Season's Greetings!

Wish You All a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year!!!

Christmas Wishes !

Wish You all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A Fusion of Sorts........

Finally i found the link to the news article that came up in New Bombay Times about the dance performance.

Click here to read the article.

The Birds have flown away!

We had been waiting for the day. Its been how many months...I don't know. The anxiety of the current global recession was getting to us. But finally the call came. My sister has to join "The" company soon. Its Infosys. We were happy, jubliant. The preperations were on. New set of clothes, bags, shoes...and several other items. This was to go on till the last day. She used to complain. And she was right. May be I was not there mostly around. But we used to have our good times together. We used to fight, sing, dance, do action song, do mimicry. But towards the end I was kind of busy. I tried to spend some time with her. After all how long will she be there for. The end days were really fast. But she stopped complaining. It was the last day.

Father and Daughter

I had always a special interest in cartoons and animation videos.
Almost all of them made me laugh. But this was one of those few videos which brought tears to my eyes.



A Beautiful and Emotional Video. Luckily I found this one in You Tube.

Some pics from this festive season...

The rangoli...

Arts and Crafts

From the days when I used to draw...

An "Om" on a spray painted drwaing paper with beads glued in the pattern.

Saw this shiva illustration in a magazine. So recreated in a larger scale.

Some more backgrounds...

Some backgrounds created in Corel...

Fire & Water (Made referring to several tuts in PS.)

Stereographic Projection

Tried the stereoprojection method on a pic.

Some Textures...

Textures from some of my works.
From Ganesh Chaturthi !
From New World......
A Festive background.

Dussehra Wishes !!!

Its been pending for so long now.

Better late than never....

All the World for you

Had created the simple version ("Bent under pressure") in gimp....modified it in photoshop ("Under the sun and clouds").

Bent under pressure

Under the sun and clouds

Voyage

It feels so good to be back...A lot of things have to be updated...but I wanted this one to be the first.
I wanted to make an ocean scene for a long time... When I had completed this in Photoshop, I showed it to my folks for a review......but i discovered that their imagination is just out of this world... Either they are really getting old....or are making fun of me. Either ways I was disappointed. I guess it has not come out very well. I did not get many reviews. But I just loved my work.

The most satisfying comment I got from a dear friend who said that it looked like an illustration from a story book.
It was a "think about it." kind of idea. I guess I will dedicate the next few projects to this idea. There are few good, inspirational short stories posted at sites like pravsworld.com. May be i wll make some depicting the stories.

Velvet

Velvet- Thats what I am going to name her. My cousin's child, she is the softest thing that I have touched. Ever!

a daughter's heart

A time when most of the people of my age enjoy the independence of staying alone, I am glad that I am still close to my home. I too used to wish I could stay alone (so does my sis). At times when my parents were away, they would install somebody in their place. So we always have had some one to handle us and the house. I wished so dearly for experience of staying alone, managing work and home, the food, the laundry and all. I know I could do it, but, never actually got the chance to prove it to myself. But life has been fair and I got my chance.

Ma and Pa were going to Dwaraka for a week and this time they could not arrange for some one to look after us. So we were on our own for a week. Both, myself and my sis, were happy about it. Of course, almost everyday our maternal and paternal uncles would call at night to check on us. But that could not dampen the thrill of staying alone for a week.

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!!!

Happy Independence Day!!!

Its almost midnight.

Here's wishing you all a Very Happy Independence Day!

Wanted to make something in Photoshop. I had some idea in my mind. A scene. A path with people from all generations walking the direction of India and looking up to it. A magnifying glass on a part of the crowd reveal the presence of the famous personalities to whom we owe our freedom. The idea was to portray that their ideologies are still respected and they still reside in our hearts. It may not seem but still a huge part of our young generation feels strongly about our country and are patriotic at heart.

I browsed through the net for some good pictures of the legends like Gandhi ji, Sarojini Naidu. Got some but was not able to successfully implement it. I decided to go for something simpler. Ofcourse, the map of India stays. I added some joyous children with flags in their hands. Also added our national song "Vande Matram". Made two variations. And here they are.

First one. A simple card on blue background. Liked this one more over the second one.

And this is the second one.

