The making of My Kerala Mural

I'd mentioned my plans to attend a Kerala Mural workshop in an earlier post.....so here are the pics from it. I thoroughly enjoyed the 3 day intense program. Before I went for it, I was wondering how many murals we would complete sitting 7 hours a day for 3 days. How many?! We were hardly able to complete one! Its such a tedious process and there are so many intricate details in the drawings that its a lot of effort but the end result makes it all worth it!

A close up of Ganesha - My First Kerala Mural 

Traditionally these murals are paintings of Hindu Deities done on walls of temples and palaces in Kerala. The colors used were all natural dyes. The most interesting aspect of these murals is Panchvarna or the use of only 5 colors - Yellow, red, green, blue and black. These are painted on a white background, so the white spaces in the pictures are left blank to show through. 

Acrylics are being used on canvas and other media more recently. Except for those changes, we used the original traditional method to do the mural. The basic steps after preparing the background (which are not required on a white canvas) are -

Trace out the drawing. We used graphite transfer method for it. 
Do the outline again with red paint.
Fill in yellow for the ornaments, head-dress, the stems, the dress and the background.
A double coat of yellow where required.
A bold red outline and some shading and some red effects on the background.
Yellow for the body (multiple coats).
Then green for leaves, stems and dress.
Then blue for some parts of the dress and garlands.
Finally a black outline all over again and for the hair.

The starting point - the drawing given to us

The sketch on the canvas

The first step - outline with red paint

Filling in the yellow parts

Red outlines and shading 

With the reference painting

Background completed

 

Again yellow for the body

    Now for some green

  And some blue

                                           

After the final step - black outlines

And I completed my first Kerala Mural. Hope to make more sometime soon.

This one goes to PPF and Show and tell Saturday #30. Drop in there to see some amazing art. 

29 faces - I did it!

After day 11 of the 29 faces challenge hosted by Martha of Ayala Art, I took a long break because of a suddenly planned vacation with the kids. I was a little disappointed that I would not be able to complete the first art challenge I ever took up. Today, I took stock of the sketches that I had already managed to make and then took up a daunting task - of sketching the rest! And I ended up with some extra faces as well. You might call me crazy but I enjoyed it thoroughly and badly wanted to complete the challenge too! So here go faces 12 to 29 and some more!

This one is my favorite because it actually resembles a dog ;). This is another stepping stone in my quest to learn watercolors :)

I really enjoyed this journey of 29 faces. Most of mine were pencil sketches as that was the easiest and the least time taking technique for me. I loved this whole exercise where some were sketched from references others from my imagination. The study of different face cuts, eyes, noses, lips was very interesting. Its amazing to see how minor changes in these can change the entire expression of the face.

I wanted to try my hand at a good variety for the challenge. Though I would have loved to try more variety, I think I did pretty well - from a dog, cats and a bird to dancers, a Red Indian, a goddess, a Rajasthani lady in a window to female faces in different moods, Buddha, Swami Vivekananda and a genie as well! 

Please visit all the other artists in the challenge and their wonderful work. Btw  I just counted all the faces and they are 31! one for each day in May!

Thanks Martha for hosting the wonderful challenge. This was a great way to learn faces for people like me.

The May Flower challenge grand finale!

I had hoped to post a flower everyday in Lori Moon's May Flower Challenge. But my sudden travel plans disrupted everything. I was still hopeful I would be able to post flowers once I reached my destination but when on a vacation at your parents place with 2 active kids to be taken care of and entertained while you are working from home all the time, the motivation to blog takes the backseat. 

Today being the last day I thought I will post all the flower pics I had taken in the last few days. 

A blue flower -

Hibiscus -

Spider Lilies -

Oleander -

Trees full of colorful flowers. The violet ones are the flowers of the same tree as these dried pods I had posted earlier. The red ones are known as Gulmohor in India and are also known as Flame of the forest as the entire tree becomes red when the flowers are in blossom.

 

Brocade and embroidered flowers in Indian sarees and a cross stitch tablecloth motif.

 

So this is my first post today and this goes to Lori Moon's May Flower Challenge. Thanks Lori for giving us such a wonderful chance to spot flowers around us, capture them and share them. And it was such a  pleasure visiting all other flower enthusiasts. I wish I'd joined earlier and not had to take the break too.

I'd fallen behind in another challenge too - 29 faces at Ayala Art. So I sketched a few faces to make the total count 29! :) I'll post those in a separate post.

