Happy New Year - 2012

/hihi
 
        May the stars carry shine upon you,
        May the flowers fill your heart with beauty
        May hope forever wipe away your tears,
        and above all ...
        May this new year be wonderful ... Happy New Year ...
                                        (Courtesy : SMS from my friend)

Here is my first painting of  the year 2012 !! Yes, I did this today and took just 5 hours to finish this work using acrylic color. Of course, its visible from this work :)

 I was in such a good mood this morning that I wanted to paint. Since I had not planned this, used only the few colors I had. I applied texture white on an old painting of 1ft * 2 ft (although its an odd size for this work), as I had no other canvas at home. Now its time for your comments :) ...

Have a gr8 day and a wonderful New Year 2012. /bye

Handicraft using Mangalore Cucumber seeds

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  Hello everybody, hope you are enjoying the winter season. In this post, I am going to upload couple of  handicrafts made from Mangalore cucumber seeds, around 4 years back.

 

  I don't know why its called as Managalore Cucumber, although its grown throughout the Malnad region... we too grow this in my native place. Since this is regularly used at home to prepare Dosa and Sambar, collecting the seeds is not a difficult task.

  After seeing this in one of my relatives house, my mother was impressed with that and resulted in relentless pressure on me to do the one for our showcase as well. So I visited their house (although I don't like visiting relatives !!),observed the intricacies and got some tips from my relative. Bamboo stem is used here as the base and the seeds are glued over it. Regular sewing thread and needle are used to string the seeds to prepare flowers. This is the difficult part as the seeds are very small.

This work gave me enough confidence and I've decided to do one more ...bit more complicated one. And here it is ...

  

  This is called as Aarati Kattu in Havyaka language and is used as decorative item on Aarti Plate on special occasions like threading ceremony (upanayanam) and marriage. Feel free to share your valuable suggestions.

 
Have a gr8 day. /bye

Peace comes from within, do not seek it without - Goutama Buddha

/hihi

Belated Diwali wishes, hope you had a blast this Diwali with less crackers :) Here I am sharing my latest acrylic work - Buddha, one of the greatest spiritual teachers from Indian sub continent. I have been thinking for a long time to paint Buddha, but was not getting proper idea.

Even after exhaustive search on the net, I was not convinced, rather confused. One fine morning, I started the basic sketching with a plan to convey - how Prince Siddharta came into contact with many old people, sick people and a dead body, how he attained enlightenment while meditating under the Bodhi Tree and his teachings to solve all our inner problems and attain a truly peaceful mind.

  

I felt it was tough to convey all these things in a single painting. To make things simpler, I have decided to have some texture with red color to indicate the sufferings he had witnessed, bodhi leaves as a symbolic representation of Bodhi tree, pigeon as a symbol of peace and a circle to symbolically represent enlightenment. Once I have the sketching ready, I tried various color options for the background using Photoshop.

I was so impressed with texture white which I used in my earlier mural, thought of using the same for the basic texture here as well. Spent quite a lot of time searching the techniques to use acrylic color on texture white. At last I was very clear about the concept, colors to use, etc. Took a 2 ft X 2 ft canvas, applied the texture white and used thin plastic paper to get the basic texture. Once its partially dried, I traced the sketching over the texture which I had on a butter paper. I did not sketch directly, as erasing is not possible on texture white.

Next step was to re-apply the texture white to give the embossed look. I have used one of  the clay modeling tools to give texture to hair and Peepal leaf for leaves. Then I started the 'real painting' with acrylic color, with initial hiccups as I was kind of new to that, I could complete it as I had planned. But don't ask the time I took to complete this work !!! Acrylic color provides you an advantage to work for longer sessions when you are in a good mood, as it dries quickly. 

I have captured the progress of this work and is available here - https://picasaweb.google.com/aasha.bhat/Buddha

And here is the completed work ...

My next plan - The Taj Mahal, an abstract work. Since I had visited Taj last week, I have fresh memories of that wonderful white marble mausoleum. However there is no ETA for this work... :)

Have a gr8 day. /bye

Experiment with watercolor painting ...

/hihi How are you ? Hope things are fine with you. I will come straight to the point, because I am not good at building sentences, developing paragraphs, and composing essays :P I would like to share couple of watercolor paintings in this post.

As watercolor is a transparent medium, you must decide from the very beginning where the areas of white will be in your painting. The best practice for successful watercolor painting is to avoid the areas to be left white and apply the lightest washes first, gradually working towards darker washes. Also you have to be really quick as mixing becomes difficult once the color starts to dry. Of course hand made paper makes life more difficult. I found watercolor tougher than oil paint, might be because I don't get second chance to correct my mistakes :)

I would like to share a Rajasthani Miniature Painting as well, which I bought in a recent exhibition at Chitra Kala Parishat. Vegetable colors and gold powder are used here as medium and its just 3 cm * 3 cm in size and painted on an ordinary paper. Zoom in to see more details..

