Getting into art journaling

     When Sachin Tendulkar announced that he will be retiring from cricket, it was hard to come to terms with the fact that I, India, and the cricketing world won't be seeing one of the finest batsmen of all time play anymore. A person who was the only constant in the ever-changing faces in the last quarter century of international cricket. In a country like India, where uncertainty defines life, Sachin was the only certainty. To see my childhood hero, who continued playing not just till I was 10 or 15, but 27, finally call it a day was just so obvious, but yet, simply unbelievable. Among zillion emotions that overwhelmed me, was a tiny, insignificant desire to sketch him.

Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, drawn in 2002

     I drew my last proper sketch in 2002, after finishing my 10th grade. My sketches weren't great, but they were decent. Most importantly, I liked them! :-). So when my sketch of Sachin came out to be utterly horrible, I had to sit down and wonder. After reflecting over it for a few days, I decided to revisit sketching with a fresh perspective. After all I am a very different person right now than I was in 2002. Also, since I'm in the US now, I decided to explore if there are any different methods, styles and materials that are interesting to experiment with. Like any other online buyer, I went to goddess amazon for answer. It was when I was skimming through countless books on sketching and watercoloring that I came across Cathy Johnson's Artist's Journal Workshop.
     It was a love at first sight. As someone who loved watching birds and maintained a field notebook, as well as a dairy, it never occurred to me to merge the two, and extend the concept to include vast number of interesting day-to-day things we all witness, study and appreciate in our subconscience even if our outer self is engrossed in seemingly important endeavors. After a couple of days, the UPS guy delivered the book to my apartment's patio.

Graphite pencils, 2005

     The central idea behind keeping an art journal is that you unleash your creativity without hurting your ego. For example, you are far less concerned how your drawing would turn out to be if you are drawing on a $5 sketchbook of size 4 x 6 as opposed to drawing on a 24 x 36 canvas. Plus, as there are several more pages at your perusal, you don't think about ruining the sketchbook drawing. Though this may sound obvious to you, I find it to be the single most important thing I've, as a average 'non-artist' person next door, heard about art and drawing.  Draw not for the sake of drawing but for documenting something which you really liked and care (to draw) for. End result: more sketches, more happiness, and no bruised ego.  :-)
     Since then I've also got The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds- an amazing, amazing book by a very talented artist- John Muir Laws. And the latest, and likely to be the last investment on art book for a while, is The Complete Watercolorist's Essential Notebook by Gordon Mackenzie. Its a brilliant book that is considered as a one-stop-shop for all things watercolor. It is a joint book of two of Mackenzie's bestsellers, and if I hadn't read one guy's review on amazon, I would have bought the first book for the same price as I paid for this two-books-in-one book!

A ship of books (based on a bookmark). Ink and
Alberecht Durer watercolor pencils on 4 x 6

     In terms of materials that I've armed myself with as I embark this journey, here's a list.
-Pencils: normal mechanical (0.5mm lead), 4B, and 6B
-Pen: Fabser Castell Pitt Artist pen- An amazing pen with waterproof ink
-Colors: I decided to give watercolor pencils a try since I'd never used them before, and their appeal in terms of portability is unmatched. So I got six colors of Faber Castell's Alberecht Durrer: two shades-a warm and cool, of the three primary colors red, blue and yellow. I really liked working with them. So much so that I decided to bite the bullet and get a basic set of watercolor paints. As getting just a few colors is enough as they can be mixed together to produce all the other intermediate colors, I decided to go for quality over quantity, and got myself a Daniel Smith Susie Short Essential Watercolors set. It is an amazing value for money purchase and several artists, including Cathy and John Muir Laws, use Daniel Smith paints. With 8 tubes of 15 ml each for ~$8 per tube, the Daniel Smith Susie Short collection is almost as cheap as the student grade Cotman series from Winsor and Newton.
-Brushes: Both Cathy and JML recommend waterbrushes in their books. Cathy recommends them for certain situations and especially so when using watercolor pencils. JML, however, mentioned in one of his youtube video that he stopped using normal brush, and now uses waterbrushes exclusively. Having said that, I am more comfortable using them as normal brushes and not as waterbrushes. Ever since their water got finished the first time, I haven't yet refilled them!

Spaceship Serenity. Ink and watercolor on bristol bonded paper
bottom half of a 9 x 12

-Sketchbooks: I first got Strathmore Bristol Bonded paper journal of size 9 x 12 because all I wanted to do was pencil sketching. But soon, mostly because I got discounts, I collected a 4x6 Strathmore Series 3000 sketchbook, Winsor and Newton's watercolor postcards, and Strathmore's series 4000, 5.5 x 8.8 sized sketchbook with watercolor paper. The idea is to have a heavier paper when using watercolors.
     I've seen several artists comment that the paper is the most important thing in watercolors. But again, that is for a studio-quality painting. We are talking about sketchbooks here. JML mentions that he likes drawing as well as painting birds on his cheap Canson book, and in fact stated that the crumpled paper (due to wetting from watercolors) adds a character to the sketchbook! My personal experience has been that I am quite satisfied with all the paper types when it comes to watercolors. It is just a journal, so I don't pay too much attention. Thats another liberating thing about journaling :-). However, I haven't made up my mind on what size journal I prefer. I initially liked 4 x 6 the most, but now I'm increasingly feeling constrained by that size for watercolors.
     One last thing that was a magical discovery for me is a kneaded eraser. All I can say is that I wish I knew about it and used it during my school days. Its ability to not erode the paper simply seems miraculous to me.

