Evening Glow - Postcard #3

In a quick change of events, I landed in Germany couple of weeks ago. I am here for the next 2 months, joining my husband who was already here on an assignment. So that means that I am not going to be actively painting (hardly anything in fact) until then. What I would be doing though, and doing generously is visiting museums and seeing some of the best art this world has ever known. Now that's interesting isn't it?

I will try to sneak in an occasional sketch here and there, but you guys look forward to seeing and reading about Art that is much better and bigger than mine. It is going to be a helluva learning journey for me, and I look forward to blogging about it.

Evening Glow - 6 * 4 inches,
colored pencil on paper

Before I go ahead and blog entirely about the Masters, I thought I would leave you with a couple of my own. Stuff that was done last month in Bangalore. It aches that I have come here leaving behind so many unfinished paintings and I cannot get my hands on them in the near future. This is one of the colored pencil drawings I have done for the postcard exchange, from an awesome reference by Dave Slaughter. I just love his bird pictures, and I know I have said it already. I have tried my best to capture the evening sunlight that's hitting the body of the bird, the lovely shade of orange.

Evening Glow - completed
colored pencil on paper

The method is the same as my previous postcards, a watercolor pencil underpainting followed by a wash with a wet brush. And then finer details added with colored pencils. Your comments are welcome :-)

p.s: Just realized that this post remained in my drafts! Posting it before its too late!

Postcard #2

Continuing with the postcards, here is yet another very colorful bird, done in the same style of a watercolor underpainting followed by colored pencils. I am drawn towards anything blue, and this one was no exception. I am no good at bird watching and do not even know the names of most of these. There is an artist in WetCanvas who gives such jaw dropping bird images for references. Each and every single snap of is a wonder, and all these birds are done from his photos only.

Electric - watercolor pencil underpainting

Electric Blue - colored pencil on paper, 4*6 inches
Private collection.

Among other things, my website is also getting updated with images of these cards. You can locate them under 'Miniatures'. And I guess you would have already noticed the change in my blog layout and color scheme. A reader had suggested long back that I could have a painting as a backdrop, and I felt I could have it only in the header. Finally got around to doing it only now. Let me hear your feedback on the new color scheme, if it is pleasing to the eye.

Postcard #1

I am doing a series of postcards for a Postcard exchange project that I signed up in WetCanvas. A postcard is typically 4*6 in size. Just like the last year's exchange, we are about 25 participants. Each of us will paint 24 postcards and mail it to the others. I have already got about half a dozen postcards and I am a late starter this time.

Postcard #1 - Yellow bird & Cactus plants
Underpainting in Watercolor pencils

I am getting back to colored pencils after a while, and the best way to get back in touch is to work small. Since colored pencil is a medium I was investing so much on even before doing anything worthwhile, I have too many sets of pencils, most of them watercolor pencils. It took me a while to actually realize that people generally don't work with the watercolor pencils to get the pure CP effect. Now I possess a set of pure CPs also, but my watercolor pencils will remain idle if I don't use them, so I use them to do underpaintings. And it works wonders, I should say.

Postcard #1 - Completed
Colored Pencils on paper, 4 * 6 inches

The method is simple - I first do a cross hatching with watercolor pencils which is very rough and the strokes will be haphazard. This is okay, because they will be evened out when I do a wash with a wet brush. It will give a lovely smooth look to the background, especially useful when the background lacks detail and all the focus is on the object in the foreground. After washing with the brush, the color would brighten up a lot too. I then complete the painting with the normal colored pencils on top of the watercolor pencils.

Ideally I should not be posting this in public before my recipient gets the card, but I don't think any of the participants even know about my blog, so it is okay :-)

Monet's gardens at Giverny

This is a painting I started and posted as a WIP 6 months ago, but it never took off coz what I had in mind was simply not getting translated onto the canvas. I was getting frustrated to the core! I would touch the painting every now and then, correct something that I felt was not okay, but as a whole it never looked right. The lighting was all screwed up and it lacked any kind of atmosphere.

