Cafe Doodle Kit

It's tough to not look at a piece of interesting paper or cardboard and not think about transforming it.  This feeling has only been fueled by a short private class I attended on simple  bookbinding a few weeks ago.

Since then I'd been eyeing a large collapsible  pastry box from Coffee Day - I had some plans for it.

Time was when cafes were all about lingering at the melamine covered table  staring into the distance, eavesdropping on conversations albeit inadvertently, trying to figure out who and what the people around you were about, while pretending to be interested in stirring damp sugar crystals into a hot tumbler of coffee. It was about doodling on paper napkins and sneaking them home as keepsakes. Nowadays it's all about figuring out what kind of Italian coffee you want, and getting it to the table and stirring in demerara sugar or artificial sweetener before it gets cold. And it's about finding a table and keeping it. Let alone trying to overhear conversations unobtrusively, you have to do all you can to see that someone doesn't fall on your lap or snatch your chair while you're trying to squint and read the menu. Napkins have metamorphosed into public message boards. And the people are too close to be interesting for an afternoon session of guessing who and what they could be.

In a bid to rewind to those oh-so langorous heady days of cafe culture, I decided to convert this bit of card  into a Cafe Doodle Kit. Paper napkins and cafes are closely linked  in my mind.   I chose to go with a Star Book which was the closest to a napkin's form - this was made from a bit of the card from the cakebox and an old square ruled notepad. This fits into the folder made from the cake box, into which you can fit your pens and pencils, crayon sticks whatever else takes one's fancy. The Star Book pages open out much like a paper napkin does, and glory be, in this present edition, you have two different surfaces, a blank page and a square line page alternately - so you can write poetry or sketch depending on the mood that overcomes you, and what aura you wish to project!  In case anyone's looking of course.

Here's an overview of how it developed.

First, preparing the paper for the Star Book. God is in the details - cutting and folding.

There's a technique of folding each page, and then sticking them back-to-back to get this form. 

The ends of the paper form are stuck onto bits of card. In this case, bits of card cut from the cake box.

Ah, the trusty folder and awl (the latter was not really used for this project, but is just there for effect).

Working on the rest of the bit of cardboard - remove all other unnecessary bits to leave just whatever is needed for a folder. (Just like the instruction to the sculptor - you only need to remove all the bits that are not elephant)

Used a paste to glue one flap into a pocket, my trusty river stones adding their weight to it.

Always good to have closure - use any bits of random string lying around.

My favourite bit -   I went a bit overboard and made my own paper button instead of adding something heavy. I used the reverse of the card to contrast with the busy cover of the folder.

The underside of the button has a bit of remnant card, so it fits into the slit on the opposite side and is glued on.

The flaps are shut and the string fits over the paper button - voila, here is the Cafe Doodle Kit.

A look inside. The pages alternate between square ruled and plain, so you can use it to write poetry or doodle to your heart's content..and in case you come up with a gem of a doodle, you have it all on record. The folder can also accommodate extra paper napkins - last I remember they still give these away quite generously. (Disclaimer: I received nothing for this from the Cafe Coffee Day guys - I just let their logo be because it would have been messy to cover it up. )

Needless to say, it was a quite a bit of fun to make this, partly because of the freedom you get to wing it along the way and just invent stuff - like this absolutely crazy heart shaped paper button. Ah yes, paper (or card for that matter) is indeed a very forgiving material.

A fistful of nature

“Mamma, I found this in the garden and thought of you.”

How often has he stood there excitedly clutching a fistful of  blossoms or seed pods in his tiny hand?

This might be a cry that goes back to antiquity…a boy-man dragging a gift of a carcass of a woolly mammoth, or a perhaps deer or two hunted down and brought back to the cave? I’m glad I’m living in  present times, and not in those hunter-gatherer days…( for one thing, we would have needed a bigger refrigerator). Instead those traits are honed down to urban magpie tendencies, usually restricted to natural objects of interest to him, and that might be of interest to me.  

We have grown together, mother and son, walking hand in hand, just breathing and absorbing life. No speech is necessary.  It’s no surprise that we begin to think automatically of each other’s likes and dislikes, of wishing that the other was there to see what we see. Even the concrete pathways are no deterrent. Windfall seed pods and blossoms, trails made by unhurried slugs, black ants, leaves eaten away by water and wind to leave fragile skeletons - even the urban jungle has plenty for those who also stand and wait.

There’s always something to look at, pick up and examine, possibly bring back home from our rambles in Delhi and elsewhere.  At one point I realized that he has to understand that although nature is our backyard, it’s not our personal property to do as we will. That’s when I gently explained that even though I bring natural objects home, I try to restrict myself to a fistful, less if possible, but not more than that. It seemed like a reasonable enough rule of the “fist”  that he could comprehend at this age.

