Running Away And Hiding In My World Of Sketches

Certain things I can't deal with, the worst of them all is saying goodbye, so instead of saying my goodbyes I chose to hide - hide as I sketch urban landscape and the people who face life head on and keep passing through the city like ghosts.

Yet eventually I did part with my feelings and the security that they represented in the present - for happiness, hope and faith for a better future. For belief and faith is all we have, if we lose them we might as well become a bunch of cynical, pessimistic, sore losers.

I believe that letting go of the security of today doesn't mean that the rest of my future has to be altered by the ugly wrath of time, for no matter how much I change and the world around me changes it doesn't necessarily have to be for the worse. Believing in that is the hardest thing to do especially when you are so happy in a moment that you just want to freeze it forever and never let go. However, if you don't let it go you will never get anything better or worse, you will forever be stagnant just like the ghosts who walk through this urban landscape.  

Blue Christmas Without You

"I'll have a blue Christmas without you
I'll be so blue just thinking about you
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Wont be the same dear, if you're not here with me

And when those blue snowflakes start falling
That's when those blue memories start calling
You'll be doing all right, with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, blue blue blue Christmas" 

- Elvis Presley

Right, that's just about how much I shall miss anyone who is not with me during Christmas.

i.e. as much as I miss tentacles, mountains, a falling Big Ben tower, a real Christmas tree, a fire to keep me warm, and the cold. Since Mumbai has no winter and hence no Christmas! So I shall have myself a BLUE CHRISTMAS! :)

Sketching Trip to Singapore Zoo

Swimming animals are hard to draw, yet drawing animal anatomy is fun because it challenges my conventional sense of form. Drawing animals really makes you use your eyes to draw because we are so used to drawing human figures that most of the time we assume what the anatomy or form will be like, but since animal anatomy is so unfamiliar it poses a greater challenge to a live drawing artist! 

Sleeping animals make me happy since they don't move and its easy to draw them!

Just as I was getting warmed up there was a thunderstorm and I had to rush to the shade, this is all I could see or draw from there. 

A sketch of the river in the Zoo, if you get the chance do go to the Singapore Zoo its an amazingly well made and well planned zoo! It makes me wonder what equatorial Singapore would really be had it not been this heavily urbanized.

Control

"Life's too short to even care at all oh!

I'm losing my mind, losing my mind, losing control"

- Cough Syrup by Young The Giant

All my days are about control, the battle to be in control of my life and destiny starts in the morning and is lost every night. Yet I must wake up the next morning and keep fighting for it is the illusion of control or the idea of it that sustains me.

Running Away

Sometimes fighting by yourself in a city where people mind their own business and don't care about anything else that is going on can be hard.. that's why I want to run away.. To a place where someone cares, where anyone cares...

Other Sketches from Europe

We were stranded at the tram station in central Zurich because of the rain. I really hate touring companies, they get you to places on the day everything is closed. Anyhoo we were spared the disappointment of closed shops and museums because it rained and I could sit and draw the people who were passing by the tram station while we were sitting there waiting for the weather to show us some mercy. It was great to just sit and see the world pass by!

This is a 5 minute sketch of Napoleon's Tomb in Paris. Again the touring company stopped their bus for a 5 minute break for people to go take a leak. I wish to go back to Paris on my own terms and spend days and nights at the Louvre!

Sketch from Cologne, Germany

It was a quick trip to Germany all the time I was thinking about how I was alone although I was with a group of people. The only time I felt solitude and not loneliness is when I was sketching this, what can I say, my sketchbook and my paints are my constant companions.. Along with that never-leaving voice in my head!

Sketches From Brussels

Hi guys, its been a while since I updated my blog, Apologies! The scanner in my home in India is just bad quality, but I am back in Singapore right now and have finally had the chance to scan my sketches from my trip to Europe this summer. This is Brussels, where the buildings are guild-ed with Gold and where there are amazing street artists selling their amazing watercolour works! Belgium and its waffles and chocolate are something that I shall never forget and if I do I have these sketches to remind me!

Arab Street: Sketchwalk

I went sketching with the Urban Sketchers, Singapore. These are a few sketches from that morning! As we sat on the roads in the morning, we saw the rubbish/puke/alcohol bottles from last night being cleared. Having never been to Arab this early in the morning I discovered a whole new place!

These shop houses are interesting to sketch because they are juxtaposed against the grossly commercial and concrete skyline of Singapore. Arab Street has its own identity because of these dilapidated, close to dingy looking buildings. The only place in Singapore where I actually found pigeons pooping as they fly!

This is a 15 minute impressionistic sketch of the Mosque at Arab Street! Funny how I had never noticed it in my countless night time adventures there!

This is a failed attempt at trying to draw pigeons while they were eating, it is so hard to draw moving birds, another thing on my bucket list for the summer!

As we sat down for the show and tell, I saw this fat (well not really fat) lady and tried a new carricature-illustration style! This is a 3-5 minute sketch!

Nanyang House From My New Terrace

It is very nice to be able to get away from all the work and just step onto the terrace and sketch.. But a terrace next to my room also means 7 floors of climb everyday! Oh well! everything has pros and cons!

Look and Experience, Don't Ruminate..

Look at where you are going and where you have reached, but don't over analyse it and get sucked into a black-hole of rumination...

Mt. Faber Park

Went to Mt. Faber Park with a dear friend and sketched, watched the light change and the world drift away.. felt good to observe and not analyse..

Estranged Shadow

The moment when even my shadow leaves me to deal with everything by myself..

Willy is a Wonka!

There is nothing that Roald Dahl doesn't have the answer to!