Now I have got back to the painting, and I gave up on acrylics as my skills were very limited, and decided to proceed with oils. I must say its been more of a relief than anything else. Relief because of two reasons - one is I am able to see some redemption for this painting, which I so dearly loved. I love the image that I have in my mind and I am striving to get it down, and I am relieved that I don't have to ditch it. Secondly, my oil painting abilities are as good as they were and I am absolutely at ease with them even though I am getting back to oils after almost 5 years! Its almost like a love affair, I could just take off where I left. I hope to strike a balance between oil and acrylics henceforth and not totally concentrate on one forgetting the other. I love oils for its flexibility and ease of painting. And I like acrylics for their quickness. And I would like to do a bit of both, going forward.

Untitled as yet.
Mixed media on Canvas, 20 * 24 inches.

So coming back to my painting. Here is how it is now. So what have I done since the last time is I have changed the dress color of the woman, coz I felt it was an overdoze of cool colors. I wanted the woman to stand out in the painting. Most of Monet's paintings of Giverny do not have any human figures in them. They are beautiful depictions of nature and light, but I wanted the human figure here and decided to go ahead with it even though I wasn't sure initially.

My focal point is the lady, coz this painting is very 'personal' in a lot of ways. Monet being one of my all time favorites, this painting is how I would feel if I were at his gardens. It is like cumulative inspiration, one from the gardens themselves, and even more from the art that was generated from the gardens. And what inspires more, Nature or the Art! The woman obviously represents me, though I don't look like that :-) I have got some great suggestions from WetCanvas to take this forward, and I hope to bring this to completion soon.

Pierre Auguste Renoir - an Old Masters study

Studying Old Masters and their ways of working are generally of immense help to artists. Though I haven’t done a streamlined study of even one master, I can see why it is sure to help artists. It helps us learn by seeing how various compositions work, how some of them work even though they don’t conform to the “rules”, how various masters painted Light, etc. While such a study is going to benefit anyone, I am sure it will be all the more interesting if a group of us do this, and that’s what I have started doing now.

In the Acrylics forum of WetCanvas, a new Old Masters Study project has been initiated, where we would study the works of an old master for a month or two, and then produce our piece of art based on that. It could be a replica of one of his works, or a new painting based on his techniques. The technique and style is more important than the actual content. And the first old master that we have taken up is Pierre Auguste Renoir, one of the famous impressionist painters. I am very happy to take this up because I am a big fan of Impressionism as a movement. I love the distinct brush strokes that characterize impressionist paintings.

Auguste Renoir painted a lot of figures, mostly women. He had women is picturesque surroundings, even his nudes were mostly in idyllic settings. They had very interesting light colored flesh tones that made them very charming. My observation is he did not use too much of darks to bring contrast into his works. They did not have the striking light and dark contrasts as say the Dutch painters’ works have. There is a dominance of cool shades; even the backdrops of his figure paintings feature ochre, greens and blues a lot. The shadows have a lot of violet and blues in them.

When choosing a painting of Renoir to replicate, there were too many good ones to choose from. I went through the entire gallery of paintings and finally zeroed in on 'Woman in a rocking chair'.
Why this interested me is because there is no colored version available. All that is there is only a sketch, and I loved the idea of adding color, and more importantly light to it. It is an outline by Renoir but it will essentially be my original painting. I did not want to be influenced by the existing colors and stick to them, so safely chose a b/w image.

A quick value sketch of Lady on a Rocking Chair

I have just done a rough sketch of the painting, somewhat decided on the background. The painting will be 16 * 24, acrylics on canvas.

Some interesting links that I have come across:

• A website dedicated to Renoir, full of interesting info and pictures.
  
• Pierre Auguste Renoir - A biography
  
• A virtual museum of Renoir - link from WetCanvas
• One of his famous paintings - Umbrellas - the Umbrellas is not entirely an Impressionist work. It is said to span over different styles - part of the painting is impressionistic, and the other half is more realistic. The link provides some really interesting information, have a look. I love how he has used blues so extensively in the painting.
  
• My favorite painting of Renoir - The Swing - See the beautiful depiction of light with some dapples of color here and there, in the ground, in her gown etc. I love this painting and hope to do a similar depiction of light in my painting.
• Woman on a rocking chair -sketch that will be a reference for my painting.
  
• Renoir gallery - A lot of paintings listed in alphabetical order.
  

Bliss!

Not a single human in sight, yeah, not even one. No one to attend to, no one to cook for, no one to question if I ate or not. And no one to really bother about what I did and did not do. That’s exactly my version of bliss and precisely what I did this weekend. So this weekend was essentially no cooking, hardly any eating (I survive on Maggi) and all the time in the world to me only to paint. Till I get tired of it, and I haven’t yet, thankfully. I must agree that I got physically tired though.

Times like these reaffirm to me that this is what I love doing, and this is what I should be doing full time. I love what I do in my job as well, but that’s besides the point. Every time I get to paint extensively, my gut feeling urges me to take it up full time. But then somewhere deep down, there is a little apprehension. If I am forced to do Art and not do it on my own, would it still invoke so much passion from me, I am not sure. And it is too huge a risk to take! Sigh! So many things to ponder!

One great thing that comes out of a weekend like this is ample subject matter to blog about. So even if I did not do a single painting for the next one month, I have stuff to blog every day. Ain’t it cool?! So here we go, before actually looking at any art, a first look at my so called studio. It is amazing when you have no one around that your entire house is your studio to play.

So this is how I exist when I have no one to supervise me. And this is a sneak preview of all the artwork to come in the following days, most of them. I wanted to get some work done on the Postcard exchange project that I started off. I am lagging behind awfully! And also experiment with doing some still lifes, besides getting back in touch with my pencils. Will post some more works over the next couple of days.

Self portrait - almost completed

I posted the incomplete version of the self portrait in time for the challenge at WetCanvas, and the extremely encouraging folks there said it was looking good already! People said that there was a very good resemblance and some tweaks would finish it up well.

After a week, I got back to the portrait and it is almost completed now. My face is fully done and I just have some little tweaks in the background. So more or less done. The face hasn't undergone any big changes from version 3.0. I had to increase my right cheek, which was not showing my chubby face fully. A slight increase in the cheek made a HUGE difference to the picture overall. And then pushing of some darks around the eyes kinda did it. Here is a look at the whole picture.


A closer look at my image alone -
I am happy with the result. It now looks like me in the mirror too, though it looks like my mouth is skewed at an angle! In the normal view it looks just fine. Let me know your comments, especially if you have met me in person.:-)

Updated: Here is a link to the Self Portrait Challenge 2008 at WetCanvas. This thread contains everyone's portraits with other's comments. Absolutely stunning work by all of them! And this is the gallery with all images alone put together, aptly titled "The Rogues Gallery 2008" :D

Some ugly stages of a self portrait

Thanks to a recently announced Self Portrait Challenge at WetCanvas, I got to do my self portrait. After more than a month of shortlisting some photographs, I finally zeroed in on a reference. I was not even sure if I should use a reference or sit in front of the mirror. But since the mirror option is certainly more time consuming, I went with having a reference.

My reference would be familiar to those who are on my network in Orkut, for this pic has been my profile pic forever. The original reference is this -


I opted for a closer crop so that the focus is on my face and not the background. Here is the cropped reference -

To begin with, I did a rough sketch blocking the main regions, for my face, body and the background. And filled it with one layer of colour. I have simply filled flesh tint in the face, without marking the features.


Then, I directly marked the features with a pencil on my face. A very rough marking, which would be refined later as I lay down paint.

I do not have stage by stage WIP images to show the painting process, as I was too involved to pause and click. I completed the face (ver 1.0) only to later realize that the proportion between the size of the face and height of my body wasn't alright. The width was fine, but the picture showed me taller than I actually am. I did not like it, and painted over the face again with flesh tint. I have emptied a tube of flesh tint for this picture alone and need to replenish my stock, btw!

