Try And Try Again Differently

Lunch Break again mixed media by Meera Rao

This painting was the result of playing with an abandoned piece.  When I painted Lunch Break  (check out that post for variation1) about two years ago it was my second attempt.  Earlier this year I pulled out the first discarded try.  I like to have something to keep my hands and brushes busy while I am waiting for washes or paints on a piece I am working is drying.  This, I hope, keeps me from muddying the work but that does not always happen! I have been trying to remember to take photos of my playing around to see where it takes me. Below is the piece when I first abandoned it. 

w-i-p

 I used a black Prismacolor pen to outline the various shapes. May be I should have stopped long before I outlined every shape!!! 

w-i-p 

I went on to darken some parts and then cropped the painting( - see the top most photo).  I had always underestimated what a tremendous learning experience it is to paint variations. I see now how very interesting it is to see the two paintings side by side now.  

And as this quote by Bob Brendle says so eloquently, "There can be no failure in an art experiment excepting that of vision."

Figures in Color

Figure in watercolor on Yupo by Meera Rao

Figure in watercolor on YUPO by Meera Rao

For almost three weeks now I have been practicing drawing the human figure.  Painting on Yupo was perfect for practicing with watercolors since I could easily rectify any mistakes by wiping off! I drew with watercolor pencils for the top one and graphite pencil for the bottom one before picking up transparent watercolors and had fun with it. It has been very exciting and challenging.  

Last year I volunteered to be a model for a portrait painting demo at our watercolor society meeting.  The one thing I noticed was that the artist constantly looked at me --as much or more than looking down at the paper.  Her rapid fire glances, constant measuring and checking the angles was my takeaway from the session --since I couldn't see what she was drawing only how she was looking at the model! 

I came across this quote by Leonardo da Vinci : "Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works."  So off to more practice :) 

Sacred Design

Sacred Design  Photography by Meera Rao 

To Erase Or Not To Erase?

Randompose pen by Meera Rao

I have been sketching these poses from the App Random Pose  for a few days now spending a couple of hours or more working on one pose each day.  It feels good to flip my sketchbook and see a collection of these.  But just as I was getting confident about the end results of each day, my ego got a reality check -- I was erasing so hard couple of days ago that the paper tore! I remember reading in Bert Dodson's book 'Fail and exploit the failure.'  So yesterday  I made myself sketch with pen only being more mindful of each line I put down.  I have to say it didn't take hours to complete the pose! 

Random Pose Graphite by Meera Rao





Random Pose  Graphite by Meera Rao



Bert Dodson in his book Keys to Drawing with Imagination writes: " I'm a strong believer in a quality I call 'wobble,' the less-than-perfect execution of things crafted by hand"   So I am setting aside my hesitations about using the eraser. Why unnecessarily make things harder on myself. As it is the human figure is complicated enough. I will concern myself with observation and practice and more practice alternating pen and pencil in my daily sketching and build my skills and confidence.

Habit Forming

Sketches from 'Random Pose'  5x7 graphite by Meera Rao

This past week, I started to sketch atleast 30 secs early in the morning as I sipped my coffee instead of reading the paper or checking the e-mail. I want to be disciplined enough to sketch every morning - so I signed up at http://tinyhabits.com/ to participate in 3Tiny Habits. Dr. BJ Fogg from Stanford has created 'a way to tap the power of context and baby steps.'

I started the tiny habit last friday (even though official start date was to be on Monday this week.) So far I have enjoyed sketching everyday. I keep sketching for a little longer or go back and finish them later in the day but I really like the 30 second option :) Rather than try to think of what to sketch, I have been selecting poses from an App "Random Pose" in my phone.  I downloaded the app from the iTunes store more than a year or two ago but was apprehensive until now about using it. 

While it is not anywhere  close to drawing from life, I am getting practice in drawing the human figure on my own terms. The poses show major muscle groups and I am learning with every sketch.  So far I have not pushed to finish a figure in 30 secs but at the website http://www.posemaniacs.com/thirtysecond a timer can be started to practice gesture drawing.  May be in a few days :) -- right now I am getting familiar with the body shapes, proportions etc.. I hope to add colors and washes sometime soon. Do you have any practices to help you be disciplined about your daily sketching or painting?  

