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Jaipur was next on our itinerary after a day trip to Agra. A 2-hour train ride took us to the Pink City on a cool April night in 2011. We stayed at Baba Haveli, which was just a quick tuktuk ride away from the train station. The owner, Mr. Vijay Gautam, was an excellent host – a relief after an exhausting and quite a bad day in Agra. Albeit not so spacious, the rooms and hallways are quaint and charming, lavishly decorated with elaborate frescoes and tasteful furniture that exude old world charm. Our room has a tiny balcony facing the street. Despite that, we didn’t have a problem with noise and were able to sleep soundly.

Early the next morning, we started our tour. Tuktuks (autorickshaws) and local buses are the best modes of transportation to get around the city. But for time-challenged people such as I and my friend during the time we visited, private cars are available for rent. I highly recommend Real Rajasthan Tours. Aside from English-speaking drivers, they offer various tour packages and even customized ones for your convenience and travel satisfaction.

Dubbed as the “Pink City,” Jaipur takes pride in its distinct pink-painted buildings, which were intended to resemble the red sandstone Mughal architecture. The capital of Rajasthan is a bustling city filled with magnificent forts and palaces, and bazaars teeming with varied textiles, shoes, and Rajasthani jewellery – the latter being its famous commodity. It boasts of being India’s first planned city, known for the width and regularity of its streets. The city is at its most picturesque during late afternoons when its rose-colored architecture glows vibrantly under the rays of the setting sun.

Glorious decorative patterns can be found on almost every wall and structure, whether painted, carved or etched. I tried to capture these in photos as best as I could for future painting references. Composite tickets are available at a reasonable price of 300 INR for tourists that would grant you access to five monuments – Amber Palace, Nahargarh Fort, Jantar Mantar, Albert Hall, and Hawa Mahal. Additional charges apply for some sites if you’d like to take pictures.

We started our tour with the City Palace, an overwhelmingly gorgeous complex of exquisite palaces, gardens, and courtyards. Priced at 300 INR, it has the most expensive entrance ticket compared to other sites within the city, but still cheaper than that of Agra’s Taj Mahal. The City Palace was home to the Maharaja of Jaipur, but was opened in 1959 to the public as a museum. Decorative art, as well as textiles and costumes used by past royalties are housed in several halls. The most notable part of the complex is the Pritam Niwas Chowk, a rectangular courtyard with four exquisitely carved and painted doorways representing the four seasons – the Green Gate for spring, the Lotus Gate for summer, the Peacock Gate (my personal favorite) for autumn, and the Rose Gate for winter.

A short walk away from the City Palace is Jantar Mantar. Meaning “calculation instrument,” this observatory consists of fourteen large geometric devices built out of stones and marbles meant to measure time, track stars, and predict eclipses. It is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site with its being “the only practical proof left for Vedic astrology.”

An almost 2 hour-car ride took us to the edge of the Aravalli Hills where Nahargarh Fort stands, overlooking the Pink City. Known as “the Tiger Fort,” this structure was reputed to have been used by former royalty during hunting escapades. It was named after a prince whose spirit was purported to haunt the place, thus delaying the fort’s construction. The mischievous spirit was only pacified when a temple was built within the fort in his memory.

While much of its original structure lies in ruins, the building designed with suites for the nine wives of the Maharaja remains intact. These well-planned interconnected apartments have a very feminine vibe with pastel colors and delicate floral frescoes covering the walls up to the ceiling, making almost every nook and cranny picture-perfect.

Our last destination for Day 1 was Amber Fort. Perched high above on Amer’s rock terrain, this colossal palace complex used to be the earliest capital of Jaipur. Some structures I found most picturesque within the fort include: (1) The Ganesh Gate covered with ornate frescoes that leads to the private quarters of the royal family; (2) Kesar Kyaari, the lush, green geometric garden resembling that of Mughal dynasties’; (3) Sheesh Mahal (Mirror Palace), an unbelievably beautiful hall constructed in such a way that even a single ray of light that enters would be reflected in all the sparkling mosaics of little mirrors embedded onto the hall from floor to ceiling; and (4) the labyrinth-like corridors lined with latticed windows.

