Different Strokes - Diana's companion

I love looking at sculptures. I enjoyed the sculptures in the Louvre as much as I did the paintings. It is such a terrific art to be able to bring something alive from stone. I have so many favorites at the Louvre, the Hermaphrodite quickly comes to mind. I absolutely love it. Whoa! While I love Indian sculptures for their intricacy and craftsmanship, the western ones have a unique appeal too. Like this one of Diana's companion. What a beautiful figure, I loved the dress, her skirt and the folds in it. Among my extremely limited travel experience in India, my favorite spot for sculptures is the Somanathapura temple near Mysore. I was there last year and it was worth all the trouble of traversing through the pathetic roads. The figures just blew me away! Totally worth a visit.

Diana's Companions
Graphite on paper, 9 * 12 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

This is my entry for the ongoing challenge at Karin's Different Strokes blog. Its been ages since I painted a sculpture. Long long ago, about 12 years back to be precise, I did a sculpture in graphite, of one of the figures in Halebid. Though I lived in Bangalore for so long, I never got to visit Halebid which is quite close. So after 12 long years, this was my first attempt at doing a sculpture. I have a lot of photos of sculptures, from the Louvre and from Rome. I am inspired to go paint some of them. We'll see.

Karin had requested the figure to be painted as a whole, without cropping. I have flipped the reference image horizontally though. I wanted to do this as a monochrome initially, with various shades of brown. But when I started sketching itself it screamed graphite, hence the choice of medium :) All the entries for this challenge can be seen here. Most of them aremind blowing, absolutely mindblowing. Have a look.

April Virtual Sketch Date - Rhododendron bud

I suck at florals, and would not venture into one even if threatened at gun point! :) Not that I am not inspired by them. When the daffodils were all around everywhere, I was so regretting I am so pathetic with flowers. Maybe some day, I might do some. Currently, I feel my style of using strong contrasts and generally visible hard edges is not quite suited for the softness that's needed to render a flower. I have a long way to go in terms of softening my edges before I can render delicate darlings.

Rhododendron bud
Colored pencil on paper, 9 * 9 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan


However, since the blog events are all about getting out of your comfort zone, I decided to do this one as well. It has such lovely colors, and I have gone in for colored pencil. Thanks to Jeanette for a great image, I had a lot of fun.

This month's entries can be seen here in the Flickr pool, and go here to check the various blog links.

Some sketches over the weekend

We had gone to this little lake close to where I live, and I managed to do a couple of sketches. My daughter was so excited seeing the ducks over there and wanted to feed them some bread. This is dad and daughter enjoying themselves feeding the birds. My husband is actually a lot thinner, and I couldn't get the proportions exact as they were moving constantly and it wasn't very easy to sketch. The little one looks quite closer to real life.

Feeding the ducks
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan




And then closer to us were a few more gentlemen who had come fishing. There was this elderly gentleman who has set up all his angling equipment and was sitting patiently with a drink in hand. I loved his pose and the entire setting. There were 3 guys in all and I would probably paint them later. Just managed to sketch this one.

Waiting for fish
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

A portrait in graphite after ages

This is a portrait of Jeanette for the monthly portrait study. I have posted it for feedback it the group, and some more tweaks are pending I should say. I am not happy as of now and I hope I am able to fix the issues soon. It was fun doing a graphite portrait after a long long time, more than 5 years if I remember right. The last graphite portrait I did was of my husband, when he was still my boyfriend! And looking back at that portrait now, it looks so childish. This time I used the flatter side of the pencils to block areas quicker and also to get a softer look. I am pretty happy with the shading and the edges, but the resemblance is way off. Your feedback is welcome.

Jeanette Jobson
Graphite on paper,
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

People on the move

We were out the whole day, traveling my various modes of transport - first by bus and then train, and lastly by a tram. The last time we were out traveling, I deeply regretted not having taken my sketchbook along, for it offered some wonderful opportunity to sketch. So carried my book this time around, and I could manage a decent number of sketches.

Left - Woman in a bus seated parallel to us, and watching my daughter.

Right - A young woman in the bus having a chat with a friend next to her.










































Pics above - Left - a woman in the railway platform, waiting for the train. She was probably solving a crossword in the meantime.
Right - a gentleman in the tram poring into his mobile phone.

These are no value studies or anything, they are more like outline sketches. As I have close to zero experience in sketching people on the move, I could not really get to do any shading. I was and am still getting used to this mode of working, it is overwhelming at the moment.

There are some more sketches which I will upload a little later. All your critiques are welcome.

Some more oranges - start of a series

Looks like I am not yet done with my share of the oranges. Picked up some luscious oranges this week, mainly for using them in some still life setups. Also, there was this lovely glass bottle at home, so I was playing around with them. I tried several combinations and liked quite a few, which cover the bottle and fruits in different angles. I like shadows with glass objects, they have so much color in them. So this was a lot of fun as we had some good sunlight too. I always prefer setting up still lifes in direct sunlight and not artificial light. Though the lighting changes very soon, it helps me get sharper images.

Here are a couple of quick sketches, first one from life and the rest from photos.

Shadow play 1
Colored pencils on paper
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

Shadow play 2
Colored pencils on paper
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

Shadow play 3
Colored pencils on paper
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

These studies will be used as bases for paintings in future. I will also sort out some of the other images and do a few more studies.