This time around, it was small windfall buds of the silk cotton tree that he proffered. Possibly inspired by the jewellery exhibition we had been to, he suggested I could make something like a necklace out of them. Although these were fresh soft buds when he brought them in, I lingered (like I always do) over them for too long, so eventually they could not be pierced.

Here is what emerged.

Dried windfall buds of the silk cotton tree.

A pendant made with camel-dung paper. Camel wool in two natural colours was used to suspend one silk cotton bud in the centre of the pendant, and as a cord for the necklace. It was a happy coincidence that the shades of the camel wool matched perfectly with the two coloured buds.

Another view of the pendant. If I had worked with fresh buds, I could have pierced a hole and strung it. Instead, I had to use the camel wool to bind the bud. 

Jewellery on display

A couple of months ago, I visited an exhibition  called “Seed to Silver” showcasing jewellery from different countries.

What captured my interest were the advance publicity reports that mentioned that natural objects and recycled material was used to create some of the jewellery. I asked the little boy to come along, and bring his camera, and although he is more of a nature photographer, he obliged quite happily.  

It was held in the most stuffy artificial location though, a hall in a five star hotel, with some token twigs and stones added to the exhibit décor to set the scene. And to make matters more congested, we suddenly discovered that the Chief Minister(CM) of Delhi, Mrs Shiela Dixit, had also decided to re-visit the exhibition on that day, after inaugurating it on the previous day. She must have really liked what she saw to visit it two days in a row.

The little boy, aka the boy journalist, took some time to start clicking the exhibits because he was a bit disturbed by the entourage, and was extremely reluctant to photograph the celebrity visitor - he was least bothered that the CM was just two feet away!  Frankly, it was all I could do to suppress my journalistic instincts, and grab his camera and start clicking away myself.   

Anyway, he did capture some of the jewellery through the glass fronted cabinets, and some appear here.  

On the whole, it was interesting more as a documentation of cultural tastes and creativity across countries. Some of the jewellery was made using recycled material that was man-made, and others made me wonder whether they could really be worn at all, or were they more of a one-time experiment.

 

Paper jewellery from Finland.

Plastic fish shaped vials were used for this elaborate neck piece.

Interesting use of bottle caps that would otherwise land up in the trash.

Finally something really natural - seed pods used  in jewellery/

Eventually the little boy did take a couple of shots of the CM (see below). Although there were questions I really felt like asking her, primarily on the safety of women in the city, looking at her just being a woman, enjoying an evening looking at jewellery and sometimes exclaiming in astonishment, I just clammed up and decided to give my citizen journalist instincts a day off.

Of course, eventually we (OK, I mean I) meandered into a separate hall where items were available for sale. I bought some of them including jewellery made from seeds from Tamil Nadu,  jute earrings from Bengal, and modern paper jewellery made by a young girl in Chennai. The absolute piece de resistance is the striking necklace made from some grass that grows in the water - it has to be worked upon to make it flexible, and I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. It's good to let go sometimes, and the little boy indulgently encouraged me to do so!  I'll try to post a photograph of my purchases sometime.

Infinite possibilities

I'm not much of a "day" person and I watch events like Mother's Day, Father's Day etc. come and go with  cool dispassion. To me it is like asking the writer of an epic to write a haiku and compress all the feelings of a lifetime into a few hours of the day.  I just can't seem to rustle up emotions on demand.

What I can do however, is spend hours thinking of certain landmark events, and relive them at will and preferably spread over days.... unchained by any social obligation to send out pop-up singing cards or bunches of flowers with eloquent messages.

With the recent Mother's Day acting as a trigger,  I pulled out  Anant's drawing books and ephemeral art work that we retained over the years and had look at them.

It's amazing to see the progression in his thought process, and the details that emerged in these drawings over time. What's particularly astonishing for us is the sketches of the birds that literally seem to sneak into a lot of the pictures. Considering that he has a very keen interest in birds even now, and photographs them at every opportunity, this does sort of seem like a foundation of sorts.

If life was perfect and I'd been more efficient, all these drawings would have been date-marked at the very least. While the drawings in the books are a little more clear in their chronology ( with the year at least),  the loose sheets are somewhat less organised, and I'm only able to judge whether he had begun writing or not.

There are plenty of online resources on archiving children's art work and although I did occasionally take a peek at them, I wasn't hugely successful implementing the ideas. One of the reasons for this was the habit he had of taking sheets of paper and doodling and sketching as and when the mood came over him...and usually while I was busy with something else. So it was up to me to basically sift through a whole pile of drawings whenever possible, retain some of the masterpieces and harden my heart while putting the rest in the ...I can't even bring myself to say it...you know where.

