Doodle Drama

Ever since I could grasp a pen, I have been drawing and doodling. 

Some of my earliest sketches peak out at me from old family albums and from within the folds of crumbling notebooks. Friends and family in the form of stick figures, geometrical houses, whirling dust storms and flower-filled gardens, renditions of the kinds of things I would see around me.

Over the years, I’d move through phases when I’d fill sketchbooks with my drawings and then set the whole thing aside for months at a time, depending on what my father expected from my art skills. A self-taught and accomplished artist himself, he had a certain idea of art and how it should look, all of which I flouted and rebelled against by putting aside my drawing tools and letting the artist in me hibernate. So there’d be chunks of time when I’d draw and draw, filling up pages with pictures of my current favorite storybooks or comic strips, followed by a barren phase, when paper and pens would be stowed away.

That pattern of prolific drawing interspersed with long periods of hibernation continued till a few months back, maybe out of habit or because I’d move on to another new project to keep me occupied. It’s only recently that I decided to draw more regularly, daily when possible, weekly when I could. I also decided to get an art education. Not the art college kinds because I know that would bring back the rebel in me, but the kind where you learn from an artist whose work you enjoy.

So here I am today, finally letting myself be the artist I always thought I’d be, learning, absorbing and drawing from my daily life. Flowers from my garden, leaves and sprigs from my potted plant collection, curly-haired girls in breezy summer frocks, clouds that roll in with rains on their shoulder.

I’m sharing some of the pictures here and will post more every now and then. If you’d like me to draw a flower from your garden or illustrate a story you have made up, drop me a line here in the comments section or message me via my Facebook page