Version 2.0 seemed alright with regards to the proportions overall, but I did not like the eyes. The eyes were perfect in version 1.0, but 2.0 altered this, and therefore the overall resemblance to myself was lesser. When the eyes are perfect, they kinda make up for other goof ups. But if the eyes go wrong even a wee bit, no amount of perfection in the other features will set right the overall painting. Here is a look at ver 2.0.


If I find something wrong, I do not have the patience to "correct" it. I would rather paint over it and start from scratch. Which is why I painted over the eyes alone when I felt they were not okay, and version 3.0 was born! I think the proportions are okay now and the eye also looks fine. A lot of shading is yet to be done though. It was getting too late and I was feeling sleepy, so decided to continue at a later point. Here is the portrait as it is right now -

At every stage, my only verification was with my daughter. If she could recognize me, I thought everyone else can! So I showed it to her and she was happy, which made me sort of relieved. But one thing that is nagging me is that the picture is terrible if seen in the mirror. When I am unsure if I am on the right track, I always use the mirror to judge my painting. And this time, it looks like someone else in the mirror (not that it looks 100% like me in the normal view either!:-) ) I have left it aside for sometime. Will go back to it later and spend some time analysing what needs to be done where, and I hope to complete this soon. Ofcourse, with background and all.

In the meantime, I would like to hear from you folks about what you think of this attempt. And suggest any changes too. Thank you!

Art with a timer!

I have always been awestruck with painters who can work fast and convey all they want to with as few brush strokes as possible. Work that is actually impressionistic but looks real. I wanted to give it a shot, after some impetus by plein air painter Larry Seiler at Wetcanvas. Working loose would come naturally to Plein air painters, as they have to capture the moment on canvas before the light changes. It comes with a lot of practice, and gives a lot of life to paintings. In this approach, there is hardly any attention to detail, only the relevant things are highlighted and the painting draws the viewer in.

What I have just completed is my first attempt at working loose. The goal was simple - to paint without spending too much time thinking. Just let myself loose on the canvas. This painting was done in just under an hour, from scratch. It was done using only 1 brush, a 1 inch flat brush. It was weird to actually paint with a timer, as though I was writing an examination!

Generally, my attitude towards an Acrylic or Oil painting is very lethargic. I take my strokes for granted, coz deep inside is the lurking feeling that if things don't work out as I expect, I can always paint over it again. This is an effort to kill that attitude and make every brush stroke count. At every stage, I noted down the time taken for that stage, and everything was painted only once. No redoing at any stage and I am happy for that reason.

Here is a quick look at the painting from start to finish.

Green Landscape - stage 1
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

Seen above is the initial sketch, as roughly as I could. My sketches for landscapes are generally very vague, I do not follow the picture to the T, but this was more sketchy than I normally do. The sketch was done in under a minute.

Green Landscape - stage 2
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

Then I start with the skies, and in about 5 minutes, do the sky with some cobalt blue and white. Then randomly do the clouds as I please. A touch of crimson here and there.

Green Landscape - stage 3
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I then do an underpainting of the far away trees in tones of red. This is to enhance the effect of the greens which will be done on top of the reds. I have not marked values, just done a plain monotone underpainting. Another 2 mins spent there.

Green Landscape - stage 4
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

And then I started with the greens, did a green wash without much details in the foreground. There is no actual depiction of grass as yet. This was about 15 minutes.

Green Landscape - Acrylics on Canvas, 12 * 16 inches
(c) Nithya Swaminathan
Original available, email me for purchase info.
Prints available here.

And finally I complete the painting with more details on the grass, complete the reflections of the sky etc. Another 25 minutes spent. So start to finish was done in approx one hour. I wanted to finish this Alla prima, in one sitting, but it got spilt over to two sessions. So that defines my next goal - to finish a painting in less than an hour and in one session. I have put this WIP into a slide show, check it out.

It is a lot of fun working like this, it is very liberating since there is no time to think and I just paint. My mind doesnt ponder over what I should do, it is only a spectator. I love the whole thing, though I cannot say for sure if this will be a new direction that I will focus on. Let us see. I would love to hear your views on this. And since my readers already know how much I suck at titles for paintings, I would love to hear some title suggestions as well. I just could not come up with one!