I belong to the school of allowing kids to be kids and not going on forever about clearing up stuff - so usually paper and crayons and pencils were always at hand in the living room. In hindsight, I feel that an easy enough method to date the pictures might have been to keep a stack of blank sheets with at least the month and year written at the back.  The other way might have been to ask the child to put the drawings into a folder which has a certain period marked on it.

Now that I start thinking about this, it's actually becoming quite crystal clear. I could have even asked my printer to get me a date seal. And made it into some kind of game that he stamp each of the drawings with the date seal. No wait a minute, let me hold myself in. The truth is that it's easy enough to get all practical now that he's ten - it wasn't so easy to get a second of breathing space when he was much younger. I think life was a blur and I went around with a rather wild look in my eyes wondering what was next on the list of gazillion things I had to do in a day. So I guess we'll have to run with what we have. And the best part about it...it doesn't really matter when exactly Anant drew any of these at all....it doesn't in the least affect our enjoyment of them after all these years.These drawings were done roughly when he was between 3-8 years of age.

Bird 1

Birds 2

 

Le Chat. My favourite and probably inspired by...

..by this papier-mache cat I made years ago and on which he painted the face. It's got a bit rundown over the years, yet, I haven't had the heart to re-paper it because I'll miss that expression.

Birds 3

A bit of colour

A sense of proportion? 1

A sense of proportion??  2

An attempt at a Bawa-esque Krishna painting? Even before he saw a Bawa

Custom-made quirkiness (I told him what I wanted and he delivered) Lollipops growing  in pots, sweeties on trees, aliens, nursery rhyme characters...

Graphic

And finally the young man as a toddler.

OK, maybe something has emerged after all...


A
In the first millisecond
that 
I saw you,
I realised the 
infinite
possibilities.
A work in progress could 
touch 
perfection.

Paper treasures

I follow a few blogs, and it won't come as much of a surprise that most of them have to do with paper. Patricia Zapata of A Little Hut had posted a tutorial over the weekend about gift toppers made from paper. I found a great use for recycled invitations cards (the red flower), and some of the camel-dung paper (the beige one). They are incredibly easy to make and can be worked on in batches.  I want to try making some out  of the colourful glossy weekend papers - that would be great to teach little fingers how to make them too. (Frankly, I think it's more fun to make these toppers than to choose gifts ...indeed why not give an inside-out, rather an outside-in present - a boxful of gift toppers - there's a thought? ).

Call of the Tingatinga

Although by and large I avoid surfing the Internet with my little boy, preferring that he scour books and newspapers for any information he needs, there are some exceptions.

Recently, he watched an episode of the programme Art Attack where an African painting was featured, but the programme was too fast-paced for him to understand the style. The thing with him is that he never forgets his creative pastimes checklist and sure enough, the first free day he got, he piped up that he wanted to paint in “the African style”. We scanned some websites, and soon enough he saw something like what had appeared on the television programme - it happened to be a website on the Tingatinga school of painting.

Even if the boy hadn’t already been inspired enough, the tuneful name and the vivid paintings would have inspired him all over again. In a few minutes he decided that he’d seen enough and wanted to make his own “Tingatinga”. Instead of the trademark enamel paints on board, we went for acrylics on canvas.

First he drew a rough sketch on paper. I’m amazed at his spontaneous dexterity at sketching - this was done freehand and without looking at any book. I wonder what I'd do if someone gives me a blank sheet of paper !

Next, he sketched with pencil on  the canvas, and began filling it in with acrylic colours. Acrylics are not as easy to handle as poster colours, and undoubtedly it takes some time to gain control over the brush, not to mention figuring out how to use paints that have thickened over time. While it’s not perfect, what’s good is that the Tingatinga style seems to be particularly forgiving because it is all about colours and filling up the canvas with a lot of details, sometimes disproportionate figures, almost like something out of an animation movie.[It struck me later that the distinct cover illustrations of the Alexander McCall Smith Mme Ramotswe series might just be Tingatinga paintings].

Work in progress. Some work still remains, the magenta needs to be filled out more evenly, and he’s thinking of adding more touches like flowers and leaves to fill up the spaces (OK, I'm kidding, he isn't thinking of anything of the sort, the artist-as-a-young-man seems to have moved on, but it's just that I feel it may help cover up the patchy background).

This first Tingatinga will be presented to a special someone tomorrow....Happy Birthday Appa!

Tingatinga school of painting inspired acrylic on canvas by Anant (April 2011)

Gratitude

Mixed media by Namitha. Ashy Prinia in watercolours on Aquarelle paper. Real twig embellished with  leaves and berries fabricated from paper made from camel dung.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.  

~Thornton Wilder

The Ashy Prinia deserved one more go, and here it is, sitting on its own little twig, unframed and free. It was easy to add some accents to this bare little twig and make it seem like a little bit of the outside has entered our space. Right now, it's living on a farm in Rajasthan.

Happy Birthday!

