Page 25

I believe this will be my last post on the blog for the year 2012. To look back, one of the biggest accomplishment of this year was to quit my job and start work on my book. I had many thoughts muddled in my head during the mid year as to what direction I should take my work to. But with the year coming to an end, it seems pretty sorted for now. Apart from the book, I am glad for the onset of Perch Project too. I am very thankful to Hazel for this, doing this project alone wouldn't have been possible. A bow of honour to all the people who have shared the enthusiasm towards Perch Project. Your 'likes' and 'shares' are not just mere social network tools, but a fuel to the project's belief and will to grow further. The fat bird of Perch Project blesses you all. No doubt that next year awaits a work avalanche with many plans brewing, but I hope to take it well and merge it with some travel plans too. 

To talk a bit more about the book, I doubt that if I can have a definite calendar for it to wrap it up. Many other projects need to start growing simultaneously, and the book is something I wouldn't want to hurry on. Although, I have to be cautious to not let it slip off. 

Last week, I finished the 25th page of my book. This page came from a snug hole memory of my childhood days. The days when the whole locality used to gather up at the few homes where a T. V. set was available to watch the evening films being shown on Door Darshan. We had a 'Weston' television, neighbourhood  kids, and some elders would gather in our drawing room for the Saturday films. Jaggery, puffed rice and roasted gram was the popcorn of a small town. Those who had other task to move on to or couldn't find a place inside would watch the film through the window grill. 

I believe such evenings don't belong to just my childhood, but of many others who grew up in late eighties and early nineties. I have tried to capture those evenings in the page 25 of the book. I imagined it to be more of a crowded page, but subconsciously the elements from the drawing room's decor propped into the page too while I was penciling. It seemed justified to let these things retain its share in the page. Here are the three step process of drawing, inking and colouring the page - 

Ionicus

Whenever I am in the MG Road vicinity, tea at Koshy's and then strolling down to Blossom's on Church Street has become an old habit. At Blossom's I would drop my bag at the counter and climb the stairs up to look for new graphic novels and hunt for old editions of classics. During one of such activities, I came across the P. G. Wodehouse series published by Penguin with covers done by an illustrator who signed off as 'Ionicus'. The cover had crumpled edges, but the artwork it embodied had crisp, clean lines demarcating the skilled use of watercolours. It had a simplicity and beauty one would like to belong to, and the pictures told the reader what awkwardness was stored in the book. From that day onwards, I have often spent a lot of time excruciating my eye filtering such publications out of huge stacks lying in the back shelves of Blossom's. With luck, I have found four so far. I believe, the staff only shell out a few copies out to keep luring me in time after time. And like a cat, I know the precious bait too well to surrender. If any of you lucky ones have got a copy of Ionicus's illustrated cover, please do mail me a scan of it on somsesh@gmail.com. I will be extremely grateful to you for this. 

Ionicus was the pen name of Joshua Armitage (26 September 1913 – 1998), an English illustrator.

He is best known for drawing the covers for a wide range of Penguin editions of P. G. Wodehouse, though he also contributed cartoons and drawings to Punch for more than 40 years, and provided cover designs and text illustrations for nearly 400 books in total.

- Wikipedia

Precious Gift

But you must also know this, Thoma, you must accept the inescapable truth. Even an alcoholic gives his son a gift. A precious gift, in fact. You will never ever be a drunkard. That is how it is, that is how it goes.

The happiest man in the world are the men who swore that they would never become their fathers. That is how the alpha males became endangered. Their sons decided that they would not become their fathers, they would be decent men, they would not sleep with strangers through the night, they would buy curtains, they would transfer food from large bowls into smaller bowls and put them in the fridge, they would not be their fathers. In a world full of new men who did not want to be their fathers, what chance did the alpha males have?
- The Illicit Happiness of Other People, Manu Joseph 

Brainwave. Issue 25. Doomsday Alerts

Apart from being a hermit, and working on my graphic novel, I have been doing occasional freelance work for Brainwave. The next issue's theme was decided long time ago by the Mayans when they ran out of wall space to extend the calendar dates. Which has over the years helped a lot of production houses and news channels in killing air time with their Nostradamus gymnastics. Leaving the horrendously looped conspiracy videos aside, here's my take on the cover - 

I also did a spot illustration for the 'Geek Speak' section.