On our second day in the city, our first stop was the Albert Hall Museum. This oldest museum of the state is a sight to behold, boasting of an impressive Indo-Gothic architecture modeled after the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A word of advice: Do get the audio guide to make the most out of your museum visit. Rest assured, it is well worth every penny.

Here’s a quick rundown of the other sites we visited on our second day in the city: (1) Hawa Mahal, also known as “Palace of Winds,” that was built so that the queens of Jaipur as well as women of noble birth could enjoy the beauty of nature through its windows without being seen themselves (they were not allowed to talk and interact with outsiders); (2) Galwar Bagh (Monkey Temple) located at the outskirts of the city; (3) the Birla Mandir Temple in its stunning white marble glory; and (4) Sisodia Rani Palace and Gardens with its multi-layered gardens and painted pavilions.

Located at the NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, is this pirate/sailor themed CT Scanner to help put children to ease and make them feel like they’re sailing the high seas.

The institution is one of the biggest children’s hospitals in the country and the only one in Manhattan. According to BuzzFeed, NewYork-Presbyterian has about 200 inpatients per day, treating about 150 kids each day in the pediatric emergency room.

For more photos and information, see the original article on BuzzFeed.

Clearance between the concepts of skin, breaking and time. Each image is formed by two Polaroid snapshots, one broken and superimposed over each other. So ‘the time of the taking of the photograph’ is essential, is not frozen at a precise time but yields a continuous fragment of time. The course between the act of tearing the photographic material and simultaneously the time to shed the first layer of skin covers the bodies, clothing, all that journey through time and what happens in it is reflected in each final assembly.
With her work the Spanish photographer Lúa Ocaña allows us to participate in her sense of space, we are allowed to take a step into her world.

All images © Lúa Ocaña

Illustrations by Anna Dittmann (escume)  dA l tumblr

A red river pushes its way through a dried out, bleached valley towards a lake that no longer exists. The ground seems to be bleeding. ‘The Lake Project’ is one of David Maisel’s major aerial photography projects. Through the large scaled images David Maisel leads us on a almost hallucinatory travel through landscapes that have been entirely transformed by environmental issues and changed by human agency. His photographs of environmentally impacted zones illustrate the issues of contemporary landscape with comparable measures of documentation and metaphor as well as beauty and gloom. The depicted terrain is located in Owens Valley, a stretch of land in southeastern California. Around 1913 the Los Angeles reclamation project effectively diverted water from Owens Valley to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, feeding the city’s water supply. By 1926, the lower Owens River and Owens Lake were essentially depleted of water, leaving a vast exposed salt flat. Since then the Owens Lake region has become the largest source of particulate matter pollution in the United States.
David Maisel’s work will be on display at Haines Gallery, opening September 5th.

All images © David Maisel/INSTITUTE

Illustrations by Amy Hamilton

Paintings by Karol Bak

The pinhole camera is the oldest camera in the world. The basic premise is that light entering through a tiny hole can display inverted pictures of the outside world in a dark room. The most popular camera working with this system is the ‘camera obscura’ that features a light-proof box with a small hole cut in it. But French photographers Romain Alary and Antoine Levi decided to think one step bigger. With their project Stenop.es they turn entire apartments into ‘camera obscuras’.
By turning rooms into a pinhole camera, they project the outside world onto the inside so that the city outside merges with the interior of the apartment. The result creates a collage of tactile and projected, turning upside down buildings into surreal reflections of kitchen implements and planting a row of trees jittering on apartment walls.

Oil on wood panel.

John Franzen’s ‘Each Line One Breath’ is a limited edition of fifty freehand drawings in which he focuses on an artistic and graphic interpretation of evolution through the use of simple drawn lines. The drawings are reminiscent of waves of water or light fabric, a breeze of wind has just gone through. Line after line he works his way across the page, triggering a feeling of conjunction with incomparable originality.
From September 5th until September 19th he will be showing his work Dixit Algorizmi at the Morgen Contemporary gallery in Berlin.