I have added a page to my blog for my Sketch Book project "A Day in the Life."  Now you can see the book from cover to cover in the right order! Please do check it out  and leave me your feed back :)

Play of Light

Play of light  digital photography by Meera Rao 

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Publilius Syrus

Food For Thought

Jam jar watercolor on yupo 6x4 " by Meera Rao

Presimmons watercolor on Yupo 4x6" by Meera Rao

I painted these two small paintings on YUPO  two weeks ago. They were both donated to a fundraiser for Akshaya Patra a non-profit organization in India that aims to make sure "no child shall be deprived of education because of hunger."  Their website www.foodforeducation.org explains: "A public-private partnership, Akshaya Patra combines good management, innovative technology and smart engineering to deliver school lunch at a fraction of the cost of similar programs in other parts of the world. The program started in 2000 by feeding 1,500 children from a temporary kitchen in Bangalore, India. Currently, we distribute freshly cooked, healthy meals daily to 1.3 million underprivileged children in 8,000 government schools through 19 kitchens in eight states in India." Recently, the organization's wonderful work was highlighted by PBS, NPR in their news programs.   

Speaking of education, I came across an article in Huffington Post: Drawing Ability Has Psychological Basis In Perception And Memory, Researchers Say  by Natalie Wolchover.  She highlights research on 'What separates the drawers from the drawer-nots?'  Of course, lots of practice is way up there along with some very interesting observations : Based on their research, the psychologists recommended the following techniques for getting better at drawing: Focus on scaling a drawing to fit the size of the paper; anchor an object in its surroundings by showing how it sits in space; focus on the distance between elements of the object and on their relative sizes; and focus on the size and shape of "negative space," or the empty space between parts of the object. Lastly, they recommend thinking of "lines" as what they really are -- boundaries between light and dark areas. I would love to read the original study in detail but then I should just go and practice sketching :) 

PS : If you have time to kill go on and watch the videos on creativity in the same link under "Also on Huffpost."  

Order From Chaos

A Day in the Life Sketchbook project 2011 page 26  G-2 pen

I realized that I had forgotten to post the last few pages of my sketchbook project for Art House Co-op from 2011- A Day in the Life -In Blue Jeans with Gold Embroidery.    One thing that came to be clear during the writing/illustrating of that project was that as in painting I found myself wrestling with wrapping up the narrative  - ending that neither stops short of a resolution or overdone :)  Eventually I followed  Frank Herbert's advice : “There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”  

A Day in the Life Sketchbook project 2011 page 27  color pencils & G-2 pen

I hope to make a page in this blog for  the book so it can be read from front to back. Now clicking on this link gives all the posts on the sketchbook that I have posted - from most recent to the oldest making you read it backwards :) - unless you go the oldest post first and scroll up! Meanwhile, let me know what you think of my project - the illustrations, the writings.

Miracle of Life

digital photography by Meera Rao 

“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”

– Buddha

Textured Variations

textures and colors by Meera Rao

The last day of the "Variations" workshop was all about textures. We saw the possibilities with Myrna Wacknov's collection reference photos, her paintings, and use of gesso, stencils, stamps, patterns, tissue for collage, etc and  unlimited imagination :) The day's task was to bring color, texture, value and other design elements together. 

After the van Gogh like textures of my day 3 painting, I decided to tone down go for subtler texture :) and I like my final piece. 

gesso covering old painting

After watching the demo about applying stencils, tissues, and stamping, I proceeded to gesso -not too thickly or carefully- a painting I didn't care for. Applying the textures subtly with stamps and even fingers, and lifting some color with the stencils, I prepared the paper.  When the paper was dry I knew where and how I wanted my drawing to go. It did not really take much time to paint after that and I had to be especially be wary of not overworking it since it was so much fun to paint on the gesso prepped textured paper! Rest of the day I played with experimenting with preparing  paper in all different ways. 

Here is the photo with all my paintings of the week together:

variations by Meera Rao

Color Harmony and Variations

Color Harmony exercise  by Meera Rao

Using Faber-Birren color triangle, we explored color harmony on day 4 of the 'Variations' workshop with Myrna Wacknov.  The roll of dice said my combination for color harmony was Tint-Tone-Shade-Grey and to use intermediate hues.

