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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

Rant For Today: Breeding Ethics

A non-developmental series of models made for medical science. Click for more info and the credit and all that.

Now here is a sensible blog post about breeding by Duchess.

It actually has citations from proper articles. It even the mentions a girl doing a PhD on the subject of the ethics of breeding. Unlike me, who can never be bothered to track down research and cite shit. I am too lazy to do any more than have an incoherent rant. This entire blog is one huge, incoherent rant.

I must confess I particularly enjoyed the timid disclaimer at the bottom about how the PhD girl who is writing about breeding morality loves children and isn’t having a go at any breeders. That made me snicker a little, the idea that there was a need for that disclaimer.

The article linked within the post from the New Yorker was also a very interesting read.

The size of your family helps determine how the world of the future will look. (Credit the New Yorker)

‘The case against kids: Is procreation immoral?’ Elizabeth Kolbert, 2012. in The New Yorker.

“In “Why Have Children?: The Ethical Debate” (M.I.T. Press), Christine Overall tries to subject that decision to morally rigorous analysis. Overall, who teaches philosophy at Queen’s University, in Ontario, dismisses the notion that childbearing is “natural” and therefore needs no justification.

“There are many urges apparently arising from our biological nature that we nonetheless should choose not to act upon,” she observes. If we’re going to keep having kids, we ought to be able to come up with a reason.”

I had a huge argument with a friend of the ex’s back in Bombay last December. We met him and his now fiancée at this hotel near the airport for dinner (Don’t know why we chose a place near the airport. The airport is in the middle of nowhere, the food was so-so and was massively over priced). We got into a heated debate over our Paan Pasand flavoured Shesha, or perhaps even a sequence of debates.

The first one was about breeding dogs to develop or enhance certain genetic traits. (I’m totally against this. It seems cruel and unnecessary to actively cultivate a squashed pug nose if that nose results in limited or poor ability to breathe.)

Or those genetically bred cows that have so much muscle (It’s for people who want really lean, low-fat meat) that they can’t even have sex without a human manually having to inserting the bull’s penis. Here I’ve even attached an article. See? I’m being so good and almost semi-researched. Maybe I should do a PhD.

This argument then morphed into:

“If you know you and your partner both have a high chance of passing on a debilitating genetic condition to any offspring would you still have a baby?”

I’d like to say that I presented a good defence of the ‘No’ stance, but some of his arguments (especially no.4 below) were so maddening that after a point I just got enraged and incoherent. Also the ex was on my left, acting like an atrocious little troll, constantly interrupting rudely in trying to change the subject and derail the debate. The ex doesn’t enjoy debates.

So this guy’s response to the question above was “Yes” and these were the core reasons listed below (My arguments underneath)

Venus in Flames. Click for info about this Votive drawing on the Wellcome collection. (and the artist credits and stuff)

1.

“All procreation carries some risk.”

Of course it does. What a redundant point. Everything we ever do carries risk. Walking across a street carries risk. But most people also have the capacity to assess the risk and make an informed decision based on that assessment.

If there is a high risk when running across a train track when the signal is red that you will get hit, then most people would avoid running across a train track. I don’t see why this wouldn’t apply to breeding. In fact I should think this should especially apply to breeding in the circumstances mentioned above.

“Dark-skinned” pregnant doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum. Click through for more info from the blog I nicked it from.

2.

“Doctors don’t know everything and can’t predict the outcome accurately. Even if they tell you the chances of this kid having a horrific incurable condition is high, like a 50/50 chance. Even if its 80%. Even if its 99.9%. They can’t know everything. So I’d have this kid anyway and take that 0.01% chance.”

What an idiot.

Again, sure part of the statement is true to a degree. (Doctors don’t know everything.) However it is also insane.

Firstly doctors don’t claim to know everything. They are presenting you with the chances of a certain outcome that you are free to then take or leave. However their inaccuracy will be a good deal less inaccurate than yours.

Secondly if using the logic above, you refuse to listen to a professional who may have spent a several years studying to give you solutions, why bother going to see a doctor at all? Just visit a Homeopath. Or a yogi. Just as good. In fact better – You’ll won’t have to think about the risks at all – They’ll tell you to pray harder, swallow a special herbal remedy when the Moon is in Vishnu and everything will be just dandy.

But reading between the lines here’s what I think this guy was actually saying,

“I’m willing to take the risk, even if it’s very high because the person who would suffer the most is this child but that’s ok because what I want is a baby and getting what I want is more important to me and besides I can easily rationalise it.”