‘When I draw, I draw the void. Not the line. I focus on the nothingness around the line. It is a sort of meditation. My mind is clear. My focus is on the mere moment. There is only this one moment. Everything is still. Never thoughts are louder and feelings profounder than in this moment. My mind transcends into bare presence. Personality becomes formless and nameless. With each breath the emptiness is filled more and more. With every line I get closer to my origin…’

All images © John Franzen | Via: The Dancing Rest

We were really excited when one of our favorite photographers, Théo Gosselin agreed to take us with him, showing us one day in his live in pictures. For ’24 Hours’ he documented a whole day with his camera.

We fell in love with Théo Gosselin’s photography when we came across the young french talent three years ago and are following his career ever since, watching his portfolio filling up with amazing pictures. He takes photos that talk about freedom, youth, the love of life and hilarity while they are charged with emotion and zest. We always wanted to follow him on his journeys, spending some time with him and his friends. So now he took us with him to a trip through Scotland where he just recently spent a few weeks with his girlfriend and two of his best friends. They went on a little roadtrip, exploring the beautiful landscape of Scotland. The four of them started their trip in France, driving across UK to the north of Scotland and towards its vast lands and mountains. This is 24 hours of their journey.

[8 pm] Skye Island, north of Scotland, we are making a fire camp to grill meat and watch the sun going down in the Atlantic Ocean. I sleep in the back of the car with my amazing girlfriend.

[9 am] I wake up in my five stars mobil hotel room, what a view! Drinking hot coffees around the fire, time for the morning wash and we’re on the road again.

[11:30 am] We made a quick stop on the road to appreciate an amazing location, my friend decide to take a midday bath in ice-cold water and dry his body with a run on the road.

[1 pm] We hit the road again to find a place to eat something. We met a funny cow on our way. We start a fire, play the guitar and eat a good lunch between trees and mountains, I take some pictures with my love and enjoy this stunning landscape.

[3 pm] On the road to find a place to sleep, we came across various amazing lakes and forests, we stopped the car a couple of times to take pictures and go explore!

[6 pm] We drove across a wood exploitation and finally find an amazing spot for the night, dead trees anywhere, frogs, a river and an incredible view over the valley. Drinking beers and playing with the hot flames of the fire, under a typical light rain. Time to sleep soon, too much beautiful images in our head for one day.

Have a good night!

All images © Théo Gosselin

Illustrations by Hiroki Takeda

Marc Maron is a comedian and the host of my favourite podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, which is a comedy podcast where Maron interviews not only comedians, but musicians, actors, chefs and artists. His conversations are always engaging, funny, raw and honest. I recommend it especially to those who are pursuing a creative field, as most of his interview subjects have insightful and unique stories about how they became successful. (As you can tell from its title, WTF contains explicit language and is for mature listeners … you’ve been warned!)

Maron’s own success story is worth mentioning. In his 40s, having lived a life of anger, resentment, addiction, failed relationships and burnt bridges, Maron had just gotten fired from a radio gig when he started the WTF podcast as a last, desperate attempt to stay in the comedy game. The podcast not only became incredibly successful, leading to a resurgence in his stand-up career and a television series, but it’s also proven to be his salvation.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to do a Maron quote, as I must have listened to hundreds of hours of his voice while working on Zen Pencils. This quote is taken from his latest memoir, Attempting Normal.

RELATED COMICS: Bill Hicks It’s just a ride, Louis C.K. We don’t think about how we talk, George Carlin On assassination (explicit), Henry Rollins Who’s the crazier man?.

