Oodles of Doodles

August 2005, Kathmandu
Coming with what seems to be an unprecedented artistic construct, a Kupondole resident has suddenly come into limelight among literary and artistic scholars. Milan, 27, claims that it is a natural outburst of his creative self, a mere effort to manage time more effectively. “Every student knows that about 25% of the class time is lost in teachers’ rambles. In every 1.5 hours of class, this amounts to 20 minutes. Although it seems trivial everyday, these fragments of wasted time add up. In a week, this amounts to 6 hours“, says Milan, “Whereas, it takes me less than a minute to get to the Happy Land”. When asked what it meant, he said “Why, any situation that offers an opportunity to doodle, of course”. According to him, he can produce an average of a doodle every 5 minutes. Consequently, he therefore produces about 72 sketches per week.

But how come his notebook can hold so many doodles? “I hardly sketch them with an intention of keeping them”, the artist explained, “Most of my art are done on pieces of paper torn from my notebook. I usually pass them around in class. I also like to lean over and doodle on others’ notebooks.”

According to a dictionary definition, to ‘doodle’ means to ‘draw aimlessly’. However, Kunda Dixit, an entertaining scribe, who manages the column “Under my hat” in Nepalitimes begs to differ. He claimed that Milan is a rising artist of late and is soon to be a contemporary creative representative of today’s generation. He has coined this distinct artistic expression as Sketches A-La Milanese, or SLaM in short.

Milan has tried to use long, bold, and continuous curvy lines. “Long curves are integral parts of a woman’s body. I usually like to experiment with long strokes of ink, although they are not necessarily feminine”, he stated.

The artist is aesthetically concerned, and likes making interesting patterns that call the subconscious rather than hitting on obvious cosmetic appeals. Allegedly, the art below had been poignantly drawn as if his ideas and frustrations had called forth his tears.

However, Milan laughingly remarks, “no, this was not a sketch per se. I had not brought my bag to school on this particular day, and it decided to rain… I had once decided to re-adopt the fountain pens. I had forgotten the blotting part. Although I have been insisting that it is technically not a SLaM, people do not heed me.”

Although most of his endeavors are natural, Milan at times likes to doodle with an objective. “I sometimes try to capture new permutations of words that jump from our instructors’ mouths. Here are a couple of examples:

We asked Milan how even pathetic sketches like the one on the left could be a celebrated product. “Every Superhero’s first sketch seems pathetic”, he responded empathetically, “Peter Parker’s first Spiderman garb also seems pathetic. However, first sketches are raw and focus mainly on the content, not aesthetics. A sketch is more than just a sketch when you see a personality in it”. When asked whether this means he considers himself a superhero, he declined to comment.

One of the artist’s favorite expressions is the Smileys-Gone-Awry Series. He states “It is hard to trace how I, and most people for that matter, resort to pick smileys to doodle. Obviously, they are very easy to draw, and with a few curves, one can quickly express his/her feelings- whether happy or sad (as simple as a colon and a closing parenthesis). However, I am also mildly addicted to instant messaging. I cannot be honest if I deny that Internet has already commanded its effects on strangest places.”

“But I decided to go one step further. Emotions are not black and white. You see various shades of the ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ in every average IQ’ed person. Hence, I have tried to introduce deviations and combinations in that yellow and mellow face.”

Critics claim that his smiley faces are much more humane, have more discinct personalities, and are still very easy to draw. Jerry Yang, the co-founder of the Yahoo! phenomenon is currently soliciting Mr. Pradhan to incorporate his sketch in Yahoo! Messenger.

This SLaM, titled “Schnook”, is the best one Mr. Pradhan has produced. “It was the marketing class. The teacher was a Fulbright Scholar, but his classes didn’t have any content. He just comes to chat. I spent about 12 minutes drawing this. Schnook is what I wanted to say right at his face. I do not know what it means.“

With popularity, the artist invariably loses his best assets, his privacy. “I get lots of stares and lean-overs“, he laments. “After a point, I have started to use this invasion of private space as another cause for expressions.”

His colleagues have also made debuts in his arts. Here is an example of Vid’s contribution (It is a depiction of ‘Optical Mouse’- you can see the irony of a cat in the monitor):

Mr. Pradhan also likes to sketch sticks, primarily for the simplicity. He claims that one can use sticks to express many body postures and even emotions.

Milan claimed that this one was conceived on the day Vid wore a strange cap to class. "I had to capture it in SLaM”, he stated.

When asked to say a few encouraging words to aspirants, he said “Free your mind. You never know when art sparks on your mind.”