cinnamon*lime

It probably doesn't happen often but the UN made my day today..

2007-06-07T19:01:00.000+08:00

I just read this post about the cleanliness drive in Chattisgarh a tribal distric of India where everyone, traditionally, does their (excretion) business out in the bush. They're obviously (and its about time) cracking down on the practice now. This last sentence really cracked me up:

"To tackle this resistance, villages like Shankarpur and Shyampur in Bastar and Chatouna in Raipur decided to fine villagers who continued to practice open defecation and it has even been implemented with vigour in Bastar, where the Collector, Mr Ganesh Shankar Mishra, himself made surprise checks and penalised villagers."

I had this mental image of an official looking guy (in a white shirt, khaki shorts and old-time hunting cap) jumping out from behind a bush at some poor unsuspecting guy squatting under a tree (just innocently doing his business) and assailing him with the unicef's cleanliness policies. Picture of the look on the perp's face: priceless.
I made a quick little doodle but my camera battery's not co-operating so I'll try posting it tomorrow.

The very lonely princess..

2007-06-01T06:37:00.001+08:00

Entry for the Illustration Friday topic Cars. Except its only one car..

When I read the topic the first thing that came to mind was trees as highways with cars driving along branches and treetrunks and resting on leaves (like ants foraging except with cars instead of ants...). However, on deliberating the matter further I settled on classic fairy tale style. Very gender specific I hear you say? Well its a fairy tale with a twist, the princess gets tired of waiting for the knights and drives down the tree and off to new adventures. Well she couldn't keep honking and flicking her headlights forever you know, batteries aren't inexhaustible! Besides there's a 10'o'clock curfew at the royal garage. Click on the image and go to 'view all sizes' to read the narrative.
Illustration done on paper with watercolour pencils and then..-watered. Apologies for the wonky'ness of the image, I don't have a scanner so I used a digital camera to upload it!

Back again! (With a bug-y favicon!!)

2007-05-15T19:04:00.000+08:00

Its 11:05 PM here (in New Zealand) and I just thought I'd put up a quick post. I've been trying to change the little icon (a 'favicon'-word of the day!) up there in the URL bar of my page. I've turned it into an abstract (butterfly-like) shape. The code seems to have some bugs in it though, sometimes it shows up, sometimes the blogger favicon shows up, and sometimes the internet explorer default shows up... I wonder if the butterfly is visible to anyone else? (Perhaps it only exists in my head.. :O)

In case anyone wants to know, this is how I did it:

Step 1: I found this really nice tutorial on making abstract shapes in Adobe Illustrator through Smashing Magazine.

Step 2: Played around a bit with the advice in the tutorial and finally settled on one I liked.

Step 3: Then I found this lovely tutorial on how to make a favicon in Photoshop and used it to turn the butterfly shape into a favicon.

Step4: I then uploaded the favicon to my flickr address (tried uploading it to myfavatar as suggested here but that didn't work because of glitches in the site. So I just reconfigured the code so kindly provided one the same page to accomodate a flickr image. And voila! I have a favicon! (Well.. in most browsers anyway... supposedly IE6 can't see png files or favicons in general...) Anyway I'll be pottering around tweaking things and hopefully changing the blog for the better!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!/ Happy Holidays!

2006-12-25T11:47:00.000+08:00

Going home for the holidays

2006-12-23T10:33:00.000+08:00

Yay! I finally submitted my thesis yesterday! Its such a load off! I've been in the lab till ubsurdly late hours these past few weeks! My colour pencils and drawing books are all gone (the movers've been through and the house is almost empty) so I drew this sketch on a bit a packing paper they left behind :) Its called 'Going home for the holidays'!
Happy holidays everyone!

I've been meaning to draw this one for a while 'cuz of this documentary I saw about elephants in the Andaman and Nicobar (or was it Daman and Dui?) islands of the coast of South India. People there actually go from island to island on the backs of elephants! It was amazing seeing how graceful and light those great pachderms seemed in the water! And the water was so crystal clear it seemed just as if they were flying!
So I've drawn the elephants flying home to their island and happily gambolling in the sea. (Junior seems to have dropped Grandpa, but that's alright its all water below... ;)

No new posts for a while...

2006-12-08T09:41:00.001+08:00

I haven't posted in weeks and likely won't be posting till the new year. I've been busy working on my thesis. So for ppl that actually check on this blog from time to time (thanks for all the support!) no new posts in the next few weeks guys, sorry about that!
Take care and happy holidays!