In fact if he just said that I’d be fine with the whole thing. I’d still think he was a selfish, amoral, butthead but at least he’d be an honest one. This whole ‘I’m bringing a child into the world for its benefit and the benefit of the world’ is such a crock of shit. I want to vomit every time some deluded breeder or to-be breeder says it. (Unlike the Duchess I have no disclaimer)

Wood carved fetus model set (circa 1877) - Toyota Collection. Click through for more info from the blog I nicked it from.

3.

“Existing but being in incredible pain is better than not existing at all.”

I couldn’t even be bothered to argue this at dinner. It’s too … exhausting. Non existing creatures won’t care that they don’t exist. Plus creating something when you know it will suffer (and not in the existential angsty sort of way, while listening to a Morrissey album, but really suffer.) seems like nothing short of torture to me.

I think this guy had religious leanings. People with religious leanings never seem to mind creating things that will suffer. They have a million ways of justifying it. So that’s always a dead-end. I stopped bothering with it a while ago. Religion I mean. If I’m going to argue about fiction I’d rather it was a debate about The Hobbit and whether Gandalf was a bit gay. (I think he might have been)

Image from the Wellcome collection "Draw your own votive". Click through for the story behind it on the Wellcome collection. (and the artist credits and stuff)

4.

“I’d love this child. My love would be better than it having good health.”

Actual statement. I’m not even paraphrasing.

Oh yes yes of course, your love would compensate for all this baby suffers even though you chose to procreate in the face of medical advice, even though you could have adopted. What a saint.

He then presented us with 2 theoretical situations:

One a baby is born to a large but poor family. They neglect the child and probably they won’t be able to give him/her any of the good things in life but this kid would be totally healthy.

Or two, a baby is born to this genetically dodge couple, he has a terrible incurable chronic illness and disability but his parents would really, really love it and give it whatever it wanted.

If you had the power to decide into which family this baby would be born which would you choose?

Even the ex who normally NEVER agrees with me picked the first option. Who the fuck wouldn’t?? I’d imagine that most parents just want their kids to be born healthy.

This particular argument really blew my mind. The sheer deluded arrogance of it. The amazing selfishness. My love will conquer all. Even genetic illness. Even suffering. I mean seriously. Who does this guy think he is? Mother Teresa?

Even now, months after this dinner my mind reels.

Drawings of pregnancy to guide clinical examination. Click for more info & credits. The grossly distended tummy over the vagina in last image makes me feel a bit queasy.

“Benatar’s case rests on a critical but, in his view, unappreciated asymmetry. Consider two couples, the A’s and the B’s. The A’s are young, healthy, and rich. If they had children, they could give them the best of everything—schools, clothes, electronic gaming devices. Even so, we would not say that the A’s have a moral obligation to reproduce.

The B’s are just as young and rich. But both have a genetic disease, and, were they to have a child together, that child would suffer terribly. We would say, using Benatar’s logic, that the B’s have an ethical obligation not to procreate.

The case of the A’s and the B’s shows that we regard pleasure and pain differently. Pleasure missed out on by the nonexistent doesn’t count as a harm. Yet suffering avoided counts as a good, even when the recipient is a nonexistent one.”

I’m totally on board with this Bentar guy. In fact I wish he was with me at this dinner. Just him, his huge thesis (not a euphemism) and his beautiful logic.

The ex was very annoyed about this entire debate and refused to take part, except by trying to stop it by occasionally yelling at me. (Being the incredibly rude person the ex is).

For once though I was perfectly happy to comply and wrap the thing up. (It wasn’t going anywhere this debate, although I did get quite annoyed when the ex was being particularly trollish. We were both sitting there hissing at each other now and then.) but the ex’s friend really wanted to carry on. He just wouldn’t drop it. The ex lectured me all the way home. I didn’t pay any attention.

In other news, I just got back from holiday in the Caribbean. I feel terribly smug.

I’m brown as a nut and looking more like an Indian than I’ve looked in ages.

So I’m asking Punjab to send over a crate of Fair & Lovely. It seems to be all the rage these days. 

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.

High Tea or The Picnic: Picking Up Where I Left Off

Work in Progress with Jonathan Ross playing on my laptop

This isn’t a new piece. In fact it’s been lying around incomplete in my folder for ages.

I stopped drawing for nearly a year. Not sure why. I just was reading a lot of Barbara Cartlands mostly. Inhaling them like they were cocaine, (Just to be clear I don’t, haven’t and won’t ever inhale real cocaine. I don’t approve of anything stuck up anyones nose after the time my brother got a red crayon stuck up his and I laughed so hard I cried) and I suppose I took a sabbatical.