I mixed the tints, shades, tone and grays for the two colors on  cards as reference as I painted the figure combining a shape drawing, value pattern and used the colors to create  mood.  This was the hardest exercise for me but well worth the effort. Once I had the colors down on the cards, the painting went very smoothly. Best part of the day was to see all the combinations and how they worked out in everyone's paintings during the critique session.

Fifteen years ago I had done a similar exercise with one color only in a Doug Walton workshop (only other workshop I have attended!) and suddenly color harmony theory became much clearer - I guess nothing like accumulating years of experience for an ah-ha moment!!! It also became clear to me that there is great value in methodically trying the color harmony combinations to get a better grasp of all the possibilities  and the mood they create.

Do you have tested and true color theory that you use? Do you use color wheels when you paint? I would love to know how you go about choosing colors and mood.  Or are you a 'fly by the seat of my pants artist' as I seem to be most of the time!!!! 

Lines Coloring Variations

Day 3 Line and color by Meera Rao

Day 3 of Myrna Wacknov's workshop 'Variations' focused on line and texture as line.  She did a demo of texturizing paper by gesso-ing not up-to par painting : gesso alone, gesso on stencil, gesso a with  roller, smoothing out with credit card, stamping on gesso, laying wax paper, plastic wrap etc for texture.  She explained that when the gesso is dry, she makes her drawing on the textured paper with any of the various tools - droppers with ink, sticks, clay tool, wide markers, tree sticks, bamboo pens and anything else that will make a line :) 

The limitations and constraints from roll of dice on day 3 gave me split complement colors Red/yellowgreen/bluegreen and color as the second design element with line as the  dominant feature. 

An accidental discovery on my part as to how color from my old painting that I was covering up with gesso showed up when I tried to use a stencil on too thin, too wet gesso led me to use a wooden coffee stick to gouge out the still wet gesso to sketch freehand my drawing -- I am very pleased how drawing like that satisfied the requirements of line, color and texture. I used a delicate/fine stamp on the bandana area. The painting I had chosen to gesso over by chance had the colors I had rolled and I loved how they showed through.  I did minimal painting with yellow green, blue green on the background and red on the bandana. I used Blue and red also for value and that intensified the color showing thru. Gesso also enabled me to wipe off paint when I did not like my choices.  It was uncanny how colors from the old waterscape painting underneath worked for  this particular portrait variation! 

closeup of line, color and texture 

The whole process was so much fun that I had to force myself to stop :)  I continued the fun by texturing two or three more papers and can't wait to paint on them. I also loved how Myrna used red gesso in one of her demos to sketch her drawing. Sketching the variations and plotting the values numerous times definitely made me familiar with the subject and gave me easy spontaneity when it came to painting.  

Creative Variations

Day 1: plotting shapes and values

Cyber follower to real time with artist Myrna Wacknov - I am back from a wonderful week of Myrna Wacknov's workshop "Variations" :)  It was really special to finally meet her after following her blog, admiring her creativity for a few years now! I was immersed in five days of fast paced exploration of creative interpretations of the portrait. Everyone worked with the same instructor provided black and white image and it was amazing to see the 'variations' at the end of each day as each participant chose different design elements to emphasize and brought her own talents, interpretations and style to Myra's instructions, prompts and guidance.

Day-1 was spent designing the shapes of the image with a modified contour drawings, creating a uniform grid for original image and then creating distored grids to reshape the image.We simplified  lines and connected shapes. We then experimented with various value patterns.   At the end of the day we each had atleast one sketch to work on day2 with shape+one other element (roll of dice) and another to work with value+a different design element. She also had 24 combinations of color chords on index cards and luck of the draw determined what colors we would be using. The color chords had Analogous, compliments, triads, spilt compliments to choose from. The seven elements (line, size, shape, direction, color, value and texture), decisons about dominance, relationships (unity, harmony, dominance, contrast, repition, variation, gradation, and balance) was to create a mood for the paintings.

Day 2 AM: Shape+texture

Day 2 AM : Shape:  The roll of dice resulted in texture being the second element for my exercise. The colors in my card were split compliments yellowgreen, red and violet. The textures were a lot of fun to paint - I  sprayed  alcohol, used oil pastels, stencils with paint and some gesso, some colored pencils to create the various textures.

