Saturday, October 13, 2012

Sketchcrawl 8, Lalbagh and Commercial Street

Thursday, 11th October
Nimmy and Sana hatched a plan to visit Lalbagh early in the morning at 6 o'clock to shoot a video for their travel scholarship and in this sweet little plan I was given a piece to chew on. I joined them early in the morning to draw the elders and the young ones jogging, meditating, laughing and gossiping for their healthy life. Although, my usual sketching areas have been crowded city market areas but denying the charm of twilit Lalbagh wouldn't have been fair. Covering our yawns and keeping our hopes alive we reached and soon got busy to our respective tasks. I climbed straight up a small hill to nestle myself on a stone to draw the huffing and puffing of the Bangalore crowd. Being a Thursday (office day), I knew that I didn't have much time to spend on elaborate sketches. Hence, swooshing around the photo inks was the best option for me and I didn't waste any time to get on to that. People are restless and when they have gathered with a purpose to be acrobatic in a park, then sketchers can throw of the luxury of neat sketches and better embrace the squiggly lines. I did quite a few quick sketches and spent a little more time on a couple of views. Here are the sketches of Lalbagh morning - 


Pigeons and pigeons.

A montage created out of composing quick sketches.
The moment before Sana dropped the ink on the stone.
We were there at Lalbagh for two hours and those were probably the best mornings I have spent in Bangalore so far and the blue colour stained hands were a proof. Yes, we spilled paint (honest mistake as Sana said) and while trying to clean it left it for the better or worse. Thanks to Sana and Nimmy for sharing this trip with me. 
photo credits: Nimmy Chacko

Saturday, 13th October
I remember when I had first joined Srishti, we were taken around on a small tour of the city where stationery, papers and other art materials are easily available. Commercial street was one of the places we visited and since then I have made numerous rounds of the commercial street and the neighbouring Ebrahim Sahib Street. Today, the roles were reversed and I was showing Commercial street to my colleague Kashmira. The clocks had turned back seven years when I was unravelling all the small branches and hidden shops on the street today. The whole street is a mix of old architecture dangling with billboards and giant store name boards. And this patchy amalgamation of old and new never ceases to fascinate me. Unlike the Lalbagh day, I spent good time on one drawing. I started pretty early on the sketch and by the time I was filling in details the landscape had changed drastically, the shop shutters had opened and a car got parked right in front of me to tinge the view. Here's a photo of the time I started drawing and the final sketch - 


And what better place to end the sketchcrawl other than Koshy's.





1 comment:

  1. Ah you are very welcome. It was a wonderful morning. Worth waking up at 4:30!

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