Taking Liberties

Pause  watercolors 12x9"

Taking liberties with color  and composition is what I aimed for in this painting.  I had taken a photograph many years ago at Colonial Williamsburg of a costumed interpreter taking a break. As soon as I asked permission to take her photograph, she straightened up and posed in a stiff stance.

This past week I played around. I changed and simplified the background colors. I managed to give her  back the look I had wanted to capture on that particular day. I observed a few ladies carrying babies on their hips and chatting - that helped me to paint  her this way. I was pleased to be able to make the changes and complete the painting.  When I straddle between realistic and conjured depictions, I feel a different sense of accomplishment  as I finish the painting.  

Artistic Impulse

A Day in The Life   page 12 color pencils

As an artist you are always told to develop your own style. Well, I just watched a TED talk by Shea Hembrey  -- he became 100 artists with hundred different styles for his own 'International Biennial Show!'  He made up artists from different counties, invented bios, wrote one hundred different artist statements and created different styles, forms of art in all different sizes too - paintings, sculptures, performance arts, installations, movies/documentaries. He was even his own curator, Gallery director --but of course, you know by now that he came up with names and positions and bios for them too.

There is a huge debate going on in TED site about what all this means.  I am impressed with his audacity, creativity and sense of humor. It tickled me that he has hundred different artists in him and now I feel comfortable to carry on with my varied styles and  choice of mediums without feeling compelled to choose one or the other. Does this mean I may end up not mastering any one style or medium? Probably so but I may never grow as an artist if I don't keep experimenting and pushing my limits. When it comes to creativity, I think it is a fine line between being focused and spreading yourself thin! Check out the hilarious and creative talk and a sample of his hundred of artists in the TED-video. Please leave a comment and let me know your opinion about it. 

Perfect Patience

Perfect Patience  digital photography

We often think that it is impossible

to develop perfect patience; however

 if we know our nature and our qualities,

and if we train ourselves in them,

it is completely possible to do it.

-Bokar Rinpoche

Spectacular Images

A Day In the Life..Full of Surprises  page11 color pencils

I am waiting for The Art House Co Op to finish revamping their website and for my project A Day in the Life -in Blue Jeans With Gold Embroidery  to be added to their digital library. I am also hoping their scanned online versions are better than mine :).  

Even as I am pleased to have completed writing and illustrating  a small book for the Fiction Project, I am fascinated by what I read and see on their site about how some artists challenged themselves to take their art to new level by changing the paper in the moleskine journals or turning it into an accordion book etc., transforming the materials they were given. I just watched a TED talk by artist Janet Echelman on 'Taking Imagination Seriously.' I am in awe of her creativity and drive to pursue her unbelievably big imagination! I also really like how she combines science and art in her work. Having just returned from Chicago last month, where Anish Kapoor has his sculpture the Bean/cloud, I wonder how does one come up with work of art that scale and magnitude that boggles the mind? Is it a different level of risk taking, resourcefulness, determination, tenacity  combined with  the serendipity of being in the right place at the right time and to know to seize upon the opportunity presented?  And does it have to be  really spectacular or it is not imagination taken to the edge?  

Sixteen Rules to Forget

Koi  (final) watercolor on Yupo 11x14

A month and a half ago when I was getting ready to frame the paintings for my show at the library, I had to stop and go back over my earlier version of  the Koi painting, further deepening the shadows (the photograph unfortunately still doesn't capture the darks well enough) and adding some more details to the fish and the water.  I like this newer more vibrant version :). Under glass with  'museum white' double mat really gives the painting a wonderful 'finished' look. I can never  get over how matting and framing dresses up a painting!!! 

I must admit I have been washing, painting, rewashing and painting again on regular paper for a few years  but  its easier on Yupo.  Yupo paper  has helped me be bolder with trying out various options for a painting --especially going darker, then coming back and saving the whites. It has helped me take chances and  try out different solutions on the same painting till I am satisfied. I play with shapes, values, colors or other elements with abandon. Recently I reread Arne Westerman's book "Painting Watercolors Filled with Life and Energy." and it reaffirmed for me the method in my madness. At the end of the book he has  a chapter on Six Things to Remember and Sixteen Rules to Forget (my favorite)! I am sharing shortened versions of both below (and that will also help me remember better .)

