Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Domes of Blue


Entrance to Blue Mosque,  watercolor on Yupo 14x11"

All over the world, throughout history, various absolutely grand and architecturally unique and beautiful places of worship have been built. Is it to glorify God, or to indulge the person who conceived and bank rolled it,  or to admire the talents and skills of artists and artisans who built it, a testimony of what man is capable of creating?  First look at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul last year during our trip was through the massive doors. I liked the multiple blue domes  - the repeating shapes and colors with sunlight streaming in. Looking at all that marble all around, I was suddenly reminded of Rabindranath Tagore's quote: While God waits for His Temple to be built of love, men bring stones.  

The look of marble was ideal to paint on yupo -- layering paint and creating texture by dabbing plastic wrap and paper towel.  I had to repeat the process of adding and lifting paint several times on the outer walls by the doors to make them darker. I also tried several times in the past couple of days to photograph the painting and this is the closest I could come to duplicate the  actual paint colors.  

13 comments:

Leslie Lambert Redhead said...

Oh! I like this! It is amazing what you can do on Yupo. Makes me want to try it again.

Saee said...

I loved the Tagore quote. :)

Meera Rao said...

Thank you Lesie - I really had to be learn to be patient as I was layering since I had to make sure it was completely dry before adding the next layer carefully! It is so easy to wipe off paint on Yupo!

AK said...

Brilliant composition with nice suttle colors.

Crystal Cook said...

Really gorgeous colors and textures in this Meera!! I love your Yupo works :)

Meera Rao said...

Thank you AK --I really appreciate that!

Crystal, yupo is so full of surprises, its really an adventure to paint on it! Thanks for your encouraging words :)

padmaja said...

Looks like a tough composition to be executed on Yupo, but you have done it brilliantly Meera, apt that you have posted this amidst Ramzan.Thanks for the quote by Tagore.

Anudeepa Kadiresan said...

Beautiful texture meera,i like this yupo work,,it's new to me ...

Meera Rao said...

Thank you, Padmaja and Anudeepa. It is a fun challenge to work on yupo!

Kathy Staicer said...

I love the colors and the textures. I have to give Yupo another try!

Meera Rao said...

Thanks Kathy, Yupo is frustrating and tremendous fun at the same time :)

Anonymous said...

The first thing that struck me about this post was the blue color shade in the painting. On second thoughts, however, I couldn't decide what I loved more - the painting or the 1st paragraph in the description you've written. That's just amazing thinking.. and I'm not exaggerating!

Meera Rao said...

Nikhil, thank you-- I am so touched :) You made my day!

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