Weblog of A Designer

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]

My Visual Art Blogalleria is one of my favorite personal Blog projects that I have initiated in the beginning of 2006, the time when I started thinking about various possibilities of a Blog and looking for different ways to use blogging as an effective tool to build a credible web presence. I coined the word ‘Blogalleria’ joining ‘Blog’ and ‘Galleria’ together, to establish this blog’s identity as ‘an on-line art gallery created using a blog’ and also, ‘a blog in form of an art gallery’. For last two years, I have been posting my personal as well as non-commercial graphics, photographs, photographics, illustrations, paintings and sketches on this Visual Art Blogalleria and it has become a public archive of my personal as well as other non-commercial artworks.

Recently, I have overhauled this Blogalleria, changed its look and feel and the sidebar content, added lots of new exhibits and items and tried to establish better interactions with my other web-based public initiatives. I am quite excited about it to see how this change affects the visitors of the site.

There was another parallel thought process brewing in my mind, when I was revamping this Blogalleria. Being a designer, I usually believe in eternal design truths, like “a dark text on light background is easier to read”. But, since I stumbled upon two interesting posts on green computing and black google by Mark Ontkush on ecoiron.blogspot.com, almost a year back, I have started thinking about Mark’s argument and since then, I have been following his blog and hist posts regularly. His argument is based on the fact that, “a given monitor (CRT) requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen” and derives a conclusion that says, websites with black background save a minuscule amount of energy, each time opened in a CRT Monitor.

Inspired by Mark’s idea, this time I have decided to change the background color to Black and to use Black as much as possible instead of any other lighter color on flat areas of the site. This effectively means that whenever someone will open any page of this Blogalleria in a CRT monitor, he/she will save a little amount of energy. A small step towards saving energy, saving earth.

Death of A Mustache
View larger artwork

When I saw the news of Veerappan’s death in a police encounter on the news paper, along with a photo of the deceased brigand, the first thing I noticed was the absence of his great mustache. I was not sure how Veerappan lost his legendary mustache, but I thought, ‘It’s not a death of a man or a sandalwood smuggler or a notorious bandit or the infamous brigand; it is actually a death of a great mustache!’ I might sound funny or weird but I was very much impressed by his mustache, since I have seen his picture on a newspaper when I was in high school!

Within next few days, I came up with this work!

Illustration: Under Construction
View larger graphics

An illustration I have done for a UNIFEM project. The project was to document the progress of various NGOs working in the area of human trafficking with fund provided by UNIFEM. I have visited those organizations and tried to capture visual references of the development and work happening there. Later, I created various collages with the photographs taken at the spot and tried to bring out my understanding about the development happened there. The illustration shown above, was for an NGO who has started to construct a huge building for the benefits of the victims of human trafficking. The building is yet to be completed, but one can easily see their hopes and happiness, around this building, still under construction. When I was there, I captured multiple low angle shots of various parts of that incomplete building and later, combined those photographs to create a collage that emphasizes on the hope of the members of the NGO, around this building, still under construction.

Rampage
View larger image

Being an avid gamer I used to spend lots of time on various versions of famous game series GTA – scheming a ‘rampage’, planning ‘bomb blasts’, executing a ‘mall shootout’ or simply ‘riding’ through the city ‘killing gang members’. This image is a kind of extension of my visual memories of those virtual images of deaths and blood and blasts, juxtaposed against our real context – a blasting population, often threatened, disturbed by deaths and murders, mass killings and genocides. It’s all about our time - restless and anxious, like the central character of GTA, standing in the middle of the blood and bodies of ‘wasted gang members’.

The Bengali text on the image says, ‘Our time’, repeatedly.

This work has been featured on the cover of Autumn 2007 issue of International Journal, published by Canadian Institute of International Affair (CIIA, Toronto), currently known as Canadian International Council (CIC). Thanks to CIC and IJ.

Exodus
View larger image

Since I was a kid, I have often witnessed hundreds and thousands of homeless, uprooted people, coming out of the dark caves of poverty and hunger, crossing the borders & the fences and walking towards a darker future, with their face glowing with meaningless hope. They know that they might not reach anywhere; still they wish to continue their journey, their Exodus, for a better home, a better world. In this image, I have tried to capture, the endless, meaningless journey of homeless people, crossing borders and checkposts, hiding in the darkness of cloudy nights, and being threatened by their own transitory existence, for years.

Later, this image has been used as a supporting illustration, by Canadian Institute of International Affair (CIIA, Toronto), currently known as Canadian International Council (CIC), for the Autumn 2007 issue of their International Journal, along with few other works of mine. They have also featured my work ‘Rampage’ on the cover of this issue. Thanks to CIC and IJ.

Insomnia in red and white / Saturday 25th August 2007 6.22 AM
View larger image »

My MacShot Project is a series of low-resolution unedited (except few basic built-in features in Mac Photobooth) photos of myself and other objects surrounding me and my MacBook, taken by the tiny inbuilt Web cam and PhotoBooth. In the beginning, the primary intention of My MacShot project was to capture few selected moments and feelings, involving me and my context, through the built-in web cam of my MacBook. They were visual expressions of few specific moments, sometimes accompanied by few lines of text and a date/time tag. Initially it was more focused towards the physicality of the webcam, the laptop and the operator (that is me), and their interactions and negotiations with their time - both physical and mental. It was more like a personal, as well as very much context-dependant photo-journal or something similar. But later, I got more interested to figure out how one can go beyond the physical limitations of in-built webcam of a MacBook.