Remember these: 

1. Paint only those things you feel connected to.

2.  Consider the uniqueness of your idea.

3.  See your work as a rectangle -not a person or a thing in the middle of a rectangle.

4.  Simplify.

5.  Use light like a film director.

6.  Use color with boldness. 

Forget These Rules: Rules (in italics) and my summarized version of his  refreshingly candid comments/explanation (not in italics) 

1.  Be careful to avoid "ouzles" in your painting. -Don't worry-its one of the exclusive qualities of watercolor.

2.  Design is simply a matter of picking the right formula. Not really. Just keep it simple. 

3. Watercolor is an unforgiving medium. Nonsense. You can paint, wash it off, restate and wash again.

4.  Expensive brushes are better and last longer. Not necessarily.  Experiment and find brushes just right for you.

5.  Paper must be stretched before painting. Not true.

6.  Don't use opaque white paint. Thats cheating.  A silly rule aimed to prove how difficult it is to paint 'transparent color.' The Old Masters used white paint. Cerulean blue, red & orange cadmiums, and yellow ochre are as opaque as white. 

7.  Always erase your pencil lines.  Not necessary.  It adds interest and texture.

8.  Be careful with the paper's surface.  Good watercolor paper takes a lot of abuse and its the results that count.

9.  Be neat and tidy.  Wrong.

10. Don't waste film, paint, paper and other supplies. Better to waste than lose a great opportunity.

11. Don't paint from photographs. Paint on the scene or work from photographs. Go either way without guilt.

12. Always work light to dark.  Not true. Develop as you go. 

13. Make every brushstroke count. No. You will play it safe and go nuts.

14.  Watercolor requires tremendous control. Not true. If you don't like it wash it off.

15.  Don't paint a vertical subject in a vertical format. Not necessarily.

16. Always stay inside the lines.  The term "crossing the line" suggests adventure. 

I close with these words from Arne Westerman: "You are an artist. Go to work." 

Beauty, Shadow and Reflection

Beauty, Shadow and Reflection  watercolor 9x12

I saw this tiny colorful beauty drinking from a puddle on a cold January morning when I was out on a walk.  I stopped to admire. I am  also drawn to shadows and reflections and  I was immediately attracted by the three shapes that intersected as the bird cautiously watched my movements.  I, as cautiously and slowly, took out my camera and managed to capture the moment as he/she continued to survey the scene.  Finally this week I painted this as a reminder of that wonderful encounter.  I used my favorite Canson Montval cold press watercolor paper, a small brush along with lots of patience to complete the painting :)

Shadow Play

A Day in the Life   page 10 color pencils

At the rate I am posting the sketchbook pages from my book A Day In The Life  for The Fiction Project, I will have fodder for my blog for a couple months :)  As with the reflections, shadows also intrigue me.  A Conrad Hall quote says it eloquently: There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job. 

I came across some beautiful shadows that were artistically created by manipulating various objects and light.  The creativity behind these shadows is mindbogging! These are a long way from the wall shadows my brother and I did as  children with flashlight and fingers on our hands on rainy mansoon nights when  there was no electricity and we were looking for entertainment! 

Always Reflecting

 Reflecting watercolor on Yupo 7"x11"

I, like countless others, have a fascination for photographing reflections.  I am intrigued how the reflections are sometimes mirror images and other times diffused and forming beautiful abstracts. To me, the play of light, color, patterns echoing the reality in its own terms - when an object is reflected off glass, mirror, water or any other shiny surface - is a mystery and miracle at the same time. Fortunately or unfortunately,  quite often I  find I become aware of the beauty of the surroundings as I catch the reflections. 

I enjoyed working on the yupo and now I want to explore this same image on a larger size regular paper soon!

