She Sings the Blue

Umbrella Harvest

Ink & Clouds

The leisurely floating clouds
Gather over the towers.
The sky as dark as ink,
Melts down and spreads over
My sketchbook

Characters and scenarios

Recently I have done a few scenarios and character design for Manish Saini's upcoming film Gungun. It is a story of a young boy named Gungun in a small sub-urban place and his friends. They go to see a magic show and get fascinated by the Magician thereafter. Right now, the film is in the pre-production stage. All the images are drawn and coloured digitally in Photoshop CS3.

Narcissus

I look down
That is me
Sunk in the water
A vine grows from my eyes,
A flower blossom
As I spread my hands
With temptation
It cries.
"Spread your hands not!
Boatman, from where do you come?"

The temptation of
our forefather
And
his great gift for us
Lust and Desire;
Thus exists
The need for darkness
And the art of theft.

Narcissus

Nurcissus, as a mostly celebrated theme for painting is re-presented in this art work. The treatment with fine black and white lines is inspired from the pre-modern etching prints. The entire image is created in Photoshop.

"I see not only the eye of an other; I see also that he looks at me." That is, what is SEEN is not only a thing, a dead object, but also a responding subject, an intention even. If a LOOK can be seen, then empiricism and all the reductionisms that are associated with it are destroyed. But a look CAN be seen, not only the face, but another face's glance at my face.
Jaques Derrida
Derrida quotes Scheler in his essay "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of
Emmanuel Levinas”, Writing and difference.

Portraits: Pages of my old sketch books

The Disposables

What we were talking about

Just before sometime

Now, there is no word, no sound

Only a white noise of radio fills the air

Just before sometime

We were sitting here,

And the bonsai orange plant grew up to a tree,

Its leaves and branches reached out of the window

And it was all orange and

An afternoon in orange colour...

Now I see you standing below the street light

The city is wrapped in dusty fog.

From my sky high balcony I look at you

And the clock, hanging from my wall,

Melts down...

Just before sometime

A ball of thread dropped from my hand

And rolled down,

Like a little girl hopping through the staircase

Enmeshing me in a web of thoughts

A spider spins a web on my window

And a yellow butterfly searching for its way out

Just got stuck…

A noisy bird sitting on the electricity wire

Flew away, just before sometime

I cannot recall its name...

Just before sometime

The smoke coiled up;

Coiled up to the sky

And in a tempest

Everything blew away.

Everything… my bed, my table, my roof...

The wind rushed in through the window

And blew away the words from my notebook

The sodden floor got littered with words...

Just before sometime

A ball of thread dropped from my hand

And rolled down the staircase,

Following you…

         

I did not see you leaving

I can only smell the fragrance of your absence.

From here, I see the train leaving

Like a snake going inside a tunnel

Carrying the boxes of cacophony...

What we were talking just before sometime

Please try to remember; I got nothing is in my mind

Let us try to get back to our conversation

What we were talking just before sometimes...

Khowai

Landscape: Khowai

Heart kept in the cup of my palm
Turned red with rust
The meandering route snakes
Through my body greyed with dust.

Now from the branches of eucalyptus
The crescent moons are hanging.
Thousands of moons
Fall and fill to bury me up
One by one

Each moon turns into a drop of tear
And flows away like a stream
A rain of moon:
Rain and rain,
Rain washes and erodes the flesh
from my rusted heart,
lump by lump

Rains, more it rains
And I sink in each rain drop

Landscape

Done with a ball-pen and colour corrected in Photoshop CS3.

Tree

This drawing was done many years back, during my days of Santiniketan.

Memories of My Native Place

CATS

Cover Page

Durga Reawakened

Drawings for my graphic novel "Durga Reawakened" going to be published on 10/10/10
Text by: Shamit Bagchi, IIM, Bangalore
Illustration: Mahan J Dutta

Silent Wish

All of us carry a baggage of memories, regrets, desires and wishes. With these entire luggages we climb a mountain; a mountain of faith that has been growing since the beginning of mankind. Its pinnacle reaches beyond the sky. We cannot see it. But we have grown up with the myth which is stronger than real, that there is a wishing tree which would listen to everyone. Does the tree have ears? We never knew. But we believe it has.
Through ages so much of luggage has been buried into the ear of that tree! We start slogging up in the mountain. All we want is someone who would listen to us, to whom we can tell all our secrets... A place where we can shed all our guilt, regrets, sins and the burden of memories. All we wish is to fly away...

Illustration Friday: Breakfast

Portrait

After a long time I revisited Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and was inspired to paint a portrait. It is an imaginary portrait. It is entirely painted on Photoshop.