Starting Blocks

The journey of a Cartoonist begins with a few pencil strokes.
Thanks to the Swine Flu scare in our city I was grounded during weekends. There was panic all around thanks to all the press-wallahs trying to outdo each other in creating a scare. Which meant I could not go out, nor could I watch TV as non-stop hysteria was flashed on the screen. It was then the Masked Man decided to fight his boredom and attack head-on.

After an eternity of not starting, I did a few Ganesha sketches. The cartoons were kind of fine for a start. I decided to seek Cartoons that were being posted and published on the Internet. Some were good, some were very good and some were mediocre. So if anybody can post, so can the "Masked Man"!. :-)

I started off by creating the blog : JB's Cartoon Experiments .
I followed this by creating 2 more blog on common topics around me.

• Flavors of India
• Politically Very Motivated

Even as a boy I was attracted to the simplicity of Keshav's Cartoons on The Hindu. He was my inspiration in looking at the funny side of Politics. The Cartoonists who inspired my interest in Politics were R.K.Laxman & Ajit Ninan. Other notable people who helped me grow was my school pal Achuth. We used to compete with each other in doing scribbles on our notebooks. (Incidentally we share the same birthday and I was born earlier by a few hours as I carried more weight :-))

The other notable people who inspired me were the cartoonists/illustrators from India Book House (Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle). Let me see if I can remember a few of them. (Ram Waerkar, Luis ....). Supandi, Kaalia etc were other notable inspirations.

I was deeply inspired by the Cartoons of Asterix and Tintin. I have managed to finally acquire the entire collection a few months back and so it was "Alea Jacta Est".

My first cartoon was done in my Boarding School. My Drawing teacher Goswami Sir after his numerous experiments on my Drawing skill decided I was more suited for Cartooning and made me do my first Cartoon in the School Magazine. I shall scan it and publish if I ever get hold of it.

Let me conclude this post by saying,
"Behind every Masked Man there is a Masked Woman". :-)

Let the journey begin.......