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Gola Featured on Mumbai Boss

Hey Peoples,

Was featured on Mumbai Boss! Yay

How sweet is that?

Speaking of sweet there is a free worldwide shipping offer on at Society6.

Go buy some Kala Khatta Stuff now.

http://mumbaiboss.com/2012/04/25/the-good-buy-kala-khatta-gola-laptop-skin/

Goodbye Twitter. Hello Pinterest

My Pinterest Boards

Not satisfied with the scores of social media sites I’ve signed up to I’m now also on Pinterest.

Unlike Twitter, which I never really committed to (I’m a visual person, besides all those hash tags are annoying.) I have only 3 Pinterest boards: one for Arty-Farty stuff, a Home one and my work one. So I’m certain I can commit to updating them regularly.

I have also created another blog called 10 Years of Mediocre Photography where I’ll be posting 1 photo a day until I run out, which given my happy-go-lucky trigger finger is unlikely to happen until I die.

I’m starting off with all my black and white photos I took and developed in our college darkroom at Camberwell, then I’m afraid it’s largely digital.

The rubbish Motorola Razr phone camera first then on to the surprisingly decent Sony Ericsson phone /camera and after we’ve got through all those finally we’ll get to my new camera. God knows when I’ll get to those. I have bucket loads of photos. 

Camberwell was a marginally shoddy college however they had a great black and white darkroom that was open till 9:30 every evening. Having no social life at the time (it was a really anti social 2 years) I spent nearly all evenings in the darkroom.

Can’t say my photos are particularly good, but I like a couple. I do miss developing film. I miss the smell of darkroom chemicals (oddly like fried chicken), I miss watching your photo develop in the tray but it was a pretty expensive hobby.

There is a great photographic supply shop in Southwark called Silverprint where I used to buy lots of discount photographic paper.

I also used to buy cyanotype chemicals (toxic stuff but handy) from there and make up a batch in my tiny student hall room. (No gloves used either. Health & Safety? What’s that?)

Chest X-Ray Cyanotype

If you don’t know what a Cyanotype is, it’s very similar to a photogram.

You coat a piece of paper with this greenish chemical mix, but unlike a photogram this coating is only sensitive to UV light.

So it’s something you can easily do in your room as long as it has a window facing the sun or a sunny balcony.

Once your paper has been exposed to UV light, you then rinse it in water to develop the print and set the chemical coating.

The coating looks dark green once exposed but after the water bath it turns a vivid blue. You can also make these in a warm sepia tone. I’ve found the cheaper the paper (higher acidity) used the better the print quality.

Skull Cyanotype

The only way I could make these was by taping the piece of coated paper to my student hall room window for a couple of hours and the only thing I had that would stay up that long were a series of X-Rays. (Now and then I’d find the masking tape had worn off and the X-Ray and coated paper would fall off)

Some are mine, some are from various family members.

Hands Cyanotype

The London 2012 Olympics

I’d like to get right to the heart of the upcoming olympics and say a few unpoetic, yet pertinent words, through that powerful medium the poster.

The London 2012 Olympics

Fuck the Olympics, Fuck the tube delays, Fuck the huge waste of money, Fuck the swimming team, Fuck the canoeists team, Fuck the curling team, Fuck the horse jumping team, Fuck the yachting team, Fuck the rowing team, Fuck the javelin, Fuck the shot put, Fuck the discus, Fuck the hurdles, Fuck the long jump, the short jump and the high jump, Fuck the opening event, Fuck the Olympic committee, Fuck the sponsors, Fuck the McCartney ‘designed’ slutty outfits that look like the bottom half will ride up all the athletes butts, Fuck the shitty advertising (except the illustrated tube posters. Those are rather good), Fuck the crappy logo designed by a group of morons trying to be ‘street’, Fuck the athletes going on talk shows to constantly bore us with their ‘training schedule’ stories, Like anyone gives a crap, Fuck the sponsors, Fuck the mascots, Fuck the raise in prices, Fuck the cuts to the arts, Fuck the BS, Fuck it. All of it.

Drawings for Your Boobs

I tried submitting my Gola print to this T-shirt company.

They didn’t want that but liked the font, so asked if I could do some lyrics or quotes in that font.

I really HATE having text that some company has decided represents them stretched across my breasts. I don’t know why so many desi companies think this is a good idea. Stuff that some idiot will tilt his head 45 degrees trying to read.

But what the heck! I figured I’d do it anyway. This lyrics/quotes thing is a bit cheese-balls for my taste but I decided to treat it like it was a challenge (or a procrastination opportunity from my work) to make it interesting for myself somehow.

And on the plus side, if it does get approved, maybe some day I’ll be reading lyrics I picked off someone else’s boobs.  (Whee!)

