Middle age! Time to get serious about life.
But me, I worry about my short arms and the brown boy wants to grow his hair.
Tag Archives: drawing
With our pack of memories slung slack on our backs
This video and the earlier one are how my day-to-day journal drawing takes place. I sit down with my book and try to draw what’s on my mind. Sometimes I start by drawing what’s in front of me – which is why there are so many drawings of Orin eating! At other times I draw the day, how things went, what I listened to, or read. Sometimes my mind is blank and quite often the fear of the empty page threatens to take over.
But the important thing is to show up, and get over that fear, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of not living up to your own expectations. And after some time, I find the flow, I start to commune with myself, and joy takes over.
Title from Joy Harjo, via Pome by Matthew Ogle
Looking back, some favorites from the last decade: Doing what you love (2013); Channeling the girls (2013); Life with Picasso, Art (2013)
A lesson learnt
{At the end of confidence, there is only one feeling. Only one.
That one has the capacity to bear all that comes.}
Days in a week
Random journal entries from last year. Watched Aranyer Din Ratri – one of my favorite Satyajit Ray films – and read a bunch of Emily Dickinson.
Design after all is a process of inquiry…
Getting into weekends
Often during the work week I am terribly challenged finding a few minutes to draw, so you can imagine that on Friday evenings I have all these pent up drawings just struggling to be expressed.
But then of course there’s the household calling or your energy levels need bolstering…
But then, there’s always revival after the end – and I usually make a memento.
Just the weekend
Just like I have countless drawings from 2003-2005 of the brown boy sleeping, now I have those of Orin’s endless meals as he grows…
Sometimes we fight over the music playlist and fall into each other’s joke traps.
At other times we have some deep conversations.
“No one has fun without anyone, Amma”
“You need to draw the details, Amma”, he says. So I do –
“Why do you always draw when I draw, Orin?” “Because it’s like you and me cuddling, Amma!”
A moment of bliss
At the ends of long days what a pleasure it is to sit and draw…
Weekend ritual
Ever since we have been together the brown boy and I have spent a few hours a weekend with a ritual of drawing and drinking coffee.
One way to get through these new lifestyle changes has been to keep to our rituals and find sanity in those moments of calm and pleasure. Hope you’re having a restful weekend.
Letters to my future self
Looking back for the year-end post, this is what I discovered:
29 sketchbooks in 6 years! Not bad at all! And before 2014 I have about 98 more, shown here, over the years of 2002-2013.
I’m so proud of myself for persisting with keeping a drawing journal, despite challenges! When my son was born in 2015, I couldn’t draw for the first 2 years of being a parent…I also couldn’t draw when we got married and was jealous of the the brown boy‘s constant talent! And some other times I was just lazy….
It’s always such a struggle to make time for improving my drawing skills and the craft of storytelling through drawing.
Like most hobbies there are few overlaps with my professional skills, but it’s the need for creation and expression that has persisted throughout. Some wise person once said it’s almost like you are the channel through which the expression manifests…and it sometimes does feel like that.
As a creative individual this is the practice that has helped to hone my creative voice, and as a human being the journals have helped me make sense of daily life and the constant reinvention we go through over the years.
Here’s an excerpt from an older press story:
For Basu, journaling is a process of making life. She shared with us that through these “letters for her future self” she “often remember(s) forgotten wishes and goals or events” that shaped her. It’s delightful to stroll through the worries and victories of her daily life. One can trace the arc of the conversation the young designer has had with herself over the years and feel like a confidential encounter has taken place.
So here’s to more drawing, more feedback and commentary from friends and well-wishers who see me drawing in real life – and onwards to 2020!
inktales 