Home: India 2017

A lot of what I see and sketch in India is a part of experiences anyone can have. But some experiences and sketches are of things that you might only record at home.

Like this stairway mural I got to watch my sister put the finishing touches to while I was there.

I missed the designing, tile-cutting, bisque-firing, and glazing – yes, she made all of it from scratch. But I did 2 sketches of the final grouting process.

This is where my kids spent every minute of their day when I wasn’t dragging them out to do something. They read, played board games and slept on this wonderful antique Portuguese bed.

And this really festive scene is from a beach party to celebrate a neighbor’s First Communion.

My parents own a mango farm in a pretty remote part of Maharashtra. No mango sketches from the farm this time. (You can see some sketches of mangoes and mango-packing from a previous visit here) but I did sketch their farmhouse, primarily because of this big old plastic water tank that tops it
These plastic tanks aren’t, by any stretch of the imagination, pretty. But they are ubiquitous to the skyline all over India.

While on the farm, I like to walk up to the crossroad where the bus stops, and have a glass of sugarcane juice. It’s fun to see life pass by.
This lady in the gorgeous purple sari came and sat opposite me. So I sketched her with her bag of drumsticks and then kept going and drew the whole scene behind her: man reading the paper next to her, sitting crosslegged up on the bench, cow (bull?) passing by, wires of course, a broom resting against some coca-cols crates in the foreground. All the stuff that can make up a scene almost anywhere in India.

All the while that I drew, I drank a glass of freshly squeezed sugarcane juice from this gigantic and very noisy machine.