Tomato Farm

The Muse of the Silhouette

Shadows of the trees on our walls caught my fancy as I got back from my morning walk and strong, stark and scorching sunlight became the muse of my day.

At first it seemed intimidating - I almost sketched a different scenery! With baby-steps, I began, though - and after a long-drawn process of making the curls and frills of the lush, I began to dip my brush in paint. But you know what - I thoroughly enjoyed playing with the deepest tones of browns, blues, reds and greens for the shadows. I was sceptical about making the shadows of the delicate lush too mired and settled for an innuendo at denser foliage as its neighbour instead. This was so much fun, I wished I had sat down in the lawns and painted on site!

It had to be a deep, vibrant colour in the petals against its silhouette of a cousin. But the cousin had to be daintier, more artistic. The angular sunrays puppeted the play of light and shadow. Who do you think won :~D ?

Snow-flakes catcher

The valley's been misty in the morning and chilly in the late evenings. Winter's slowly creeping in - almost unnoticed. We've taken out our thickest, snuggest blankets and all I can think of are the Pine trees in Shimla's snow-laden landscape. Here's a toast to the swirls of branches that balance porous snow and look upon the city!

Glorious Gerbera

Isn't gerbera such a happy flower? I've been smitten with the flower since I first saw it "in person" on my 17th birthday, thanks to my best friend in school. I was looking for a picture where the flower has shades of light and shadow and yet looks staright in the eye. That's when I came across one of Jacqueline Knott's early paintings. She, of course, has done a brilliant job of it, as all the rest of her pieces. But I owe her the inspiration to finally egt down to painting this one - my very first gerbera - thanks, Jacqueline!

Pond Paradise

I've always loved lotuses for their radiance. I'm lucky to now have them in my neighbourhood pond. But till I did, I spent a considerable time online looking t pictures of the beauty. There was a time, about 2 years ago, that I was smitten with the reams of colour that a single petal held in a lotus. Each petal seems to be of a different shade - a pink lotus, for example, would have fuscia, majenta, light pink, purple and mauves for different layers of the petals and each petal would have a colour spectrum for it's colour. I found it so fascinating, I daydreamt of spending the whole year painting lotuses of different colours.

Dreamy as this may have sounded that time, when I began staining the paper, it was nightmarish. I remember forgetting time and space while painting it. Some time earlier on into the painting, I lost track of the reference pictures and began looking for colour as my mind's whims. For a while, I was taken aback with what I saw as my labour of love for the reverend flower - it didn't look at all like what I had tought I had seen; it looked exactly like what I realised I'd understood of it's beauty.