Growing Art

A Day in The Life. Page 9 color pencils

One of the things that fascinates me is how ideas and creativity come about. I especially like the instances where science and art collide to produce the most wonderful discoveries and artwork.  More than ever this illustrates that we can all learn techniques- be it scientific methodology or how to lay down paint but to have a breakthrough, to make big discoveries seems to require something almost magical! I came across three  different stories about Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin. There is much more there than simply happenstance. 

A Smithsonian article explained that long before Alexander Fleming discovered the antibiotics, he was a painter, a member of the Chelsea Arts Club. He used watercolors, but that was not his favored medium.  He painted ballerinas, houses, stick figures fighting and other subjects by using bacteria! The  article says :"He produced these paintings by growing microbes with different natural pigments in the places where he wanted different colors. He would fill a petri dish with agar, a gelatin-like substance, and then use a wire lab tool called a loop to inoculate sections of the plate with different species. The paintings were technically very difficult to make. Fleming had to find microbes with different pigments and then time his inoculations such that the different species all matured at the same time. These works existed only as long as it took one species to grow into the others. When that happened, the lines between, say, a hat and a face were blurred; so too were the lines between art and science."  Further down the article is the revelation :"On that fateful morning, what Fleming actually discovered was, in a way, a version of one of his paintings. Each of the colonies of Staphylococci bacteria that he had inoculated on the plate had grown into a small shape resembling a planet or a star in a night sky. But there among his wild planets was something else, a larger, lighter body at the top of the dish, the Penicillin fungus. Around it the sky was dark, where the bacteria were dying. It was his masterpiece, his “rising sun,” the painting that would save more lives than any other discovery."

Read the Smithsonian article: Painting with Penicillin: Alexander Fleming's Germ Art  and then listen to PRI's Studio 360 story : Godfather of Bacteria.  On PRI's link Painting with E.Coli,  there is also a photo of one of Flemings paintings :) 

A blog Growing Impressions-Gulden/Baldwin records the collaboration between artist Amy Gulden and scientist Dr. Kristin Baldwin :"...we have enlisted a natural organism, E. coli bacteria, to generate images that resemble paintings or prints, but that have a unique set of patterns that could not be generated using non living materials. We hoped that by letting nature generate its own patterns we would trigger the interest of the eye and the visual brain, which has evolved to pay attention to the irregular patterns generated by natural growing objects."  There is an amazing collection of 'paintings' in that site!

This goes to show that we definitely need to nurture curiosity. Arts and science is a very artificial seperation of  knowledge!

In Search of Beauty

A Day In The Life - page 8 color pencils

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." Ralph Waldo Emerson's words ring in my mind quite often, especially when my wants and needs rear up their heads! This past week in Chicago was no exception. These days though, finally, more often than not, I use my camera to bring home the beauty. (The airline luggage restrictions help too!) And, more importantly, I understand what he meant. 

In the past couple of days there have been two stories on NPR about art, beauty and collecting-  'World's  Richest Man Opens Flashy Museum in Mexico' and 'Chasing Aphrodite and Other Dirty Art World Deals.'  The stories mentioned 'object lust', 'because they wanted it', 'they lose reason', 'minor and mediocre pieces by big name artists.'  When I finished listening, I was quite disillusioned by the elitist  mindset of some of the museum directors, curators, professors and one reporter whose tone I definitely did not care for.  I realized how easy it is to judge another or lose one's way when dealing with issues of ethics, art, culture, and greed.   I love going to the museums, admire the collections, but, I was once again wondering about the ethics, pros and cons of collecting, standards of beauty, value of art pieces etc.  

On a much simpler note, having just completed my sketchbook Fiction Project for Art House Co-op, A day in the Life, I was also very excited to see on display,  "Color and Rhythm: Henri Matisse's Jazz " at the Art institute of Chicago. 

  

As I had mentioned before, working on my book has given me a new appreciation for others' efforts and I marvel at the end results! 

