Painting upside down - a challenge

Walking on the ceiling!

Watercolor pencils on paper, 10 * 10 inches
copyright Nithya Swaminathan

This week's challenge at Karin's Different Strokes blog was to paint this walker upside down. In her pep-talk accompanying the reference image, Karin makes a valid point about trying to paint what you know rather than what you see. That would not happen when painting upside dpwn.

With this approach, I followed the reference and the patterns of light in it. Blindly painting what I saw! I did not alter the image in any way, as that would probably mean flipping the image and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. It was super fun I should say. I also went ahead and signed the painting as it was painted, so if viewed in the right direction, my signature would be upside down :-)

Walking on the ceiling - viewed upside down
Watercolor pencils on watercolor paper, 10 * 10 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

When painting normally, I have the habit of viewing my canvas in the mirror every now and then. That kind of guides me if I am in the right direction or not. It works like a charm especially for portraits, as mistakes will stick out in the mirror image. This time around, I had to hold my temptation from turning the image :-) That was the most difficult part of the challenge, so to say.

Here is the link to the weekly challenge, have a look at others' interpretations.

Also, watch this space tomorrow for something totally different from me. That is besides the final image of the still life.