Cart before the horse?

A still life in water color that I did long time ago.

Tanjor glass painting

I have always loved Tanjor painting, where the central character, or the focal point, is always cute and chubby. Glass painting needless to say is a very satisfying art form. The process involved is simple yet requires a lot of patience and memory. I first washed the glass with soap and water, and dried it smudge free. I drew the Ganesha from reference on tracing paper. At this point I feel like mentioning that many of the Tanjor paintings are made from tracing a few well known drawings. Some of them are not done by artists who have given a thought to anatomy. It sometimes helps not to trace the original, but redraw it and bring in corrections. I then stuck the drawing with the drawn side facing me, with the help of simple tape. Then I started painting from the other side on the glass, so that the image I was painting was a laterally opposite paining, like a glass image. To paint in glass means to start with the details first, and then fill in the not so detailed works. I usually paint from up to down so that I don’t end up with paint or smudge marks, and keep a spare paper under my hand to avoid the same. After the outline and the ornamental details, I used a bit of liquid led in places I wanted to fill in stained glass paint to give it a jeweled effect. That was a bit tough, till my hand got used to it. It helps to start off with insignificant bits, and come to the face once you get the hand of it. The rest is just step by step painting. You fill in the stained glass paint, allow it to dry, paint the gold ornaments, then the garland and flowers and small details, then get to painting the flesh and its tones. The only tyring part was waiting. Since I juggle time between kid, home , blog and this, I wished the painting would dry up to my schedule rather than take its time. Oil paint takes sometimes a week to dry.

Durga

I saw a carved face of Durga in a relatives house and fell in love with the intricate workman ship. Shola pith work is so beautiful. I had it in my memory for a long time. Then when I was discussing paper embossing with a friend, we had this idea of making a similar piece with paper instead of the soft white wood. After much thought, and lot of procrastination, I finally got around to doing it. For the face I used paper clay, and shaped the face. The rest is ivory paper and paper embossing. Perhaps the picture does not show the intricacies of the embossing, but then how can one compare a carved beauty to an amateur attempt in paper embossing. But I had to try and find out how far I could go

Meditations

A Banjara woman

A portrait in Indian Ink on paper.

Knoting it out

The art form is called Macrame. Once it was said that sailors worked on this craft, to while away their time at sea, and then sold it when they landed. It is viewed as a more masculine form of hand weaving, like say knitting. To create this piece one works mainly with knots. I love to work with my hands and with different materials. This is done with common hemp, and decorated with wooden beeds. I had a whole lot of help from Handcrafted by Elaine. She has instructions and designs for any one who is interested.

Not enough Patachitra

This I painted at break neck speed, one Sunday, as one obsessed-for 6hours continuously, with just a break for some juice.