Hope that they have come out well.

While browsing for the pics on the internet I came across a good link(http://www.jamd.com/search?text=Mahatma%20Gandhi) which had some good pictures related to Gandhi Ji. I did not explore the site fully but I feel it has more exciting things to offer.

Some captured moments

Ever since I got my Cannon PowerShot A570 IS, I have been clickin a lot of pics.

Here are few pics from my recent kerala trip.

This was a shot taken just outside a temple. The poor puppy was scared of heights and wanted somebody to get it down.

Finally when no one was left, it decided to jump by itself. It did and happily went away wagging its tail as a winner. Even a puppy can be a serious source of inspiration.

Shots of a family temple.

Like traffic is own to mumbai, a daily dose of power cut is own to kerala. And I kind of enjoy the darkness. The following shots of the lamp were taken one such nite during power cut.

Even a small source of light can give an unlit lamp some form.

Witnessing the first miracle

I never believed in any of the modern spiritual leader. I do admire their service to the society, but, being portrayed as god may be made me run away from them.

My sister and her in-laws are a big believer of Satya Sri Sai Baba. I had been to their place for the first time this vacation. There was a bhajan held. I too participated in it. I had watched my sister through the bhajan chanting a thousand baba names. I just wondered, what made her believe in baba. Was it just being influenced by her in-laws. I decided to ask her. That night, we sat chatting and not to sound so obvious, I casually asked her about her devotion. She said about her experiences and positive effects of baba on her. Its her choice whom to believe after all. I didn't want to argue with her on wether baba was indeed god or not. But not being easily convinced about the issue, i tried to take out topics on the the magics that these baba in general did. Like taking stuffs like "bhasma", "flowers" or "fruits" out of thin air. If they were so capable, I wondered why they did not feed the hungry, shelter the orphans?

She did not answer me. She said there are reasons.

Art Material from an Artist

A little here......

A little there..........

I want them all !!!

Aah........Saturday is here.....Have a mission to complete...

Mirroring through

Was returning home late when it rained. Luckily I had my camera with me.
The pics in dark never came out well.

But had always wanted to capture raindrops.

Something to explore

Had downloaded some brushes.

Hope have been successful in using it.

A pain to remember

Was sitting at the parlour, nervous as ever. I was waiting for the beautician. Had threading to be done. Had grabbed an old Readers Digest copy (October 2005 Readers digest).



The cover was occupied by Bethany Hamilton. Never heard of the name. I decided to read it till my turn came up. It was a real life story of an American Surfer . She is known for surviving a shark attack in which she lost her left arm, and for overcoming the serious and debilitating injury to return to surfing. It was just three weeks after the incident, and she was already surfing again. It was so inspiring.

Being "The Extra" in Other's Life...

I feel its me there, standing alone, calling her out while she enjoys under the sun and shares her happiness with others. But I know she will call me out when she's blue, its autumn in her life. But there's love here too.

I never imagined that i would ever experience it. I have been fortunate enough to have a lot of friends at every stage of my life, and each friend so different from the other. There are the Hi-Bye ones, then the "Have a nice time" friends, the "Through the thick and thin" friends, the counselors, the flirtatious ones, the "Long distance" best buddies, the fake ones (the rarest and endangered species in my life. But they are there.) and the "There-not there" friends (again rare).

Our Caretaker

I generally commute to my office by my cycle. On my way there's a big tree. The one which protects us in all seasons. Shades us from the scorching sun, protects us from the downpour.

Is this not what we believe god does. But, for atheists, the tree to me resembles our conscience. The one that shades us. A shade under whose light we can clearly see the right from the wrong, distinguish just from unjust.

As James H. Aughey has quoted,

" Conscience is the voice of God in the soul. "

A mix of old and new

A lot of ones that i had missed out to upload earlier are here. Some of these were made really long time back and some recently.

This is what I had designed for the home page of my website. I don't know when i'll be done with this.

My dad had asked me to design the cover page of the souvenir for their Association.

I don't know why they approached me. Was I really good or was it to save money?
I still don't know.

Any ways, this is what I designed first. I thought it was cool. but it got rejected.

Then, I made this and it was finalised. The souvenir came out to be ok.