Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Redoing Rome. A Postscript.

 
















I did visit Rome again as I promised myself I would, and this time, the second time around, I got it right. I celebrated as I should have four years ago and I did everything I wanted to do the first time around. Rome in autumn is magical and unforgettable.


The walk to the art supply shop Ditta Poggi. This early morning walk took me through all the magnificent sights of Rome, without the crowds and in pleasant weather. I could stop, pause and stare all I wanted to and every time I turned my head there was always something more magnificent to see.




And then, a proper walk exploring Trastevere, where I ogled at magnificent churches, explored the red alleys and ate the best gelato ever (Otaleg).


I went to Janiculum Terrace again. I replaced the older memories there with happier ones. I gave thanks for the completion of my second book and validated my first book as it should have been done the first time around. For these moments, that I could come here again and acknowledge how far I've come, I have only gratitude. These are the memories that will remain with me.



The power of Caravaggio in real and the breathtaking work of MC Escher



The dazzling Palazzo Colonna with its exquisite works of art will require several posts. 
I'll stop here instead at just two pictures. Can you believe I saw Caravaggio, Escher and the art inside Palazzo Colonna all in one day? But that's Italy for you, crammed to the brim with centuries of art, in palaces, spilling out casually into the streets, scattered on the walls of bars and restaurants, art is everywhere.






























I have not done justice to Palazzo Colonna with two pictures, but I wouldn't even know where to begin, and to blog the experience here would take an entire month or two of documenting solely this. So I will simply leave it here and end with a picture of me with my smile after my walk at Trastevere. I am glad my friend insisted on taking a picture of me. I am beaming. And this happiness is pretty much what my experience in Rome gave me this time around. I have many, many happy memories and much gratitude. 



Sunday, December 6, 2020

A Fitting Conclusion - The interview

So this is the most in-depth and extensive interview I have done in my career as an illustrator. I talk about process, pictures, payment, profession, publishers and other related matters. The difference with this interview is that the questions were asked by another illustrator, making them pertinent, relevant and allowing me to open up as I have never done before. This is also a wonderful closure to this blog and to an entire part of my career as an illustrator at the end of this year. Now I can move on to other things with much gratitude for all I’ve been given.

Many thanks Niharika Shenoy, not only for giving me this chance to articulate my thoughts but also for interviewing and showcasing Indian illustrators so nicely on Medium.


Click here to read The Interview



It has been a great 10 years on this blog and a full 13 years of blogging. It is time to close the circle here too as with an entire volume of my life.

Here are the places you can find me and my work -

https://priyasebastianillustrations.tumblr.com/

https://www.behance.net/priyasebastian

The writing, travels, sketchbook stuff, opinions, photographs will all be at

https://priyasebastian.tumblr.com/

Thank you and goodbye.




The Forest

One day when you wake up,
you wil find that you've become a forest.

You've grown roots and found strength in them
that no one thought you had.

You have become stronger and more beautiful,
full of life giving qualities.

You have learned to take all the negativity around you and turn it into oxygen for easy breathing.

A host of wild creatures live inside you and you call them stories.

A variety of beautiful birds nest inside your mind and you call them memories.

You have become an incredible self-sustaining thing of epic proportions.

And you should be so proud of yourself of how far you have come from the seeds of who you used to be.

-------------------------------------------------------- Nikita Gill


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#priyasebastian #priyasebastianillustration #priyasebastianillustrator #seagullbooks #isitthesameforyoubook #conflictzone #picturebookartist #picturebook #kashmirbook #illustratorinterview #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrator

Friday, December 4, 2020

Up in the Hills

 Sometime in December, I went off to spend time with friends in Mussoorie and Landour. I got my very first glimpse of the Himalayas from the plane and I was enthralled. I got acquainted with words phenomenons like "Winterline" and tried to draw new shapes (mountains) in my sketchbook. I also ate loads and loads of pork and had to beg for simple vegetables with my meals. I used a walking stick to walk even a few kilometers because that is a necessity when you live in the mountains.




The spectacular Winterline where hot air gets trapped beneath cold air 
causing this beautiful phenomenon.


Landour Bakehouse (below) with the classics - 
Delicious Chicken Tikka croissants and Rose Cake. 
So good. 


Sketching the Himalayas in Chakkar in Landour





Apart from the desperation to get out and about, this holiday made me remove my Montreal woolens from the recesses of my wardrobe and wear them. I was still very cold however, until my friend simply threw her mother's sheepskin shawl over me and I was instantly warmed. As Henrik Drescher told me, "It is not how much you wear but what you wear!". When it comes to weather, Bangaloreans don't know very much.


Beautiful pageants around fires are something completely new to a Bangalorean's eyes!



Below, gorgeous treasures picked up during treks around the mountains.


