Continuing my journey of last Inktober blog post in which I shared my journey with the first ten Inktober sketches in 2018, today I am going to share my journey with the next ten sketches. On hindsight, I think I did some good sketches for the period from day 11 to day 20. Here is the Inktober 2018 prompts by Jake Parker for your reference.
Well, let's dive in!
11. CRUEL
I read the word "cruel" and I knew I wanted to draw Mother Gothel from the amazing Disney movie Tangled. Here is a clip if you want to have a sneak peek of the character, checkout this Youtube video. Checkout the movie trailer here. It is a great movie for kids and an entertaining one for adults; a visual treat for everyone for sure.
Coming back to the sketch, I quickly picked one of the images of Mother Gothel raging with anger. I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the portrait I could achieve with little effort. I had a feeling that all these days of practice are paying off now and reflecting in my art works. It is a nice feeling to experience the effortlessness.
In school, I only knew that the blue whale or Nila Timi (ନୀଳ ତିମି) is the largest mammal in the world. It did look like fish. But I did not know much about the animal until I watched Finding Nemo during college with my friends. I love the simple yet profound message that the clip conveys in this clip.
Wow, a theme is developing in this post. Lot of flashback, animation movies and good memories are coming back. In the movie it is portrayed that they are wise and helping creatures in contrast to sharks which are always portrayed as ruthless villains. Any way, fast forward to a few years, I started obsessively watching Planet Earth and other similar series by Planet Earth, and learned a little bit more about the whales. I zeroed in this image because I felt fascinated by the energy, fun, and ecstacy of jumping in the water and I wanted to capture the moment. I had fun trying to sketch the lines, the waves, and the water droplets. Sketching the water droplets was an interesting challenge. I also feel satisfied by the look of the sketch, partially because I was sketching in this bright white notebook and liked the shine of the page.
13. GUARDED
I tried to search for an interesting picture for the term "guarded", but my mind kept going back to the
guards of the huge prison in which Tai Lung was held captive in the Kung Fu Panda movie. I googled and ended up learning the name of the prisoner, "HUNDUN"! I was able to sketch the character pretty quickly, without much hassle, and it turned out nice, that too with the right expression.
On a side note, Kung Fu Panda is a great movie filled with lots of fun and inspiration in addition to amazing visual storytelling. I love the concept that Master Oogway tries to convey when he says, "One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it." I have always been intrigued by it and keep going back to the message every now and then. I can not help but narrate the plot here. So, if you want to avoid being spoiled, please skip the next paragraph.
Master Oogway reveals to his student Shifu that this mystery man called Tai Lung who has been in prison for long long time is going to be free. Oogway and Shifu are of opposite temperaments. Oogway is this cool zen-like person, whereas Shifu tries to control and fix everything. As soon as Shifu hears the news, he sends a messenger bird to tighten the security of the prison. The bird meets Hundun and other guards of the prison who are obviously too proud of their advanced security measures. They bully the bird and in the process, a feather of the bird falls in the fancy cage in which Tai Lung was locked in. This triggers the whole chain of events eventually freeing Tai Lung and creating havoc. I find it to be such beautiful and nuanced narrative of the situation. Had Oogway not told the vision to Shifu, had Shifu not tried to prevent the situation, none of this would have actually happened! Such a brilliant plot point and story telling!
14. CLOCK
Ok, although it is enticing, it is time to come back to real world. I did think drawing a clock tower would look nice, but I found it too boring. I thought of exploring the history of clocks and making a collage of different clocks over time. Even though it was not an artistically very challenging, it was an interesting collage making process.
15. WEAK
The term "weak" reminded me of this quote from beautiful trilogy called Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi. I absolutely love this quote. It makes so much sense to think people in terms of strong or weak instead of good or bad. We all want to be good, we all want to think that we are good, and bad people are others, and often out there somewhere. But is that true? No. Will our ego allow us to see the bad in ourselves easily? Difficult. So, instead if we ask ourselves, "Am I being strong or weak?", won't we get a better perspective of things? Let's do it now onwards. Let's ask ourselves every now and then, "Am I being strong or weak?"
