Saturday, October 18, 2008

The 'Hatching'

A4 size; Black pen on paper; Using a technique of ‘hatching’ and ‘cross-hatching’ for the King hatchlings ! This technique is done by drawing closely spaced parallel lines to create tonal or shading effects.

After having glued myself to Bangalore for a few months, immersed in painting, I finally got a chance to take off to the Western Ghats, where (my brother, Sandesh) and the filming crew were shooting a documentary for National Geographic about King Cobras! The crew, along with Gowri Shankar and the many volunteers at ARRS (Agumbe Rainforest Research Station) had put in many weeks of radio tracking the King, observing and recording its behavior and filming the nest building in the wild. Now, it was time for the baby kings to break open their shells and come out into their whole new wild world. And I was lucky enough to land up at Agumbe right in time for this ! It was early August.

I sat watching the heads pop out, everything in slow motion, taking their own sweet time to absorb their new surroundings and venture out boldly, leaving behind their safe haven. With their heads out, they stood in the same position, sometimes for hours together, as if everything had been paused. Thus giving me ample enough time to sit in front of them and doodle rough sketches in my field-journal. And presented above is the final sketch of the baby kings hatching. Made this after i got back to Bangalore.

11 comments:

MUJEEBpatla said...

i never expected such magic with pen and paper...amazing drawing and great explanation....

Anonymous said...

hey, will tell you. This is just amazing. Waiting to see the sketch in person.

Miss D said...

WOW...You work is truely outstanding. I will really upload my stuff to humour you..

MEROPS said...

Mujeeb, Madhu and Dipti... thank you very much !:)
Dipti... waiting to see your works. Am sure they are great!

Akhila S said...

Waaaooooow! An amazing piece.

Veda said...

fantabulous! Foe a moment i did not understand what u were talking about in the pic...gosh the moment i clicked on the pic for a larger size.....eeeee....snakes!!!!!!!!!!!


awesome work sangeetha!

MEROPS said...

Thank you very much everyone!
All your words of encouragement, adds more enthusiasm to work!

"K" said...

Great sketch! I have trekked the western ghats so many times ... every once spotted a king cobra. I guess it takes a lot of patience in tracking one and studying its behavior.

MEROPS said...

Thanks Karthik... My brother worked on a King Cobra Documentary and so i had the oppurtunity to look and sketch them out in the field ! Did this, after i got back home.

Amtrips said...

thats great, as if like watching out in real..i imagined...!! the painting is just beautiful, "kings are born again"...!!

http://mindlesslampoons.blogspot.com/ said...

awesome sketch