29 faces May - Days 9,10,11

This has been a busy week. I did manage to sketch/paint a face every day, I couldn't find time to post them every day. Not very great ones this time.....but here are faces 9, 10 and 11.

The first one is a pencil sketch of a Bharatnatyam dancer. That's another classical dance form of India. I kind of messed up her eyes.

I read an interesting article on the Ivory-billed woodpecker in an old Nat Geo magazine.It was believed to have become extinct in 1950's but a team of bird watchers in the recent years reported sightings and produced evidence. But it seems, the evidence isn't concrete enough to prove the existence of this beautiful bird.

And the last is one of my favorite cartoon characters - Tintin and his dog Snowy. As a child I loved reading all the books of the series and now my son loves watching the movies.

And these go to Paint Party Friday too! A nice party hosted every Friday by 2 very talented artists, Eva and Kristen.

29 faces - Days 5,6,7 and 8

I'm clearing the backlog of 4 days. 

I tried to sketch a famous personality but it didn't come out as intended. :( The resemblance hasn't come out at all. Well, all I can do is...keep trying.

 This is my first 'own' face i.e I drew it on my own without any reference. Although Budhha doesn't seem like a handsome man in my sketch but at least all parts are in the correct place :)

This is a Rajasthani man with his camel. Can I consider the camel's face as another one in the 29;) Rajasthan is the only desert state in India. To make up the lack of color in the terrain, Rajasthanis wear wonderful colorful costumes. They even dress up their camels with lots

Goddess Durga is said to have killed a fearful demon to save the world from his atrocities. The day the Goddess slayed the demon, is celebrated as Vijayadashami. Week long celebrations are held in India and huge clay statues of the Goddess are put up in public places accompanied by fairs. 

Sorry for the poor quality of the pics. I felt too lazy to scan and took photos in the fading light of the evening.

Kathakali Dancer

This is my entry for 29 faces May (Day 4) and PPF Week 8, Year 2.

I used acrylics on sketching paper. And I'm happy with the outcome :)

Kathakali is a dance-drama form from the southern Indian state, Kerala. It is said to have its origins in the 17th century. The most striking feature of this classical dance form is the elaborate makeup of the characters. They enact parts of the great Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana and other stories from Indian mythology.

I had this dream of painting a Kathakali dancer and finally...thanks to PPF and 29 faces I did it!

Still Alive!

I'm back after a loong hiatus. My last post was on 18th Feb! Well the long gap was due to a vacation, some work and then plain laziness. And I wasn't even visiting the blogs I usually do and not checking PPF entries either. I only had to go through them today to get inspired to make some art and participate in PPF!

This time I took my Indian style doodling to a pot! Some Indian sweets are still served in earthern vessels as they are said to retain the original taste better than steel and plastic vessels. One East Indian delicacy is more often than not found to be served in these small earthern pots - Mishti Doi or Sweetened Yogurt. That's how this one got into our house and became my canvas for today's PPF entry. 

Happy PPF and I hope to be back every week again. And I'll soon have a long post (or a series of posts) on my vacation to Andaman and Nicobar Islands - a piece of Paradise! And you cna bet it'll be full of the pics I took :)

Namaste

As you can make out from my blog, I have a lot of interest in all forms of art but haven't really tried my hand at too many things until now. But now I want to spend more time in learning and creating more art. And Paint Party Friday has become a weekly inspiration for me. I was wondering what to make for this week's party, when I came across the Soul Challenge. I was intrigued by the idea and wanted to give it a try. So here's what the word Soul means to me. It of course is influenced by the Indian beliefs of Aatma and Parmatma. 

According to the Indian philosophy, the Aatma or soul is a piece of the superior force that's present all around us - the Parmatma. This superior force is interpreted in different ways. Some call it God, others prefer other names. After all, matters of the soul are extremely personal preferences. Indian spiritual thinkers believe that all living things are mere tiny manifestations of the supreme force and once we die, the soul departs the physical body and blends back into the supreme force.I tend to think of God as a supreme force and visualize "it" as a very bright light. :)

The current Hindu religion is a pretty complex with centuries of interpretations and misinterpretations taking it away from the original ideas. However, there are a number of rituals that are practiced even today that emphasize the basic philosophy of the Aatma and the Parmatma. One such practice is the Indian form of greeting - Namaste. 

By greeting a fellow human being with a Namaste, we are actually acknowledging the supreme force present in him/her and bowing in front of it. So, here's how I look at these things -

So this one goes to both Paint Party Friday and The Soul Challenge at Artists in Blogland.

A paisley and a flower

I've been doodling again...Indian style! Happy PPF!