Birthday in lockdown

A lot of people (family and friends) that have had their birthdays during these lockdown months have wished this year away. But this man is one of those individuals who has found his love for nature once again, in different aspects of nature, apart from wildlife during this period of isolation – the skies – clouds, stars, moon, storms are a few of them. In between the sunrises and sunsets before the stars shine brighter in the sky, the animal diversity gets some attention. I attempted a timeline of his day, during the lockdown era, as a birthday card for him.

Gift of INKTOBER

Here comes the last lot of drawing from this year’s Inktober series.

Prompts – Ride, Injured, Ripe, Catch

I am amazed at myself on completing this series or any challenge, for that matter. I venture into a lot of projects and challenges, only to walk away from them after a while. Reaching the end is always the toughest part. And here I am, successfully wrapped up 31 days of Inktober following the official prompts.

I will not lie about strong thoughts of quitting in between or just letting it be. Nobody cares whether I skipped one day or didn’t do any after a week or ten days of the month. I am not answerable to anyone for the supposed commitment I thought I made to Inktober. And that if I have so much difficulty in sticking to 30days of daily drawings, why do I think I can ever take up art as a profession. Of course, the stupidest reason being, it’s my birthday month. I can skip few days because I don’t want to bother myself with drawing for an hour.

All those days the demons of every human mind hovered in the forefront until I coaxed and cajoled myself to go back to the day’s prompt and deal with it. More than 25% of the drawing were complete failures in conveying the message and I hated them yet for the sake of a habit building process, I ended up posting everyone of them on Instagram. By the time, I reached the 20th day, I was comfortable with the idea of sharing yet the guilt that the piece is not good enough bothered me. Here I am. All 31 days of Inktober done. Not proud of all the sketches yet proud of having met the daily drawing habit and the commitment to Inktober.

Inktober 2019 – III

With every sketch I finish for Inktober, it surprises me to look back and see how far I have managed to come. Showing up daily for something consistently for a whole month is an intimidating thought and I have made it two thirds of the way.

Prompts for this week- Legend, Wild, Ornament, Misfit, Sling, Tread, Treasure

Inktober 2019 – I

After multiple failed attempts, I managed to cross the first hurdle- the first week and here’s the summary of the work done

Accessories

Accessories that my father gifted when I was 7 years old and ever since I haven’t been able to thank him enough. For a few years, it was entering the ring with him right behind encouraging me. My adulthood saw us far apart from each other. I didn’t understand the real reason of the gloves until much later. It was always him telling me that life will punch you down millions of times, find a way to get up and punch back.

Inky love – 2

Couple of years ago, a friend suggested I take up the Inktober challenge. I had no idea what that was and I went looking for anything that had a #inktober on Instagram. That looked like a super cool challenge and I decided to take it up. But three days into the month, I ran out of steam because I had no idea what I could do with those prompts and if I want to go by my own prompts, I should have planned it well. Bottom line – I didn’t think I had the creativity nor the motivation to take up such a commitment.

Inktober is about 50 days away. Irrespective of what the prompt list looks like, I want to complete the challenge this year. So as a practice I started making ink sketches of scenes all around me or some from memories.

These scenes somehow get etched in mind the moment one decides to sketch them but doing them all on a black and white and shaded style gives you a different feel.

All this while, I have used marker pens with consistent flow of ink. And my dip pen with all the different nibs sat in the drawer all these years patiently waiting for me to pick it up and admire the value of it. So here it is. The rediscovery of the dip pen.

The uneven lines, the inconsistent flow of the ink and the imperfections of inking a memory or a view on paper is exciting at a different level. I hope the dip pen doesn’t have to go back to its box for another couple of years without being used.

More to come later…