Calotes T-shirt

Well.. here's the T-shirt i painted for my brother's birthday just last month. A Calotes lizard !

This is the second T-shirt painting i have done. Did the first one for a dear friend of mine, about more than a year back. But, I dont even have a proper picture of the first one and now its all faded off i heard :( . Last time, i had used acrylic paints to do it. But this time did it with Fabric colours, so hopefully it should stay.

Spider Lily

Hymencallis speciosa

One of the most prettiest flowers in my garden. Wish it could bloom all year round. Did this painting in September, i guess.
Have u ever seen this flower when it -just- opens?? Gosh! its amazing ! Its like a loose bud.. the tips are all attached and *suddenly* it breaks free and those spider-like long petals spread out. The 6 long greenish stamens with yellowish-orange pollen heads, stand upright, making it look prettier !

Next time u see a Spider Lily in a loose bud.... wait and watch it release itself. You just cannot hold back your smile!

.... a watery sunbird wash!

For sometime now, the sunbirds have been on my mind. Dipped my brush to do some small paintings of these tiny jewels. Hoping to capture them at their best, very soon. Over a hundred species of sunbirds have been recorded around the world, out of which India has just about 12 species.

These are the Purple sunbirds. One, amongst the 4 known species recorded in South India. Their long slender down curved bills are well adept to taking nectar from flowers, thus putting them in an exclusive nectar-feeding family called the 'Nectariniidae' .

True to their name, the males have a brilliant glittering iridescent plumage, which is best seen when the sunlight falls on the birds.

Out of the Sketchbook - 2

Some doodles in my sketchbook, out in the field...

Out of the Sketchbook!

Back from my most recent trip to Coorg! I stayed at honeyvalley and also hiked up Tadiandamol, which had been on my wish-list for 4 years now, from when i started with the idiscoveri programmes! This has been the only exciting adventure -all by myself- so far! Suresh and Susheela Chengappa have always been lovely hosts with their most generous smiles and delicious home-cooked food.

Met some other wonderful backpackers there and every now and then, had some time to get my sketch book out. Of everything that i saw, I guess i formed a more special bond with the moths at honeyvalley! They loved to be sketched and i loved to sketch them too. They sat ever so patiently until i sketched them.. and heh! they kept sitting even after that!!
The trek up Tadiandamol was just amazing, but tiring as hell! From honeyvalley to the peak its about 9 kms and the last part of it is steep and uphill all the way. It was so misty and cloudy when i reached the top and i couldnt see more than 30-40ft from where i stood. to make it more memorable, it showered just so much to refresh me from the hike to the top. Between the showers, i just made a quick sketch of the Ground-Orchid on top, which left me smiling as i had something to take back from there, other than some pictures! As i was heading back, decided to take the other path which is longer but would pass through the Nalkunad palace...It was 14 kms from the peak to honeyvalley! Most of the path in the beginning was downhill or either flatish.. but the last 4 kms were kind of uphill and gosh it seemed to take forever! My legs had almost started giving up on me, i trotted along so slowly at my own pace and finally reached honeyvalley at 6:30pm. Exhausted like never, hungry and wanting to hit the bed as soon as i could.................but if only the Wolf Snake in my room let me! :)

The 7 Chakra's...

The 7 chakra's in the human body!

Well...unlike the wildlife & nature paintings i have posted on this blog earlier, every once in a while i need to accept other commission works too, to keep myself going ! These are the most recent set of paintings that i have worked on. I was not aware about these chakra's at all, until i started painting them. Though its nowhere close to wildlife, i really enjoyed working on this set mainly coz of their design and the colours! I learnt a little more about them as i painted.. i believe, the Chakra system orginated more than 4,000 years ago and are referred to in the ancient litratures of Vedas, Upanishads and in the Yoga sutra's of Patanjali. Each of these 7 main Chakra's in the body have been symbolised by the paintings and their respective sanskrit alphabets, to add to their meaning.
Here are the names of the 7 Chakra's in thier respective order...
1) Muladhara, symbolised by a lotus with four petals.
2) Swadhisthana, symbolised by a lotus with six petals.
3) Manipura, symbolised by a lotus with ten petals.
4) Anahata, lotus with twelve petals.
5) Vishuddha, lotus with sixteen petals.
6) Ajna, in the form of an eye, held as a chakra of time, awareness and light. On the two corners you see the 'sun' and the 'moon'.
7) Saharara, is generally considered to be the chakra of consciousness with thousands of petals.

Fibreglass mural - finally complete !

4'X6' fibreglass mural
(click on the image to see a bigger version)

This started of as a terracotta mural 2 yrs back.......
completed as a fibreglass mural..... just yesterday!

Right after the 5 academic years in college, a bunch of us... Swetha, Manju and i started a mural for our freind SL... for his new house ! What we had done in terracotta looked great.. its quite time consuming and it takes days and days to dry. As we had started doing it right in the monsoon season.. it took about 2 months to dry. Finally gave it for baking and about 5 peices of the Terracotta mural maze had to break down while firing. This was our first terracotta mural and we amatuers must have let some air-bubbles seap in, which gave way to the cracks. Though we were aware of the possibility of breaking while firing.. we wanted to take our big chance and try it out. This was a great learning for all of us. By the time this dried and got fired, each one of us had moved into doing different things in our lives and we could not get back to finishing the mural. All thanks to our freind SL who waited patiently. I guess he had almost lost hope that we would ever complete his mural.... but we suddenly came back to the enthu spirit to finally complete it. This time it was Swetha, Nandini and i. Our dear freind Manju is busy getting prepared to step into a wedlock. We missed her as much as she missed working on this mural together. This time, we didnt want to take a chance with terracotta as it will shrink, take time to dry (its the monsoon season again) and still there is a big chance while firing it. So we decided to try our hands on doing it in Fiber. We need to specially thank Mr.Basu who guided us 2 yrs back when we were trying our hands with clay. Now a special thanks to Mr.Chalapathy (Swetha's dad who is a well renouned sculptor of Bangalore) and Rangaswamy who guided and helped us through the fibre process ! 10 days of work-work-work and today.. its finally complete!

I will soon put up the whole sequence and step-by-step procedure of the 'making' of this mural !
Its been a great learning and a great experience !! :)

The Pondy ponderer ..

Dono why i chose to paint the Pond Heron a couple of days back. But i just left like doing some quick water colour paintings. I had been to Lalbagh last week and sat there sketching all the birds i saw, and i guess the -Pondy ponderer- stuck to my mind! Came home, used some photographs for reference and brushed around a little bit!

The Indian Pond Heron (Ardeola grayii) is found throughout the Indain Sub-continent. One of our most common wading birds in shallow waters and marshy wetland habitats. The Paddy fields are amongst their most preferred habitats too, and so they are well known as 'Paddy Birds'. In flight, the underwings of this bird is striking white, when compared to the bird at rest, which is drab brown and streaky with not much white showing at all. Makes a great camouflage in a marshy area.

Waits so still and patiently to strike at its meal.
Well here's the pondy ponderer pondering patiently... as always!