Day2 PM: Value+lines

Day 2 PM : Value:  This time roll of dice for secondary element gave me lines along with complimentary colors yellow and violet. I sketched with masking fluid and incorporated the saved white lines into the design element. I used various yellows and violets to bring out the values in the painting. I had a piece of netting from a potato sack that I dabbed paint over to bring lines in the background. Splattering white liquid acrylic paint with tooth brush gave a cool look for the sunglasses.

Myrna is a treasure trove of ideas. She freely shared her collection of samples,  her paintings, clippings and tips with us throughout the week.  I loved her critiques of all the paintings.  The other participants were all accomplished painters from Potomac Watercolor society and it was a treat to watch them in action.  Myrna Wacknov has posted her demos in her blog . Watch for more postings in my blog and hers.

Reflection of Life

The world is a looking glass...... digital photography by Meera Rao

Art is a Verb

Memories of a bloom 3 watercolor on Yupo 7x5"by Meera Rao 

Memories of a bloom 2 watercolor on Yupo 5x7" by Meera Rao

Memories of a Bloom  watercolor on Yupo  7x5" by Meera Rao

Three paintings so far with the theme: 'Memories of a Bloom.'  I posted all three here just to see how they look as a group. It felt strange to paint #3 just as fresh spring blooms were popping up in the yard! Memories of a Bloom  and Memories of a Bloom2 were painted earlier. Yupo as I have mentioned so many times before, is a great medium to play with to see how to work out compositions, color and values without much hesitation - it is so easy to wipe off part or all of the painting and start over when things don't quite work out!  And as I rework my paintings I see that there is much truth in the quote from one of my favorite books - Art and Fear - Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland : “To the critic, art is a noun. To the artist, art is a verb.”  

As promised in an earlier post, it is time to tag blogs for the Liebester Award which Aparna from Warli Soul generously passed on to me. Liebster is German for dearest, beloved or favorite. This award is bestowed on blogs with less than 200 followers but deserve more attention :) Please check out these wonderful artists! : 

Rajeev Mohan's Spalsh of Color  

Lisa Graham's Lisa Graham Art

Kathy Staicer at Katsart

Nanas - Excellent Fruit

Pineapple watercolor on yupo 6x8" by Meera Rao

I bought a pineapple last week and it sat on the counter for a few days ripening slowly.  I sketched it in graphite first and then in watercolors. It took a lot longer to do the detailed pencil sketching than the paintings as I didn't do any pencil drawing of the fruit for either of the watercolor pineapple paintings.  I used waterbrush pens for the smaller pineapple. I think sketching them in pencil and then with the waterbrush pen was definitely good practice- by the time I painted it on yupo I was familiar enough with the fruit. But I guess no sketching ahead may also explain why it is a little plumper in this version :)  I also experimented by misting the yupo painting with alcohol to get the texture. 

watercolor sketch with waterbrush pen 5x3" 

We call pineapple as ananas in my mother tongue Kannada.  I just found out that "In the scientific binomial Ananas comosus, ananas, the original name of the fruit, comes from the Tupi word nanas, meaning "excellent fruit",[8] as recorded by André Thevet in 1555, and comosus, "tufted", refers to the stem of the fruit."  Tupi is one of the languages from South America and the pineapple plant is indigenous to that area.  I am sure, even though I am not aware of it, there is an interesting story as to how the fruit with it's name came to be a familiar crop all the way in southern India :) 

graphite sketches 5x3"

Winter Abundance

Winter Abundance digital photography by Meera Rao 

I saw these berries weighing down the holly tree branch on my walk last week. For some reason the birds have not found that tree yet.  I understand cold winter frost makes the otherwise poisonous berries edible for the birds. 

Taking the photographs often is a lesson or practice sessions for me in how to compose, to get closer look at vast range in colors, light-shadow and variety of textures.  Sometimes I wonder though whether the camera makes me lazy about really paying attention to all that because  now I can just go back and refer the photos whenever I have a doubt, erasing a compelling reason to really observe for long or commit to memory much of the details......  

