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I was about 14 when one day my father bought me a Marvel Comics Pocketbook from one of the antique shops in our locality.

I was aware of the other popular Marvel characters like Spiderman, Hulk, or Captain America, but this one was completely new & very different. He didn't have cheesy catchphrases or muscles to boot, but with all his mysticism and charm, Doctor Strange easily captured my adolescent imagination.

I remember loaning my prized possession to one of my closest schoolmates for a few days. But then days turned into weeks & months to years & one day we parted ways as we went to different colleges – but Doctor Strange never came back to me.

As I completed my education, I got engaged, joined employment & settled down in a different city. But strangely enough, the Doctor was never quite forgotten.

So after crossing 40, when I felt like re-igniting my passion, one day I started looking for that pocketbook again. Not any comics or books or other collectibles. It was a different era now – so all kinds of digital temptations were available aplenty. But I wanted only that pocketbook.

By then, the 30-year-old book had become a collector’s item & so as my search began, I realized I’m walking into a new terrain of collectibles, used classic comics, and iconic comic-book illustrators.

In the next few months, I found out a lot about international dealers of old comics, how used books are priced based on their condition, what is the difference between Bronze age & Golden Age comics, what is a comic con and of course, about Steve Ditko – the master artist who besides being the early creator of Spiderman, was also credited with creating Doctor Strange.

I learned about Ditko’s trademark “face of dread” treatment and how the variation of the same panel can be used throughout a series to create harmony. How other-worldly realms and mystic menaces can be created by only a few lines. How not to waste space in a panel & be economic with your storytelling.

All these were to have a huge impact on my sketching and later, on painting. And of course, I became a comic-book collector for life, drawing inspiration from their magical illustrations.

Some Pocketbooks I collected over the years

I realized, the taste of something found after a long search – I did find that Dr. Strange pocketbook - is sweet indeed, but the new things that we learn during its search are often sweeter and can have a higher impact on our life.

Joe Cibere & Ryan Fox are both great artists whom I first came across in the Associate Member Show of the National Watercolor Society (NWS), California – but when I started looking at their portfolio – from Cibere I got to know about the Japanese concept & application of Notan & from Fox, the use of rice paper for watercolor batik. Both were new ideas for me and Notan is something I have later used quite a bit in my works.

For the application of Notan, I started using black acrylic ink which became a style element in many of my paintings. I also used Notan while illustrating a storybook.

A Notan-inspired study

In an earlier blog, I wrote about the incidents involving Tina Charles, Edward Hopper, and Tintin! In all those cases I did learn something extra than what I intended. And the search itself was fun & revealing!

As one of our professors used to say, “search for knowledge is knowledge itself”!

Like that song, I heard one day playing in a roadside shop, while I waited for my bus. I was just about to ask the shopkeeper about that haunting tune when the bus came. I tried a lot to find out which channel was being played that day in that shop, & which artists were featured, but all went in vain.

Later I forgot all about it and it was only in 2017 when H&M used it in one of their campaigns, did I remember the tune & then learn about the title “Summerwine”.

I also got to know that the song itself became a hit, reaching No. 49 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in April 1967. In early 1968, "Summer Wine" was included on Nancy Sinatra and Ray Hazelwood's album of duets & was the first of their string of hits. I regularly started playing the number while painting & very soon music of all kinds became a staple in my studio.

And talking of staples, 2 of my most common supplies – Canson Montval paper & Rosemary’s brushes – were also picked up following the lead in a completely unrelated search.

Like these, there are many instances where I have learned something other than what I wanted to find and it later became very useful to me.

I think if we are mindful of the journey when pursuing a destination – if we can embrace the unexpected – the journey itself can become very enriching and enjoyable.

And almost nothing is wasted.

Consider Gesso I saw being used by Mark Mehaffey, the Michigan artist who was a jury for the 102nd International Open Exhibition of NWS and of whom I wanted to gather some information. I learned how acrylic Gesso could be used to generate an effect of fog or smoke & used it extensively in one of my own series titled “Ganga Aarti”.

The series Ganga-Aarti is based on my travel to Varanasi last year. On the same trip, I visited Sarnath which is a holy site for all Buddhists. There on the walls of Mulagandhakuti-vihara, I found some beautiful frescoes which captured my imagination and I started studying Buddhist principles & Jataka stories in a little more detail.

A fresco in Mulagandhakuti, Sarnath

I found out more about Kosetsu Nosu, the master painter from Japan who painted those frescoes in the 1930s.

One day, I know all these will also become useful in some way or the other.

A search related to Kosetsu Nosu took me to Japanese Sumi-e painting & I found that whereas the sumi-e is concerned more with the simplicity of line, Chinese brush painting involves shades of ink as well as the use of line.

And one needs Chinese calligraphy brushes and quill pens to try out these effects, which I know, I’ll have to look for next.

And then the next after that.