The Goddess

She is the new Goddess. She has traded her knives, swords, lotuses, and severed heads for other pursuits. Who has time for slaying baddies and posing with flowers, when there is a job to go to, a family to feed, a marriage to preserve, a house to uphold, friends to meet, children to teach, money to handle, legs to wax, and a crazy-beautiful life to live! After all, a Goddess can only have so many hands.

Gossip

Gossip- keeps us on our toes, and makes us close our doors:)

Parrot Tarot

You don't see these so much in India anymore. Everything is modern now and no one believes in a parrot that can pick the card that will tell you about your future. But I have seen the 'Kili josiyam' guys set up the parrot cage and the cards at the side of roads in Chennai, in my childhood. And maybe there is something to it. After all, Tarot cards still exist, and training a bird to pick your card is well- impartial.  

Chinese Whispers

When we played Chinese Whispers as children, I was a very serious participant. I listened well, letting a little bit of distraction wash over me, so that maybe I would mis- hear the phrase, and say something different to the next person.  And it would irk me out when players distorted the words on purpose just to make it funny. The idea is to see what comes out of genuine mistakes. And I couldn't laugh at fake ones, so I stopped playing. But when Illustrationfriday.com's topic was 'Whisper',  those childhood games would not leave my memory. Here is Chinese Whispers. Digital.

Choppy finances

Braving life in a personal fiscal storm is one of the scariest things I can think of. The other scariest thing I can think of is a turbulent ocean at night. Safe to say, I am terrified of this image:) Inks and Photoshop

Elizabeth Bennet

My love for Jane Austen and classics with female heroines, or anti-heroines or real life good and bad ladies with captivating stories has inspired me to take up painting again. Here is Eliza Bennet in a meadow. Acrylics.

Halloween in February

This is an early Halloween illustration. I call it the Endangered scare:) Kids wearing endangered animal costumes for T-O-T-ing. How cool would that be?

wings

This one's for www.illustrationfriday.com!

Kids and the internet

Pratham books posted a call for illustrators, for a book about the internet! And me and a bunch of others shared our two cents worth. Me and most of that bunch were not picked, but this is what I submitted. This is Netti from India talking to Amy in New York via the interwebz...

The Queen of Tarts

I was working on this as I watched the Tudors on Netflix, and before I knew it, The Queen of Tarts took after the snooty and proud Anne Boleyn.

The Queen of Tarts  loves all tarts and has perfected making them in her spare time and so naturally, she is the authority. She seats herself on her plush divan and sniffs at tarts that she has had made for her by the innovative kitchen staff of the palace. If tarts were alive, she would have married one. But as such she remains a spinster, because in this unfortunate era, tarts do not have a pulse. Yet. 

Susan Oak is the real Queen of all tarts, big and small, sweet and sour, sticky and smooth. She does not to wait for live tarts, and chooses instead, a wonderful human boyfriend:)

Sweeeeet Acorn

My good friend Susan who is the best chef I know, finally decided to put her talent to good use and started a blog.
It educates dumbuns like me that are afraid of baking, sauteeing and otherwise burning themselves that cooking can be fun, and very beautiful (you'll agree when you see her photography).
She is www.sweetacorn.com and here is an image for her baby blog. Susan does not have red hair that looks like Moe Howard's, but maybe someday she will. 

the MALE project

People ask me why I don't write a children's book, and illustrate it myself. Here's why. I'm good at drawing, but I'm great at drawing only a handful of things, and I will only let my book be about this handful of things. Ultimately this will be a children's book with no animals, toys, or landscape scenery. And Scholastic will reject it. 

Same goes for topics I give myself to build my portfolio. My husband observed that all my topics are girl-related and feature an unreasonable amount of pink.  So, this time, he gave me something to draw on. My project was to show a soldier coming back home from war. I could have shown the silhouette of a ripped man walking with his backpack on his shoulder, against a backdrop of yellow bomb blasts and planes hovering over his head, and a patriotic flag floating conceptually in the background. But I'm a girly girl, so sue me:) This is what I did.

circus Freak pt2

Elephants in circuses are made to balance on a drum, walk around in circles with acrobats on their back, stand for the audience on their hind legs. People clap for these creatures of majesty and power as they are made to bow down to human whims.

People clap for this elephant too, but only out of awe and respect. He is the ring master and only whips the concrete under his feet for the noise…his troupe starts to juggle, tightrope-walk and trapeze at his command only, and the mice squeak his praise ( mostly to let him know they're down there, and to please not accidentally trample on them.).

Circus Freak.

A long long time ago, in a land 2 layovers away (Savannah, Georgia), I created a circus. Even though the circus was strange, this was a human circus– complete with human trapeeze artists and bearded ladies. I like human circuses because it means that I don't have to deal with drawing animals.

But now, in a fit of rash bravery, I have started an animal circus. This is Calamaria, the juggler. She is seen here juggling clams. I thought the name was very clever until my husband walked in and misread it as 'Chlamydia'. Grr.

Archana

I borrowed a photograph from my dancer friend, Archana Kumar, because it was so so beautiful and I wanted to draw it, to capture all the heat of that photo and make it mine. So I tried pastels, which I haven't touched in a while- and the result looked like I hadn't touched pastels in a while. So I crumpled that up and tried doing realistic watercolors. It came out great- if you don't know what Archana looks like. If you do know what she looks like, my painting looks like her on crack. I'll save that one for her personal email.
So I reverted to what I know best..black lines and inks. I enjoyed doing this even though some of it was a challenge. It's even inspiring me to take more cultural stuff up!