On a slight diversion towards the story, Amish does a great job of bringing Hindu mythology and our ancient history to Indian youth in a beautiful way. Although there is general critic on his writing style, Shiva trilogy tries to make Indian youth curious about Indian history, heritage, mythology; and does a great job at that. Even though it is about Shiva and Sati, who are essentially Hindu deities, the narrative is pretty secular, and I encourage people from all religions to read it. It is a beautiful invitation to explore our rich past, and shape our future. It is a fantasy, not a history. But it will successfully take you into a beautiful journey that will give you glimpses into the glorious past of the ancient civilization called India, and will leave you wanting to know more, and wanting to feel proud.
Now, back to ground work. I liked the calligraphy. Every time I write some nice quote, I tell to myself, "I need to take calligraphy lessons." and that never happens. The page looked empty after the writing, and I wanted some theme to be present in the background. I searched for Tibetan Buddhist monks, zeroed in one of the images, and sketched it. I liked the faded appearance of the background that is actually a foreground. The sketch makes our attention to constantly shift between the text and the image. I felt excited about the effect. Now coming to thing of it, I should do more sketches/paintings of similar theme.
On that note, let's move on to the next theme of Inktober.
16. ANGULAR
I was annoyed by this term. "Do you call it a theme?", I thought. I even looked at the instagram posts shared by other people for the day 16's theme. Nothing resonated. The word "momentum" kept tagging itself with the word "angular". So I decided I will sketch something about angular momentum. I was thinking of a geometric diagram, but I found this nice sketch of an ice skater spinning and trying to adjust her body in order to conserve angular momentum. So here it is! Thank God, it was not as boring experience as I had expected.
17. SWOLLEN
I was traveling a lot in those days, and my feet were getting swollen easily because of constant sitting. It was a funny experience, it did not hurt, but it did not feel alright either. So I googled for the images of swollen feet and quickly sketched one. It was again an easy sketch; it did not require a lot of effort or emotional engagement; but it definitely captured my mildly annoying experience.
18. BOTTLE
"Who on earth gives a theme called bottle! Are you mad?" This is what I thought when I read the theme. I just put the plastic bottle near my bed on the table and quickly traced the structure. Boring and frustrating like anything. Ah. Then I look for others' posts, and people have done such amazing jobs for this stupid mundane theme called "bottle"! Look here!
I felt ashamed. Perhaps, I was not motivated enough, perhaps I was just trying to reach the deadline and not really create anything, perhaps I was letting the general stress around me suppress my creativity.
19. SCORCHED
I wanted to capture the scorched land in summer. After a quick search online I zeroed in this image. I was expecting to see images from India, but I was surprised to see similar situations in Brazil as well. My ink pen was running out of ink, and this unknowingly created a nice effect. It did take a little bit of mechanical effort, but turned out to be alright in the end. I don't feel proud of this sketch in particular, but it feels nice to have done something I would have never attempted otherwise.
OK, moving on to the last sketch of the post, if you are still with me this far.
20. BREAKABLE
I don't remember my search process for this Matki Phod event. But I am happy to try out this sketch even though it is a little bit messy. Drawing the sprouting water from the matki (earthen pot) was an interesting challenge. Here is a quick narrative about the history Matki Phod events for those who do not know about it.
Krishna (a Hindu deity) loved butter so much that, he would gang up with his kid friends and try to sneak on everyone's house and try to break open the earthen pots containing butter that were safely stored high above ground. People in western India celebrate this naughty nature of him, by organizing Matki Phod (break the pot) events on Krishna's birthday (Janmashtami or Bhadrava Krushna Ashtami, or the Ashtami or 8th day of Krushna Paksha or the waning moon in the month of Bhadrava, the 5th month in Hindu lunar calendar). Young people form a pyramid and try to break open the pot hanging high above the ground. I have never attended any such event, but seen a lot on TV, and I am sure this would be a fun and energetic event.
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Well, that's it! If you stayed with me until now, thank you for your patience! This post did turn out to be a reference to many books and movies and also brought back many nostalgic moments to me. Looking back, it was a nice experiment in which I sketched stuff I would not have cared to sketch or explore otherwise. But I must confess, I kept feeling frustrated by mundane themes and also felt bogged down by the whole exercise of sketching in order to just achieve a deadline.
That's all for today; will get back soon with the last phase of Inktober 2018!
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