I wish I was a kept woman (like some people I know), then all I’d do is draw all day. But I imagine that system only works if you’re willing to breed or happen to be a good housekeeper. One thing is certain: I am neither willing to breed nor can I housekeep.

So I’ve picked it up where I left off. Sometimes my focus wavers a little. I come home from work and find myself frittering away 2 hours on the interweb.

It’s been quite frustrating drawing on this desk. Right now the desk is smaller than the drawing. Paint brushes roll off it, pens drop off it, my ear phone cables keep getting yanked. Nothing fits on it and painting in certain places that don’t fit on the table (like the corners) are a right pain.

I have to turn the paper vertically and move the desk and chair back so the drawing isn’t rammed into the wall. The ex keeps yelling that I’m taking up too much room – It’s both aggravating and uncomfortable. There is a lot of huffing and puffing now and then.

Do other people have these problems? How do they cope? Is it just me?

I’ve developed a serious case of ‘desk-envy’. People post pictures of their desk – Spacious tables with place for their printers, scanners, pen holders, brush holders. Plants! What seems like the height of luxury to me now.

Regardless of these small, trifling difficulties and my complaints (At least I haven’t lost my ear or gotten syphilis from a life-model) I’ve resolved to finish all my incomplete work before I start anything new (So hard!)

That includes the first 2 Goddesses and this one. Then I can start some other ones.

Nearly there! I just need to paint all the tables white and maybe touch up the sky.

Trying to finish it tonight or tomorrow.

Alrighty, back I go to the discomfort desk.

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

Rape Rick Finished

Rape Rick Final (I scanned it before I stuck the sequins on, as they won’t scan)

So I’ve finished the Rape Rick at last.

By the by, in case you were curious as to why I drew this, please read this post here.

The reason it took so long is that I sort of lost interest half way through making it and it stalled for ages.

Partly because of that app project which started eating into my evening hours as it wound up to a close. (Which I ought to post about at some point but I’m scared that people might find my blog via it. Is that paranoid? Can people do that? I don’t know but I’m nervous.)

Then I started setting up my shops and put up the Enthu Cutlet & Indian woman prints.

I was discussing this with the Fourth A, who is simultaneously doing a PhD, a jewelry class, house-hold DIY and also plans to open a chaddie (underwear) business.

I said she needs to focus more.

So do I. I also need better time management. I spend too much time faffing around instead of knuckling down and just finishing a project. I have 4/5 other projects and drawings that are half-finished. I need to make a list and tackle them one by one, and not start anything new until they are done and dusted. (Mighty last words!)

I had a wretched time painting the Rape rick. The first coat of yellow came out too wishy-washy.

Then I coloured in the black lines and promptly smudged it accidentally. So I had to paint the white again and add another coat of yellow.

So I did a second coat. Then I thought it might be too flat so I added some orange.

Too much orange I think

Then I wanted a gradient so I added more orange on the 4th coat. (I know, madness)

Then I started painting all the leaves and flowers, until on review I decided it was now far too orange so I spent the better part of 2 evenings fixing the orange back to the yellow.

Then I needed to re-paint all the flowers and leaves. Argh!

However I think the chrome yellow is a marked improvement. It had to be done.

Then I scanned it all in, and then finally stuck on the sequins. I love these sequins. The glitter didn’t work on the heavily painted yellow acrylic but I had bought the rhinestones you get to stick to bling up mobile phones and those worked really well. I’m dying to glitter something else up.

You can’t tell from the scan, but the flowers also have gold glitter on them. The text is also coloured in with a red glitter pen, and the thick black lines with a black glitter pen. The glitter pens are quite subtle. When you move you see it glinting.

Penis Close up

Text & Sequins Close up

Girl Close up

Rape Rick Photo

Rape Rick Sequins

I also bought a Gouache set recently, in a fit of New Years stationary madness, that I’m now beginning to slightly regret.

I keep putting my hand on the paper before the paint has dried. Or dropping water on it.

Or even ash if I’m smoking and painting.

Even my ear phones are now covered in yellow and orange since I’ve been watching TV on my laptop while I paint and the wires tend to drag over my palette.

So I don’t know why I bought the Gouache set. (Gouache will move if you add water. Acrylics once dry, set solid.) All that will happen is that I’ll make an unholy mess all over the place. At least acrylics don’t shift once they’re dry.

God painting is so hard. I have no idea what I’m doing.