New at Sweet Lotus Art

This is one of four graphics that are now available at Sweet Lotus Art. It's one of four drawings I made, originally in black and white, after visiting China in 1995, during the UN Women's Conference. I colored the drawings many years later and used them on greeting cards and mugs. I will eventually post links to the website where they're still available as cards/mugs. This is the first time that I've made them available for sale as POSTERS. There's watermark on the image here and at Sweet Lotus Art that won't appear in the printed version.

SWEET LOTUS ART

… and finally, after weeks of making excuses and developing allergies to keyboards and wanting to sleep all day, every day, SWEET LOTUS ART is a reality. 

And you know the best part? It was fun to set it up. The host site, FolioTwist, is highly approachable and easy to use. At every point, if I got stuck it was because I wasn't paying attention and/or I was so convinced I wouldn't be able to move forward that I got stuck just in order to feel justified in my beliefs. Incompetence is always the easiest of all options, right?

But Zac and Dan of Folio Twist are patient, helpful and more than anything else, really good at what they do. So Sweet Lotus Art is finally up and I'm feeling very happy about it. 

As some of you know, I've been exhibiting my edition prints for years so they're on view, as one might expect. However the new element here is that I've made many of those etchings/lithos available here as digital reproductions -- that is, something like a photocopy except that it's beautifully printed, through another web-site called ImageKind (they also sell tons of other art). I can afford to say "beautifully printed" coz I'm not praising myself here -- that site does really good work. I ordered a couple of prints for my sister and when she showed me the results, I was kind of blown away. The paper and the printing are great. And because they're reproductions, not "signed originals", they're also surprisingly cheap*.

I am also offering a large number of "doodles" -- sketches I made (and continue to make) while talking on the phone -- as digital reproductions. Some of them are in black and white, as they are when I make 'em and some of them, like the one featured above, started off b/w but I colorize them and make them into what I'm calling Digital Posters. I will gradually transform all the b/ws into digital posters (they'll continue to be available in monochrome too).

I am not offering the edition prints for sale internationally for the moment. I am not yet set up to do the packing, insuring and shipping. But if you're living outside the US and want to order prints from ImageKind, it should be easy enough. You'd just pay a lot more for shipping, of course, than you would in the US.

So … umm … what are you waiting for? GO VISIT. Send the link to all your friends. And if you're an artist, sign up at FolioTwist and start your own gallery. It'll be fun. Trust me.

*but you have to click on "unframed", when you're at ImageKind to see the raw, unvarnished price. At first glance you'll have a heart attack, because the price includes the frame, matt and glazing.

ELSEWHERE, USA

Finally! A new post. Yes, it's been a very long time. I've been all over the place, but I've also been back here in the US since the end of July.

I won't even try to recap several months' worth of activities. But there are two items I'd like to share right away. One is related to the above image. It relates to a column that's been appearing in the Saturday edition of Business Line (part of The Hindu newspaper network). I've been meaning to post this list of links FOREVER but … well … Anyway. Here they are now.

The column is a slightly fictional version of my life here. When I say "slightly" I mean that all the names are different, including places, people and the occasional animal; the events are mostly true but not all of them; and the sequence of events is not necessarily as presented.

So that's the first item. The second item is what will appear in the NEXT post, (i.e., it'll appear above this one, once I've finished posting), which is my first ever on-line web-site for displaying and selling my art-work. It's taken me a full month just to get around to posting the link! I've been working on the site for about eight weeks now. I can't explain why it's taken so long, because the web-site, FOLIO-TWIST is very well designed and easy to use. More about this when I get around to posting that link …

Meanwhile, here are links to 12 columns:

ELSEWHERE 01 -- Opening Doors 

ELSEWHERE 02 -- Shopping For One

ELSEWHERE 03 -- Greetings, Visiting Slave

ELSEWHERE 04 -- Coffee Emergencies

ELSEWHERE 05 -- Who And Why

ELSEWHERE 06 -- No Breeze, This

ELSEWHERE 07 -- Lights Out

ELSEWHERE 08 -- Day In The Aisles

ELSEWHERE 09 -- Jogging Along

ELSEWHERE 10 -- Day In The City

ELSEWHERE 11 -- On The Beach

ELSEWHERE 12 -- Stars And Straps

SUKI ONLINE / 2014 / 02

26th February 2014
Aside from not updating the posts at this blog, I haven't been updating my book list either. *sigh* Here are two links that I missed posting:
The paperback edition of THREE VIRGINS is available in the US. In India, it's available in hardback online from the publisher, ZUBAAN. Flipkart features a link to the paperback edition, which is not, so far as I know, available in India.

It's had some very positive reviews. Here are three:
Namita Gokhale in OUTLOOK
Mitali Saran in TEHELKA
Akhila Krishnamurthy in the HINDU

My latest illustrated book is WE ARE DIFFERENT, available from Flipkart India and of course from its publisher, TULIKA BOOKS.

I have also recently begun a fortnightly column with The Hindu's BUSINESS LINE in their Saturday magazine, BLink. It's an interesting and well designed magazine, well worth a visit.

Here's a link to the first piece: ELSEWHERE, USA. I'll post more links as I get them.

And finally, there's been a lot of activity on the Indian indigenous comic front.

Arul Mani in the LADIES FINGER! posted a very friendly review of Penguin India's DOUBLETALK many months ago and I was too sluggish to post a link here. Thanks to Amruta Patil, who very kindly sent me the link (realising that I would never otherwise see it or find it on my own)

At the Bangalore Lit Fest that I attended in January, I was the Mediator on a panel about graphic novels -- I really would like to write about this at greater length, so I won't say more right now. In a related development, SUKI made a guest appearance in PULP QUARTERLY, a lively new publication focusing on graphic stories and story tellers.

SUKI ONLINE / 2014 / 01

Notes:
1) Okay, so it's been TWO MONTHS. I've been traveling since the 10th of December 2013. Not continuously, sure, but enough that I couldn't settle down and give Suki her space.

2) The view is of the Trishul/Nanda Devi range (it's not properly centred, so Nanda Devi is kind of cut off, on the right) and I felt breathless and blown away and all of those things -- I've seen the view before, but never this clearly, never for five days continuously, never with the sense of being In The Presence Of Snow Peak Super Stars in quite this way before. I traveled to Sitla from New Delhi with E and A (by car. A driving all the way), intending to spend the two days before and after the New Year there. I've been to Sitla a number of times before and we've always stayed with wonderful friends, at their very special, very beautiful home/estate/orchard. The peaks have always been curtained away behind mist and haze. But this time, there they were just … there.

Just there.

You want to spend the whole day looking. And that's all.

3) I got back to my little hideaway in the US last Friday, after an extremely active trip. I feel as if I spent the whole two months running around. First to Madras, then to Sitla, then very briefly to Bangalore, for only my second Lit Fest, the Times of India's Literary Carnival.

I'll post more photographs in a later post, from the Sitla trip. Not more pictures of the range (because nothing really does it justice) but of quick blinks taken from the window of the car, of village markets along the way.