Love to beat




Title of the series  that i did  about a year  ago. Must confess  - the title or the idea was not mine .Credit due to where it came from.  What was interesting was that  for the first time ever  - i thought through a theme and painted based on that. What was even more interesting was that  - i found myself   sketching and coloring for the first time after moving back to India.This is the story of evolution of  "Love to beat"-my first theme based  series of paintings . When i started looking around for inspiration for what would i love to beat  , after browsing through  very  cerebral and intellectual   stuff - i came back  to my comfort zone  for inspiration - natures with  all its beautiful  constituents-birds,flowers, butterflies!!! Someone  had rightly said - "If you have had river in your childhood,you always hear it". I had lovely blue  Shivaliks, Rispana (yes its a river , though  seasonal), fragrance  of Eucalyptus wafting in the air all  around ,star  lit sky in the night-thats the Doon valley  i remember from  my  childhood . Coming back  to "Love to beat " - for me  there couldn't be a greater inspiration than nature to bring it alive. "Love to beat"-is a series of four  miniature size painting -lets say double of  the conventional  miniature size. With  subjects as  exquisite in appearance as the ones i had chosen, the size of paper  felt  small- in light of the fact that  the priciple medium  for painting was soft  pastels (for those not familiar with the medium -they  are chalk sized sticks) . acrylics and water color came to  rescue  at different stages  to bring alive the series.  







@versatility

Water@versatility  -obvious -nothing to explain  here .Essential  for our  survival  in myriad forms. The fastest  painting  I have ever  done - Scribble  for 7-10  minutes  with  blue pastel  , no whites used .loved the fluidity  that i managed to  get in the first  go  therefore did not try  improvising on it .











@spreading light

Sun@spreadinglight   -What  was interesting and challenging about  the reference image was  conveying the sense of  water without using  the traditional  blue -apart  from the reflection  of the ducks -there was very little that  could convey  "water".Not very happy with the end result.

  

@vividness

Butterfly@vividness  -Could have used a more vivid palette of colors  to  convey the  vividness!Butterflies  are amongst  my  most  favorite subjects to  paint along with  birds .Flowers - i don't tend to  get  right  easily.will try harder next time.

Paintings in my head and heart

However they can't be seen unless   i free my hands from the daily grind and get down to painting on paper !  the week or two in my last blog has now stretched to about 7 months-haven't started on anything new  and thats killing me . i know if i take a very long   gap - i lose the rhythm -it takes a while to get back to  sketching and painting at the speed  that i like . i also realise somewhere procrastination and cribbing about procrastinating is turning out to be a good excuse for not painting. for example - instead of writing this crib note i could easily be planning something out. why can't i plan something at  a short notice - there are excuses for that as well - Oil colors - turpentine and linseed oils  not the best thing to have around  when you have young children at home  , acrylics - to static and stubborn for my liking  , water  colors - you live on the  edge when you paint - one stroke gone wrong - and the painting loses its radiance ,soft pastels-my most favorite -yes they are the one  i can start with  instantly.combination of soft pastels and water colors - works best for me -instinctive bias - closest to natural and organic colors to paint with. since this blog happens to be the only space where i  live  an "artist's life" -let me also tell you  what  my  next subject to paint will  be "sweet peas and sunshine"- i have been planning to paint this for  the  last 4 years.hoping that i will start and finish before the fifth year is out. hoping that i will  be able to keep my promise this time ....

The art and science of it all

Had started this blog 3 and half years ago - so that i could share my paintings with friend and family.however life got busy.finding time for painting became a dream. my love for painting obviously didn't reduce.so here i am -hoping to update this blog more often with my paintings and related stories.
one of my favorite pastimes is to trawl for good reading material related to techniques and material related to the drawing and painting.I will be sharing the interesting tidbits related to this craft on this blog.you would wonder why am i refering to art as craft -watch out for another blog on that one.
JMW Turner is one of English painters i admire-especially for the kind of depth and distance he manages to convey in his water scapes.was adequately intimidated when i discovered that he was a professor of perspective at one of the London universities!!
If you start figuring out the chemical composition of colors/pigments -you would realise how well you need to know chemistry in order to be able to paint well.don't believe me -try googling-"what is the right proportion of linseed and turpentine to be used in oil painting" -you will get the answer.
Pigments incidentally have played a very significant role in the economics and history of art.Artists would often pledge their finished paintings to color pigment merchants - as they could not afford to pay for them. Even today -if you are buying artist quality color box - and you get it cheap , then you can be sure that the box does not contain alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue-the most expensive of color pigment.
Seurat -one of the french post impressionist painter -believed that knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art .He set out to define this language using lines ,color intensity and color scheme -he called it chromoluminarism.he is the one who devised the technique of pointillism -which served as the trigger for neo impressionism -the art movement after impressionism which was clearly defined by artists searching for new methods of painting.
working on a few paintings right now -will be uploading in a week or two

Chitrakaar