The chosen theme was ‘Summer’. So I choose the only 2 lyrics I could think of (see below), because all the quotes I found on the internet just were just way too poncy to write on a tee.

Stuff like

“A life without love is like a year without summer.”

You can’t wear that on your boobs!

Paul Weller Weller Weller HUH!

I like to sing this to myself now and then. Mostly I sing the Adam Buxton version.

I did think about Zombie Nazi Penises while I was drawing it though.

I know, I know.

I know.

My ex M.A teachers would be so disappointed in me.

But I rather enjoyed drawing it. Soothing. Un-confrontational. No rape. No bird people. All nice, all happy.

Now I really need to get cracking on my 2012 Drawing To Do list that is nearly as long as my arm.

First things on the list.

1. Finish certain incomplete parts of Arsonist’s Ball.

I sometimes get bored just before the end of a drawing and then it lies with tiny parts incomplete for ages.

2. Scan Picnic & Goddesses.

3. Make Olympic’s poster.

Coming soon.

Kala Khatta Gola

Kala Khatta Gola

I once ate 5 of these one after another.

I couldn’t speak the next day.

But god they are delicious.

So I bought some ice lolly cases on Ebay and made the concentrate from the Rasna packet.

The ice lollies are pretty good, but the texture is just not quite like the real thing.

Business Card: Round 2

Ok here we go. Round 2.

I did this vector thing when I was re-designing my website.

That all went to shit. I mean, Flash is like, so over man.

Also it was a head-ache to update. So I took it down.

Then I stopped paying Streamline.net because their customer service sucks and only newcomers get the good deals while everyone else gets shafted.

So I have this vector thing I might as well make use of it on my card, since it’s kind of relevant.

Yellow is cheerful no?

I probably will never use these, but it’s good practice designing them.

Text Arrangement 1. Centered

Text Arrangement 2. Can't decide.

Back card 2

My Business Card

Business card 85x55 Front Final

I occasionally enjoy designing a business card for myself.

I’m not sure why. I never use them, even the ones my work hands out. (My boss told they’d be printing out fewer cards for me this year after I told them I’d been using my business cards as roach material.)

I suppose I like to indulge in the vague illusion that I am running a business.

I’m not. Drawing is a pleasurable hobby. As soon as I try turning it into a business for business’s sake I lose interest and it just galls me.

The ex only recently grasped this. The ex is constantly telling me to sell out and make loads of money – As though money will just rain down on an illustrator who likes to draw things like this or this or this.

I need to draw cute things, happy-happy-joy-joy things, to sell well. I don’t mind, I secretly follow ‘cute’ artists. You know the ones – They draw cats and flowers and pretty girly dolls. Shit like that. But I don’t think I’d enjoy that all the time.

I also enjoy the even vaguer fantasy that I will go around handing out my business cards at social functions or parties. I really should you know, but :

1. I never remember to take them with me until the details are out of date.
2. Even if I do remember to take them, I stuff them somewhere so the edges get scuffed. Then I feel too ashamed to hand them out with scuff marks.
3. I’ve never noticed an opening in a conversation which has ever prompted me to say;

“Oh, really? Well here, let me just give you my business card…”

I need all my grit just to make it though the polite chit-chat at social events much less be suave enough to be handing out business cards willy-nilly like some smooth operator.

I never took to freelance (For somewhat just reasons.) I’m in a country that is trying very hard to squash all small businesses, and immigrant businesses in particular. This is a country really determined to give immigrants the boot while freely handing out dole money left-right-and-center like it’s candy. (If you are British, have the right pair of ovaries and the will to breed, I mean really breed, you need never work again.)

So there is no way you can realistically support yourself on a freelance illustrators salary nor any way that it will enable you to get a visa to stay and work. Nor do I have a safety net out here if I fail to make ends meet month by month.

Additionally I do not enjoy uncertainties. I don’t enjoy them in my reading material (Barbara Cartlands‘ for example, have guaranteed happy endings, however improbable they might be.) and I certainly don’t enjoy them in my life.

Freelancing is all about uncertainties. Will you get any work this month? Will you even get paid?

A full-time job is slightly restrictive, and will most likely eat into your personal project time but you can be sure you will at least get a salary at the end of the every month. (Unless you get fired)

Perhaps if I was in Bombay I might do this. Go freelance I mean. I’d be living with my folks, so I wouldn’t starve or be homeless, I’d just have no junketing around money.

Which would be fine because without Riddhi & Leo I hardly have any real friends left in Bombay.

(Leo is in London and Riddhi is in New York. Shanaya & Mads, my college buds, are also in London. Various other people are also abroad or I’ve lost touch with them because they may not be as ruthlessly active online and as hopelessly inept offline as I am.)