Completing the Circle

Poquoson Public Library Artist of the Month May 2011 

I am always excited to exhibit my paintings at our city's Public Library.  It is a wonderful opportunity to display a collection of my paintings. I get a sense of  how all my paintings look framed and next to each other.  I am really grateful to have a venue to just show my work and  for a very compelling reason to keep painting, knowing there is one place once a year I may have my month of  audience :) Please swing by the library if you are in the area.  I would love any feed back!

This my 200th blog post and my heartfelt thank you to all who visit my blog.  Your interactions have helped me grow and evolve! As the artist Anish Kapoor said: There's something imminent in the work, but the circle is only completed by the viewer.

Comfort or Boredom?

A Day In the Life.. Page 7 The Fiction Project color pencils

I completed the fiction project last week and mailed it off to Art House Co-op in Brooklyn, NY. In the end I filled 30 pages with sketches and writing - that includes an author page, and two pages of tid-bits and explanations. I had initially torn off two pages to experiment on, and another three pages when I had difficulty with the page with the rangoli. I scanned the pages to my computer so I will be posting them slowly on my blog :) I sprayed the completed pages with Krylon acrylic clear coating so the color pencils will hold up and not smudge on the remote chance that it will be handled and looked at a number of times!

The project was exciting, fun and stressful all at the same time. I was sketching, drawing and thinking about  the book every single day and I felt daily practice definitely improved my skills. I am looking into another project to keep up the daily practice :). Giving my best and not being hung up on perfection freed me to enjoy the process. The project pushed me to sketch things I would have overlooked or afraid to tackle. I hope to give some of the sketches full treatment in larger versions.  I was excited to see the end product - a book authored and illustrated by me - not perfect or amazing, but a small accomplishment! Strangely, I did not mind mailing it off.  

Now, about  page 7: on a daily basis, I do not care for chores - will gladly by-pass them whenever I can!  Over the years I have noticed how my elderly or unwell relatives and friends have fiercely insisted on doing the daily little chores as they negotiated their days, and that made a great impression on me. I wonder, why, when, how or if, the perspective  will change for me. 

Circles on Wheels

digital photography 

To understand is to perceive patterns.

-Isaiah Berlin

Drawing Fire

Delicate Dance  watercolor on Yupo

Last summer we enjoyed many Calla Lily blooms in our garden. This past week, I finally got around to painting one on yupo sheet many times before I was satisfied.  It was a tremendous learning experience to try out different colors and varying backgrounds simply by repeatedly painting and washing  off  until I settled on this rendition.  I am experimenting using only washes and water for texture. 

I borrowed the title of the post from a series of articles in New York Times  by Michael D. Fay. On June 6 2010, in the introduction to the series, NYT explains:  'In 2005, then Chief Warrant Officer Michael D. Fay traveled to Iraq in his capacity as official Marine Corps artist. There he fought with Marines engaged in Operation Steel Curtain against insurgents along the Euphrates River, and documented the events in sketches, photographs and audio recordings. Mr. Fay describes that experience here in “Drawing Fire,” to be published in five consecutive parts this week in Home Fires. It is based on material from his memoir, “The War Artist,” (earlier drafts appeared on his blog in January), and includes artwork and photographs from his time with Marine units in Operation Steel Curtain.'  His accounts of the war and the accompanying sketches paint the horrors that is deeply riveting and moving. Check out his blog 'Fire and Ice' and also the Joe Bonham Project, where you will find more sketches by 'group of illustrators dedicated to recording the faces and experiences of America's returning wounded warriors.'  Kandhahar Journal  has sketches and accounts by war artists in Afghanistan.  The artist soldiers give a different picture of the war. 

Happy Vishu

A Day in the Life-page 6 color pencils and pen

Happy Vishu - New Year to all. Today is New Year for most of the people in southern India. I did this page in my sketchbook for the Fiction project 'A day in the Life - in Blue Jeans with Gold Embroidery' a few weeks ago and waited to post :) The entry describes a ceremony from most Hindu households in the south on Vishu-Ugady day.