In such a small area, you can see each and every part of the elephant in detail .. wrinkles around the eye, ornaments, cloth, etc. Also I came to know that the artist doesn't have any formal art training behind him, hats off to his work !! I purchased a brush from him, claimed he used similar brush for this work. Although I knew he had used some other (good) brush for the work, but I was so impressed that I purchased without bargaining. I am very happy and proud to own this work and the brush. The only thing is - I have to make use of it :)

Right now, I am working on an acrylic painting - Buddha. The groundwork which I did for this work is far more compared to my previous works. May be because of that I have developed a sentimental attachment on this work, hope it will come out nice. Fingers crossed :)

Have a gr8 day. /bye

My First Mural ...

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Wish you a very happy Ganesha Chaturthi to you all ... I will be in my native place during the festival, so wishing you well in advance. We celebrate Ganesha Chaturthi in a grand manner compared to other festivals in Sirsi, probably due to the extended influence of Chatrapati Shivaji. As you must be aware of, historical records reveal that Ganesha Chaturthi celebrations were initiated in Maharashtra by Shivaji, to promote culture and nationalism.

In one of my earlier posts, I had uploaded a work-in-progress Ganesha mural. I somehow managed to complete that today and posting it here.

When I started this, I did not give much importance to the traditional aspect of Ganesha. I made Ganesha with Right Sided trunk, after speaking to the family members and reading some articles I came to know that usually we don't keep the idol with right sided trunk at home. Since I used m-seal and it was already dried up, so I could not just change the trunk alone, I had to remove the work completely and start everything from the scratch :( . But the good thing is - it came up better than the earlier one.

I took a 12 X 18 inches mdf board as the base and Shilpkar, white m-seal which is used for craft work (used 1.5 kg of m-seal). As m-seal becomes harder within 10-15 minutes once you mix it, you have to  mix only the required quantity and to be really quick to get the appropriate shape. Moulds for some of the basic shapes like leaf, flower, lamp, bell etc. are available in the market, I thought it's not worth spending  money for those items. As this work is completely hand made, the shapes are not symmetrical :) I have used knife, broken spoon, pen refill and some of the clay modeling tools to get the required design. By the way I have used mustard seeds for the texture surrounding Ganesha.

Some more photographs are uploaded here - https://picasaweb.google.com/aasha.bhat/MyFirstMural

I made a mistake in positioning the eyes, doesn't look like an elephant but  looks like human eyes :) I was kind of desperate to finish this today, and realized the mistake only after I am almost done. Now I don't have time to correct it, will do that sometime next week and upload here again. Finally I need to apply varnish and put a frame once I am back in Bangalore.

PS : I know some of you had issues in viewing the animation video uploaded in my post titled 'Its time to share an animation work'. It works well with IE7.0 and Firefox 3.6.20, please upgrade your browser and try once again.

Best wishes for a peaceful and happy festive season! /bye

Happy Krishna Janmashtami !!!

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Happy Krishna Janmashtami. May Lord Krishna give all the happiness in your life. No better day than today to upload one of my old paintings - Radha Krishna.

I have done this using poster color around four years back. My intention was to try out poster color as well, so that I can claim, I have hands-on experience :) 

Poster color is a good option for school art projects because it is affordable, and is simple to clean up since it is water based. Also poster color dries within an hour, so you have to apply it quickly. 

Poster color is typically used to make big banners or sign boards. You have to use a palette for mixing the required color as it’s not easy to mix the color on heavy duty paper (which I've used for this work). 

As I already tried oil and water color before this, I did not like this medium ... may be because of its dullness. I could not move the brush freely and I was not able to get nice strokes. Of course, lack of efforts from my side as well !!!

Have a nice day! /bye

Its time to share an animation work :)

/hihi Hope you're enjoying the rain in Bangalore, excluding the troubles like traffic jam, blocked drainage, roads beaming like swimming pool... ohh .. let me stop here.

Somehow I feel, B'lore rain makes me desperate to reach home, where as in my native place it attracts me to come out of the house and enjoy. I am really missing the monsoon of Western Ghats, eating home-made snacks with the family members sitting around the Fireplace (setup specially for the rainy season in the  Malnad region), parents shouting at me to stop taking my bicycle out in the rain .. which I love the most, etc.

Let me stop the flashback as I don't want to be upset and spoil my whole day. Having mentioned as an aspiring character animator in my profile, so far I did not upload not even a single work.  Its time to introduce one of my animation assignments to you all, which I completed recently. I spent around 10 days for this work, implementing the corrections one after the another as suggested by my mentor, finally it has reached this stage. There were jerks in my previous work, so I put lot of effort to make it smooth, which resulted in toooooo much elasticity. I still feel bad whenever I open that earlier version. 

Coming soon .... ;)

I am working on a mural - Lord Ganesha and here is the first look.  I took a liltle bigger board,  have lot of things to do. Once I am done with basic shape, need to apply the color and varnish. I hope to complete this before Ganesha Chaturthi so that I can post that in a blog.

Before concluding, I must thank Mr. Prakash Hegde, who posted my blog in the Facebook without my knowledge :) That helped me to get encouraging comments and got to know talented individuals. There was a bit of hesitation in me to share this with 'Facebook Friends' as I don't post regularly and of course, I don't have too many work to upload here frequently  :p

Keep smiling, have a nice day! /bye