Never got around to typing this completely, and I’ve got about 2 hours to spare before I leave campus for my flight, so, why not?
Also, there should be a series of posts going up today (in the next few hours, I think). Hopefully I’ve written this one, and then one on a general examinations thing, and then one on my thoughts on being halfway done with Law school. It feels like it’s been forever since I last typed.
Art and I share a complicated relationship. Everyone in my family appears to be talented with the arts and crafts, but I inherited none of it. Asking me to use scissors or participate in gluing things was usually a massive mistake. I couldn’t cut a straight line, because left-handers cannot use regular scissors (a convenient excuse I found I could use), and often, I ended up gluing my hands and leaving a grey mark that merely absorbed water as I ran my hand under the tap.
I wasn’t good with drawing either. As I told you, my grandmother had to teach me how to draw a fish in Grade 2/3, and subsequently, my mother took up most drawing duties for projects. I did the writing bits and the entire planning – even ended up sketching ideas on a whiteboard. But the final diagram was a group effort: my mother and I against my art demons.
The only thing that helped me comfort myself was the cards that I made. I used to use minimal art skill, but maximum love, to make fun cards for birthdays and anniversaries. Slowly, once my grandpa taught me how to navigate the internet, the thing I discovered was that I had a flair for copying things I saw on my computer – so sketching card covers became extremely easy. There’s a pile lying around at home.
In Grades 10 and 11, when I ran for Student Council, I came up with a bunch of puns to complement my campaign symbol: which was a pair of spectacles. I plastered boards with memes. But the thing that caught most people’s eyes (and this is in a video too), were the posters I had on blue chart paper. My mother traced round spectacles and wrote out my jokes on most of them. Together, we won House Captaincy, and School Captaincy, and those were definitive experiences in my life.
Puns come easy to me. Diagrams don’t. Chemistry orbitals were tough to draw out, my Physics Alternative to Practicals scared me more.
The worst though? Figuring out if lines were straight even when I had a ruler.
And using a protractor to draw a circle. Once mastered, that was super fun, but till then? The path is gruelling.
Which is why inktober was super liberating for me. So, thanks a ton for reading or even clicking on the links in my tweets. I had fun doing it this year, so maybe next year I’ll take it more seriously.
Curd rice out.
P.S. – Here’s a fun photo my grandpa sent me (Thanks, Tata!). I did this as a child with his help over summer. Art-wise, no one matches my grandfather – he’s done 500+ reverse glass paintings, and tries out new art styles every now and then, with pencil sketching being another forte of his.
Tejas Rao 