     Now with the three books and these materials, and countless tutorials and videos on youtube, I think I'm set to explore the world with pencils, ink and watercolors, and eventually specialize in birds and landscapes- the two fields that I strive to master as a nature photographer!

Tunnel View, Yosemite. Ink and watercolor on a 4 x 6 basic sketchbook. It was so small and fast, that start-to-finish took less than 20 minutes

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::An update::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

YES!! I was able to draw Tendulkar. Not the original portrait style that I had imagined, but with ink and watercolors.

Naruto

I never liked anime. I didn't know what manga meant. Growing up, I was so used to watching traditional, western cartoons that when I first saw anime, the characters looked ugly! Almost two years back, a friend recommended me to watch an anime series called Naruto. I told him I hate anime. He asked me which ones I had seen (and hated), I said none. Well, both of us being PhD students, there is no room for making conclusions without evidence. So I watched the first episode of Naruto. Didn't like it. I thought the lead character was an idiot, there was a lot of emotional drama (being tortured by family drama serials in India all my life, I certainly didn't look forward to see more of this) and there was unnecessarily hysterical dialogs, and the conversations were, well, highly animated (no pun)! After I told him I didn't change my view, he said watch the first 8-10 episodes and then you will get hooked. I said "let's see", but both knew it may not happen.

Fast forward 2 years. In between, I had seen a couple of Kurosawa films, rewatched Kill Bill, and was now aware of the 'animated' dialogs in Japanese. Somehow it is very familier. I can easily visualize such dialogs happening in any of the Indian languages.  Japanese didn't sound alien. So when I was free last fall, I decided to give Naruto a go. Watched the first few episodes, and as my friend had said, I got completely hooked on to it. Loved the story, loved the plot, loved the style, loved the humour, loved the animation, loved the music, loved the action, loved the emotions. In short, I loved everything that Naruto presented. The whole experience is super duper inspiring. Within a couple of months, I had watched the entire 10 year old series. Now I started bugging a friend to get her to watch Naruto. So with with her, I rewatched the entire anime. I didn't get bored as it evoked a very powerful nostalgia as the plot covered several years and I loved to watch again, the characters when they were younger. Now I was up-to-date with the anime, but the story is going on, and I was loosing patience. Enter Manga. The anime is based on the manga comics and Naruto manga was several subplots ahead of the anime, and so I read the manga. Now I look forward to the new manga every Wednesday, and the anime every Thursday.

What I liked the most about Naruto is the plot. Its such a well thought out story. The integrity is maintained throughout its long span. I liked how it started on a small scale, a small happy village, and plot got increasingly bigger and bigger and now its dealing with a world war and the fate of humanity. Very similar to several books that I have read which start at a small scale (the Shire; 4 Privet Drive; Lyra's Oxford), and then the plot expands to include several big kingdoms/ nations. The lead character is carefree, in fact even a nuisance at the beginning, and then grows up to shoulder some heavy responsibilities. Same happens with Naruto. I liked the setting of the Ninja world. Similar to Jedis (I've read George Lucas got the idea of Jedi from buddhist monks). The concept of duty (or dharma) is very common in India. I have been aware about the chakras since I was a kid (my dad used to urge me to 'awaken' my chakras by doing specific yoga). Even the manipulations of different forces of nature using ninjutsu is very similar to the mythological wars in the texts Ramayana and Mahabharat. So may be that's why I could relate very well with the world of the ninjas.

Another thing I liked was how the characters were not black and white. Even the protagonist does things which one would not expect a 'hero' to do, and even the 'villans' are shown to be good humans at some point. There is a constant transition in the perception of a character's morals and now I expect that to almost all the negative characters, still it is never boring when it actually happens. The music is very well placed and there is this weird leitmotif, not just associated with particular persons, but also associated with particular situations (for example a specific music when a fight between two ninjas is about to have a complete turn around).

Judging from the manga developments, it seems like Naruto is going to end pretty soon. I'm sure the creator has a very powerful end up his sleeve. He has already told us how the series is going to end: with Naruto becoming the Hookage (village head)- his childhood dream/ ambition since the first episode itself. But that's the beauty of this manga/ anime. Its easy to guess whats going to happen, but the way it happens always takes your breath away.

About the drawing, this is the first real sketch I have drawn on a computer. I used a Wacom bamboo tablet (which I had gotten for 50 bucks when it was on a 50% rebate) and Sketchbook Express, a free software for mac. Initially I was just going to draw a quick and dirty sketch in less than 10-15 minutes. But then later decided to take advantage of the ability to create multiple copies in the digital world, and do a colored version after completing the sketch. When I started looking for tutorials on coloring, I realized that there are several smarter ways of doing the whole process using layers. First draw a rough sketch, reduce its opacity. On top of it, draw another layer with 'line art' (clean, powerful strokes of outlines, not the messy dirty ones I draw as sketch). As there is already the rough sketch below the layer for reference, its super easy to draw the line art. Once that is done, put the line art layer at the topmost, and create a color layer below it. Coloring is also very easy. Getting colors using palette is easy. For highlights and shadows, it is possible to increase or lower the palette's darkness to get the desired effect without searching for a darker yet similar colored shade. Easy. And obviously, it is possible to erase anything, so there is no 'dead end'.

I didn't pay much attention to the image while sketching, and while coloring, I realized some of the parts needed to be redrawn. Damn. Next time, I am going to pay a lot of attention, and proceed with coloring only when I am 100% satisfied with the drawing. I believe it will cut my time by half!

Happy manga, anime, and happy drawing and coloring to you all!