Conversation - with WIP

I generally work from reference images, and follow them pretty closely. My painting would be easily identifiable as based on whichever photo I use, coz I do not experiment to change much. I wanted to change this approach, thanks to a brilliant thread at Wetcanvas couple of months ago on 'How to use reference images' (too lazy to hunt the link!) and started this painting primarily as a challenge to myself. I wanted to see for myself how much I am able to differ from a photo and able to stand on my own. I picked up a black and white photo of this little girl that had no big details, no light source, and used that as the base to create this painting.

Conversation - stage 1

Nothing here is painted from my imagination, but the whole painting is based on a dozen images, combined in a way that I found appealing. Rather I imagined a scene in my mind, and hunted for pictures that had a lighting to suit, to create a mood etc etc. So its essentially my own composition, and that feels so good!

Initially, my idea was to add a colorful ball to the right side, and something like a butterfly close to the child. It was as if she was playing with the ball but her attention got to the colorful butterfly and the ball was lying unattended to! Well I was thinking about my daughter all along the painting and that is so typical of her. I did add a ball but did not like it and painted over it.

Conversation - stage 2

I felt kinda lost midway and thought of starting afresh on the canvas, but with a lot of compositional help from the experts at Wetcanvas, I could redeem the painting and make it a tad better. Someone at the acrylics forum suggested about adding a kitten/puppy and I loved that idea. So despite the fact that my bakcground was done completely in green, I added a kitten directly with some paint. That probably explains why that kitten looks kinda distorted.

And then I also felt that the child was looking older than she should. I wanted a girl of 2-3 yrs and she looked about 5 yrs I would say. So I worked on 'rounding' her arms a little more and making her size a little bigger so that she was the focal point. And since I felt there was too much of green all around, I added some flowers to the foreground.

Conversation - completed
Acrylics on Canvas, 16 * 20 inches
Original available
(c)Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

When I just thought I was done and went ahead and signed it, my husband said he did not like the kitten at all. He ofcourse was not able to tell me what the issue was, but worse still I wasnt able to point it out myself! Another artist said that the kitten is too big. Now I am in a fix, whether to make it smaller, or paint over it and put in something else there.. Maybe a butterfly, maybe a puppy or anything else. I have no clue as yet. Any comments and suggestions are welcome, I would love to hear different views on "What could it be thats keeping the girl so engrossed?!"

Conversation - detail view

What you see above is a closer look at the child and the kitten, do suggest any changes that you feel would make this a better painting. Thank you!

Autumn Woods - completed

Did anyone feel that my maples were a bit too yellow last time? Well I felt so, and I had to do something about it. That’s probably not the only reason why they look like gulmohars and not maples, but I wasn’t too happy with the leaves. I added some flesh tint on them to make them brighter, and darkened the crimson on the other side.

Autumn Woods
Acrylics on Canvas, 18 * 36 inches
(c) Nithya Swaminathan
Original Available

In my previous update, since the leaves had a lot of yellow and were surrounded by more of green and yellows last time, they were getting lost in the grayscale. The barks had a good range of values, but the leaves looked quite flat. I have changed that by adding a lot of dark blues surrounding the leaves, to push forward the maple leaves. And then I correspondingly reduced the yellows in the sunlit areas of the birch barks as well.

Some closeups of the painting for you guys. First is the closeup of the reflections. The reflections have been done by adding the barks first as bright as possible, and then doing several washes of blues and greens, and some browns here and there. Finally to get a better feel of water, I have added some dried leaves floating here and there. I am pretty happy with the reflections overall except for those of the maple leaves. The orange kinda sticks out. I have already got suggestions to tackle it, will probably be washing it over with some darker hues.

Autumn Woods - close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

This is a closer look at the middle part of the painting, the ferns and their reflections. This is also my favorite portion of the picture, the part that I am really happy about. I went about randomly doing the ferns but they turned out quite well.I also added some highlights on the ferns. And instead of having the bushes on either side look alike, I made one side have tall grasses. And the middle part is supposed to be a path of some sort, though it may not look like one.