- Since my last comic about social media, I think it’s fair to say I’m still totally dependent and addicted to my phone. Who checks their phone as soon as they wake up and while still in bed? I do. Who takes their phone into the toilet with them? Me. It’s gross, but I bet you do it too … don’t lie. Who can’t be alone in public without looking at their phone every five minutes? Yep, me again. While I love social media (it has obviously helped Zen Pencils enormously and it’s incredible how easy I can interact with readers from all over the world), we should also remember some of its negative side effects, as this article points out.
- What are your favourite podcasts? Some of my other recommendations: Hardcore History, The Bugle, The Smartest Man in the World, The Nerdist, Stuff You Should Know, StarTalk Radio and The BS Report.

News: a 21 metre high living wall containing 10,000 plants and 16 tons of soil will help reduce flooding in London, according to its designer. (more...)

Bill Watterson is the artist and creator of (in my humble opinion) the greatest comic strip of all time, Calvin and Hobbes. I was a bit too young to appreciate it while it was originally published from 1985-1995, but I started devouring the book collections soon after. I think my brother had a few of the treasury collections and I must have read those dozens of times. I was hooked, and I remember copying Watterson’s drawings relentlessly as a kid (Calvin’s hair was always the hardest to get right).

To me, Calvin and Hobbes is cartooning perfection – that rare strip that has both exquisite writing AND gorgeous artwork. A strip that managed to convey the joy of childhood, absurdity of humanity and power of imagination all through the relationship between a boy and his stuffed tiger. And most importantly, a strip that was consistently laugh-out-loud funny. I flick through my Calvin and Hobbes books a few times a year, not to read them cover to cover anymore, but just to get lost in Calvin’s world for awhile and to remind myself what comics are capable of.

Besides the fact that Calvin and Hobbes is the comic I cherish above all others, Bill Watterson is my biggest creative influence and someone I admire greatly as an artist. Here’s why:

• After getting fired as a political cartoonist at the Cincinnati Post, Watterson decided to instead focus on comic strips. Broke, he was forced to move back in with his parents and worked an advertising layout job he hated while he drew comics in his spare time. He stayed at this miserable job and submitted strips to comic syndicates for four years before Calvin and Hobbes was accepted. About this period Watterson wrote: “The only way to learn how to write and draw is by writing and drawing … to persist in the face of continual rejection requires a deep love of the work itself, and learning that lesson kept me from ever taking Calvin and Hobbes for granted when the strip took off years later.” (Also see the Advice for Beginners comic.)

• Watterson sacrificed millions (probably hundreds of millions) of dollars by never licensing and merchandising Calvin and Hobbes. He went through a long and traumatic fight with his syndicate over the licensing rights, and although he eventually prevailed, Watterson was so disillusioned with the industry he almost quit cartooning. “I worked too long to get this job, and worked too hard once I got it, to let other people run away with my creation once it became successful. If I could not control what my own work was about and stood for, then cartooning meant very little to me.”

• Luckily Watterson didn’t quit and took a sabbatical instead. Eager to reinvigorate his creative mojo on his return, Watteron proposed a radical new layout for his colour Sunday strips. For those not familiar with comic strip lingo, each week a newspaper comic will have six ‘daily’ strips (usually black and white, one tier, 3-4 panels) and one ‘Sunday’ strip which is larger and in colour. Previously, the Sunday strip was comprised of three tiers of panels and looked like this. The layout was restrictive and the top tier had to be completely disposable because a lot of newspapers would cut it and only run the bottom two tiers in order to save space so they could cram in as many comics (or puzzles, or ads) as they could.

Watterson was sick of the format restraints and wanted more space to experiment and push his storytelling ability so he (with his syndicate’s support) gave newspaper editors a ballsy proposition. They would have to publish his Sunday comics at a half-page size with no editing, or not publish it at all. By this time Calvin and Hobbes had been running for over five years and was extremely successful so Watterson had the clout needed to pull this move off. Despite fearing many cancellations, he was pleasantly surprised that most newspapers supported the change. Free of the shackles of tiers and panel restrictions, Watterson gave us visually exciting and beautiful strips that hadn’t been since the glory days of newspaper comics in the 1920s and 30s. He was free to create strips like this, and this and this. “The last few years of the strip, and especially the Sundays, are the work I am the most proud of. This was close as I could get to my vision of what a comic strip should be.”