My curiosity lead me to research how and in what way photography changed paintings, in style and subject matter.  I came across some very interesting information in an article 'Painting and Photography'  written by Nancy Roth for Answers.com. : Photography arrived at a point in the history of European painting when Romanticism, as embodied in the turbulent fictions and exotic allegories of figures such as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), was widely admired and commercially successful; realism, the painting of immediate visual experience, was beginning to coalesce into an oppositional movement, championed by the brash young Gustave Courbet (1819-77). Neither of these painters saw photography as a threat to painting. They, and others later, quickly embraced it as a means of referencing such details as facial expression, ephemeral light effects, and motion. Delacroix even wrote in his journal that ‘if a man of genius should use the daguerreotype as it ought to be used, he will raise himself to heights unknown to us’. Some painters, notably Edgar Degas, Pierre Bonnard, Edvard Munch, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, themselves became accomplished photographers. It was rather the popular Salon painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856), celebrated for the technical precision of his work, who reportedly declared, on seeing his first daguerreotype, "From today painting is dead "   

I am so glad he was wrong :) 

The Power of Choice

Garuda Puppet  watermedia  22x30

So how long does it take me to complete a painting? - I started Garuda fifteen some years ago at the very first workshop I had signed up for.  We went to an antique shop and I sketched an Indonesian puppet in pen on a full sheet of Arches watercolor paper! Each participant then picked three colors from a basket to use as underpainting.  I ended up with Opera, Phthalo(more like acid)green and Aureolin yellow :)  Too meek to protest or cheat with tamer colors, I tried to do my best by really diluting the paints but still ended up with a very garish start. I remember very well trying to save the whites around the face of the puppet! But I never even attempted to complete the piece. Over the years, I could not discard it --the paper was too expensive, and I did not want to admit defeat! 

Yesterday I pulled out the piece. All my reference photos were lost somewhere in my studio. I decided to plunge by boldly covering the space and underpainting behind the puppet with opaque blue gouache. Things already looked better! Except for the face, the arm, and the hands, I glazed the background designs with a thin wash of ultramarine blue --that subdued the colors and pushed it back. I then defined some of the shapes with indigo violet, some with yellow ochre, remembering the  batik textile designs from the Indonesian island of Bali. Feeling a bit adventurous, I defined the eyebrow and the beak with a mix of opera and phthalo green. I finished by glazing the arm with yellow ochre and one last thin glaze of ultramarine blue on everything but the face and arms. I am pretty pleased with the rescue - mainly because I learnt so much in the process! Funny thing is that, all this took about 4 hours! And I really wish I had a 'before' photograph.

This painting session was the exact boost I needed desperately yesterday.  During the past month I had received one too many rejection notices for shows and someone from the artworld even questioned my commitment as an artist. As I thought through my experiences, I suddenly realized how far I had come in the fifteen years and how much I enjoy what I do. And talk about serendipity, I came across the wise words about 'social validation and false merit metric of prestige' at Brainpickings :What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world.[…]Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like. - (Paul Graham on How to do what You Love). Tucked in the same site, TED talk by Alain de Botton about 'ideological fallacies of success.' was also just what I needed :)

So, I would like to really thank all of you who visit my blog and validate what I do here! I also  especially want to thank Aparna from Warli Soul for the 'Liebester Award' she gave me. Liebster is German for dearest, beloved or favorite. This award is bestowed on blogs with less than 200 followers but deserve more attention (-Serendipity again!) In my next post, I shall pass this along :) Meanwhile, do check out her beautiful 'Warli' art. 

Drama of Color and Texture

Mushrooms 2 watercolor on Yupo 5x7"

I loved painting the drama of color and texture of these mushrooms.  I had painted these mushrooms before  - ( reproduced also below) but I wanted to experiment and play with them again from a slightly different angle.  I tried more stylized repetition of shapes  and more intense hues.  Colors on Yupo dry deeper than on regular watercolor papers when the brush is loaded with straight color but not much water. Pressing with crumpled up tissue, misting with water and letting each layer of paint dry thoroughly before coming back with another layer of transparent paints resulted in the different textures. 

