Street Vendor

We were stuck in a traffic jam in Dhaka a while ago and we have plenty of those . I looked around and took a few photographs of cart pullers, rickshaws and street vendors. This cigarette vendor was on the pavement a few cars away waiting for his next customer. Smoking is fairly popular here in Bangladesh and on just a short stretch you’ll find several such cigarette vendors.  They have a couple of empty soft drink cartons stacked and a glass box to hold the stock and display it.

The number of photographs I’m taking of the streets and the people has dwindled to zero As of this morning my husbands camera (it’s smaller) has been appropriated and I intend to take many more.

I’ve noticed that in almost all my drawings and painting the focus is on either a face or a person and the background is completely ignored. For this one I decided to add the background. It got overworked and I’ll be trying it out again.

Abhimanue – Take 2

This is my second attempt at drawing Abhimanue. He was the first person I met on my first day in college.  I had been apprehensive and talking to him calmed me down.  Abhimanue had an open door policy and always made time for the students.  However trivial our queries may have been he answered them patiently with sound and useful advice. He also let me take this photograph You can see my earlier attempt at drawing him here.

I’m mighty pleased to have found an art group with a teacher. I showed him my recent pen & ink work and some pencil sketches from life and asked for his help in making different tones. He showed me how with a pencil and charcoal stick. I was supposed to fill in the other half but didnt want to mess up the beautiful work that he’d already put down. It was a pleasure to see him at work. Watching the freedom of his strokes I realised that I need to start doing my drawing exercises again.

I havent managed to save enough white space but was still quite pleased with this attempt. Also I tried out 3 different charcoal sticks and there was huge difference in the black marks they made both in terms of the colour as well as the smoothness with which they went on.

Colourful Rickshaws

I grew up in Kolkata, a city with hand pulled Rickshaws. I must’ve sat in one just once and my friend pulled me along up and down the road to her house for a lark! At that point there were a few other cities with hand pulled rickshaws but they were soon upgraded to cycle rickshaws. In Kolkata, they are still being used but there is talk of converting them to Cycle Rickshaws. I hope that they are able to rehabilitate the Rickshaw pullers in a timely manner without loss of income.

We have now moved to Bangladesh which is known for its colourful Cycle Rickshaws and Rickshaw Art. These Rickshaws are on my list of could be series of paintings. There were 3 people sitting in this Rickshaw which is meant to be a single seater and yet the driver seemed to be moving it along effortlessly. The reference photograph was taken with the hope of making a painting. I’ll consider this pen and wash to be a study for a larger piece. One thing that I can see is that I need a few lessons in perspective and proportion I like the colourfulness of this effort.

8″ X 10″ Pen and Goauche wash in my sketchbook.

Self Portrait in Ink

This is the 3rd piece that I made today.  I’m just thrilled with that and not so much with this drawing!   I used a different pen today (Lamy Joy) and regretted it a bit as the ink in this one seems to collect in a small pool at times!  Makes it difficult to recover from mistakes.   I think I will need to use it a lot more to get used to it.  I have earlier used Rotring Art Pens and the Lamy Safari and prefer those.

8″ X 10″ pen & ink in my sketchbook.

Sandeep Jigdum

I’ve been working in fits and starts on my College of Art Portrait series.  Made this one of Sandeep’s at the art group meet this morning. We hadnt met up in 5 weeks and I was really happy to catch up and restart these meetings once more. I had made a sketch of Vishal yesterday evening which hadnt turned out so well and so I was keen on trying another. I’m bit happier with this one but the resemblance is missing. I think a Take 3 is required here too. Maybe I’ll just skip to painting him instead. The one below was made in Oct/Nov ‘05 soon after the photograph was taken. I showed it to Jigdum and he drew out a rough sketch to show me the areas I needed to take care in. I’m also pleased to see the progress over a period of time.

Try, try, try again!

There was something about the angle in which this photograph was taken and being too close to the subject with a wide angle lens.  Vishal’s nose was out of proportion to the rest of his face. I found this very difficult to tackle. My brain refused to accept that I could only see so much of his chin. Made 3 attempts from the same photo reference over 3 weeks. The one on top, the one I just finished has come the closest to resembling him.  One more for the College of Art Portrait Series.