Day Lilies

He’s be cursed, Hibiscus…

…for being such a delicate and enticing flower!

I had been looking at them for a while, every time I crossed the path to the school. I’d seen them bloom. I’d seen them radiant every afternoon.

Shamelessly, I plucked one little one from our garden last afternoon, resolute that I’d found my muse for the day. I played around for about 10 minutes, holding my little treasure, putting it under sunlight with its back towards me, then with its glaring face, then its profile, then peeking at me, then cold-shouldering me, then looking up, then looking down, and finally smiling straight at me, saying, “Now pick up the pencil and begin!”

I did – and one wasn’t enough. Irresistibly iridescent.

No reference photo, no inspiring painting – this is purely my mind’s game one April afternoon!

Smitten,
Roopika

P.S.
By the way, you can have a look at the yellow one's face here!

With wings outstretched

Isn't the Bird of Paradise such a picture of wellness anticipated, hope and the change of tide to some refreshingly new chapter? It's the one emotion that most pictures of the flower have always evoked in me. Isn't it the perfect birthday wish?

Until I downloaded some classic BoP snaps, I didn't know it was so vibrant with so many different shades - I was particularly taken aback at the blue arms that seem to artistically outstretch from the centre - almost as if those of a princess waking up to a warm sunny afternoon. Something luxuriously blessed about the flower makes me wonder if it conjures up the picture of a dignified royal heir more than the picture of an energetic pixie!

In The Prime

I've realised three things with this painting - exactly when think you've finished all those bugs and beasts on your to-do list to make time for this one evening that you want to paint, you'll be bombarded with unexpected work from all quarters. There were children who needed to talk 'suddenly', a colleague who needed help with a class activity 'suddenly', a post-dinner meeting that went on for MUCH longer than anticipated, and then of course, a sudden tiredness and procrastination that seemed to engulf me last night the minute everything else was at bay.

The other big discovery - I enjoy day-paintings a lot more than night ones! If for nothing else, night-paintings seem to have a ticking timer for the upcoming morning that makes me somewhat impatient. Day-paintings, on the other hand, promise me that just in case I can't wind it up by dusk, there's a whole night that's waiting!

The third lesson - Paper Matters. The puddles on this painting that uses regular cartridge paper made me squirm at myself for not switching to the handmade paper files that I bought last year (and are still waiting, stacked daintily in one corner of my art-cupboard!)

So here is today afternoon's painting - in line with the promise that I declared on Facebook yesterday :) This one's only about colours - I had a gala time swishing and swooshing my paintbrush with yellow and crimson every now and then. The reference picture is one that I found in a book titled 'Roses' that caught my eye in the Botany section of the library a while ago. I was overwhelmed with what the book had in store for me... Ahh...More florals coming up - I prooooooomise!

Visteria, stare ya!

I looked at Jelaine's blog, clueless about the new coats on her work-in-progress piece that she promises to be full of detail. I'm extremely humbled for her to mention my name (that's SO sweet of you, Jelaine) - and just as much, somewhat mentally blocked with the blue she used in her painting. The minute I saw it, my hands were itching to paint. It was just the blue - that blue - all it's shades - but that very hue. I needed to touch it then and there.

I remember making a painting full of visteria. It was such a delight to paint that when I finally came across the close up of the bunch, I couldn't resist it. It was, however, one thing to appreciate it botanically, quite another to interpret it artistically!

Something told me that this was meant to be a wet-in-wet play of colours. Cobalt Blue sheet-one had me as cheerful as my little kiddos in class. A second layer ushered in some details of the petals. I finally brought in loose strokes of my old favourite, Mr. Prussian to waltz around a wee-bit, every second resisting the temptation of telling him to take smaller (and more precise) steps. I HAD to push myself to forego the details. That's the visteria of my wall - fuzzy and deceptively delicate.

Born Bunched!

Hello, 2009!

May this bird of paradise be the harbinger of the same for everyone in 2009...

Happpppyyyyy Neeeeeeeewww Yurrrrrr !!!

