The very lonely princess..

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!

SMOKE for Illustration Friday

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.

'Wind' for Illustration Friday

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.

'Smitten!' for Illustration Friday

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.