Autumn Woods - close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

As I had already mentioned in the previous post, I felt like adding a couple of rocks in the middle. They look really nice, I can tell you. I like the mood that the rocks add, I feel like gingerly stepping on them and walking into those woods, ha!

Autumn Woods - Greyscale
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

Finally, a look at the grey scale, to determine the values in the painting. In this version, I am able to differentiate the background foliage from the maple leaves, which was missing in the previous version. I am fairly happy again with this as well.

While I was checking out slide.com, I just put together the WIP images of this painting and got a slide show done, aint it cool? Shows the flow of the painting from scratch to finish, more importantly shows me my own thought process, how I went off track at several places etc etc. It provides a good learning for me.

Here is a link to this thread at Wetcanvas. Have a look at the amazing results produced by the other artists as well. Such different paintings produced from one image. Awesome fun!

Autumn Woods - an update

I was absolutely dissatisfied with the leaves that I had begun in this painting. I had only done the initial layer and there was still a long way to go, but the first step itself was not in the right direction I felt. Being the oil painter that I am, I had this urge to pick up my palette knife and paint to my heart's content. And yeah, thats exactly what I did.

Autumn Woods - Stage 5
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I have no clue if acrylic painters actually use the palette knife, this was the first time I did. I have used it with oil paintings, and I love the textures the knife generates. My leaves now have got that texture too and I am liking it. The end result is satisfying, though they look like gulmohars and not maples, LOL! The reference image has no clear direction of light, which I wanted to change. Hence I introduced some light from the right side and pushed the darks in the shadows with a lot of blue. Also, I introduced some flesh tint and mild yellows in the barks that face the sunlight, to bring in the sunlit effect. Wonder if I have succeeded fully.

Autumn Woods - detail close up
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

What you see above is a little close up of the leaves, how haphazardly they are done without any actual leaf shapes. I love doing that. I simply picked up some scarlett red, orange and lemon yellow in my knife and went about it without a thought. The dark bluish black lines behind are shadows of the leaves and branches on the trees behind. I introduced these sharp shadows also to accentuate the sunlit effect that I was trying for.

Autumn Woods - stage 6
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I think I would call the top half of the painting done, excepting the ferns in the front. They need some more highlights on them and I am half way with them. I have just begun working on the reflection, have loosely laid in the barks. When I started with the reflections, I felt like adding some wet rocks along the banks. Some rocks with a coating of algae on them. Wonder if it would go along well with the painting or work against it. You will probably get to know that tomorrow.:-)

Autumn Woods – A challenge

This is my latest painting, that I am doing as part of a challenge in the Acrylics forum at Wetcanvas.

Recently, Celeste had done a small sized landscape of Autumn Woods and in the Acrylics forum, she was challenged to do it in a much larger format. Elaine and Celeste also decided to welcome anyone else who would be willing to join in and have fun. So the idea is to paint from a vague Autumn reference and create a painting that's better than the reference image. And the main challenge is to do in a big canvas. I had a 18 * 36 canvas lying idle for quite some time, and thought this was the best chance to use it. Though there are no deadlines as such, I get the motivation to paint on seeing the WIPs of everyone, and it's a lot of fun.

I made some additions to the original image by adding a water body in the foreground, and added some reflections of the woods. I love fall reflections and leaves, so wanted to paint them here. This was also since my canvas was too tall for just the trees. This is a WIP that I hope to complete during this weekend. My parents are visiting us so I am not sure how much work is going to get done, but there will be an update on Monday for sure.:-)

Autumn Woods - Stage 1

This is technically the second stage in the painting, the first one was my canvas filled with scribbles from my daughter! And I started thereafter and added the trees in white and grey. I also blocked the darkest darks with ultramarine blue and a lot of green. And I got most of the sky done too. This will be my first layer.

Autumn Woods - Stage 2

On top of it, I have started adding some greens and ochre yellow in the background, indicative of some bushes.