Bursting Colors watercolor on Yupo 5x7"

Last fall finding these mushrooms on one of my walks I had held my small camera close to the ground and taken a few photographs.  It was really fun to dramatically transform the already colorful mushrooms even further :)  

Mushrooms digital photography 

Run Me Out In The Cold Rain And Snow

Out in the Cold Rain and Snow Digital Photography 

“It was a rainy night. It was the myth of a rainy night.” 

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

PS: I have tried to take away the two word thing on the comment form.  Please let me know if its working! If it is not working could you tell me what/how to do do it so it doesn't show up anymore?

Fascinatingly Beautiful

Orchid  watercolor 5x3" 

As I did a quick sketch of the orchid a few days ago using my water brush pen and sketch kit of limited paints, I vaguely remembered that the orchid varieties in number are almost double that of bird species. I went surfing to see if my recollection was right. 

My memory had served me well and  I also discovered that at 25,000+ species, there are four times more varieties of orchids as that of mammals!  More interesting was that 'the name comes from the Greek ὄρχις (órkhis), literally meaning "testicle", because of the shape of the root.'!  Greeks also thought if would-be fathers ate large new orchid tubers their child would be male and if mothers ate small tubers, the child would be female :)  The flavoring vanilla comes from one genus of Orchid -vanilla(of course). The Aztecs believed vanilla mixed with chocolate gave them great strength. In China however, orchids are a key ingredient in medicines for treating coughs and lung-related illnesses. It is also quite fascinating to read about pollination, propagation and seed production in orchids. Growing up in tropical India, I knew them as beautiful and colorful epiphytes and was fascinated how they grew on trees!  

I have a l wide collection of photos as well as few sketches of orchids and I hope to paint some larger varied flowers soon!

Remembrance, The Lasting Perfume

Memories of a bloom 2 watercolor on Yupo 5x7"

Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume.  ~Jean de Boufflers

I saw these stalks with dried out flower pods, petals, leaves still attached while on a walk couple of years ago in Colorado.  This painting is the second in the series capturing the memories of that cold crisp morning. I used the same techniques in this painting as in the earlier one.  My plan is to  change or add  one color to each of the painting to give each painting its uniqueness as well as making it a part of the series. They are small paintings but take time to complete since each layer has to dry completely before I lay the next one. You may check out the first painting here. 

Talking about memories I recently came across an article highlighting the fact that memories are not fixed but flexible and can be manipulated very easily: "....memories are surprisingly vulnerable and highly dynamic. In the lab they can be flicked on or dimmed with a simple dose of drugs. “For a hundred years, people thought memory was wired into the brain,” Nader says. “Instead, we find it can be rewired—you can add false information to it, make it stronger, make it weaker, and possibly even make it disappear.” Nader and Brunet are not the only ones to make this observation. One of the scietinsts, Nader further wonders:  "What actually happens when we recall the past? Does the very act of remembering undo what happened? Does a memory have to go through the consolidation process again? " 

A little further the article points out a fascinating point: "While neuroscientists were skeptical of Nader’s findings, cognitive scientists were immediately fascinated that memory might be constantly revamped. It certainly seemed to explain their observations: The home run you hit in Little League? Your first kiss? As you replay these memories, you reawaken and reconsolidate them hundreds of times. Each time, you replace the original with a slightly modified version. Eventually you are not really remembering what happened; you are remembering your story about it. “Reconsolidation suggests that when you use a memory, the one you had originally is no longer valid or maybe no longer accessible,” LeDoux says. “If you take it to the extreme, your memory is only as good as your last memory. The fewer times you use it, the more pristine it is. The more you use it, the more you change it.” We’ve all had the experience of repeating a dramatic story so many times that the events seem dead, as if they came from a novel rather than real life."

So I wonder, how much do I change my memory when I sketch and paint things I encounter?   