When people like Thoreau spoke about walking amidst nature to rewire the mind, I don't think he meant a walk at the local neighbourhood park, not even Lalbagh, although it can be a good substitute if there is nothing else, but what a healing, soul-cleansing experience it is to walk in a proper forest. How blessed and beautiful is Jabarkhet Nature Reserve.



Many thanks Sam and Bussu for this memorable holiday.










Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The Trek

 







This picture has not been taken from a plane. I actually trekked up this height at Makalidurga Betta.
You will have to click on the picture to fully appreciate the magnificent view.

The rest of the pictures are somewhere on my Tumblr.



#Makalidurga

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Together / Apart

 




Sometime ago I was asked not only to illustrate but also to write about the effects of the pandemic on the theme Together/Apart for The Indian Quarterly. This is the result. It also got me my name on the cover of my favourite magazine, which is nice :)

Blogger does weird things when I cut paste from Word, in fact I find it is no longer a pleasure to use Blogger. Much like Wordpress, it is a chore to upload, align, write in the right place etc. If you want bigger, more sumptuous images, you can find them in my Behance account, where you can also read what I've written.

I think I am going to be done with Blogger and blogging very soon.

Saturday, October 10, 2020

The Ancient City

 


Matera, every step of the way, every turn of the head, so much beauty.

 


Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Evil



The evil that persists and persists and persists.

What do we call the horror that stretches across our present age like a canopy, a kind of shadow violence, the sort we are all guilty of: violence of the ignored, utterly avoidable variety. The casual violence of cruelty. The violence of poverty, denial, lack of care, of turning our attention away from slow burning fires that we ought to be duty bound to watch and hold in our eyes. We are not innocents here, but shadow men, looking the other way while havoc is wrought in our silence.

                                                                                       ~ Fathima Bhutto

Monday, September 28, 2020

SMELLS

 Click on the pictures for bigger images -














Thursday, September 17, 2020

The Glimpse

 


The people of Matera are white, all of them, even the tourists are white, there were no Asians, South East Asians, Blacks or Latinos; in this city of all white people I was the lone exception. I was looked at with curiosity each time I entered a shop  and then after a pause and an overcoming of diffidence, I was asked where I was from.
Then one day suddenly out of the blue, I saw this young lone Black woman walking along one of the streets with a lilt in her step. She had none of the tourist accouterments and she seemed very much at home. Her appearance against the pale, bleached walls of Matera was striking. And then I saw her yet again from the balcony, walking somewhere. I wonder who she is and what her story is.



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#matera #materasketchbook #italy


Sunday, August 30, 2020

Owning my Path


And if I

Asked you

To name

All of the

Things that you love,

How long

Would it

Take to

Name

Yourself?

                         ~ via TS



Sometimes you make a long journey for a specific reason only to find that your curiosity was leading you towards a mirage.

The wonderful thing is that you can always take the return flight home; you can always turn the steering wheel back, to your own road.


*


One of the most striking properties of survival-machine behaviour is its apparent purposiveness. By this I do not just mean that it seems to be well calculated to help the animal's genes to survive, although of course it is. I am talking about a closer analogy to human purposeful behaviour. These may include 'desire' for some object, a 'mental picture' of the desired object, an 'aim' or 'end in view'. Each one of us knows, from the evidence of our own introspection that, at least in one modern survival machine this purposiveness has evolved the property we call 'consciousness'.

 

The fundamental principle involved is called negative feedback, of which there are various different forms. In general what happens is this. The 'purpose machine', the machine or thing that behaves as if it had a conscious purpose, is equipped with some kind of measuring device which measures the discrepancy between the current state of things, and the 'desired' state. It is built in such a way that the larger this discrepancy is, the harder the machine works. In this way the machine will automatically tend to reduce the discrepancy - this is why it is called negative feedback - and it may actually come to rest if the 'desired' state is reached.


~ Richard Dawkins THE SELFISH GENE






 

Monday, August 17, 2020

Class

 


One of the many things I've learned during this pandemic is how to make an InDesign cover.

The illustration I've used is one from my book of course, but I thought it would work very well for what I am reading at the moment - My Body and Other Stories. I had read the first story called The Husband Stitch in Granta before I bought the book and it was intense. A key element in that story is the green ribbon. Rather than drawing the green ribbon and incorporating it into the illustration, I've chosen instead to use the element  in the design by using a cursive font and the colour green. I was told that people buy a book, sometimes even a second time only for the cover. Would you pick up this book and buy it if it had this cover?




 The other thing I learnt to do in InDesign is to draw this egg below for an unpublished book with an imaginary title. It was one of the first things I did and I enjoyed making it.

 

The InDesign classes conducted by @sukrutianah are during weekends on Zoom. Each class is one saturated hour. I realized much to my bemusement that the screens of my fellow classmates suddenly going blank is absolutely normal and they are still listening. I once made a comment about the Harry Potter movie being better than the book and the blank screen of one of my classmates expressed outrage.  We are from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore respectively and the experience is  great. Thanks to this course I actually opened InDesign on my computer and started using it.