Autumn Woods - Stage 3

The next thing that I do is to add more foliage. A lot of glowing yellows and greens in the top for the leaves, and there are going to be a lot of orange maple leaves right in the middle. A good thing to do here would be to actually do the tree barks to completion and then do the leaves. But I am as impatient as my daughter, if not more, and I want to get a 'feel' of how everything would look together, so I have started with the leaves right away.

Autumn Woods - Stage 4

And then I start adding some more detail to the barks, nowhere near complete though. I add some darker greys and browns to the birch tree barks. This is where my painting is right now. I have spent about 2 nights on this one, and there is still a long way to go.

Autumn Woods - Foliage close up

Here is a little close up of my leaves which fall on the top left of the canvas. I promise that they are leaves, though they don't look so. I will define the shapes properly as I progress and make sure they look like leaves and not some patches of color thrown in.

Autumn Woods - Trees close up

Here is another close up of the barks, which are still only about 20% done. A lot more to do there as well. It is mind blowing to see the progress of everyone else, and I am learning a lot in the process. And having a hell a lot of fun. I can't wait to get my hands on the canvas tonight.

Watch this space for more updates.

Bougainvillea Pots

In the acrylics forum at Wetcanvas, we have a project titled "Different Strokes" running for every month. On the 1^st, an image is posted on the forum and everyone paints with the same photo as reference. We do not show our works in progress, but reveal the final image on the 20^th. It is great fun and awesome stuff to see how each artist approaches the same subject. I have always wanted to take part in this one, but been lazy. Last month's reference was too good to miss, and I got the better of my laziness! No prizes for guessing that I got lazy again this month.

Bougainvillea Pots
Acrylics on Canvas, 10 * 12 inches.
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

The reference image had a line of flower pots on a terrace of a building, with some coconut trees in the background. I did not like those trees, so I changed the terrace to be more like a balcony at ground level and gave this background of waves. I really liked how this one turned out. I spent about 2 nights on it, and was happy with the results.

I also mustered a little courage to be a little different in chosing my colours. I used bold strokes of purple for my shadows, which I normally wouldn't do. I would do my shadows in diluted black, but tried it this time and liked it. Even though the strokes would stand out in real, it gels on the image as a whole. The whole idea of the project is to experiment and I am glad I found time for it.

Orange still life

This is a still life I did as part of the ATC Exchange at Wetcanvas. This picture is based on a beautiful photo by Henz Fotojam in Flickr. I had asked his permission to paint the photo, to which he graciously agreed. I initially wanted to try an oil painting of this one on a black surface, but ended up doing a colored pencil drawing on white stonehenge paper.

Still life with Oranges
pvt collection of Ardith
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I was mainly attracted to this reference because of the beautiful flowing fabric that was so rich in color. I absolutely suck at doing fabric, and wanted to give it a go. I am sure I did not succeed fully, but was happy for a first step.

Also, I tried a complementary underpainting with this one, where I did the first layer in red and crimson for the fabric and mild blues for the oranges. Then went over them with the actual colors. As I had mentioned already, the ATC project gave a chance to try a lot of new things, since it was very less consuming thanks to the miniature size.

Fall all the way

I love fall colors, maybe more so because I have never experienced it being in Madras all my life! Needless to say such vibrant hues make for great painting subjects as well. For the ATC exchange, I did about 14 landscapes in fall colors. Most of them turned out quite well. Have a look at the first set of those.

Autumn reflections, 2.5 * 3.5 inches, pvt. collection of Pat Halverson
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

The above painting is Chander's favorite among all the cards that I did. I was not very pleased with it initially, I probably tried to do too much in too little space. But it looks quite appealing to me now. I like the scan better than the original!

Across the Bridge - 3.5 * 2.5 inches , Pvt. collection of Mariette Hebert
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

These have been done with colored pencils, with final touches with acrylic paints. I will probably describe the technique in detail later.

In the woods - 2.5 * 3.5 inches, private collection of Monica Gillis
copyright Nithya Swaminathan

I guess this will do for now. I shall post the rest of the paintings later, and I will also flaunt the little gems that I received. A lot of them deserve to be framed, I am absolutely delighted and honoured to have got them. What a treasure!