Eye of the Tiger

The animal needs no introduction. It was rated as the best looking animal in a National Geographic Traveler opinion poll. The Tiger with this malevolent look had always fascinated me. I had painted a Tiger way back during the 2004 vacations. A few days back, a documentary on Discovery brought back the idea I had for a long time, to draw a Tiger on a comp. I was bored designing stuff for Shaastra (although I enjoy the responsibility), so the work was a welcome change. It was also chance to get back to designing things from scratch, something that was time consuming but immensely satisfying.

I drew the Tiger first on a piece of paper and used the drawing as a guide to draw the outlines in illustrator. After drawing a black and white Vector version, I tried colouring it in Illustrator, but gave up in the beginning itself. My dad laughed at my creation, saying the Tiger looked as if it suffered from Jaundice.

If it wasn’t for my dad’s comments I would have given up. But I persisted and took the image to Photoshop and used a single brush to finish the entire picture.The original file is 129 MB in size and my comp cupped thrice while trying to edit it. The original dimensions of the image are 5000*3200 pixels. It felt great after getting back to doing something entirely original, from the first line on a piece of paper to the finishing touches using the Burn tool, it was the most satisfying work I have done till now. A few might ask me whether all this was worth it, and my answer would be an emphatic YES!.....

(harikul.deviantart.com)

Some more thumbnails

Postscript
I was watching a Discovery Channel documentary the other day, on the Sariska Tiger Reserve. I know the Discovery isn’t the most exciting channel to watch when you are vetti, but it is quite entertaining. Anyway, the documentary was made by none other than David Attenborough (brother of the Richard Attenborough, director of Gandhi). It explained how the administration slept while all the tigers in Sariska disappeared without a trace. It took the media and public outcry to finally wake up the state and respond to the atrocities. Soon, as usual a committee was setup, while the CBI investigated how 20 odds tigers vanished and the park officials denied any tigers were killed. At the end of it, the Project Tiger was scrapped, and in its place National Tiger Conservation authority was established. Project Tiger was once the pride of Indian government showcasing its ability to protect the nation’s natural wealth. The new committee was made Inclusive, by including scientists, experts, park officials, local members, bureaucrats, politicians and the guy who came to serve chai while the committee was being formed. This meant, everyone had an opinion, but only a few really understood what was happening. As conservationist and naturalist Valmik Thapar put it, “it ended up being like a Khichdi, a mix of everything resulting in all talk and no action”. Interestingly the committee gave powers to the local people to decide the future of the Tigers. At first sight, it sounds like a great innovation, since local people are supposed to revere and respect the Tiger. Yet, the encroachments into the national parks by the same local people have only increased the threats to the wild life in the park. Confrontations with man and beast have become more common. Another problem that escapes most people while talking about inclusiveness is the fact that the local authorities sometimes just do not have the necessary expertise to tackle important issues. Making local authorities, a part of protecting tigers is a different issue and one which can lead to positive outcomes, but making them more or less fully accountable for coming up with plans to protect tiger reserves seems to be a naïve decision on the part of the government.