anybody can doodle

Dan was a wee little fellow when I saw this story about an artist collaborating with her four year old kid to create wonders. Check it out here. I wanted to try collaborating with the boy, but I couldn't wait till he becomes four. So I decided to try at 18 months. I handed over the adult tempera colours. It was unfamiliar territory for him. He was used to crayons and sketch pens, pencils and regular pens. This was new.

He was hesitant to put his fingers into the tiny tubs of paint. I made him dip his fingers. He freaked out in the beginning when he saw paint on his fingertips. Then I showed him how to dip fingers in paint and use it for finger painting. He made some strokes.

I had to hand him his sketch pens after a few minutes of finger painting.

The finished toddler art.

And then the mother gave the toddler art piece a wash with water colours. Finally the mother doodled all over it and folded it and made it into a greeting card for the father.

Here is the final product.

Since the kakka aka crow is his favorite word (he sometimes wakes up uttering the word kakka), I decided to put that down in the card along with a little crow on a tree branch. 

Fishes from the mother.

And butterflies from the son.

The crow.

Doodle triangles.

Us, the Doodlers.

This signature will be used for future collaborations from the mother and son. :)

That's all folks.

NB: The father of the boy liked the greeting card. :)

A Guest Artist (3 and 1/2 yrs old)

It makes me feel all kinds of happy when kids come over, sit on your dining chair, concentrate and create art on a blank sheet from your own sketch book.

Presenting the Guest Artist of Honour, Angel aka Mishka (3 1/2 years.) She is our next door neighbour and Daniel's favorite playmate. One minute they are fighting and the next minute they are hugging, and vice versa.

Angel Colouring away.

There is a house and there is the sun :)

Kids are adorable when they concentrate on drawing. :)

Much Love,

Growing up

Dan is 18 months old.

Growth-o-meter :)

BiiGii and her little shop

I have decided to spread some craft love today. I have tremendous amounts of respect towards people who find time to craft even when they are supposed to be busy doing their MPhil's and PhD's. Bhuvi is one such good friend with whom I can talk about the quirks, the perks and the hardships of all things handmade. She is a passionate jewellery designer/artist who has set her little shop in facebook called biigii's little shop. When she is not looking for raw materials and spending hours carefully crafting unique, quirky, pretty statement accessories, she is doing her research in JNU. Crafting is something she talks about as her way of "creative procrastination".

Here is a sneak peek into some of my favorites from BiiGii's little shop. You can check out more stuff on her facebook page here. The descriptions she give for her creations are equally unique, when compiled together in a book they might read like a new style of poetry.

Next time when you want to wear or gift something dramatic and unique, check out what BiiGii might have in store.

Much love to Bhuvi Gupta.


Whimsical Brooches of foxes in mufflers,

Pink eared Rabbits who might take you to alice's wonderlands,

Hipster Teddys

Statement neck pieces,

Handcrafted earrings that are truly one of its kind,

This turquoise pendant is my personal favorite.

The ever popular brave and tangled necklace,

or these mismatched stunners, 

Here is another one of my favorites, beauty! 

Doodle Shelfie

Another fun project I did for the brother's room other than the neon yellow wall art while we were in Kerala. This doodled bookcase was initially a meal safe, an antique kitchen furniture. A meal safe was used in olden times to keep plates, glasses etc displayed prettily on the top tier shelf, the second tier was covered in a wire mesh and was used to store cooked hot food. The last hidden tier covered in wood panelling was where the ancestral mommies used to hide their precious things, hand written recipe notes and so on and so forth.

This was a not so useful piece of furniture lying around in the kitchen. What is the use of a meal safe when we store cooked food in refrigerators and reheat them in our induction cooktops, microwaves, gas stoves and other such modern kitchen appliances. So one fine morning, I plotted with the brother of mine and shifted this beauty from the kitchen to his room. We found the wire mesh to be too ugly to be in a bedroom, so we tore it apart. After some brainstorming, I decided to wrap a cardboard piece in black construction paper. The doodle was a freehand one done using white correction pen. The top tier was a really nice space to keep the books that were lying around.

The before picture. 

Close up of the doodle.

Excuse the intruder in this shot :)

Tada!

That was a satisfying little repurposing/ furniture makeover project.
Happy happy :)

In the Nehru-Gandhi Backyard

We became regular visitors to the Teen Murti Bhavan premises, the former residence of Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. This indeed is a dynasty building where Indira Gandhi's children played around. There are these vintage pictures of Rajiv Gandhi standing with grandfather Nehru, pictures of the Kennedy's relaxing in the back verandah facing the big lawn and so on and so forth. The premises now hold the residence of Nehru turned into a museum, the Nehru Memorial Library which according to the history teacher in the household is one of the best libraries in India, and the Nehru Planetarium which we intend to visit when a planetarium will start making sense to the boy.

So the recent development is that since the father wants to attend a lecture series happening in the library, the mother son duo decided to hang out and explore the loca.We pack some snacks and water bottles and roam around to our heart's content. We have now became familiar faces in the museum and library, the boy has befriended the security police men, the karamcharis in the museum, library and the library canteen. We also meet a lot of people doing their customary teen murti visit in Delhi Darshan programs. The boy is now so familiar with the former prime minister's residence that he has started to consider it as 'apna hi khar' :)

On one of these visits, we decided to click some pics too.

The library entrance.

The spring flowers.

Boy is fascinated by the ramp and the railing.

The prime minister's residence, back verandah.

Also, spot the boy.

The backyard where the little gandhi's grew up.

 the boy tries to break and enter in to the prime minister's office at every visit.

This drawing room might have inspired the home decor style in many Indian homes.

 The famous rose bud on the nehru jacket, our mirror selfie.

The boy made new friends in every visit.

He is expecially fond of this huge letter box that is thrice his size.

And we took mom-son selfies.

 And then we were tired, we just wanted Appa to be back from the lecture.

Appa came back wearing a 'let's go home' face. And that was the end of that day.