Haunted By Sleep

My dysfunction life has gone to another level.. I dread going to sleep because my unconscious is darker than the night.. So when I am awake, battling the demons inside, I draw in jealousy - I am jealous of the fact that everyone else can just switch off, they don't have to face their darkest fears every night..

I Am A Coward

Courage is the ability to keep going on although every cell in you tells you that it will be okay to give up and take refuge in a safe place. I don't think I had the courage to go on at that moment - a moment when I gave up. Strangely it takes a lot to admit that somethings are bigger than even you. But one eventually finds the courage to do what is right..

I still feel like a coward, searching for courage in a place that is dark. One day I hope to do the right thing by myself, till then I shall contemplate about the courage I seek.

The Best and The Worst..

Sometimes one person can make or break your world. Bring out the worst and the best in you, leave you living in a world of surreal delusions. Thanks for being that person for me..

Emotionally Stoic: Internally Conflicted

When the inside is so numb that although emotions are experienced inside, they don't manifest themselves physically. A moment of stoicness, of still waters, although what lies underneath the vessel is a sea of monsters. I wish I could cry.

Arguments of Insidious Intent

Sitting at Starbucks I saw 3 men, deep in conversation, arguing silently while keeping the sanctity of their group. It reminded me of these lines from The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

"Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit."

It was weird, I didn't see reason in drawing them, maybe it was the new parallel pen rearing to go, maybe it was the need to make a live drawing, whatever it was it was a good digression from my rather boring and emotionally driven typography assignment which was self-inflicted torture in retrospect. Lately I have been finding solace in sketching people, other people. There is no reason, it is just a place I run to when I am overwhelmed by my reality.

Appeasement

This was painted more than a year ago - at the singapore zoo..!

It depicts the zebra's appeasment gesture also the gesture with which they greet each other showing to the other that they are not a threat and wish to exist in harmony. Horses and zebras are such brilliant creatures I wish I could see just one mustang - a wild horse. I wish that humans had such an appeasement gesture where I could just rub you on the back of your neck and prove beyond everything that I do not mean to harm/ hurt you. Where social dynamics, the past or the awkwardness would not matter. Its time for me to stop fighting, fighting to be in someone's life, fighting to say that I am not a threat - I wish I could end it all with just an appeasement gesture. I am laying down the arms and retreating my forces from the barracks, does it matter? No, because I am human.

Everyone Is Oblivious To My Emotions

For the first time I sketched in almost complete darkness, had very little idea of what I was doing.. felt lost not just on the paper but on Campus too - existentially lost - no one will ever understand how I feel. I can only hope that someday someone will see my work and connect with some of the emotion, maybe not all of what I feel and the context of such feelings but something of what I feel. This is the view of the Halls of Residence 9-10 from the terrace on my block drawn in darkness of mind and eye.

Be The Best That You Can Be

Be the best that you can be,

Yet self-destruct at times,

So that you may eventually see

That being the best you may be

Is something that you were never meant to be...

Because when you self-destruct

You see all the possibilities of who you could be,

You see all those roads that you cautiously never chose

But are now treading on quite gutsily..

Then you realize that who you were meant to be,

Is a thing that changes continuously,

So chose wisely which path you wish to tread

Then the future you shall never dread.

When who you were is not enough..

When you realize that who you were is not taking you forward anymore there is no point trying to be that person because no matter how idealistic and right that person was s/he does not fit into today's context. Sometimes all you need to do is stop, evaluate and adapt, it is the order of nature for even Darwin says, " In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." Let go of what you thought was right and who you were so you can find and be someone better.

Perumal Temple, Singapore.

Just needed one interview and this Pandit has already wasted 7 hours of my time and not given it to me.. The interview is for a Graphic Design (GD) Project called Fading Traditions.. Going to break my head with this Pandit soon, so while I was waiting for the Pandit to get back to me, I sketched the Temple, could have water coloured it but it was time to go..

"Time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and Drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for hundred visions and revisions"

F'kin Perfect by P!nk

I don't know why this song appeals to me, its probably the video or something. I drew this in class while waiting for the tutor to get to me for consultation.. It's Just a doodle, so didn't want to post it but what the hell!

Sketching Trip to National Museum Singapore

After a year and a half of brooding and not sketching much, I finally went on a sketching trip with Urban Sketchers Singapore, It was great to just sit down and do some watercolour, although I agree it could have been better but I am happy that I started. Mom always said "getting ahead is getting started." So here's to a new start.

Are You Lonesome Tonight?

Recently I have learned that feeling alone is natural, but when I drew this I still felt the presence of someone who took all the loneliness away and although he is gone now and I am alone again I am trying to be strong.. strong so that one day soon I can call this loneliness - solitude. Solitude is the glory of being alone while loneliness is the pain in being alone. I need to find strength to deal with this.

So until I have more strength I leave you with this thought, if you are a part of someone's life be there for them like how you promised. It's true that it is wrong for people to get latched onto someone else for support but it is also wrong to deny them that support when then need it the most. Don't become bitter to them, try and be humble and patient. Above all try to find happiness in small moments, I find mine in sketching and music, what's yours?

Have been anticipating the worst lately..

Ever felt that something good shall lead to the worst outcome in your life? I have spent the last few days wondering, anticipating the worst; hoping for the best but always finding myself thinking about something that could potentially make things better for me as something that will bring me to my lowest low.. Hope the grass turns from yellow to green soon!

Abandoned Dance Shoes

After a really long time, I have started sketching again, so unlike these abandoned dance shoes - for I don't feel like dancing, not alone, not anymore; my water colours and brushes have finally seen the light of day after 1.5 years of Artistic Block.