• After working on the strip for 10 years, when Calvin and Hobbes was at the height of its popularity and was being published in over 2,000 newspapers, Watterson stopped. He had given his heart and soul to one project for 10 years, had said all he wanted to say and wanted to go out on top. “I did not want Calvin and Hobbes to coast into half-hearted repetition, as so many long-running strips do. I was ready to pursue different artistic challenges, work at a less frantic pace with fewer business conflicts, and … start restoring some balance to my life.” Since retiring the strip, Watterson has pursued his interest in painting and music.

It’s pretty incredible when you think about. Could you say ‘no’ to millions, I repeat, MILLIONS of dollars of merchandise money? I don’t know if I could. Would you stop creating your art if millions of people admired your work and kept wanting more? I don’t know if I would.

Reprints of Calvin and Hobbes are still published in over 50 countries and the strips are as fresh and funny as they were 20-25 years ago. It has a timeless quality and will continue to entertain comic fans for generations to come. Great art does that.

- The quote used in the comic is taken from a graduation speech Watterson gave at his alma mater, Kenyon College, in 1990. Brain Pickings has a nice article about it. The comic is basically the story of my life, except I’m a stay-at-home-dad to two dogs. My ex-boss even asked me if I wanted to return to my old job.
- My original dream was to become a successful newspaper comic strip artist and create the next Calvin and Hobbes. That job almost doesn’t exist anymore as newspapers continue to disappear and the comics section gets smaller and smaller, often getting squeezed out of newspapers entirely. I spent years sending submissions to syndicates in my early 20s and still have the rejection letters somewhere. I eventually realised it was a fool’s dream (also, my work was nowhere near good enough) and decided webcomics was the place to be. It’s mouth-watering to imagine what Watterson could achieve with webcomics, given the infinite possibilities of the online medium.
- My style is already influenced by Watterson, but this is the first time I’ve intentionally tried to mimic his work. It’s been fun poring through Calvin and Hobbes strips the past week while working on this comic and it was a humbling reminder that I still have a long way to go.
- The quotes I’ve used in the write-up above are taken from the introduction to The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection, which sits proudly on my desk.
- Thanks to Marlyn, Emily, Joseph, and Suchismita for submitting this speech.

J.K. Rowling (1965-) is a British author who has written a well-received series of novels that have sold moderately and gained a small, cult following. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Not only is Harry Potter the highest-selling book series of all time, it is also the highest-grossing film franchise of all time.

Rowling’s success story is truly inspirational, and she describes it in her fantastic 2008 Harvard commencement speech, which the quotes in the above comic are taken from. It’s one of the best commencement speeches I’ve heard and I highly recommend it.

I was a big fan of the Potter books (not a hardcore, wait-in-line on the release day fan), but a fanboy enough to read each new novel and watch each new instalment of the movie as they came out. Has anyone read Rowling’s new crime book, The Cuckoo’s Calling, which she published under a pseudonym? Do you recommend it?

- RELATED COMICS: Neil Gaiman – Make Good Art. Stephen Fry – Ultimate self-help book.
- Thanks to everyone who submitted this speech.

Optical Illusions are always quite captivating for everyone, but as soon as you have the chance to become part of the optical illusion it becomes something special – the Dalston House. The Argentine artist, Leandro Erlich, internationally known for his sweeping three-dimensional optical illusions has been commisioned by The Barbarican.

The Dalston House resembles a movie set, featuring the façade of a late nineteenth-century Victorian terraced house. A mirrored surface is positioned on the on the ground lying life size façade, in a 45-degree angle. Visitiors apppear to be hanging of the building or sitting on window sills, by sitting, standing or lying on the horizontal surface. The audience plays an important and active role in the installtions for Erlich. By altering the viewer’s relationship with familiar spaces, he playfully disrupts our own notion of reality, creating new possibilities and situations.

All images © Leandro Erlich | Via: dezeen