My Museum Of Digital Art

My Museum Of Digital Art

Copyright © 2007 Ranjini Sharma All Rights Reserved

Welcome to my Museum of Digital Art.

I am going to be your kind hostess today. Please stop rubbing your eyes. I am hazy and blurry on purpose!
Look, I am personally offering you some crispy hot Spinach Pakoras too! Please, go ahead and grab a few before proceeding down stairs.
(Grumble grumble……the things I need to do these days to attract a few extra visitors and some nice comments!)
Yes, my friends, I am a self-trained artist. Well, ‘artist’ is a big word. I am interested in doodling and I have dabbled in all kinds of art forms for many years. My first pencil sketches were tried and tested when I was a kid. I continued scribbling and scratching all through my teen years. My work can still be found on shaky old tables, frayed textbooks and torn notebooks in my parents’ home.

In recent years, I found time to do some acrylic painting too. They are all over my home now and I have no more blank walls left. In between, I took to furniture designs using Fresco, a European plastering technique.

My artsy itch got worse a couple of years ago when I learned the latest vector graphics and digital imaging technology. I found this sophisticated form of doodling very fascinating and started creating some fun designs. These designs did a number on my poor wrist, because drawing with a mouse is tedious work! I could have anchored the mouse to the belly of a real mouse and chased it around the pad for the same effect. But, I wanted to create realistic looking objects. I am not interested in modern art. Sorry!
Besides, I love mice.
Here below are my designs created using a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe PhotoShop.
My first four designs on the collection of stamps below are based on the very funny Japanese art called Chindogu.

I have provided several links at the bottom of this page for those who are interested in knowing more about Chindogu. It is hilarious and I highly recommend it. There are plenty of other sites through Google.

I had a book at home titled “101 Un-useless Japanese Inventions” by Kenji Kawakami. According to him, the Japanese word Chindogu literally means an odd or distorted tool. It is a collection of real inventions that were made with the best of intentions and with great skill. But because of their utter failure, they never were patented and can never be patented or sold. They are not inventions that were made to look funny or to fail, but due to their oddity or sheer stupidity, they ended up in the collection of Un-useless inventions.

I loved some of those foolish inventions so much that, for the sheer challenge, I decided to use vector graphics to recreate some of those inventions and incorporated into my own stamp collection. The originals are displayed and described in Kawakami’s hilarious book. Hope you enjoy my 4 stamps since I have spent many waking hours tweaking the tiny Adobe tools to give a 3-D effect.

1. The Telephone Dumbbell: This discourages lengthy phone calls if you add a 5 or 10 kilo weight to the telephone. Your phone calls will end very quickly or excessive talking may help build muscle. The inventor also claims that an added weight to public phones will reduce waiting time and increase national fitness.

2. Eye Drop Funnel Glasses:It is difficult to pour expensive eye-drops into your eyes without wasting or having them run down your made-up cheeks. The eye-drop funnel takes away trial and error. You can now expect accurate aim with every drop.

Why did it fail? Seems like a good idea, right? Well, I think it is a question of hygiene. Where can you store them so they can remain sterile until next use?

3. Perfect Cake Cutter: If you have greedy guests, nothing to worry. Now you can be fair when cutting your cake by dividing it into perfect slices. Adjust the protractor depending on the number of guests and you can avoid party skirmishes.

The inventor suggests that in order to make perfect slices, you have to locate the center of the cake for which you need a compass and dividers. Hosts hated the idea of converting a birthday party into a Geometry problem and so this invention failed to sell. The protractor was the hardest part for me to design due to its oval shape. After 2 days of struggling, I was able to anchor it to the 3-D knives, but I just could not fit all 360 degrees into it!

4. Full Body Umbrella:Perfect invention, right? Often, I walk in the rain and get wet because of low-flying horizontal raindrops. I have imagined this umbrella throughout my school going days. Protected by this 360-degree sheet of clear plastic, anyone can enjoy walking in the rain. This was tough to make because I had to create an umbrella with rain drops and wetness all around. Here too, I removed a crowd and put some digital greenery in the background.

Then why did it fail? Only one problem…You would have to watch out for small dogs that may accidentally or intentionally enter your sheet and nip or chase you around forever.

Below are some of my other digital designs (nothing to do with Chindogu).

5. The first one is a book cover. Here I am imagining myself to be the author of a New York Times Best Seller. If this was a book related to my favorite tourist spots, then Mysore and Chamundi Hills in Karnataka would be top on that list. Belur and Halebeedu would be definitely included. I have also visited the most wonderful places in California, USA, and my favorite has always been the Hearst castle. An eccentric wealthy businessman, Hearst built his castle with great love and incorporated some of the most beautiful art and architectural features. His flower gardens are worth mentioning too. I also took pictures of my own rose garden and then combined all of the above to create a fictitious wonderland.

Below are some of the individual photographs that were used. These are the 'before' pictures..
1. This is the real Chamundi Hills temple. This was probably taken on a busy day. I removed the crowd later and replaced it with steps.

2. I used the two lion facades from this temple at Halebeedu.



3. This is the famous Hearst castle flower gardens.


4. I used statues like this to create a welcoming entrance to my concocted wonderland.



Below is the end result of my finished book cover. It has a little bit of all of the above!

6. By now, I was getting interested in very intricate vector designs and using those wonderful tools to create brilliant objects, like lamps, candles etc. I came across a portrait of Queen Jane Grey of England on Wikipedia. Queen Jane looked plain to me!


She was badly in need of a makeover and I had to spruce her up with some 21st century technology. So, after looking at many web pictures, I tried recreating my own Queen Jane with Illustrator software. I worked for hours in my little tailoring room, creating intricate designs for her silk clothes. I even went ahead and adorned her with Indian jewelry from head to toe. After giving some finishing touches like her tassels, I was done. I stood back and stared. There she was, the prettiest little queen standing there without any fanfare. So, I decided to put her inside my own Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. I created brilliant lamps and anchored them to the wall. Finally, I framed her with my finest digital silk curtains and a valance.
And here she is:

That is all I have for you today. There will be more in the future. Before you leave, please relax and help yourselves to a glass of digital champagne right there by that lamp. Doesn’t that look tempting? I made it in my own digital kitchen!
Well, I must thank you all for coming today. It has been a pleasure. Here let me hold my homemade digital candle to show you the way out. Bye!



http://www2.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall95/tenets.htm http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0796July/Phenom/chindogu.html http://www.designboom.com/history/useless.html http://www2.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall95/031369.htm

Copyright © 2007 Ranjini Sharma All Rights Reserved