Peekaboo

The Coy Missus

This was a delight to work on! Without augmenting the colour-contrast, this picture tells you the colours the way they are in my painting - the red are really that radiant and yellows really yell that loud! I wanted to have a softer background to the more in-your-face colours here and there was nothing that matched a cloudy sky to a sunny painting. Doesn't this remind you a typical old-fashioned English couple where the Missus is coy at her introduction to a roomful of guests and the Mister's grinning with pride at his damsel's daintiness?

Having said that, I do realise that I got a little carried away with my strokes as I moved the painting all around on my desk. This isn't a study in light and shadow that would have made this painting all mosre luminiscent. It's really a rot of glaring colours - just something I need to pep myself up for the upcoming weekend!!!

Sunny tulips - an experiment

I wanted to make two huge tulips with all the floral colours possible when the sun seeps through the petals. It didn't turn out the way I had intended, but that's the real reason for putting it up here - I promise to make another attempt at it and ensure it looks less like a disaster and an experiment.

With this painting, I've learnt the importance of:

• A detailed under-drawing
• A ready reference picture to keep track of your brushstrokes
• The quality of paper in watercolour painting - it seems to me the single biggest factor in ensuring a good result!
  

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 ?

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.

Lazying Lillies

Pastel Scribbles

It's been years that I last made a drawing in oil pastel. While early years at school saw us excitedly rubbing colour sticks from a array of 48, it's been intriguing me if my box of 15 would suffice for a reasonable piece.

Thanks to my inquisitiveness about the outcome, I went on the overdrive, certain since today's sunrise that it had to fulfil two conditions...

1. I didn't want to touch the pencil. It had to be ALL pastel - with no scope for errors (rather, huge scope for honing my cover-up skills!)
2. It had to use ALL of the 15 sticks

While the first drawing had me focussing on what flowers I wanted my "Spring Walk" to have, keeping in mind a colour balance (on both sides of the pathway), the second one had me dealing, additionally,with light effects and distance.

What fun it's been! Right from dirtying my fingertips to peeling off the paper cover over the sticks; from letting colour be the determinant for object to letting contrast be the guidepost for colour... it's been quite a compensation for the burnt-out after-taste of my filter coffee decoction this morning :)

Swaying Daydreams

It was one of those lazy mornings when bed-in-breakfast suddenly climbs up your wish-list as and urgent priority. Was it sheer lethargy that brought about Impressionism - I heard myself woolgathering. A gentle, subtle heady feeling made me grin stupidly at the idea of painting today. I didn't want to work too much with pencilling in any details.

Aimlessly wandering across some seemingly cobwebbed web-pages suddenly made me sit up with a discovery. Poppies have long been associated with daydreams, it said, thanks to the properties of one of its derivatives - opium.

Hmm... From meandering moods to bewildering brush-strokes - here it is!

PS
I've never cared much for the flower before this.

Blue and Orange

At first this composition did not excite me enough to take up the paintbrush. But flipping through the various pages, it was a picture hard to miss - purely because of the contrast of the orange flowers against the blue vase

It's my first water colour gauche study, plus there was the opportunity to understand light and shadow in a relatively simple composition to begin with.

One questions, though... what flowers ARE these?!

The Iris Virus

No, no, no - I don't want to offend the Irises of the world! It's their addictive beauty that caught my fancy since I saw the first ever. I once tried to paint a few on a really large sheet of paper and (Heavens forgive me!) even framed it as a gift. I couldn't look at a picture of an iris for a while thereafter - every time I did, I felt as if faced with rightful indignance.

However, it's hard to resist the ladylike soft charms of an Iris in full bloom. I downloaded pictures and painting of irises by the dozen and finally chose two from this treasure-chest for a painting that I never new I'd imagined. It had to be two queens dancing asplendour and dressed in colours that contrasted each other, but did not desire to overshadow.

The process was a lesson with many sub-chapters on water colour painting. To count on my fingertips, I learnt...

• How much water to use while blending.
• How to blend colour with the white of the paper.
• How colours seem different when they dry up and therefore what degree of dilution is required for a certain desired tonal variation.

And how easy it is to skip a bath when you're drenching paper in colour!