Most of the people who come to the garden come as orbiting satellites to Riddhi’s Death Star. I merely bask in her warm, Death Star glow while she is around.

So here is the back of the card. I wish I knew a way that I could make the QR code on the right actually make the user’s phone download a VCF card with my details on it (I’m sure there is one but I haven’t figured it out yet.)

Right now the QR code would just take you to my Society6 Shop. (If you have a smart phone you need to download a QR scanner app.)

Although I think QR codes are a bit of a hassle and slightly useless.

Back final. QR code for my Society6 Shop

I Got Picked For An Etsy Treasury!

I’m not exactly sure what that is but it feels exciting.

It’s also always nice to be picked for things.

Etsy Treasury Link. Click here.

The theme is ‘Keep it Green’

They have some cool stuff.

Reminder!

BBQ framed in white. Quite nice I like white. I'm usually quite conservative with frames. I go with walnut or black.

Someone found my blog by typing in

i am sad for no reason

Wow.

I mean what more can be said?

Although, what does that say about this blog, hmm?

Reminder: Only 2 days left for free world-wide shipping!

Free Shipping offer ends 29 Jan 2012!

Burn that date into your memory.

Just 2 measly days to decide on which print/skin/Tshirt you could buy from my shop, that would change your life forever!

Ok so it probably won’t change your life much, except that visitors to your house (should you hang it there) would turn to you and say,

“Oh my god, what is that drawing?? And why are there so many naked bird people? That’s a little weird.”

Which could be highly entertaining for you.

You could also hang it in your loo or a corridor, or if you really liked it your living room.

Aren’t I being good?

Plugging it and shit.

I feel so business like and professional.

GO GO GO GO GO NOW! There is no time like the now! Click here.

Who likes to pay for shipping anyway? Waste of money. Seriously.

Fishy iPhone Case/Skin

Indian Woman – Prints and Skins

Indian Woman Portrait Print

Prints! Skins! Good shit! The T-shirt! Go on! Click here! 

This is the final version of a little drawing from my sketch book.

I scanned in the line drawing, converted it to a vector shape in Illustrator and then imported it into Photoshop to colour it in.

I find working in Illustrator nearly impossible and extremely frustrating. I don’t understand why they can’t allow you to use the same tools and method as you do in Photoshop to create and edit vector shapes. Illustrator is so fucking non-intuitive.

I just use it for the bare minimum and then do the rest in Photoshop. I also got some textures from my favourite texture repository Lost and Taken just for good measure and used them for the background. They took a week of fiddling about, leaving it, looking at it later, then some more fiddling to get it right.

I’ve not been as prolific with my sketch book as I should be.

My rape rick drawing stalled after 2 weeks because that app project (which has been going on for over a year) finally reached its long overdue climax. Even though the client made various attempts to impede progress by changing their mind constantly. (Sigh. I can’t even bear to go into it.)

So my bosses said the other say that they wanted to have a chat with me.

“Uhm…is this a good chat or a bad chat?”

I felt dubious about this so-called ‘chat’.

“No no it’s a good chat, to discuss your work and stuff.”

“Oh good, as long as I’m not getting fired…”

They said they were very pleased that of all the people in the office I stay behind and work late and want to reward me so I keep it up etc etc.

I said since it wasn’t going to a bad chat we could have it when I come back from my holiday.

The ex said I was a dolt and I should have had the chat right then and there. The ex is constantly collaring the bosses to ‘chat’ about the ex’s inevitable world domination.

That’s all very well (working late and so on), but my illustration is being severely impeded by all this enthuness in the work department. I’ve been too tired when I come home to pick up the illustration slack even though I’ve populated my shop and have been doing stuff like this. (Digital illustration I mean)

Indian Woman iPhone Skin. I don't know how many people want flowery lotus breasts on the back of their phone. Should I remove them?

I’m rather pleased with myself for colouring this in digitally. All the shapes inside the woman are vectors, so she can be stretched to fit nearly any format.

I also wanted her to be printable on colour T-shirts (I don’t know how colour prints turn out on pre-coloured T’s). So there’s a black and white line version for the green, red, blue and yellow T-shirts.  I think I’m going to buy this or the red one.

Indian Woman Line T-Shirt

Indian Woman Unisex sweatshirt

Indian Woman Laptop Skin

Then I was so carried away I even created a landscape version for the Laptop skins. (Which I rather preferred in the end to the portrait so I made some prints of those too.) It it cuts the boobs in half so they don’t seem so…uh…booby.

I could probably change the letter in the circle. I dunno.

Indian Woman Landscape Print

Ooof so much effort! Reward me by promoting me, pretty please!