Thanksgiving for Illustration Friday

2006-11-19T18:35:00.000+08:00

I offer thanks for every living creature that has escaped a cruel fate at the hands of humanity.

Asian bears (such as the malaysian sun bear and the himalyan black bear) are particularly threatened by the use of bear gall bladder extract in traditional chinese medicine. The bears are captured, kept in small rusty cages and a metal pipe is stabbed into their body to extract their bile. They are in continuous pain because of the pipe and the subsequent bacterial infections they get and often chew their own paws off in agony.

....I'm so sorry bringing up all this sad stuff during your Thaksgiving holiday. Its just... I feel so sad and helpless when I see stuff like this, and there's fabulists like Mr. Make-believe here that only have to open their mouths to make things worse.

Thankfully there are sane people out there (www.wildaid.org and www.wspca.org) that are making a difference. Please, please, please If you know anyone that makes use of this stuff tell them NOTHING extracted from an animal is going to have any medicinal effect because it is protein, which means its made up of the SAME amino acids you get from all the other food you eat. Plus it gets broken down by the acid in your stomach so fat chance its going to retain whatever magical medicinal property its supposed to possess!
Sigh...
Rant over. Thank you for your patience!

'Clear' for Illustration Friday

2006-11-12T19:42:00.000+08:00

"Are you happy there?"

"Yes, very."

"What do you do all day?"

"Watch things.. On a clear day I can see right up to the Antennae Galaxies..."

Done in Artgrip Aquarelle. I don't have a scanner so I just took a picture of it and uploaded that onto the computer. Sorry it isn't very clear...

SMOKE for Illustration Friday

2006-11-05T11:25:00.000+08:00

There's this antique shop called Shang's Antiques near Tanglin that we sometimes drop in on during our weekend walks. There's this lovely, venerable old boxer (he's 15 years old which makes him a 105 in dog time!) there who always lies near this 12th Century Ganesh statue near the door. The dog recognizes us and always wags his tail sort of feebly (he's too old to get up, he used to get up but he just can't now... he recognizes us though!).
The owner usually places flowers and offerings and things in front of that Ganesh (Ganpati/ Ganesh is the remover of obstacles).

I've drawn Ganesh reaching through the smoke (from the incense sticks) to pet the dog (because he's such a faithful and loyal and dependable GOOD dog!).

In the background are other antiquities, statues and textiles from the shop.

Done in aquarelle pencils and then painted with a wet brush.

New Foodie Blog up and running!

2006-10-30T22:18:00.000+08:00

I've started a new foodie blog, eventually I aim to feature recipies and short video snippets, but since I'm busy with work at the moment, its just going to be pictures of the food I make everyday. Enjoy!

P.S click on the title to go to the foodie blog (components listed there)

'Wind' for Illustration Friday

2006-10-29T22:16:00.000+08:00

Submission for Illustration Friday. This week's topic is 'wind'

I remember back home in Pune (somehow this happened more frequently when I was little) there were these tiny (at the most as tall as an adult) localized wind currents that just went round and round. Some people were scared of them saying they were spirits and suchlike.

They're actually just localized temperature differences that cause warm air to rush in causing a sort of vacuum funnel that makes everything swirl around it picking up leaves, dust and topsoil. Very cool! I remember an old mickey mouse cartoon based on one of those. It was a 'baby' tornado and it tormented Mickey for no reason... heheh.

Havn't had much time for extra-curricular stuff lately, been busy at lab and working on my thesis.

I hand drew Whoopy and then took a picture with my camera and uploaded it. The little tornado type thing I drew on Illustrator then coloured the leaves in Painter and put the whole thing into Photoshop and put an 'old b/w photo' filter on it.

HAPPY DIWALI!

2006-10-21T23:54:00.000+08:00

Diwali is the Indian festival of lights. To make a long story short: A long, long, LOOOOONG time ago an indian king destroyed a demon that was terrorizing the subcontinental neighbourhood. The people celebrated with lights and firecrackers. The tradition continues to this day. Why? Because burning/ exploding things is fun! This is what humans like to do!
Seriously though, I prefer the family get togethers and stuffing yourself with sweets and snacks part of Diwali. The firecracker exploding part is just a pain in the ... er eardrum!
Unfortunately, I'm stuck in Singapore this Diwali. I was going to post a 'Diwali' themed illustration but havn't had time (was at lab till 8pm today, despite the fact that its a public holiday and ITS DIWALI!)

