drawing, Life, sketchbook

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)

Life, sketchbook

A peek into my January sketchbook

Nothing special, just the banal musings of my daily life.

sketchbook

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.}

art, Books, illustration, Life, List, sketchbook

My best books of 2021

Last year I didn’t read as much as I usually do, what with one thing and another, but I ended up with some good ones. Here are the highlights.

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman: Recommended by pacificleo, it was one of my best books of the year.

Voices of Dissent by Romila Thapar: This essay puts today’s responses to resistance in perspective, by charting out the history and evolution of dissent from the vedic times. A worthwhile read, even though the language was quite academic. (If you buy from Seagull, you can choose your version of the cover, designed by the brilliant sunandinibee.)

Among graphic novels, I read some beauties: Japanese Notebooks: A Journey to the Empire of Signs by Igort, The Winter of the Cartoonists by Paco Roca, Hostage by Guy Delisle, Leonard Cohen: On a Wire by Pilippe Girard and some more that I shared in Graphic novels by women.

Last year I also updated my perspective on feminism with We should all be Feminists by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie and Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria.

Some other books that I enjoyed were Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing, Daybook by Anne Pruitt and The Pursuit of Art by Martin Gayford.

In fiction The Startup Wife by Tahmina Anam was enjoyable and different, as was Crudo by Olivia Laing and No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.

Our best pastime was drawing with Making Comics by Lynda Barry that Guto and I used throughout the year.

I thought I hadn’t read much, but now I’m getting tired just looking at this list. Oh well, life is short, and my eyes won’t last.

Life, sketchbook

Facts & Lies

There’s a game we play at work, called Facts and lies, which goes like this: you have to share three things about yourself that others may not know, and the others have to guess which one is a lie.

I played this with our teams in India and in the States –

So, what did you think? Leave a comment below / send an email.

sketchbook

Sleep is such a luxury

Life, sketchbook

A life’s achievement

life

[Soo: Do you think I’ll ever achieve anything in my life?

Anteater: Hmm. Why don’t you? Why doesn’t everybody?]

sketchbook

Back again

I never left drawing, but I did find it difficult to share drawings after my pregnancy. Not sure where that came from. Was it a loss of self, a disconnect from the past, a need for solitude?

Perhaps I’ll never know for sure. But here’s the latest sketchbook: