Pears series gallery

I have stopped duplicating posts between both the blogs as I do not want to spam people who follow my blogs on Facebook or through feed readers. So in Facebook, while in my profile I import this blog, posts in my other blog will be seen only by people who follow my fan page. Now that I have done a dozen paintings of pears, I thought I can just put them together in a gallery format. Clicking on individual pictures will take you to the relevant blog posts.

My new project 300 to 30 is going on great, much better than I expected myself to do! I have so far completed 12 paintings in as many days, and have a couple of more nearing completion. The next few paintings will be landscapes, not necessarily in a series. After a few days though, I will be back to working in a series, one that I am very excited about :-) Watch this space for more updates.

Who's hiding behind?

Continuing with the series of Pears and Grapes, here is the next one. I like this one best so far, among the three. I really like how the fabric turned out in this one. My foremost critic, the husband, is not very happy with it though. I am waiting to see what my friends at WetCanvas have to say. It is funny how different things appeal to different people, and it is impossible to please everyone alike. There were quite a few people who liked #1 better than #2, and vice versa :-) It remains to be seen what they have to say about #3 now.

Who's hiding behind?
Acrylics on Board, 5 * 7 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

The pears have a lot of color, in order to capture the lighting, reflections of the cloth on the surface of the fruit etc. However, I find the grapes are much more challenging and it is fun to paint them. The grapes need to have the translucent effect and I am not there yet. This is the first time I am doing grapes and I am having fun, learning a lot, observing more color. Of course, I have more paintings coming up in this series, and I finally hope to nail the translucence. I hope!

The pears that I have used in these set ups are of the Red Bartlett variety. They are largely red with a mix of ochre in between. My set ups are such that the red side gets prominence. And my renditions seems to be more bright red in color, which is something I have generally done, exaggerating colors a bit from real life. I like it that way, tends to have a more dramatic effect.

More pears and grapes

In the previous painting of pears and grapes, I felt the colors were probably too much on the darker side. I generally keep my colors bold, but I could have probably gone a little softer on the fabric, parts of the fruit etc. My friends at WetCanvas gave some wonderful suggestions, and I tried to incorporate those into this piece. I underplayed the glossiness of the pears, made them look more fleshy than shiny. And instead of going wild with purples on the cloth folds, I opted for softer grays. Your feedback is welcome.

Pears and Grapes #2
Acrylics on Board, 5 * 7 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

A new series, a new blog

I started a series of still life paintings with pears a few months ago. The paintings underwent a lot of changes and then were lying around incomplete for a long while. I then felt I was not at all satisfied with the compositions and decided to ditch them. I gessoed again over those boards. The references were quite interesting though, with vibrant colors and so I reworked smaller compositions with them. I opted for closer crops which could be painted on a small size. Here is the first one in the new series, of Pears and grapes.

Pears and Grapes
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

On my birthday, I launched a new blog. It is a new project that I have undertaken, where I plan to complete 300 paintings before my next birthday, when I will turn 30. Check out my new blog 300 to 30.

I am on Facebook now!

I am an active user of Facebook, where I have reconnected with long lost friends from school and college. Something that I had not thought about however, was using Facebook to market my Art. I was not really keen on having a business page there, as I felt it was too redundant, since I already have a blog and a website anyway. But Linda Blondheim, in one of her marketing posts, gave it a whole new perspective. Facebook might help to connect with non-artists who are interested in Art, whereas the blog with all nitty gritties about the process is perhaps too technical for a non-artist. I thought that made a lot of sense and decided to give it a try. Click on the image to see my page.

I was very reluctant to get into Twitter too, in fact I do not use it to its fullest even now. But in a very short span of time, Twitter has helped me connect with more Artists than this blog did in 2 years. There are a lot of interesting links being shared, and I find it awesome. I have also discovered a lot of Artists whom I did not know, via Facebook too. A lot many artists have fan pages on FB and its nice to stumble upon them. And I hope having a page of my own helps me connect with a community that's interested in art, artists as well as collectors.

One thing that I find tedious about setting up the page is that the image gallery has to be maintained by uploading images there. Flickr is my preferred service for hosting my images, and I cannot simply import my images from Flickr to the facebook page. So I have uploaded all the images all over again. The good thing though is that we can have many different galleries so that the images are all well categorized. Since the pages for us artists are all about images, it would be great if we could just import images from Flickr.

I have launched this page only yesterday, so it is too early for me to say if it has had any effect. A few months down the line, I shall probably be better positioned to do a post about it. So if you are on Facebook, please check out Nithya Swaminathan on Facebook, where you can see a big chunk of my completed works. I have also included a fan box widget similar to the followers widget in the sidebar here, please have a look. You feedback is welcome, and thank you for all the support.

Links:

• Nithya Swaminathan personal profile on Facebook
• Nithya Swaminathan's Art page on Facebook
• Nithya Swaminathan on Twitter
  

Lane of Pink Blossoms

I have a liking to do rows of trees, rather than a single tree. Part of it is because I can skip all the detailing when there are more trees. I still don't think my foliage is any good, but it works well in some cases. I feel totally rusty and lost when I do some close ups of leaves, flowers etc. I have a long long way to go as far as botanical art is concerned!

Lane of Pink Blossoms
Acrylics on Canvas, 4 * 6 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

Jacaranda lane

I loved this reference, and was reasonably pleased with how it turned out as well. This was sent to Elizabeth, who took our virtual class on painting trees. I liked this one best amongst those that I painted, and since Elizabeth was largely responsible for that, I sent it to her. She loved it and had such nice words to say, which really made my day.

Jacaranda Lane
Acrylics on Canvas, 4 * 6 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

It is funny and often frustrating how colors get distorted under a camera or a scanner. The colors in this one for instance, though there is a significant amount of blues, it is not as blue as it appears in the image. It looks much better in real life, and it is unfortunate the photo is the way it is! Sigh!

Continuing with the flowering trees

My tree paintings have all reached their new homes, except for two of them. This one has not yet reached, and I hope my friend doesn't peep in here :-) I got some really good feedback for the trees, and I am so so glad!Pink tree
Acrylics on Canvas, 4 * 6 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan