Life in a Sketchbook

This is one of the five drawings i made for the caricature contest of Muscat Festival last year. The contest had two categories: Anti-Smoking & Environmental Cleanliness. All the five drawings I made were for the Anti-Smoking Category. The winning drawings were to be shown in the Caricature Gallery in Qurm Park during the festival. unfortunately none of my drawings made it to the gallery.

The drawing shows a group of smokers enjoying a ride on the back of their favorite buddy Mr. Cigarette. Not telling them where they’re headed to, Mr.Cigarette is taking the smokers to “Death” Land. I had to translate this drawing since the original one was in Arabic. Of course i couldn’t translate it literally otherwise it would sound awful in English, so i had to change it a little bit .

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. I will be posting the rest of the drawings one by one after I translate them to English.

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

In this drawing I imagine animals dressed up as agents prepared to get rid of the evil plastic bag. They have to do something about it because it’s killing them & humans aren’t doing much to stop it. This drawing translates a wish that i always had. What if animals can actually do something about it ? what if they had the ability to think & figure out that these plastic bags can actually kill them and they need to get rid of it right away ? Of course this wish is far from becoming true. The only thing the poor animal will be doing when it sees a plastic bag in front of it is swallow it & mistake it for food.

In the previous post, you saw the article & the drawing which came out on the 2nd issue of Funoon e-magazine. They were talking about the dangers of plastic bags. What you don’t know is that the “Earth”drawing wasn’t my first attempt. Before that i made this drawing. It covered the same subject but it was rejected by the editors of the e-magazine. Apparently the reason it was rejected is because they thought it was too childish & didn’t suit the magazine’s professional look. I didn’t agree with them but i went ahead & prepared the other one.

I believe, like many other artists do, that cartoon isn’t restricted to children only. its for everyone to enjoy from a little kid all the way to an old man. Cartoon is just another way to deliver information, only it can be much more effective than a plain text. If you see a drawing that you like, it will automatically stick in your head along with the information it’s delivering not to mention that it will also draw a smile on your face. In the end, everyone is child at heart, But some people aren’t aware of it yet.

You can check out the whole article below :

To view the 2nd issue of Funoon E-Magazine click here

Hello & welcome to my first blog ever “life in a sketchbook“.

As an intro I’d like to explain why i gave the blog this name.

Unlike reality, life in a sketchbook is pretty easy & simple. There are no rules or restrictions in here & nobody will be telling you what to do. Anyone can be whoever they want to be. Happiness,Sadness, Fear & Anger these are the seasons around the year in here.

This place is where i will be sharing my sketchbook life with you guys & its also where I’m going to practice & learn to be a better artist. Of course that cant be done without your help so I’ll be waiting for your comments & you should criticize me whenever you feel its necessary because that’s how I’ll learn from my mistakes.

Now, shall we begin ?