Rather, they’ve been breezing past me like I’ve been stuck in warp mode. Moments have been fleeting, and I can barely remember what I did yesterday. I draw significantly less now, my sketchbook that I proudly acquired in a local flea market lies in my bag most of the time waiting to be grasped and flicked open and marked upon. I’ve come upon the stuff of Eden without a dongle though; Wacoms are beyond reach. Consuming more bits than words. Running less and lifting more. Sleeping a good eight hours every day.

Work is fun. Can’t say I struggle to stay in touch with friends and family, but the pack has grown tighter and more real. Simultaneously, have become numb to the coarse sand and cement texture of the capital’s suburbs; I’m more used to clay and leaves. The air is spicier, the noise follows suit. Suits are aplenty under beacons, but each day I dread more, paying for them.

Hope. That’s all.

As a kid, I used to visit my maternal village in Bengal a lot. I still clearly remember the day I first tried fishing. A few friends of mine, from the Santhal community were expert at catching tiny “Puti” and “Chara” fishes from a fresh water canal and helped me try my hand at it. They used to carry tiny balls of atta (flour dough) in their pockets and use it on homemade fishing rods made with branches and nylon ropes gathered from the fences of farms. I remember watching in awe as the kids would fashion themselves a tasty side-dish for lunch in a matter of a few minutes. The small fishes are heavenly when fried crispy and served with chopped onions and steaming white rice. Strangely I still remember the smell of the homes with thatched roofs and mud floors with cow-dung layering where I enjoyed many such meals.

I couldn’t manage to catch any fish but surely contributed to losing much of the bait in the water.

When I first saw Goro Fujita’s Quill VR work on my Insta feed, it instantly hit me like a gust of fresh air. Although created and rendered in an otherwise standard looking 3D space, the objects and world in the visuals had their own character. It was a bit uncanny, since we are used to much more clean and sterile stuff on 3D. These animated drawings, were just that. They retained the hand-drawn quality and splendor with the added freedom of being in a 3D space, allowing more flexibility in terms of camera work. But that’s something you’d get once you pay a premium price for a VR headset, the software and the powerful workstation that can support it. Naturally, it was out of reach.

Then I coincidentally came across the works of another Japanese artist, Gaku Tada.

The guy had conjured magic and had managed to create a beautiful watercolor look and got it running in real-time. This pointed me towards the prime suspect on which it could have been executed— Blender. His work was enchanting to say the least and got me into Grease pencil, a tiny but powerful corner of Blender I had not explored in the past.

And granted, the learning curve was a bit steep for the first week but once I got a hang of things (thanks to the lovely breakdowns by Gaku, Sophie, Kevandram, Lucasz and a few others and the resources on blender cloud) , it felt liberating to draw in 3D space and animate those drawings as well. And, these are a few works I came up with:

Now I certainly won’t say that it’s an easy alternative to something like Quill VR, but with the Blender subscription coming at a literal cost of goodwill, and there being nothing that comes close to it, it’s something in itself.

It’s a lovely playground to dabble in NPR, I dig the natural rough aesthetic, the resulting liberating freshness and delight.