Today I did my first author Skype visit to a school in Washington DC, right across the country from Seattle. I was invited to kick off the school's 'Poem In Your Pocket Day' in their morning assembly in front of 400 kids (the entire elementary school). 

To keep the visit engaging, I decided to not just read poetry to the kids, but to illustrate it LIVE so they could watch me draw along with hearing the words, and bring the words and images together to their funny 'punch-line' conclusion. Thanks to the magic of Skype Desktop Sharing, the kids were able to see me draw on my tablet even as I spoke to them on Video. The school librarian later sent me the following testimonial:

"Vikram's presentation via Skype was excellent! Our 300 students in grades one through five sat  enraptured during his time with us and were inspired to ask him lots of questions. He focused on his experiences as a poet for our "Poem in Your Pocket Day" assembly and was both funny and completely on target. I had at least a dozen of our teachers tell me how wonderfully perfect they found his presentation to be."
-- Primary School Teacher Librarian, Washington International School.

The visit was a great success and I am going to be doing more such Skype visits, especially as I feel I can create a unique poetry + illustration experience for the kids and hopefully inspire them on two fronts.

If you know of a school that would like to invite an author/poet/illustrator for Skype visits, please let me know.

Sometimes you chase the dream, sometimes the dream chases you...

This painting will be the signature piece in my upcoming show 'Chasing the Dream' at Stylus Seattle, opening May 9th 2014 7-9pm. You too are invited to the opening reception - please come if you can!

Stylus Seattle is on 2nd Ave. between Bell and Battery. Here is a link to the Facebook event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/532408546867970/

I don't usually post too much realistic art on my website, but this experimental painting I did recently from a live model came out nice, so just thought I'd share it ...

Last weekend I attended the 2014 annual conference of the Western Washington chapter of the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators). It was my first time at the conference and I found it to be inspiring to be in the company of a community of like-minded people. Heard about the industry, chatted with many published authors and illustrators (including one who's books I highly recommend) and made a few editorial contacts.

One fun thing at the conference was an ice-breaker illustration contest - basically a prompt was provided and people were asked to submit an illustration. Unexpectedly I won the morning round with this entry:

The afternoon had a different prompt. Strangely I won that round too, with this entry:

Overall, a great experience and worth checking out if creating children's books interests you. 

There are 2 new 'portfolio pages' on this site that are not connected to the header bar. Here are the links if you are looking for them:

'Screwball Cartoon' line-art portfolio: http://www.vikrammadan.com/portfolio-lineart.html

'Happy Painting' portfolio: http://www.vikrammadan.com/portfolio-paintings.html

I recently completed this relatively large oil painting (3 feet by 4 feet) that explores quintessential human characteristics such as friendship, adventure, curiosity, exploration, separation, loss, sadness and ultimately, happiness. The title of the painting is "The Physical Impossibility of Sadness in the Mind of the Befriended". Take a minute to look more closely at the painting, and especially the central figure and the empty chair, in relation to all the action happening in the mini-paintings in the background.

The setting for this painting is a 1950's style kitchen with its blue vinyl furniture and lime green fridge, meant to invoke a feeling of past, happier times. The title itself is a riff off Damien Hirst's famous work 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living".

This was one of the largest, longest painting projects I have done, taking almost 14+ full days of painting. Here is the step by step process:

And just to show an artists work is never done, here I am updating the painting even after its hanging in a show:

This month, April 2014, the LTD. Pop Art Gallery in Seattle is hosting it's third annual comic-book themed show, which is held in conjunction with the Emerald City Comicon - a major comic book and pop culture convention.

For this show I decided to work digitally. Since I have read just about every type of comic out there, I was having a hard time picking a topic and decided I would roll in everything I could by creating a comic-book inspired alphabetical poster. Some of the letters were a bit hard, but overall this was a fun experience, working in a combination of Sketchbook Pro, Corel Painter and Photoshop.

See how many of these alphabets you can decipher. Several of them are intentionally cryptic...

Copies of this poster may be purchased from the LTD. Gallery while the show is up, which it will be through the month of April 2014.

For the record, my favorite is 'R' ....