Life in a Sketchbook

here is a story from August 2011, back when the Saudi Eid Moon sighting controversy took place. This created a lot of buzz online especially on Twitter. in order to explain what happanned im qouting the article from storyful.com which was also kind enough to include my drawing in the article:

Eid al-Fitr is the first day of the holiday in which Muslims stop fasting. It is determined by seeing the Hilal, or crescent moon, which indicates the beginning of the next lunar month, marking the end of Ramadan, the Islamic Holy month of fasting.

Saudi Arabia officially stated on Monday that Tuesday, Aug. 30 is the first day of Eid.

Then, on Tuesday, various sources began claiming that “Saturn” was mistaken for the Hilal. This caused public dispute and #zo7al (Saturn) to trend on twitter.

I introduce you to the newest character to come out of my sketchbook. I call him Evil Dr. Dee .

I still haven’t used him in a storyline or something but obviously he is an evil doctor and he does bad things (like taking over the world ?)

Let me know if you guys like him so that I can consider drawing him again in the near future

Eid Mubarak to you people and may Allah grant you all your wishes in this happy occasion.

Hope you all had an awesome first day of Eid. I know I did. I got in touch with my relatives and had lots and lots of meat !

For those of you who dont know, Eid is a Muslim celebration that takes place after the month of Ramadhan. Muslims celebrate it after fasting the 30 days of Ramdhan.

I dedicate this one to all of you. Its an Arabic text which translates to Eid Mubarak . I always liked drawing cartoon letters but I never got the chance to publish it in the blog before this so keep an eye for more.

Hope you like it. Eid Mubarak and enjoy your holidays.

We always imagine zombies as scary walking corpses who only think of having a bite or two of our brains.

But c’mon guys,  lets give those stinky fellas a break. they have been getting nothing but hate for the last 40 years.

Thats why I made this Cute Little Zombie. Zombies can be cute after all. I dedicate this one to all the zombies out there. Enjoy your brains !

Mario has been around for the last 30 years (before I was even born). But have you noticed that this fella never ages. He always had the strength and the ability to save Princess Peach and never complained about a back pain or some weak knees from all the jumping he performed during all these years.

What if Mario was aging ? What would he look like after all the shit he have been through in the Mushroom Kingdom ?

This is how I imagined Mario in his 40s. He is still in shape but he is sick of all the trouble he has been getting from Bowser, Princess Peach and all the stupid toads ! No more Mr.Nice Guy !

So I decided to join the crowd and talk swine flu. It was the first thing that came to my mind when the editors of Funoon magazine asked for a contribution. I made this drawing along with an article named “Swine in-Flu-ence”.

I wanted to make the drawing simple and easy to understand so I intended to use comics art. This drawing is a good example of how beautiful & powerful comics can be. It shows a group of people running behind a pig to make a tasty dinner out of it. All of the sudden the pig goes “Hatchoo”. Then we see that the situation has been reversed and now the pig (which obviously got infected with swine flu) is chasing the people to get his revenge.

To view the third edition of Funoon magazine click here

So I already started my summer vacation this week and guess where I am now ? You could describe it as being at the centre of the action. More hints ? It’s where swine flu has been spreading like crazy. That’s right, its London. It has been 3 days since my arrival and I already started having a blast. I’m really enjoying the cool weather and the heavy rains. And I’m certainly NOT missing the crazy heat & the awful humidity of Oman.

A lot of people advised me to cancel the trip and avoid going to London to prevent myself from being swine-flued. I can’t say I didn’t think about it, but c’mon … its my vacation !! I didn’t wanna ruin it by spending it in Oman or go to Dubai for the 10000th time. Hell no, this time it had to be different. That’s why I had to go despite the risk.

The first thing we did when we reached Heathrow airport was to wear surgical masks to protect us from the flu. Everybody was giving us these odd & funny looks. We were being laughed at, not only because we were the only ones wearing the masks in the airport, but also because the masks were different than the unusual ones. It made us look like ducks.. or shall i say travelling ducks ? the situation was hilarious and embarrassing at the same time. I’m planning to make a drawing about it soon when I get the time.

In the other hand, the new issue of Funoon e-magazine just came out. I contributed with an article & a drawing just like the last time. The subject of the article was “Swine in-Flu-ence”. yup, Swine flu again. Keep an eye for my next post to see it all.

Earlier I showed you one of the drawings i made for the caricature contest of Muscat Festival 2008. Here is another one. It shows how smoking can be picked up by kids because they might think its a way to act cool and look like an adult.

In the drawing you can see an evil cigarette trying to convince a kid to smoke telling him its the only way he can prove that he is an adult just like the group standing in the back. If he smokes that cigarette he can climb the ladder shown in the back and be just like them .. or at least he’ll think that way.

as mentioned before this is one of the five drawings I made for the anti-smoking category of the contest. The characters I made in the drawing are wearing the national Omani dress “The Dishdasha”. Same goes for all the other drawings I made for the contest since the audience of the gallery was Omani. look out for the rest of the drawings i made for the contest which I will be posting soon.

Click on the image below to view the original Arabic version of the drawing :

None of my readers complained it to me before but I always knew something was wrong with my blogger link :

http://lifeinasketchbook.blogspot.com

Its too long and almost impossible to memorize. The only way to log in to my website is to use a bookmarked link and you cannot just type it from your head. Also, If you wanted to tell your friends : “Hey guys, I found this cool blog about a crazy dude who does cartoons and other weird stuff, but i can’t remember the link right now so I’ll send it to you when I get home” then you totally forget about it when you get home and this whole word of mouth marketing thingy goes to waste. Damn !

My precious readers you may suffer no more for I have found you an eternal solution. Instead of my previous long & boring blogger link, I now have my own cool domain name :

www.lifeinasketchbook.com

what ? I know its still long but its shorter than before okay. Ooh and you can still use the old and boring link if somehow you didn’t like this one.

Anyways, congratulations to me.