My blog is new and so am I, to this whole internet creative blogging scene. Although I have been creating designs for almost 20 years now, I have only recently started touting them on the internet. Starting today, I am indulging in Artist Spotlights. There are so many creative people out there and so many who amaze me with their brilliant styles and the ability to birth art from the most unusual nook and crannies of life. In the coming weeks and months I hope to bring to your attention, the work of these fantastic individuals that is truly inspiring on many levels. But today, amidst a little self-promotion [well, no one is going to be featuring me, at least not for many years] I want to share with you a folder of sketches that I came across recently, many of which I had forgotten I had ever sketched. The yellowing paper suggests that these are quite old. To be precise, most of them were done 19 years ago when I was 12 years old. I was so delighted to have found them. These are some of my favorites and I am working on combining them with vectors to produce some lovely digital artwork soon.

The pastels are my personal favorites. I remember getting a 64-oil pastels in a box for my birthday when I started doing portraits. I was fascinated by the different shades of colors, which were perfect for a multitude of subjects. Faces were my favorites. I loved doing eyes and lips and the soft shadows in the angles of the face. Pencil sketching began much earlier for me, I used to love sketching animals, slowly graduating to portraits and abstracts. I never really gave up sketching and doodling. Mixed media art is something that fascinates me a lot today and experimenting with that gives me a lot of joy.

The most amazing thing is that I have kept some of the old oil pastels as souvenirs, memories of me starting out. I think they used to be in my box of treasured childhood stuff, things that would have then been wondrous in a 12-year old’s eyes. Now they sit in my fancy art box alongwith my tablet pen, just mere little stubs, reminders of a time long gone. The orange beauty of an art you see just above was something that I used to practice before a contest for 6th graders where you had to illustrate and color a portrait from memory. I had done and re-done the sketch so many times, I could do it in my sleep. I won bronze at that competition and it took me 40 minutes to get it right.

The portrait just above what I am now writing is of the other half of LBOI, Nick. I made this when we had just met 14 years ago at college. He still looks pretty much the same, albeit a little bit older and a million times more gorgeous.

Ahh I remember being a die-hard Maradons fan and until-I-die Argentinian supporter back in the days. I used to never miss a single Argentina game and when they lost in that final after coming so close, I was inconsolable. At the moment Manchester United rules in my roost, I still carry a torch for Argentina and try to watch most Socceroos games.