Here’s a recent look at my painting of a filthy section of waterfront across from the ritziest shopping district in Mumbai. I’ve added mainly neutrals and some lights… not the brightest whites yet, I want to build up the texture and colours first. You can see how it looked before this step here.
I’ve just started on a new painting for our living room from a photo we took in Mumbai, India three years ago (below.) I’m working with acrylic as they are safer to work with around my toddler than oils. And we can share so setup isn’t a big deal – a squirt of paint for Hera, and a squirt of paint for Mommy! The only challenge is keeping Hera from helping me paint my painting, hee hee. The lovely thing about working in acrylic is it dries so quickly, so I’m able to hang it right back up on the wall and be able to consider my next “moves” between paint sittings.
As you can see, after about 40 minutes Hera was tuckered out, so was a very short & sweet painting time!
Tip : Something I learned from Kiff Holland while in college, painting your canvas a bold colour to prime it gives you a fun surface to work on. As you paint over top, leave little flecks of the original bright colour peeking through here and there to give some zing to your painting!
I stumbled upon Polyvore a couple months ago, and have found it really intriguing (and a bit flattering!) seeing digital crafters using some of my artwork in their collages. Polyvore is meant to be a sort of interactive magazine, where you create your own visual style collections “Mix & match products from your favorite stores.” Then you can “Shop looks created by the web’s largest fashion community” by browsing through links provided to where the images originally came from. But from looking through how the site is actually being used, there are a lot of very personal collages being created which have absolutely nothing to do with fashion! It’s so interesting how these things develop and grow beyond their original intent. While it was a bit disconcerting at first seeing my illustrations used without my permission, I like that Polyvore is very good about putting up links to and crediting the artists of the original “pieces” within the collages.
The above collage, “Together…” by WendyG Short Hair Contest!, uses a drawing I did of myself and a woman I met in India who guided me through the wells of Abhaneri (shown in the film The Fall.) Also by the same artist is “Opa’s Best Friend” which uses a teddy I illustrated for my diary of Hera’s stuff. The collage below, “i.am.dreaming, let.me.never.awake” by light.my.saphire, uses my art nouveau inspired butterfly drawing.
This is a photo I took while in India with my husband, Ben… which I just submitted to the CONNECTIONS Photo Contest. The contest calls for amateur photographers (sorry pros!) to submit a single photo that captures the authentic essence of a place. I think this is my favourite photo of our time in India… we were visiting the Monkey Temple near Jaipur, where pilgrims come to bathe in the sacred baths. We were the only tourists there, and upon arrival were being coerced into buying souvenirs, to be blessed by priests (for a fee,) and being chased by little girls with baskets of cobras to have our photo taken with them (also for a fee.) There were few places in India we felt uncomfortable on our trip, and this was one of them. But then we caught a glimpse of this little girl, all by herself, playing in the sink while gathering water, and snapped this picture. I feel like it captured something sweet and sad at the same time, the contrast between the struggles of poverty and childhood innocence.
I really enjoyed reminiscing while drawing this illustration… it’s from a photo Ben took of me in India being guided by an old widow through the Abhaneri wells in Rajasthan. Illustration is done with a graphite pencil, white pencil, and light blue pencil on a piece of warm coloured scrap paper, which really makes the blue of her sari pop out.
This is a study of some beautiful marble latticework we saw in India… took me ages to capture the pattern, can’t imagine how much time it would have taken to carve this by hand hundreds of years ago. I put my green designer thumb to use for this illustration, using a scrap of orange construction paper to draw on, which adds a lovely crumpled texture to the illustrated study.
I’m taking a little break from my pen & digital colour drawings of Hera’s stuff and doing some sketches from photos we took on our trip to India last year. This sketch is of a bunch of different memories of our time in Udaipur.
Well I’ve been a bit neglectful of sharing some of the things that captivated us while we were in India… we toured literally dozens of temples and tombs. The one I think we most amazed us were the Ranakpur Jain Temple, which had different carvings on over 1400 marble pillars, all unique. The marble ceiling carvings were my favourite though, as you look up and these perfect dials thirty or so feet above you while you find your way through a maze of pillars. It was overwhelming at times how much pattern & carving was everywhere… you almost get a bit desensitized to it. Here are a few of my favourites from all over India…
The peafowl, I discovered while in India, is the most beloved of their beautiful birds. We saw dozens of them (peacocks are males, peahens are females) in the wild… roosting in the trees, running around in the brush. Once we saw a male ‘dancing’ with his tail feathers fanned out… and were told that is ‘very lucky.’
So when I was introduced to the Indian Miniature paintings, the first I looked for was artwork of peacocks. This painting is only 4×6 inches… the paints are vegetable based, similar to tempera. The detail they put into these miniatures is incredible.
This piece of art was from a book, there is script on the back of the illustration, all hand painted text. We bought one more, which I’ll post in a couple days!
I’m back from my 15 day trip to India with my husband… so forgive me for the trickling posts recently!