The copy reads:

I light the lamp on my altar. A mirror is the latest addition -a reminder of a special kind. In southern India where I grew up, the New Year is ushered in with a ceremony many centuries old. The night before, a special shrine is assembled in prayer room/corner with season's first fresh vegetables and ripe fruits, arranged around a mirror draped with fresh flowers and gold jewelry. The next morning, each family member is led to the shrine with the eyes closed. We open our eyes in front of the shrine looking into the mirror, now surrounded by lit lamps. shining in the midst of this beauty and abundance is our own face in the mirror. It is a beautiful reminder of the divinity in each of us. The same divinity that pervades all. I wanted to have that reminder everyday of my life.

I did assemble the special 'kani' shrine last night and looked in the mirror  this morning :) And a mirror has been a permanent addition in my altar since January 1 - the new year in the western calendar.

Lines or Forms?

Skylight at National Gallery of Art  Washington D.C. digital photography

Always lines, never forms! But where do they find these lines in Nature? For my part I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not. There is only light and shadow.

- Francisco de Goya 

Ideas and Doubts

A Day in the Life - Swirl of Doubts page 5 color pencils

Generating ideas for the sketch book has been an interesting process.  The challenge has been to have  continuity in the theme and connecting one page to the next. Frustration with the paper has translated into not looking for perfection in my sketches or in the writing.  Letting go of the fear of failure is very liberating and I am somewhat enjoying the process of filling up the sketch book.  I read somewhere that Pablo Picasso once said "You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea."  Seems like I have taken that to heart. I have completed fifteen pages so far and have a few more to go. I am looking forward to see what I will come up with next :)  

Patience and Possibilities

Patient Pelican  Watercolors 6"x7"

I have been rereading  (or rather re-looking at the illustrations/paintings from) Jeanne Dobie's Making Color Sing. This was my very first purchase when I started painting in watercolors many years ago. Two days ago, her chapter on 'Mouse Power - achieving luminous grays' prompted me to finally paint the photograph of this pelican I had taken a while back. According to her 'mouse colors are like the bit players who support the stars.' 

I didn't quite follow her instructions or do the exercises,  but selected a transparent red, aureolin yellow, cobalt blue and viridian to make my grays, and used the grays to paint everything but the little yellow and orange patches on the bird :) A smaller brush than I normally use and waiting patiently for the paint to dry between the layers helped too.

Reading parts of the chapter while waiting for the paint to dry showed me the weakness in my  usual method of studying only the pictures in an art book rather than reading the chapters in detail!  I guess I need to change my ways a bit and not try to reinvent the wheel on my own!

I had moved away from her suggested rose madder genuine a few years ago since it had been rated poorly for color fastness in "The Wilcox Guide to the Best Watercolor Paints."   While linking her book to amazon.com, I noticed that there is a newer edition of her book- hope  she has replacements for the fugitive colors in the new version.

Meandering Lines

A Day in The Life - Rangoli doodle pilot G-2 pen

I am not sure  cleaning up my doodle when I transfered it to the Fiction Project sketchbook was a good idea.  After tearing off a couple of pages (now I have fewer pages to fill!) because my freehand doodle was not going the way I wanted, I realised forced doodling is not going to have a free flowing feeling to it!!! I have a weakness for rangoli doodles so I can free hand a rangoli when I have to and not check any rangoli design books.  Rangoli with these continuous lines are my favorite - I try to see how long I can go on with the line before it meets the starting point.  Some traditional rangoli start with even or odd numbered dots and you weave the lines around it. How you place the dots, how many  dots  in each subsequent rows, and how many rows of dots all lead to different designs. With regard to the sketchbook, I have decided to draw only on the right hand side of the book, not fight the thin papers and just accept imperfections.

Did you know Google has special doodles of its logo to celebrate important dates in a calender year. Check out their Google doodle art! 

Spring Signature

Dandelion digital photography

"It's  not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. "

Henry David Thoreau.