Brainwave. Factoons. 30th May

Leeches are blood-sucking worms, whose mouths work as suction pumps to draw blood out without causing any pain to the host because of the anesthetic in their saliva. One of the easy ways to get rid of them is to put some salt on their body. The salt draws all the water from inside the leech's body leaving it dehydrated. Although, you shouldn't put salt on leeches when they are attached to your skin. It can make them vomit back into the wound which can become infected.

Maurice Sendak

I did some very good books, which mostly is an isolationist form of life – doing books, doing pictures. And it’s the only true happiness I’ve ever, ever enjoyed in my life. It’s sublime to just go into another room and make pictures. It’s magic time where all your weaknesses of character, and all blemishes of personality, and whatever else torments you fades away, just doesn’t matter.
 
You’re doing the one thing you want to do and you do it well, and you know you do it well, and you’re happy. The whole promise is to do the work, sitting down at a drawing table, turning on the radio. And I think, “what a transcendent life this is that I’m doing everything I want to do.”
 
At that moment I feel like I’m a lucky man. I’m trying very hard to concentrate on what is here, what I can see, what I can smell, what I can feel – making that the important business of life. Just looking out the window at the colours that I see, reading Charles Dickens at night for an hour, little rituals I have of listening to Mozart. I’m learning how not to take myself so seriously, that what I’m working on, what I’d like to work on, it’s not earthshakingly important anymore. I am not earthshakingly important.

So what am I saying? I’m just clearing the decks for a simple death. You’re done with your work, you’re done with your life. And your life was your work.
 
I think what I’ve offered was different. But not because I drew better than anybody, or wrote better than anybody, but because I was more honest than anybody. And in the discussion of children, and the lives of children, and the fantasies of children, and the language of children, I said anything I wanted, because I don’t believe in children. I don’t believe in childhood. I don’t believe there’s a demarcation of “you mustn’t tell them this, you mustn’t tell them that.” You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it’s true. If it’s true, you tell them.
 
I have adult thoughts in my head, experiences, but I’m never going to talk about them. I’m never going to write about that. Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don’t know. I don’t know. I guess that’s where my heart is.

Taken from - Drawn blog post.
- Maurice Sendak. Writer and illustrator of children's literature. One of his most notable work is 'Where the Wild Things Are'.

At times you hear the words that speak so true to your thoughts that you wish they were your own. Thank You Maurice Sendak.

Cafe Pause

I have been working on a few murals and illustration for cafe Pause located at Sarjapur Road, Bangalore and got done with it a week back. The cafe required artworks that could be used to bring humour on the white walls. The word 'Pause' when put into the context of Bangalore life directed it to the traffic, dug up roads, Saturday night watchdogs and the never ending hikes of Auto-rickshaw fares. Never does a day pass by when one of these issues have spared you. Hence, the cafe Pause worked as a good platform to nit pick on these situations and share some light moments with it. I decided to work with felt tip pens and markers to create illustrations that can be converted to bitmaps and enlarge it large enough for the walls. Although it was quite a painstaking process but the end result left me satisfied. Here are the photographs and final artworks as it happened. 
Mural - 

Right-click on the image and select 'open link in new tab' for larger view. 

Right-click on the image and select 'open link in new tab' for larger view. 

Right-click on the image and select 'open link in new tab' for larger view. 

Small Illustrations - 

Apart from these illustrations, I had pitched ideas for poster series which later got scrapped due to time constraints. But I am planning to do the poster series as a personal project. 

I will put the photographs of the cafe when it's finally ready with all the artworks up on the wall. Lot of things have changed in the earlier planned placement of the murals and I am hoping that the new negotiated arrangement works out well for the murals and the cafe. 
All the artworks displayed here belong to Sharath Reddy. Please don't use them anywhere else without permission. 

Brainwave. Factoons. 23rd May

A 'byte' is the unit to measure digital information, like hard drive memory, file size, etc. Before there were pen drives and CDs, we stored and transferred data using floppy disks (which had a humble capacity of 1.44mb). We sure have come a long way from there. In fact, when Intel co-founder Gordon Moore noticed in 1965 that the capacity of the circuits had been doubling every two years since it had been invented, he predicted that the same trend would continue in the future. It looks like Moore's Law holds true even today.

Thank You Drogba.

I remember the 2008 Champions league when Drogba had to leave the play after being red carded and the 2009 semis where he shouted against the referee in front of the camera. Last Saturday, when Drogba stepped out for probably his final game at Chelsea, he washed all the painful memories of Champions League by netting the ball twice. As things stand, he is leaving Chelsea but before parting he has inscribed his name with the club in the history of Champions League. Thank you Didier for what you have done for the club and for the fans.

Thanks Vaibhav for the title, I hope we get to make more posters with the same title.

Seth's Genius

While finishing the last pages of 'Best American Comics 2007' I read some pages of 'Wimbledon Green' by Seth. I then went to my book shelf and took out the copy of 'It's a good life, if you don't weaken' by Seth again. I had picked it up at Comic Con. As I reached the end of it, Seth had affirmed his genius of storytelling. I am sorry for this crude comparison but his story flows as effortless as George Clooney's acting. Seth's characters dig a comfortable hole for you in their head where you can sit and be part of their conversation, thoughts, ramblings, judgements and many more nuances of the speaking mind. And the beauty is that these conversations are centered around everyday's joys and perils of a human life. There are two places in this book which I bookmarked because of the big thoughts it presents in simple words. I think there is a lot of truth held in these spoken sentences. Here they are - 

Factoons. Brainwave.16th May

Here's the new factoon for this Wednesday. 
In its basic form, rubber has few uses. But depending on what chemicals are added to it, we can make rubber flexible (like rubber bands) or strong (like tyres), and create several things with interesting properties.

Factoons. Brainwave. 9th May.

I have started doing a Science cartoon every Wednesday for the Brainwave facebook page. This one is about Carbon Dating. You can visit the facebook page here - Brainwave
Here's the description for this Factoon - Any living being gathers a fixed ratio of Carbon12 and Carbon14 during its lifetime. Once dead, it begins to lose the Carbon14 stored within its body while the Carbon12 amount stays the same. The difference in the ratio of Carbon12 and depleted Carbon14 helps scientists measure the fossil's age. 

Brainwave. Issue 18. Moving Around

The latest issue of Brainwave is on the wheels, literally. I spent a lot of time doing the splash page for this issue trying to mix illustration with typography. Although the style looks fairly quick-to-do in its nature but it's quite deceiving. Took me some time to finish it off. The Tour De France illustration is inspired from the artworks of Malcolm Farley. 

A spread on Tour De France

A spread on history of racing.

I just finished reading a compilation of Best American Comics 2007 put together by Chris Ware and it has given me all the more reason to step away from overtly decorative artworks for a while. To name a few of the inspiring artists - Anders Nilsen, Dan Zettwoch and Seth. I think I am going to try some minimal illustrations in coming issues.