As I started taking more and more snaps, often abstract, I started realizing the innumerable possibilities of this tiny in-built webcam and this simple photo-capture software called PhotoBooth. With simple features and functionalities, it allows you to turn usual objects, into amazing pieces of compositions!

I saw him .. the Green Monster .. with a bleeding heart! / Thursday 5 July 2007 20.54 PM
View larger image »

• My MacShots: Selected MacShots

The second image (The Green Monster) is a close-up of my mobile screen, as captured by in-built Web Cam of MacBook

Comics
View larger image »

Since my childhood, I have always been mesmerized by the magical world of images and text of comic books and the bikini-clad girlfriends of the super heroes with their funny speech baloons, crossing the boundaries of those small boxy frames and rigid panels. I have always wanted to create a comic strip, but it did not get done. The only thing that I could do is to bring together one of my unfinished poems about a weekend trip with a rejected photograph from the same trip, and make a conscious effort to simulate the eerie ambience of the first cell of a dark, action comics strip - still without a story, waiting for a hostile moment to begin its journey through the pages of our childhood fears.

The text on the image can be roughly translated as,

There are trucks and trucks and trucks, and more trucks, more and more trucks, truck after truck, standing still beside the yellow seat, before us, and the dark sleeves of their t-shirts wipe off from the dark, gloomy, night, the vaporized sodium of Highway no. 7!

Wild Pepper Forest (2006) - The work is inspired by a line from a Bengali poem by one of my favorite Bengali poets, Kamal Chakraborty (’80 – ‘90). The sentence goes like this, “… tomake dekhate partum buno maricher jongole thyangare ghumiye porechhe …” .

A rough translation of the line would go like this, “… I wish I could show you how the brigand has fallen asleep in the wild pepper forest …”.

The image was  used as the cover for 14th issue of Kaurab Online, the on-line edition of Kaurab, a Bengali Literature magazine founded by Kamal Chakraborty, which he also edited for 30 years.

I have written a prose piece in Bengali, along with this image, as a part of my response to this line. Rather, my work is a textual and visual tribute to the poet, Kamal Chakraborty, who has inspired me to experiment with the form and content of Bengali prose in my writings.

• Read this Bengali prose piece, “Tomake Dekhate Partum (I wish I could show you)” in Bangla UNICODE font
• Read this Bangla Prose Piece, as GIF

French and English transposition of the first paragraph of the Bengali piece has been done by Rouflaquettes.

French transposition:

Je pourrais te montrer
et je veux tellement te faire montrerles
les grattes ciels depuis les frontières de la cité… …
bric à bric
sable, bois
pierre à pierre
sur plafonds blanchis
vignes coulantes formidables de piments sauvages … …
dont l’ombre endorme le brigand faire à mesure
tel que le soleil de thésaures de notre parole
dictionnaires
examens et leurs cahiers verts
ainsi que le stylo à balle en rouges …

English transposition:

I could have shown you
and I would have wanted so much to show you
the skyscrapers beyond the city’s frontiers,
brick after brick
sand, wood
on lime-washed ceilings
flowing vines of elegant wild pepper
whose shadow shelters the sleeping brigand
like the sun of the thesaurus
and dictionaries of our speech,
exams and their green notebooks,
marked in red ball-point ink …

Later, in 2007, I reworked the image to create a cover for the printed edition of Kaurab.

The reworked image can be viewed here »

Reconstruction:
I believe, every time viewer sees a painting or any other visual art, he tries to construct/reconstruct his own painting, using the elements available within physical and/or psychological frame of the ‘original’ painting being seen, within his mind. He creates his own image that emerges from the original image; and then starts interacting with this new image within his mindscape. The ‘original’ image becomes secondary here, at this pint, and works only as inspiration; and sometimes as reference. The more he interacts with this newly constructed image, it changes and the visual characteristics of the viewer’s gaze become more and more prominent, replacing the same of the ‘original’ artist.

In this series “Reconstruction: Level 1-3”, I have tried to capture various phases of this mental reconstruction by the viewer. My effort was to depict, how viewer’s perspective can replace, the perspective of the ‘original’ painter.

The so called, ‘original’ work is done by Suman Kalyan Ghosh, an artist and painter from Kolkata. Suman, being my friend for years, keeps sending me letters, photographs and also samples of his recent works. The one I have chosen, is an untitled abstract in pastel that Suman painted in 2005.

Reconstruction: Level 1

view larger image

The painting is not framed and pinned up on the soft board beside my table in my cabin. I took a snap of a very small part of the image from an unusual angle. I have consciously included the signature of Suman, at strategic position within the frame, so that it can add value the entire composition as a visual element, too. I have also included the yellow board pin that has been used to put the original painting on the board. I have introduced external elements, shapes and colors and the image already looks like a separate composition.

Reconstruction: Level 2

view larger image

This is Level 2 of the “Reconstruction” series. The board pin is now playing more vital role in the composition. The signature of ‘original’ artist became more visually integrated with the entire image and repetition of visual elements has started changing the persona of the image, gradually.

Reconstruction: Level 3

view larger image

As the reconstruction goes on, the personality of the image keeps changing. A faint hint of my urban complication starts sipping in into Suman’s subconscious innocence.

[To Be Continued]