As summer is coming to an end in the UK, I find myself reminiscing about warm weather in Bangalore, splayed on my patchwork bedcovers underneath the trusty ceiling fan. Trusty ceiling fans were not so trusty back in boarding school, and I’m sure everyone who’s reading who went to Rishi Valley knows exactly what I mean. They frequently gave out when we most needed them in peak summer, and there’d usually be a lag between a power outage and the generators switching on, rumbling laboriously into action.
That was nearly ten years ago. To accept it has been that long since I was in school is an atrocity in itself, but I’d rather focus on the meat and potatoes of this blog: that I finally made the trip back to Rishi Valley. It’s going to take me too long to describe to those unaware of it, what kind of school Rishi Valley is and the breadth of experiences one might have there. I’m hoping however that a few paltry pictures I took will suffice, along with its meagre caption.
My visit back this time was different from previous ones - this time, I brought along my sketchbook and a little Ziploc pouch of materials I put together before leaving. When we (I was travelling with my partner-in-crime Dev) arrived, the first order of business was to figure out…where the heck do I start? When you revisit a place that you know so intimately and you want to preserve it through photography or drawing, you tend to put immense pressure on yourself to choose the perfect spots and perfect angles from start to finish. In my experience, it’s best not to overthink this and just start somewhere. Starting off without expectations makes the experience a whole lot more exciting than planning everything, because you end up with images of things you’d never usually have paid much attention to.
And so it was that I cut my teeth on two place I didn’t frequent too often while I was a student (certainly not the first one at any rate): the boy’s hostel and estate dairy. In my pouch I had Koi brush pens in a few colours, Caran D’ache neocolor pastels and Brustro colour pencils, and I pre-prepped pages in my sketchbook with Acrylic washes.
I have to admit, I was off to a rusty start coming off two months of barely any observational drawing, but luckily only the trees and sky above were witness to my foolery.
Being introverted I find that sometimes drawing, especially in public, can be a great way to start conversations with passing strangers. In the case of the spread above, a group of 12th graders happened to walk past me and stopped to ask me questions about being an illustrator and I couldn’t help but remember being that age, always so curious to know if I was ever going to figure life out as an adult. Well, being an “adult” now, I’m happy to report that everyone at every age is always learning and figuring stuff out!
My next two sketchbook spreads were made at a football game: 12th graders VS alumni, who were easily discernible by their mid-twenties world-weariness and robust waistlines. While Dev jostled and tumbled about on the field with the best of them, I chose the most garish prepped page I could find and proceeded to draw the game. It’s quite challenging trying to get down quick movements and details with pastels, which I felt was the entire point of drawing a sports activity. For my second drawing I used a pencil to get those details in, and attempted the good old Cambridge School of Art illustration student hack to capture moving people quickly - drawing them as shapes.
I quickly learned that the more I drew, the more I felt like drawing. I added one more spread of drawing after a wholesome RV lunch, observing children doing “dubs” on the swings outside the dining hall. “Dubs”, for the unfortunate individuals who never had the chance to partake in them, is when one person sits on the swing-set the usual human way and another stands directly facing them on the same swing. It is not for the faint-hearted, and I speak from experience. I enjoyed doing this this spread a lot, even though the rapid act of dubs was very difficult to put down onto paper. I liked how the very vertical panels on the second page forced me to really zoom in on the children, though drawing the details of their moving faces and bodies was even harder.
I tackled the next spread of drawing sitting in the Senior School Library, on a table I might well have sat on myself, staring into the abyss of my History or Sociology textbooks. I remember taking particularly long on this drawing because I didn’t want the girls in front of me to know I was drawing them, though I’m sure my presence was suspicious anyway. I looked too old and unencumbered with books to seem like I was there to accomplish any serious work. In hindsight I might have chosen a page with a less jarring foreground colour, because I don’t think it did justice to the coolness and sense of calm that this library is known for
With our trip coming to its end, my last drawing was an understated one, made inside the dining hall after dinner. I resorted to a simple drawing pencil for this spread, choosing to focus on line and detail rather than colour. It is a rather somber end to a serenade of this place I knew as home, but in my opinion, it is no less effective than the big, bold, screaming red pages before it.
I have found that drawing is one of the most powerful ways of making memories. The act of being so engrossed in a moment in time in order to draw what is before you opens your senses to everything and everyone around you. I can remember almost every detail about the environment around me while I made these drawings. I had numerous conversations while at RV, and went on plenty of long walks and expeditions; but the most visceral memories I carry with me months later are the moments I was drawing. The weather, the sounds, the movements of people beside me…they all add to a sense of place, creating a tangible nugget of time I can savour for a lifetime.
Sometimes it’s not about how accurately you draw a place or people. It’s the emotion and quality of the lines, colours, and shapes you made while being immersed in the moment. Truly authentic or accurate drawings are those that have the power to transport you. In that, I think that my trip back to RV was a roaring success. I now have a very real, very alive piece of RV with me in my sketchbooks, even though I’m sitting thousands of miles away.
Such a cool adventure to go on Antara. Very inspiring xx