So without further ado, here's my Illustration Friday submission for the week. I call it missing me hurts you/ afraid to forget you. Its not meant to be scary or anything! :)

Here's the origianl version, I added the one above because apparantly Whoopy doesn't show up on some screens in her avatar below! :)

'Smitten!' for Illustration Friday

2006-10-15T15:40:00.000+08:00

This incident actually occured way back when Whoopy was just a 'kid'. I was walking her and we came across a man with a Dalmatian. Noble was the only word for that dog. He was absolutely beautiful, just regal! And he'd won a lot of prizes at various dog shows because he was so well trained. The owner demonstrated for us by giving him the 'freeze' command. The dog just went completely immobile, even though Whoopy was sniffing and snuffling and leaping all around him! He did'nt even twitch his nose! And then... just for an instant I saw his eyeball follow her just for a few seconds, and it nearly broke my heart! Poor thing! He did so want to play but... Guess you don't get to be an award winning dog for nothing!

Please click on the picture to view other sizes.

'TROUBLE' for Illustration Friday

2006-10-13T08:49:00.000+08:00

Illustration for Illustration Friday's topic for the week: Trouble!

I used to own a Vespa style scooterette and my spaniel Woopy loved riding on the feet rest space. I believe,that in her mind, she was the one driving! She used to look up at me and give me her goofy smile, "Enjoying the ride? ", she seemed to be saying. "Want me to go faster?"
heheh
She was no trouble at all really.... maybe this picture should be renamed "Hey, where's your helmet?"

MUNN!

2006-10-11T23:31:00.000+08:00

A first draft of an impressionist style rendition of my dog Whoopy. Whoopy was a black spaniel we got when I was in college. I was really depressed before she joined my family; once she came into my life, nothing was the same again. No matter how bad things got (and looking back, things never really got unfixably bad, although it was impossible to know at the time) just having her, there, like a little kid happy, loving, innocent, it put things into perspective. The way I've drawn here there was her own unique style of sitting, just sort of leaning sideways, relaxed, hip-hop'ish! :) And even though it would imbalance her when she was sitting like that, she'd still offer her paw ever so politely when you said 'Munn gimme five!'

Some info on her name: the family we bought her from had already named her Whoopy after the (amazingly talented) Whoopie Goldberg! Why?

' They have the same hairstyle! Two curly bunches at the sides...!'

"That's not hair, those are her ears!'

'Ah... -well I meant the hair on her ears!'

It was too late to change but we always called her Munn (which is baby talk for mine, or my little one...)

The above illustration was done on Corel Painter Essentials 2 by the way. Using a Wacom Intuos tablet. Which I bought today. 4X5
AWESOME! I'm loving it!!!

SALMO-FAN! (FOR FARMED SALMON MASQUERADING AS THE REAL THING!)

2006-10-06T08:52:00.000+08:00

I was browsing the treehugger.com site when I came across something called a Salmo-fan. Its like a chinese style fan but each fold is a different colour representing the flesh of 'healthy' (i.e. wild) salmon. The people who raise farmed salmon, use this object (the salmo-fan) to decide how much chemical dye is to be fed to their salmon to give them that 'wild' pink colour. Wild salmon gain their characteristic pink colour from the krill (tiny little crustaceans) they feed on. Farmed salmon, on the other hand, look a dull unappatizing grey.
Fish farming is an absolutely un-environmental practice, fish raised in overcrowded cages, anchored to the sea bottom near the coast. They are fed anibiotics as a matter of course (you'd be sick too if you were packed into a cage with 20 other humans, and forced to live in your own waste) and are often prey to parasites which can easily infect wild populations.

Girl and beast in garden ;)

2006-10-03T09:54:00.000+08:00

I was just doodling myself out of despair a while ago and I did this on the back of an envelope.

Its me and my spaniel sitting on the porch of my grandma's old house. (It was a lovely old stone house in Pune, beautiful garden with fruit trees and so many flowers... unfortunately its been knocked down and developed into condos now...).
I spent most of my early life playing in that garden. My dog, whoopy, loved it too. It was such a fun place to explore and run around in..
I rember granny calling out through the window, 'Why is it so quiet out there? is everything alright?'
:)
I miss those days; my time was all my own and I had next to no responsibilities. Unfortunately, back then, I could'nt wait to grow up!

ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY!!

2006-10-02T08:48:00.001+08:00

There's this really cool website called illustrationfriday.com
Every week they have a topic and you can link illustrations that you've made using said topic. This week's (or is that last week's? :) topic is Quiet. I did a cartoony illustration in aquarelle pencil (water colour pencil) as my submission.

Its not very clear; I dont have a scanner so I just took a picture of it with my digicam and uploaded that instead! heehee