Israel and Tuscany

As part of the virtual sketching tour at Somewhere To Sketch, I got to sketch some wonderful locations in Israel and Tuscany. Thanks to Ann Hyde and Lynn Cohen for this wonderful idea!

My sketch of a seafront road in Pisa, Tuscany

 The Google street view shot

My sketch of The Wailing Wall in Israel

The Google street view shot

These go to Paint Party Friday.

Beach water colors

This was an attempt to paint one of my favorite vacation beaches - Neil Island among the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. I just made a post about my trip there with lots of beautiful pics. I intend to try and paint some of them soon. The original photo is here.

This one goes to PPF.

Project Watercolors Resumed

Months ago I set myself the target of learning to paint decently with watercolors. After the initial few futile attempts, I almost gave up. In fact I haven't created any art for the last couple of months. Last week I happened to visit a neighbor of mine who is an artist in her own right. Saw her work and got inspired. But instead of trying with oil paints like her, I tried my hand at some watercolor pieces. I personally feel these are much better than my last attempts. What do you think of these and what are the obvious improvement areas?

I'm still not sure about what kind of paper to use for watercolors and where to find it in Bangalore. I used handmade paper for the first 2 paintings and was not happy with the way the color wouldn't spread around easily. you can see that in the backgrounds....they look so messy.The 3rd is on a normal sketching paper and that turned out better. 

These go to PPF hosted by Eva and Kristin. There are so many wonderful artists participating these days that it takes almost the whole weekend to go through all the beautiful 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.

Daffodils

For today's May Flower Challenge, I wanted to share a watercolor of Daffodils I had done quite sometime ago. I think I've already put it up in this blog in a post of my watercolors. But I'm putting it up again. 

Do go and check Lori's wonderful tulips!

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.

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!

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.