was different. The similarity of their fates bound them together in their hatred for her.

The girl with golden hair and green eyes looked up, and through the bars that made up the dungeon’s ceiling, she tried to look into her savior’s eyes, but her face was in shadows.

The lady turned and left. She walked through the labyrinth that took her away from the darkness of the dungeon into her palace above.  In an hour, her bath would be drawn. In the shimmering glow of a hundred candles, the silky smooth mixture of milk, honey, and blood will enter her pores and rejuvenate them. God had given her the boon of eternal youth, and this was why the same God who had created her, had created them. For her.

She smiled again. The thin, controlled smiled of a high-born lady.

About the Artwork:

This artwork is important, both due to its inspiration and its timing. I did it about 8 months ago. It was inspired by a high-born lady who I’ve known quite well. Not directly, but through someone I deeply care about. I did this caricature-art when I was hospitalized – a day after my surgery. (That’s why the line-work isn’t clear. There’s only so much you can accomplish when you are propped up on pillows and still under the influence of pain-killers and other medicines.) This artwork is about things that are seldom spoken, and never talked about in public. It’s about mothers who should never have been mothers, about ladies who aren’t ladies, about empathy or the lack of it, and about the pain that’s inflicted upon you, merely because you are you.

The story, however, is fiction; perhaps inspired by a historical account of a countess…I think. Let me google it out. Oh   yes…Elizabeth Bathory.

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 🙂

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!

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!

Blog Carnival for Story-writers – 3 Days to go…Read the Stories that have come in!

Hello Visitors of both the Serious and the Casual kinds:)

STOP & READ THIS!

If you don’t know about it already, let me remind you that the September Blog Carnival for Storywriting “Story in the Caricature” is drawing to a close…have you written your story yet?

Here are the stories that’ve come in so far:

• In Love with Melody by Oorvi
• To boldly go… by Viv
• Every job has it’s good bits by Ian

I am waiting to read your story:-)

Here’s a quick To-do list for participating in the Carnival:

1. Write a story and post it on your blog.
2. Add the Permalink to your post in the comments section of the September Blog Carnival Announcement post here.

And yes…

if you love to read stories, read the entries for the previous 3 carnivals here.

I now return to the act of drowning myself in work, but I shall return soon! Meanwhile, go for a treasure hunt in the exotic lands of your mind and bring back a beautiful story. Discover the storyteller within you:-)

Announcement – Blog Carnival for Bloggers – Tell the Story-in-the-Caricature – September 2010 – Edition 4!

Dear Readers,

I am pleased to announce the fourth Story-in-the-Caricature blog carnival.

Here’s the caricature, which I hope will inspire you to write a story.

Who's sh(e)? What's sh(e) doing?

So…

What is a Story?

A story is:

“a piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events”

What’s your story? What’s the “chain of related events” that jangles in your mind when you see the picture above.

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 September 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 on October 1, 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 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?

The best way to find out is – tell a story! I believe we all are storytellers…we all know how to present something very simple and mundane, in an interesting way – Honestly, that’s all there is to storytelling – so fire a print of the caricature above, stow it away in your bag or briefcase, and write a story to discover a new, creative you.

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

Announcement – Blog Carnival for Bloggers: Tell the Story-in-the-Caricature – Third Edition!

Welcome to the third Tell-the-Story-in-the-Caricature Blog Carnival.

Here’s the caricature to inspire your creativity:

What's his Story?

The Previous Carnivals:

Read about the previous carnivals here.

The Four Rules:

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 August 31, 2010 (Tuesday.)

The Three Rewards:

1. All the story links added until the last date, will be published on this blog on September 1, 2010, along with the blog-address and a short-bio of the writer.

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 not appear here.

If you’ve lived in this world, you ARE a Storyteller:

We’ve all got stories to tell – and let nobody convince you otherwise! This caricature reminds you of something – doesn’t it? A fear, a hope…despair for some, happiness for others…it tides up your emotions – right? Pour them out on your screen – and write a story!  A STORY BY YOU!

Announcement: Story-in-the-Caricature – A Blog Carnival!

Announcing the Story-in-the-Caricature Story Writing Carnival – Last Date: July 31, Midnight.

Remember the story writing contest we had on this blog?

I learned something from it.

I learned that there are things in this world that can’t compete with one another. You can’t compare them and say that one’s better than another for the simple reason that they are different. Though every story is a story, yet every story is different from another story – and so to compare them on a given set of parameters is a huge error.

This of course doesn’t mean that a story may not be more “successful” than another. The success here is determined by those who read the stories – whether or not they choose to comment on them is a different matter. This is why, the rules for the “Tell the Story in the Caricature” have changed along with its name.

Now the rules are simpler, and I hope, more palatable. But before we read about the Rules and the Rewards, let us look at the caricature for the story:

What's her Story?

