Spring Smiles with Flowers

Bouquet With Iris watercolor 13x9

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers -- Claude Monet

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

Digital photography

Spring Fever

Spring is in the air. The daffodil plants are poking through in the yard. I see gardeners excitedly spending time clearing winter debris and getting the garden ready for spring planting. Ducks are frantically looking for a place to nest and lay eggs. During my walk in the local fitness trail last saturday I saw patches of beautiful tiny blue flowers whose name unfortunately I haven't learnt yet. And, I came across a fascinating article "Breezy Love or Sacking of the Bees" by Olivia Judson in New York Times.

The flower power was indeed strong. I pushed aside the two paintings I was working on and decided to do a quick small color pencil flower sketch. The simple flower took longer than I anticipated. I got carried away, covering the paper with design and color!

Red Beauty color pencils 6x6"

Six Degrees of Separation

We have a patch of cactus growing by the bedroom window.  It usually gives a spectacular show of yellow flowers after a good rainfall in spring.  We have been having monsoon like rains this week and I see the buds popping up all over the patch.  As I was researching  the name and variety that was growing in our yard, I discovered that cacti are part of the plant order Caryophyllales which also includes plants like beets, baby's breath, spinach, amaranth, tumbleweeds, carnations, rhubarb, bougainvillea, buckwheat, chickweed, knotgrass etc. I still don't know the name but I full of wonder and amazement at the nature's bounty. 

After the Rainfall  watercolor on hot press paper. 15x11"

Second Chance

The past few days have been devoted to matting and framing some of my recent paintings.  In between cutting mats, rather than start new paintings I have been going through my discarded and abandoned ones and playing with them to see if I can experiment and revive any of them.  'Yellow Roses'  had a part of the painting chopped off and its leaves and background washed off carefully and reworked in entirely different colors and style.  I didn't touch the roses this time around, just worked on the rest of the painting.  Working on old 'failed' paintings like this  gives me a chance to learn from my mistakes and try out new  or different techniques. As I was wondering if only there was a something that will let me know just before I make mistake, I stumbled on this article in latest issue of 'Discover' about 'Brain Scans that Can Predict When You are going to Screw Up.' According to a study, just before the subjects committed an error, brain waves in two regions spiked: alpha wave in the occipital region and mu wave in cortex region.  These results have excited scientists in a lot of different areas of interest from Air traffic controllers to possible improvements in treatments for ADHD. I am torn now since a part of me also feels, in art, quite often mistakes lead to new discoveries.

Yellow Roses watercolor 17x15"