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My mom had video taped a show off of Pakistan Television called Sufi Soul which features sufi musicians from all over Pakistan (including Qawwals like Meher and Seher Ali as well as other singers of the verses of saints like Saeen Zahoor) who perform live in an intimate setting. I can watch that show for hours. Here are some sketches I threw together while I did just that. The watercolor is from a skit comedy show.

Here are some sketches of faces I saw at the terminal in LAX while waiting for my flight to Ohio last week.

Here are today’s 3 and 5 minute figure drawing experiments. I loosened the ink line and used a lot more of it this time around. As usual, I like the later ones more than the earlier ones from the session so they are up on top.

I went to see Manisha Shahane and Ashwini Srikantiah perform with their bands at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. Manisha has a great deal of variety in her set. For one song, she brought her friend’s kids on stage to make train sounds when she pointed to them during the song. Asha was a lot of fun with her band (including Sandeep, playing guitar and later eating crepes in the green shirt) too!Here are a bunch of watercolor sketches from their performances and of the people around me. There’s also a sketch of Aki and an unfinished one of Big D manning the camera. That one’s unfinished because I drew the camera too small…in ink! I think the watercolor of Manisha, Beret and Asha is my favorite. It was the loosest of these sketches. Still can’t capture a likeness in any kind of detail..especially very quickly…got to work on that.

Here are some figure drawings from today. I’m continuing to play with line and color. It’s a lot of fun to see where I can take this! It’s this kind of experimentation in short poses that really helps me try out different ideas. I feel like the first two(among the last I painted, are some of the most successful).

Checked out a lot of music today. I wanted to continue the ink and watercolor thing, but my pen just wasn’t flowing..so I just switched to watercolor only or I never would have got anything done today. Got to find a proper fountain pen…not the ones with cartridges!

I started at the Grand Ave. Festival. The first two are of MC Rai (who I’ve raved about before) and his band. The third one is of Dakah Hip Hop Orchestra (you can see some of the mcs, dancers and orchestra members). I didn’t get any sketches of Kinky, but they were amazing! I couldn’t stop moving long enough to paint! After that, I went to the Eagle Rock Music Fesival and saw two fun bands. The fourth picture is of a band called Restaurant and the last is called the Element Band.

Abida Parveen is a Pakistani singer whom I’ve wanted to sketch for a while, but could not pull off anything I was willing to post until tonight. She is known for singing the poetry of many Sufi Saints from all over Pakistan and India in a number of languages. Her singing is beautiful and the poetry she chooses equally so. I’d like to share translations of this type of poetry more in the future, but for now a taste.

Tu Han Sakhi, Mai Han Pyasi (poetry by Bulleh Shah with translated subtitles)

Kithe Mehr Ali

Damadam Mast Qalandar (traditional Sindhi song about Lal Shahbaz Qalander with mention of Jhulelal)

Mahi Yaar Di Gharoli

To me, many of these songs are mysteries to be unravelled. Names and titles mentioned in this poetry is often the starting point of discovering where the song came from and what the social context is, though the meanings tend to be universal themes. The context simply makes it that much more rich.

Here are some watercolor figures. I drew them with ink and then quickly added some watercolor on top. The first one is one of the last ones I painted during today’s session. On it, I had started laying down some lines and then stopped. It looked like enough so I finished it with watercolors. This is where I want to go.

Here are tonight’s watercolor and ink faces. I took two faces and drew them twice. First straight in ink, then painted on top with watercolors. The lower right hand one (last one I did) is the one I find most effective.