Mindscape In Cyberspace

Few months back while flipping through the pages on Flickr, I bumped upon a series of nice line drawings, said to be drawn by The Scribbler. I explored more and found this small but lots-of-fun-to-do tool, The Scribbler - an on-line application that allows user to draw freehand simple line drawings, and create a complex and interesting line drawing, automatically, from that.

The Scribbler, created by ZeFrank, takes simple vector based input and creates its own drawing on top of it based on a number of simple rules. When a new scribble line is created it chooses a few numbers at random that eventually determine what sort of line it will draw. As it begins to draw it fine tunes those values to the type of drawing that you’ve made. Because there is randomness built into the program, each scribble is unique.

In the on-line version, user can adjust some of the values that Scribbler would normally choose at random, such as line thickness, line color, and the maximum length of a scribble line.

Once drawing is reached at the desired stage, the user needs to ‘Pause’ Scribbler and take a screen shot. Well, it seems, that this is the only way to save your Scribbler art. Take a look at Scribbler gallery to check Scribbler art created by people at the Scribbler gallery. Some images are really impressive.

I could not resist myself to try my hands on fun toy and found that this small tool can create amazing results, if one can collaborate with the application. If you follow the logic that the application is using to create the complex lines and eventually form a complex texture from those lines, it will be easy for you to draw the right curves, that might create a nice output, once Scribbled.

Following are a series called Scribbler Earth, that I have created using images generated through The Scribbler. I was trying to doodle on the application, and thinking about earth. These are what came out, after I manipulated those scribble screen shots and added some color on them. Of course, being a first-timer my scribble skills are not so well, but I think I will improve and come up with more Scribbler arts.

Scribbler Earth 01

[Click on the image to view in larger size]

Scribbler Earth 02

[Click on the image to view in larger size]

Scribbler Earth 03

[Click on the image to view in larger size]

Scribbler Earth 04

[Click on the image to view in larger size]

Scribbler Earth 05

[Click on the image to view in larger size]

Flickr is one of the most popular on-line platform to showcase and share your images with millions of users from various corners of the world. Though, primarily Flickr is meant for sharing Photographs (and now video, too), however many artists, painters, calligraphists, print makers, and designers share their artworks, illustrations, paintings and other non-photographic images on Flickr. If you visit specific groups dedicated to non-photographic visual art, like paintings, graphics, digital art, illustrations, you will find thousands of artists showcasing their artworks and providing an amazing spectrum of visual culture, across the globe.

Here is a list of 20 Flickr groups dedicated mainly to non-photographic art, which I find very interesting:

1. Art and Artist »
2. Art is Art »
3. Art Directory »
4. Art District »
5. Art - Drawing and Painting »
6. Art Now »
7. Art Vision »
8. Artists Without Borders »
9. contemporary fine A R T S + Culture »
10. Digital Art »
11. Global Urban Art »
12. Graphic Design »
13. Illustration »
14. Illstration Now »
15. Obsessive Drawing »
16. Painting »
17. Paintings from you… THE ARTIST »
18. Sketches »
19. Urban Artist Collective »
20. Your Art - Not Photography »

When a group of scholars and academics involved with a publishing initiative that seeks to bring out significant works on political theory, approached me to design covers for their upcoming publications, I was genuinely very excited. Their approach demonstrated a disregard for the cover and visual identity of the publications. Portraits of writers independently done by recognized illustrators were used, with a conventional serious color scheme of gray-blue, irrespective of the subject of that particular publication. They needed covers for two of their next publications emphasizing the content.

The Paradox of Freedom
View larger graphics

For the first book, “The Paradox of Freedom” my challenge was, how do I express the idea of “paradox” in the context of India’s freedom from British rule, and its emergence as a nation? How do I assemble these ideas with the writer’s strong Marxist viewpoint? I decided to use solid bold text to form a puzzle-like complex structure with flipped and interlinked letters, randomly filled in with the familiar saffron, green and white of the Indian flag. Approximating the look and texture to that of the Soviet propaganda posters, I used the communist red for the background to suggest a Marxist reading. The result was quite effective.

Revolution by Consent
View larger graphics

Designing acover for the second book - “Revolution by Consent” was more challenging for me. How to communicate an abstract idea like ‘consent of the people’? How to represent revolution graphically? I started working with the idea of the mass and abstracted it through a set of hands raised as if in protest signifying a revolution. A closer look at the gesture of the hands in silhouette demonstrates that instead of protest, the hands represent consent or agreement to a cause. The cause is the backdrop - the first few words of the Preamble to the Indian constitution. The red color seeping into the Preamble represents the Marxist framework used to read these historical events.