Papier-mache Red Cardinal  on real twig, painted with acrylics. Made by Anant.

Happy Birthday to our precious E!

The last leaf

One advantage of “coming out of the closet”, as it were, about my artistic aspirations, is that many indulgent people suddenly materialize bearing materials like paper and canvases, paints and brushes and such like to see me through my doubtless long and arduous quest. In ancient times, I’d probably have popped a few of these items into a satchel and made my living painting in the village square. Now these materials usually line the said closet, and lay for weeks or months while I contemplate them in my mind, imagine myself fiddling with them, imagine textures, shapes and objects, and then…. I put them away for a while in my mind.

Then suddenly the forces create circumstances when something pops and I need to just do something with that particular piece of paper or those paints. Recently circumstances, in terms of an unexpected collision of human body against horizontal concrete, led to some injury to the hands, making it difficult to flex my fingers for a few days and to use the computer for my work. It was easy to turn to the overflowing closet and pick out some very interesting material, paper made from camel dung, given to me a few months ago by my friend Ilse during a visit to Delhi. This post is for her - Thanks Ilse!

Handmade paper has this aura about it which makes you feel that each sheet is extremely precious and can only used for something that is important.  Indeed, I’m very cautious and possessive about my handmade sheets of paper, often using just narrow strips at a time, and even storing the cutting scraps.

While working with the camel dung paper, I kept making mental notes on how it held out with PVA glue, watercolours, acrylic and poster paints, and how it felt when built up into layers, or being molded into tiny forms. Although I usually use a home made paste for papier mache or even for layering handmade paper, I desisted from trying it out at this time as I didn’t want my fingers to get any stiffer in the Delhi winter.  

I found the colour and the grainy appearance of the paper to be very pleasant and neutral to work with, although it may appear a trifle grim and industrial to some eyes. This led me to create the  limited edition Meccano set inspired range of paper objects shown below (but that’s of course just an excuse…I really was just thrilled to be reacquainted with my eyelet-punching gadget). Just three layers of paper (for small objects) were enough to create a texture of leather (thinnish but stiff) and that’s where it creates a great range of possibilities for me. And the PVA glue made the paper harder and…this is the best of all…it shows very little signs of warping with use of this glue at least for the size of objects I made. I have to be careful and qualify the thickness and the size of objects because they make a lot of difference to the “stiffness” of the final product.  In summer, I will check out the effect of papier mache paste which is a pasty flour and water based glue that takes time to harden between layers and needs hot and dry conditions to work well.

I would not use watercolours on this paper, mainly because of the inherent colour of the paper which would dull them further, but would definitely try acrylics. From the little I know of the paper making process, the speckled look and grainy feel would be no doubt due to the fibre content of the dung. For me it is this quality of the paper, the texture, that really has me hooked because it is full of character and takes on different hues.  I feel it would be an interesting material for a paper sculptor for this reason.

The Last Leaf

If you know the story The Last Leaf by O.Henry, you’ll know already that the last leaf that remains on the tree is really the one that’s been painted on. Perhaps this temporary installation perched on my studio table could be interpreted as a grim reminder of the wanton destruction wrought by mankind and what we should do about this. But I don’t want this to get too complicated… this little branch  that I found on the road with its twigs and leaves is really a stage -- among the leaves are two leaves crafted with the camel dung paper.  First one to guess correctly which ones are “painted on” will get a UNIQUE handcrafted pendant  made from the camel dung paper. I trust that you won’t use the computer tools like magnify etc. to play this game, just sticking to the current resolution should be enough.

The Last Leaf  

Ephemera

Here are some pendants and coasters crafted from the camel dung paper, working backwards from finished product to some part of the process. 

Hmm. I wouldn't mind a large cold drink right now especially if the glass is placed on a cheerful coaster made by the resident artist!

A cord running through one of the  Meccano set inspired pendants.

More design options for pendants.

Look at the difference in textures, pendants made from camel dung paper placed on smooth exercise book paper.

A view of the camel dung paper and the plain pendants.

I would shy away from laminating these objects for the simple reason that it detracts from the feel and the idea behind creating this paper in the first place. These are ephemeral in a sense. The next step would be using natural dyes for rubber stamping or painting on them. It’s wonderful to work with paper that is both a canvas and a “substance” that itself can be moulded and worked upon.

It's amazing how my thoughts always return to nature, regardless of the material I use in my explorations.aIf anyone has a moment to spare, try sitting down and "crafting" a leaf. It isn't easy. I could get away because I needed it to "appear" like a leaf for the camera and not bother with too much of the finer details (although I must add that my young son who has keen eyesight couldn't spot one of the fake ones in person). Perhaps more than any installation or paintings or journalistic exposes, a simple exercise like being asked to paint one leaf as realistically as possible might make people think about consumption-destruction-creation in a different light. Anyone game for it?