The Four Rules:

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 on Thursday Midnight Night (8th July, 2010 14th July, 2010 31st July, 2010) GMT.

The Three Rewards:

1. All the story links added until the last date, will be published on this blog on July 9th, 2010, along with the blog-address and a short-bio of the writer.

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 not appear here.

Another Important Note:

All of us have stories to tell – we all are storytellers. However, some of us have discovered our storytelling abilities, others haven’t. Remember that all of us have an innate ability to express ourselves through the written word – but not all of us have discovered it yet.

Let us discover:-)

Let’s Party!

PS: The shortlink to this post is: http://wp.me/pJgyP-fS

(Just in case:))

How to Draw the Caricature of Dr. Albert Einstein – the Greatest Scientist of the Twentieth Century

Dr. Albert Einstein’s caricature is among the easiest to draw. He has features that hanker for the caricaturist’s eyeballs. His hair, his nose, and his quirked-up eyebrows that push the skin of his forehead into those innumerable furrows and lines – all demand your attention. They leap out of his face and grab hold of your hand to make you draw them!

Why? I wonder.

Excellent. So his face isn’t like Jack Nicholson’s (with a signboard that says, “everything you see, you can caricature for 99 cents”,) nor is it like George Clooney’s (a treasure hunt in a Martian desert.) Einstein’s face is somewhere between that of these two. It tempts you to fetch your pencil and your drawing pad as the three prominent features in his face are really, madly prominent!

I discussed the folly of trying to caricature “everything” in the previous tutorial, “How to Draw the Caricature of Jack Nicholson – The Wolf.” Listening to my own advice (yes, unlike many, I trust my own advice,) I decided to exaggerate the following features.

• The Hair
• The forehead with one brow quirked-up
• The Nose

The first step in creating any drawing is to…begin, and so I began. When I draw faces, I draw the eyes first, and those eyes watch me draw. This can be an especially unnerving experience when the person watching you draw is Dr. Albert Einstein! I kept my cool, avoided his assessing glare, and continued to sketch. After drawing in the eyes, I moved to the nose, and then to the lips…his eyes continued to follow my pencil, everywhere.

After a while, I gave up, and looked straight into his eyes, and then I realized that there was more to Einstein than his face. I began to remember what I had read of his life. Einstein was known for his brain. He was thought to have been born with a bigger brain.

Lo and Behold! If the expression sounds archaic, please excuse me – for I am (archaic) too.

So…once again…

Lo and Behold! I decided to exaggerate the size of his forehead!

Here is how the caricature was created.

Caricaturing Einstein’s Eyes and Brows

Check out any picture of Einstein, he’s got a bemused look on his face. He seems to be looking at world and saying, “It can all be explained through the General Principle of Relativity.” So I pushed up his quirky eyebrow a tad more to exaggerate the look.

Caricaturing Einstein’s Nose

Einstein’s nose isn’t one of those razor-sharp, slice-n-dice kind of nose. It’s a soft, round, and bulbous nose – a little longer than the normal. All this makes the nose-bulb(?) look like it’s experiencing the full force of gravity!

(Dear Sir Isaac Newton, I hope that you and Dr. Einstein get along well in heaven, and both of you along with Dr. John Wheeler, use the quantum foam to stay in touch with the scientists of our time. I assure you, they need your help to clean up the BP Oil Spill Mess!)

Oh, the nose! As you can surmise, I wanted the nose to become longer, and its bulb to become more bulbous; so I pulled the lower anchor points out of the feature frame, until the nose overshot the lips. (To understand anchor points and feature frame, read “The Evolution of a Caricaturist“.)

Caricaturing Einstein’s Hair

Einstein’s hair is magnificent. It’s white, long, and fluffy (he used a shampoo that he invented himself – right?) I added the effect of the electric hair blower on the white, long, and fluffy, to make them more prominent.

I also fluffed up Einstein’s mustache and tweaked it a little at the ends:)

Caricaturing Einstein’s Forehead

Inspired by Dr. Einstein’s supervising eyes, I made his forehead and also his head, bigger. Remember that the head is almost hemispherical. I decided to exaggerate not the size of the hemisphere, but its shape! Look at the forehead closely and try to visualize the head – you’ll “see” that the shape tends to be a sphere more than a hemisphere.

Einstein’s forehead has a lot of prominent lines. I exaggerated the lines. Look at the right edge of the forehead – you can even see the folds. When your exaggeration moves out of the facial space (at the edges) it becomes stronger.

That was all I did – and Einstein’s caricature winked at me:) My job was done!

If you are interested in exploring the techniques involved in drawing caricatures further, I recommend the following:

• “How to Draw Caricatures – The Evolution of a Caricaturist”, a Free Online Book on Google Knol.
• “Tuto-tweets by @theCaricaturist

Have fun caricaturing:-) Spread the Smile!