A sketch and a request

I have a sketch today for Paint Party Friday. 

No...this is neither a WIP nor is the baby sleeping nor have I forgotten to sketch the eyes. The baby has no eyes. This is how a lot of babies born to victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in 1984 and Agent Orange during the Vietnam War look like. Some don't have eyes, some have severe physical deformities to the extent of looking grotesque. Even today some babies are born with multiple heads, limbs protruding from various parts of the body and a large number have mental disabilities. And all this is years after the actual disasters- one claimed to be an accident and one a strategy of war. 

And the sad part is the parties responsible for these unpardonable acts are washing off their hands the whole thing. Union Carbide, through whose plant the leak at Bhopal happened has since been taken over by Dow Chemicals (Incidentally Dow was one of the manufacturers of Agent Orange too) Dow has been refusing to take responsibility for the plight of the Bhopal victims and their children. They are also going a step further and trying to clean their image by sponsoring the Paralympics 2012. 

The Paralympic games need funds and such big sponsors are hard to get. But, the world must know the truth about Dow Chemicals. 

I would request you all to read this online petition here and sign it if you think you support it. Thank you!

Don't we want the world to be full of cute babies like this?

A tree again!

Well, I'm at it again....my Project Watercolors....learning watercolor painting is a target I've set for myself. But apart from the Friday hurried painting (to be able to make it to Paint Party Friday), I hardly get time to paint. Last week I had made a watercolor tree almost in the middle of Friday night. This time I started and completed a couple of hours earlier. ;)

I checked out a few more techniques for painting trees and also clouds. Have tried to use them both here. But I wasn't bold enough with the clouds. :)

The result makes me conclude one thing - I need to get much thicker better paper for next time. This sketchbook, although is said to be for watercolors too, isn't too good. After drying the colors don't come out as intended. They become a couple of shades lighter.

Anyways, this time I took care of light and shadows to some extent. But I see the light on the tree and the shadows suggest slightly different angle of sunlight. Nevermind....I have moved one step ahead in my journey. 

Thank you all, who took time out to leave encouraging comments and really cool tips. I'd still love to hear from you and learn from you. Do check out the other lovely art at PPF.

Project Watercolors

No...This is not one of those smart projects that you artists are used to. I'm not hosting any watercolor event or challenge :) My Project Watercolors is for me to learn to paint with water colors. 

I'm learning from tutorials on the web especially on Youtube. I watched a few on painting trees. And then I tried painting one here -

And I'm not too happy with it. Nevertheless, it is a start.

Ever since I started getting into art a couple of months ago, I wanted to buy watercolors but wasn't getting the time to. I only had a Faber-Castell Watercolor Pencils set. I tried my hand with it while trying to color my earlier Nimbu Mirchi sketch and the result was pathetic -

It was the same in the Namaste piece I submitted to PPF and Soul Challenge last week. I wasn't able to render exactly what I had in mind because I just didn't know how to handle the Watercolor pencils.

The last time I'd tried my hand at watercolors was a few years ago with these daffodils -

It looked nice and colorful overall but there were no true watercolor techniques in it. It was more like coloring with crayons. Of course, I didn't have video tutorials then. 

So I've decided to take up this project of learning watercolors. I'm not fixing myself any deadline...at least not now. Please do give me any tips and suggestions you might have. Happy PPF!