The Red Windows - Virtual Paintout - Dec2010

This is the first sketch that I made in my new Moleskine watercolour book that I picked up from London... For those who don't know, Moleskine has started selling though WilliamPenn stores across India...

The location for Virtual Paintout for month of December was County Clare Ireland...

The size is 8cms*12cms, watercolour and pen, on 200gsm paper...

sketches from Ludhiana Dec2010

While some friends shopped Jutties and Phulkari shawls, I made this sketch at Ghantaghar area in Ludhiana... This is possibly the busiest area in Ludhiana, very close to the railway station, full with hustle-bustle and noise levels are beyond explanation through words...

virtual paintout 1/2010 Apr

I am not sure how I missed to upload the sketch I made for Virtual Paintout 's April edition...

This is pen on paper, 26cms*20cms...

This is the link to the location of the sketch - http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=28.373497,-16.761855&panoid=1n02rneEn8Bo2dPTZgQRRg&cbp=13,88.95,,0,1.47&ll=28.373579,-16.762047&spn=0,0.528374&z=12

sketches in London - 4

After I made the first sketch at the Heathrow airport, they announced that our flight would be delayed by an hour... So I made another sketch... However, I had no idea that the wait is going to be much longer... an entire day!.. and spending time in that enclosed space(airport and hotel room) really was getting crazy... and couldn't put pen to paper after this sketch...


When this post gets published, I would be on my way to Delhi for an official trip... and I hope the flight leaves on time... Work will also take me to Ludhiana... I hope to do some sketches during this trip than what I did last time... Also plan to get some nice photographs for inspiration for paintings...

sketches from London - 3

I got some time to sketch at the Heathrow airport while waiting for the flight... I liked the way she had tucked the bag behind her legs!..

sketches from London - 2

Continuing from the last post about my visit to the National Gallery during recent London tr... after the guided tour, there was about an hour before the gallery closed... so I went on to check paintings from the impressionist... There I found a lot of artists sketching from the originals... I found the originals a little intimidating so sketched one of the sketcher :)

sketches from London - 1

I went to London in end Oct... I visited the National Gallery on friday evening with an intent of attending one of the guided tour... I reached earlier and got some time to do a quick sketch of Trafalagar Sqaure... The guided tour was nice.. The guide covered about 8 paintings and its a good insight apart from the obvious visual treat... I went back again next day for a detailed visit of the gallery... more sketches later...

sketch from pondicherry

I went to Pondicherry in July with some friends... I like Pondicherry a lot... the cafes, beachfront, weather and general attitude here is such that one tends to forget the usual stress in life and relax a bit... We stayed at Mango Hill and the experience was nice... this was the view from our room down the pool... interestingly the balcony of the room was such that it extended over the pool... and having been made of wooden planks placed apart, you could see the blue water underneath...

Bangalore edition of 27th Worldwide Sketchcrawl

Mr.Beans coffee house on 100ft Road, Kormangla was the venue for this sketchcrawl... There were four participants myself, Prabha, Murali and his wife... Here are my sketches...

view of the coffee house from outside...
mr.bean invites for a cup of coffee and more...
one of the couches... I generally do more of line drawings and avoid getting into details of shading/depth... but this one was after a little inspired by Murali's sketches...
We also chalked out a rough plan for the next sketchcrawl... It will be at Banerghatta National Park... More details once things get finalised...

3 of 100 "starts"

This is the 3rd of "100 starts"... the reference is from one of the WDEs... I quite like the way this one turned out... The colour notes were not perfect but I did stay away from overdoing the study OR so I think...

2 of 100 "starts"

As the title suggests, this is 2nd of the 100 starts that I have committed to make... The reference image was from WDE hosted by Wendy... I quite like the fact that I was able to manage these shades of green even though only the darkest one had the right colour note... I have noticed that I tend to spend a lot of time getting the colour and still do not get the right colour since I am using a limited palette... Prussian Blue, Cadmium Red and Pale Yellow Cadmium... Seems its a good idea to widen the palette a bit in the beginning... Since these excercises are atleast helping me get on with painting something and I do not wish to loose the momentum...

I have also made a good mini-studio sorts that I will share in one of the upcoming posts...

1 of 100 "starts"

I am reading a book "Fill Your Oil Painting with Light and Colour" by Kevin MacPherson. Its the first time I am reading a book on painting and applying the lessons to use. One of the things suggested in the book is that you do 100 starts - which means you block the major colours of the subject without getting into any detail. Basic idea here is too build ones judgement of colour of objects and the relation they share with things around. As well as building the speed factor. So here is my first of this series...
I left my camera at my mama's place during a recent visit... so image was taken with mobile camera and quality is not great...
It is a very good book and available for less than inr1000 on flipkart.com!

sketches in Mar10 [2]

Cricket is the most popular sports in India. There is a new shorter duration format of this game - T20. After this format became popular, the BCCI launched the India Premier League or IPL as it is better know. 2010 is the 3rd season. The entire team of Rajasthan Royals were on the Indigo flight that I took on my way back from Ahmedabad. One can only imagine the excitement that the 80 odd passengers had travelling in that small space with their heros... I am not a very big follower of cricket. And so it didn't strike me that I take an autograph even though I passed a couple of pages from back seats to Yusuf Pathan and Shane Warne for autographs... I however made this sketch :)

sketches in Mar10 [1]

I did some sketches during a recent official tour... These were done on handmade paper with felt-tip pen and so the lines are very hazy... Next time on, I plan to use a ball point pen instead...

