comic strip – Page 35 – SKETCHMAN BORIS

Cartoon blog day 32: Perfume

Our sense of smell is very interesting isn’t it?

Whether it’s your apartment where you can get used to the smell given a certain moment so much so you have to go out and come back again inside to smell what your visitors smell.

If you really care about what your apartment smells, looks like, I suggest you invite people. I live in a small one room apartment and I invite people so I can force myself to clean it regularly.

Sometimes, I give up, it’s not about not having time it’s just you become accustomed to your own mess, whether it’s your room or in your decisions.

I firmly believe in this: Your beliefs are valid if you can talk about them comfortably with other people.

Especially as an artist you might have a dream, that doesn’t mean it’s the right dream. Of course apart from my handful of close friends nobody including my wonderful mother can understand the joy of storytelling especially telling stories in comics.

You don’t need to constantly get approval of the path you choose but you do need to keep yourself in check and your closest friends will be the safety net when you make mistakes. The only way to teach, learn and grow IS by sharing as much as possible because it’s by being out of your comfort zone that you’ll improve.

Bonne journée.

Cartoon blog day 31: RIP Stan Lee

20181113 RIP Stan Lee

I am still sad. Even before knowing Stan Lee, you sort of knew him. In certain documentaries about comics, people criticized him for taking the credit for solely creating characters like Spider-man when Steve Ditko came up with the brilliant design we now know and love.

But Stan always took the time to mention the talented artists who worked with him Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita and so on.

Everybody loves Stan Lee, he was our link to what people referred to as Golden Age of comics.

I truly mean it, his legacy lives on. An artist always puts a little bit of himself in everything they do, in that way those who looked up to his characters also looked up to Stan Lee, the author.

He taught me that it was cool to be good, you can use your superpowers to help people. When most boys went to the gym to impress girls in high school, the loser I was I went to the gym to look as close as I can to his characters hoping it would give me superpowers.

We have lost a living superhero who made even a skinny, shy kid from India dream his way out of his shell, thank you Stan Lee, Rest In Peace.

Cartoon blog day 30: Lizards, snakes and phobia

20181117 CBD30 Geekdom

As you might have noticed by now, I don’t mind sharing my secrets. I had the idea for this cartoon because I have a phobia of lizards, no matter the type, the size, they shake me to the core.

I haven’t quite put the finger on it, I think it has to do with the way they move. I argued that this weird movement is actually one of the reasons I find practical effects scary compared to the CGI alternative.

I made a video proposing practical effects as a way to improve the quality of special effects in Indian movies (YOUTUBE channel: MOVIE MESSENGER). Some would say, no you are scared of lizards because your ancestors must have fought against lizards and that is now programmed into your brain.

I live near this (I’m not in a prison it’s just my balcony has steel bars):

IMG_20181108_130012958

And there is a Monitor lizard swimming sometimes here and I often have nightmares where I wake up the moment some sort of lizard or lizard-like creature appears. By the way they are called Monitor lizards, I thought they were called Molitor lizards, what are they monitoring?

What is your phobia?

Bonne journée.

Cartoon blog day 29: Geekdom

Everyone is geeky about something … or someone right?

How is buying more shoes than you need is tolerated more than buying comics to read stories you can see nowhere else.

Again we keep coming back to the same topics: ATTACHMENT, whether it’s your national sports team, your favorite TV show or your nation itself. You have to be receptive of criticism, because there are some good ones out there.

Because it’s by being critical that we improve ourselves and the environment around us.

Balance, as complicated it is to grasp should be the path to follow. But we rarely think about BALANCE.

Stories I consume in different mediums (comics, movies, series, novels, etc.) feed my imagination. And unlike what most people tend to believe, imagination is always based on something human. So I always learn something which is why I created a whole Youtube channel for that (check out my Youtube channel MOVIE MESSENGER).

When students ask me how can I draw things from nothing, you can’t. You have to express intangible concepts from your mind to the canvas, meaning ideas from other ideas which exist in your head.

All this ARTxplanation is good but how do you know if you are off balance?

This is where ART comes in, art keeps things in check. Here is one way in which you can test yourself from obsession: If you are a pseudo-religious Batman fan and you are comfortable laughing at yourself, in other words laugh at comedians who make fun of Batman fans, you are in a healthy mental relationship with what you love.

Bonne journée.

Cartoon blog day 28: When do you become an artist?

This is my favorite topic.

Why is this question difficult to answer? Whenever you create something you are an artist, right?

Defining an artist comes down to defining ART itself. Many have given definitions to ART, for me ART is a language.

OK, language means we communicate something. So what do we communicate as artists? FEELINGS.

It’s DIAGRAM time (that’s not a diagram):

Artist lives his life –> Experiences life –> He learns something and feels something –> He creates what he can with that feeling in mind in the attempt to transfer that feeling –> the audience is exposed to the art work and feels what they feel.

So then an artist is someone who communicates his feelings successfully. Well if it was a brochure, sure it’s pretty straight forward but in most cases experiencing experiencing ART is like doing the Rorschach test you get what you get.

So what’s the point?

I think genuinely artist is one of the rare professions where others have to in a way knight you as one.

Anyway for business purposes don’t just introduce yourself as “ARTIST”, what kind of artist are you?

Bonne journée.