Dewy Feathers

Dewy Feathers Digital Photography 

Last week one morning when I went to get the paper, I found these beautiful dewy feathers strewn around  our driveway and lawn. It looked like there was some kind of struggle wherein a few feathers were lost ! I didn't see any other signs or bird parts and am hoping the creature escaped worse fate from whatever that was after it! When something like this happens, I always wonder whether I notice things around me since I took up photography or did I start toting a camera because I see things around me that I want to capture :) 

These beautiful feathers reminded me about something I read a while ago:  'feather money - tevau' from Solomon Islands. We are familiar how Native Americans, Indonesian Islanders, and many many others hold feathers in high regard and use them in rituals. But in Santa Cruz, Solomon Islands,  feather is currency!  As many as 50,000 feathers from smallest scarlet honeyeaterer birds are fashioned into coils and used 'as a form of currency for settling important obligations' .  Check the link to see a photo of the coil in the British Museum website.   In ancient Mayan culture, the quetzal bird's tail feathers were used as currency and hence the Guatemalan currency is known as 'quetzal' ! Its amazing how many little beautiful birds have been sacrificed not for food but for their treasured feathers by various 'collectors' all over the world.  

A Grand Little Bundle of Joy

Kallie watercolor study 4x6"

On Jan 26th we became grandparents for the first time - we now have precious little Kallie. The very next day I did the small study above --didn't think I could do a watercolor portrait but this little piece seemed to painted itself :) I forgot to take the final photograph -after I cleaned up some lines (by the nose bridge) etc before I framed it and gave it to the new parents ! Its been wonderful to hold, cuddle and love the little bundle of joy.

Cooking Up a Painting

  Fruity Goodness watercolor 5x3"

Last week we bought some apricots and a week later they were still hard, not ripening and sour :( So two days ago I chopped them up, added pulp from one mango tucked away in the freezer last summer, mixed in  pomegranate juice, a bit of sugar, ginger and red pepper flecks.  A few minutes in the microwave gave me a bottle full of delicious chutney to be savored for a few days !!!  

As the jar sat on the kitchen counter basking in the sunlight, I quickly painted this small watercolor.  I used my water brush and the small field paint kit with mostly transparent colors. The glass jar was a bit daunting to capture but I am pleased with both my cooking and painting --a day well spent :) 

On the Train

Now Serving.. (Brindavan Express -somewhere between Bangaluru and Chennai) digital photography


“How do they taste? They taste like more.”
- H.L. Mencken

Wabi-Sabi

Lily Pond  color pencils 8x10

Today I came across a Japanese term wabi-sabi. And it couldn't have happened at a better time. 'Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble.'    Wikpedia explained  'Wabi sabi can change our perception of the world to the extent that a chip or crack in a vase makes it more interesting and gives the object greater meditative value.'  It further explained that  'In art books, it is typically defined as ″flawed beauty.' I am going to fully embrace that word! 

The 'Lily Pond" was framed and hanging for a number of years. A few days ago, I  took it off the frame and reworked it some, deepening the colors, mainly the darks and the shadow areas. I see  compositional  and technical flaws.  But I am going to embrace the philosophy of 'wabi sabi' as well as the  "How innocent"  outlook of my wise old Sumi teacher from a one day workshop long ago as she urged me to accept my art work with open arms and move on. :) 

Spicing Up the Sketch Book

A Day in the Life - Sketchbook project page 25 color pencils 

The spice box has a place of honor in an Indian Kitchen and I treasure mine :) I knew from the beginning that I wanted to include it in my sketchbook project. 

I approached the subject with lots of anxiety but  really loved sketching my special shiny Indian Spice Box, its contents as well as the red peppers, tomatoes, lemons, chilies etc.  The different textures, colors, sizes and shapes were fun and a huge challenge to sketch.  The decision to just sketch the objects and not worry about background was freeing.  I learned that paying attention to  the mass of each variety of spice and hinting about the space between most individual mustard/cumin/coriander/dal gave the finished image more unified look. Spraying the finished sketch with Krylon Kamar varnish was a good idea too. Even though better  quality paper might have made a difference,  I am glad I put forth a lot of effort and time into this particular sketch :) 

Fleeting Patterns

 Fleeting Patterns  digital photography

I wonder if the little duckling was aware of distorted reflections, colors, and patterns around it as it swam about that particular morning  few months ago in San Antonio, Texas! Do ducks see color? depth? patterns? They must - because drakes - Mallards, Mandarin and Wood ducks are colorful and patterned. And I see duck hunters wearing camouflage and hide in covered boats.  Anyway, I am really grateful I was in the right place at the right time to capture a fleeting moment in time.