Florida Sunshine

Medium: Mixed Media on Wooden Ply
Size: 24" X 12"

Just completed this one last night. Here you can see all the three sets of complementary color (green to red, orange to blue, yellow to violet). This was an experiment where the background was done in Collage with handmade and handpainted papers like the golden apples in Golden Triplets. And did the Sunflower with accent liner and glass paint. And at the end accent liner turned out to be a good way to sign the painting as well. Initially I had no idea as to how will I do the background while I was doing the rooster (which I should be completing this week) in Collage. And suddenly a thought came to mind that I could do the collage in background and I had visualized how the painting will look finally. You know sometimes we what we visualize and what finally we end up doing are not same. But here I pleasantly surprised myself by achieving what I aimed to accomplish. So the next one in the making is a rooster. You want to have a sneak peek into it. Here you go :



I should complete the neck and the grass below. Waiting to receive the handmade papers from Judy who makes beautiful chunky handmade papers. And the best thing about her is that she makes the colors and values the way I want them.
So see you all in the next post with my completed Rooster painting and you all could probably help me in naming the painting. Something out of the box....I am just not able to do it.

Preening Egret

Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size : 16" X 12"
I love birds and this is one of my favorite bird portrait. Initially I was wondering if the red and black background will work but after completing I was completely satisfied. As I decided to do this painting in one go I had to do the background in acrylic as it dries faster. To make the composition more interesting i used a little of pink and purple above and behind the beak for shadow.

Golden Triplets

Medium: Collage on Wooden Board
Size : 12" X 12"

I did this collage at a workshop in Amelia Island with Elizabeth St. Hilare Nelson.The three days at the workshop were real fun. The main reason why i like this style of art is because of impressionistic look it has.
In Elizabeth's class the first exercise everyone does is to make an apple. And i am glad that i did one with three of those :). It gave me an opportunity to learn and master the technique.
Here we first color different types of papers...like handmade, maps, book papers, music sheets, newspapers etc..basically any kind of paper which we think we want to use. Then we make a pencil sketch on a wooden board and lay the basic color values and then glue the torn pieces of paper on it keeping the values in mind. And keeping the values right is the real challenge.
Thanks a lot to Elizabeth...my art instructor and a great friend. She made sure that all of us get our basics right. I fell in love with her work when i saw it for the very first time.

The Sunset

Medium: Oil Pastels on Sandboard
Size: 18" X 16"

The inspiration behind this painting was Banaras. But I let the painting remain very abstract and that was achieved by using "less is more" approach. This was a sort of study where I tried to work with minimum strokes and played with colors. The use of red and orange for the boatman in foreground was deliberate for the obvious reason that warm colors appear nearer and therefore achieved depth. I took complete advantage of the excellent texture which the sandpaper provides.

It's Spring time

Medium: Glass Painting

This painting is all about the play of complimentary colors...violet to yellow and blue to orange. Painted the Tiger lilies varying the values of orange and yellow to add more depth, realism and interest in the composition. And I love the way butterfly stands out. I purposely made the flowers on the bottom left violet and blue in color to create harmony.

Calcutta Street Scene

Medium: Mixed Media on Canvas
Size: 10" X 8"

This is a miniature piece of art. Here I have used warm colors like browns and blacks and yellows...And this one was liked so much that I ended up making 2 extra copies. I generally do not repeat my work but this one turned out to be an exception.

Interesting thing here is...that the inspiration behind this painting was a photograph in the newspaper. Also I looked at some street photo from calcutta and I really liked it. The photograph was black and white and months later I made this painting. And I just love it.

It does not happen always that you try create something new and you finally like it and fall in love with it. But this is one main reason why I love painting !

Bull Finch

Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Size : 16" X 12"

Bull Finch...looks so much like a sparrow yet so different... more colorful.....mostly green with little red...is what catches the eye. Happy with final outcome but the feathers...could have been done more loosely....Just wanted to complete it in one go......

Here and there I feel like making changes but something from within told me stop...else it will look overdone.....