First up is a sketch done while we were being taken to the place where the aircraft was parked...
Second is a view from my seat... This was a ATR aircraft... which I find a bit scary as they fly on a lower height and wobble badly in case of turbulence... But otherwise the take-offs and landings are smooth...

sketches from Feb10

We attended a leadership learning program at Pegasus. Here the learnings were built up through the activities/team tasks. Had a very good time there. The institute is located in a remote village and surrounded by nice hills/farms. The classrooms didn't have any walls and there were times when my thoughts would wander out to find interesting subjects from an artists perspective. The sketch below is one of those... I could not capture the up and down movement of the landscape here...
Next sketch was done while waiting for a friend who was trying out a lot of garments during a recent sale...

sketches at the Fireflies concert

I went to the Fireflies concert with some friends... Its a very cool concept and you can read more about it here... We reached there a little late and had to queue for about 30mins before getting in... Sadly, we didnt find a good spot to sit and so it was a little difficult to enjoy the music...

There was a dance show where the participants had there bodies painted like tigers and the did some awesome things like breaking a coconut with bare hear etc, in addition to some super dance steps... the steps with so fast that I could hardly make a direct sketch; instead did some patterns... one of the viewers was shocked with disbelief and kept his pose for a while so I was able to sketch him as well...

We stayed on for two more performances before heading back... Next year will plan such that we reach early and get proper place to sit and enjoy!

waiting in the queue... what I was seeing then is actually opposite of the sketch... it was a pitch dark background and only the wires and pole was lite-up...
sketch during the tiger-dance...


awestruck audience...

pondicherry trip - I

I went to a trip to Pondicherry with some friends in Feb10... It was a absolutely relaxing trip... Its very difficult to explain in words the calm and timelessness of this place... It doesnt seem anyone is in any hurry/or has any agenda... things seems to be falling in place on their own... I am sure this is what a tourist feels in any city... but Pondicherry was awesome...
The cafe, sea-food, breeze was too tough to let go... Whenever, I plan for a next visit, it will definitely be 4-5 days as 2.1/2 days we spent this time was too less...
I did 2 sketches in the trip... One was a rough sketch of some hills on the way from Bangalore...
second was in Auroville... Its a view of the Matrimandir... Its a very intriguing structure... I will put some colour to it soon...

Bangalore edition of 25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl

"Au Bon Pain" a cafe on MG Road was the start point for the Bangalore Edition of the 25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl... We were six participants - myself, Prabha, Arun, Nishita, Murali and Jyotirmoy...
It was a hot day so we stayed at the cafe most of the time before moving to a buliding behind Mayo Hall where we did one or two sketches more... It was time for some lunch after which we went to UB City which is hosting a exhibit of Contemporary Art in India...








Some rough sketches...

raring to go...

I do not remember exactly but the reference photo was from one of the wde on wetcanvas-dot-com... I ventured out to paint it finally today morning... Got some inspiration to paint with these words of Van Gogh -
If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint", then by all means paint, and that voice would be silenced.
This is acrylic on canvasboard, size of canvasboard is 20cms x 15cms... but I wanted a square composition and so painted part of the canvas and final painting is just 15cms x 15cms...
This will be the first time that I will put my painting on sale :)
It will be available at ChitraSanthe on 31st Jan
This is how the entire canvasboard looks...









And this is the portion painted...

sold

sketches

This is a rough sketch of a chair at my place... I quite like it and will try to make this into a painting soon...

buses and bus stand...

"buses and bus stands" was the theme for this weeks urbansketching... the first one is at the murugeshpalaya bus stop on old airport road... the women in the foreground were an interesting subject in terms of the colours, drape of their sari... good that their bus came late and I got to sketch them down... auto rickshaws are an integral part of the bus stands here... waiting to snatch as prospective commuters from the bmtc(Bangalore Metro Transport Corporation)!
I like the second better... this is of the front portion of a vayu vajra which is the a/c volvo bus service between bangalore city and the BIAL(Banguluru International Airport Limited) airport... they are a very convinient means of transport as the BIAL is very far from the city...
these volvo buses also run within the city are by far the best public transport I have found in India...

colours to sketchcrawl sketches

As I mentioned earlier, I tried to put some colours to the sketch I made for the 25th sketchcrawl... The result on this one was not that good as the paper in my moleskine is too absorbent and it took a while to control the colour...
Next time onwards, I will be a little more efficient with colouring(I hope)...