Indian artist Aarthi Parthasarathy has a new comic called “Royal Existentials”. It’s made of images from vintage Indian Mughal miniature paintings, an art form that dates back to at least the sixteenth century.
I heard about it from this article, where she mentions where she got the idea:
A web-comic fan herself, Parthasarathy was inspired by Wondermark, a comic strip series created by California artist David Malki that has Victorian-era drawings with funny dialogues added in. So, she set out to create something similarly humorous but utterly Indian.
For the series, Parthasarathy picks existing images of Indian miniature paintings and writes contemporary dialogues to them focusing on the joke and the punchline. The social commentary is incidental. “It started out as a way to just have fun with images,” she said. “After the first three, I suddenly realised that this is becoming very social, very feminist.”
I think that’s super turbo cool. Keep at it, Aarthi!! My one note is that I wish the comics were bigger on the site so they’re easier to read!
BONUS RELATED LINK: I’ve mentioned this before — and it’s as old as Wondermark, if not older — but I still love it: the Bayeaux Tapestry Generator, with which you can make something akin to comics, or memes, or just 100% accurate representations of history.
OLD ART 4 LYFE