49. Winter Sun

This is the painting that I completed and trashed a couple of days ago. My smallest brush lost its life just when I needed it to do the winter trees and branches a little delicately.:) And I got so irritated with the output from a slightly larger brush. On second thoughts today, I felt I could salvage the painting and don't have to paint over it so soon. So after I bought some new brushes yesterday, went over the trees alone today and I think it is done now.:)

Winter Sun
Acrylics on Canvas, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

This is a sprawling lawn in my neighborhood, and thanks to the snow, it was covered without a speck of green being visible. The winter sun was shining so nicely and I found the whole scene so irresistible. Let me know your feedback on this one.

48. Pears #2

So we continue with the next painting in the "new" series of pears. I am curious to hear any critique or feedback on these pieces. Compared to the pears I did a few months ago, there is a definite change in technique, colors and my approach to the paintings. Which one do you like better? While the older set had too much of red popping out, I am varying the colors a little more now. I am keeping it looser too, not being too hard on the edges. And another key difference is that these pieces are painted on black, whereas I painted on a white gessoed surface last time around. That makes a huge difference, and I love painting on black!

Pears #2
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

I wonder which one looks better, do let me know what you think! More Pears to come in the coming days.

47. Back to the Pears

I was working on some snow landscapes yesterday, and they were kind of driving me crazy. I did not want to pick up the smallest brushes and nitpick with details, but thats what I am tempted to do. It is like an instinct, I just use the smallest brush when it comes to buildings or any other details. I did finish a painting but trashed it in the end! So much for all the nitpicking!

Huddled
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

So wanted to loosen up today, and decided to paint a familiar subject. All too familiar aren't they? Do you remember these pears from about 6 months ago? I was real quick on this one, just iicked up a big 1.5 inch flattie, and did this in less than 45 minutes. I decided to stop it when it reached a decent shape, with flaws and all that. It was awesome to paint that way. I really needed this to get back into rhythm!

Oh yeah, I have a lot more of the same pears coming up. This time, I have cropped them much closer than what I did last time. Generally, I do not crop images in a way that a part of an object gets pruned. This time I have experimented a bit and come up with some different crops. I hope the compositions work. Stay tuned for more fruits :-)

Stuttgart Christmas Market - WIP

This is the painting that I am working on currently, a cityscape clicked during one of the Christmas Markets that we visited last month. This picture is from the Weihnachtsmarkt of Stuttgart. Cityscapes are new for me, absolutely unknown territory and building perspective generally gives me jitters. I am trying to work on some of my weakest areas in landscape painting, viz. buildings and a general feel of distance. It is also shot from an interesting angle, from atop one of the rides we went in. I am not sure if this qualifies as an aerial view, it is like a balcony view perhaps :-)

Weihnachtsmarkt Stuttgart - WIP
Acrylics on Canvas, 16 * 20 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

This is only part of the painting, the backdrop so to say. There is a lot more activity in the foreground and we are not yet there. I am taking this one slowly, as I don't want to mess it up :) Watch this space for more updates, and the finished painting hopefully next week.

46. Waterlily #18

This is the last of the waterlilies, for now that is. I kinda got tired by the time I finished this one, a little bored with all the lilies. So I just decided to stop with one today. I wanted to squeeze in one more, but not at the cost of me not enjoying the process anymore. I've had enough flowers for now! As mentioned earlier, my original plan was to do these lilies over this month but they are now done much faster. I might get back to couple of more of these later in the month, but I am not sure. I may or may not do more. There aren't many references left anyway.:)

Waterlily #18
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

Apart from this I also worked on a couple of larger paintings today, and will post them during the week. And we shall move onto a new subject tomorrow! Let me know all your critiques and feedback on the lilies. I had a blast doing them, did you enjoy them as much? Let me know!

45. Waterlily #17

After one lily with no green, I switched to this one with a lot of green. I like the images with these huge lily pads. They are such a joy to paint! These giant sized lily pads apparently can support a lot of weight and stay afloat, despite the delicate nature of the leaf. I remember a photo in the Wilhelma park showing a toddler sitting on a lily pad :-) I'd like to someday try painting these lily pads and flowers in a more realistic style as well, as there is so much detail to capture in there.

Waterlily #17
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

I also tried changing my approach to this whole painting a little bit. In all previous paintings, I did a rough sketch and painted the water leaving out the floating leaves. This resulted in the water being a little choppy and not very smooth. With this one however, I did not do an underlying sketch at all. I just painted the water in various shades of green first. And then painted the leaves and flowers over it.:) So the edges where the water surrounds the other objects are not broken and choppy.

This one was also very quick, in complete contrast to the previous painting. This one almost painted itself. That's the most joyous state to paint in, where the painting simply "knows" where its going and we just go with the flow. Happens so rarely, but the feeling is completely worth the wait.

I'd greatly appreciate all your comments and any feedback on this one. Thanks for looking!

44. Waterlily #16

A waterlily with no trace of green today.:) The lighting is not great, a rather cloudy image. I liked the reference for the bluishness, it looks like its washed in purple. Only a couple of days back I was telling how the even numbered ones have turned out better, but that's not the case today.:) This one was quite laboured, I was not at all happy with the result and was going on tweaking this one. The second painting of today was a breeze in comparison.

Waterlily #16
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

Your comments and feedback is most welcome!

43. Waterlily #15

Second painting for today. I think the composition is not quite balanced, as the right side has all the flowers and I wonder if the left side holds any interest to the viewer. I am not entirely sure of this composition working. I will leave it for a couple of days, and if I feel it is not right, then add something more to balance it out.

Waterlily #15
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

Let me know if you have any feedback. 9 days into the month and I am so averaging 2 paintings a day, which I am very happy about :-) I hope I am able to pull off two more tomorrow as well.

42. Waterlily #14

It looked for a moment today that I may not be able to complete a painting at all. The whole morning was gone in a snow expedition here for us. Several inches of snow had accumulated overnight, and so a trip to the grocery turned out to be a two hour long adventure. After all that we were quite worn out and I did not expect I'd be able to get any work done today. But thankfully, I could engage my little one with some stuff and started this painting from scratch and finished it.:)

Waterlily #14
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

Let me know what you think of this one.

41. Waterlily #13

It is hard to believe that we are 13 paintings up already in the series! This is by far the fastest I have worked in a long long while. I was expecting that I'd be painting lilies the whole of this month, but looks like it won't even last till middle of the month. I am now hoping to wrap up the series early next week. And there are at least 5 more lilies to come.:)

Waterlily #13
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

I don't like this one at all. It is the weakest painting of the series so far in my opinion. I actually called it complete yesterday, but was not at all happy and chose not to post it. Tweaked it a bit today, but still not happy. Calling it done anyway. While I am okay with the reflections and the leaves, I think the flowers turned out miserable. I will probably get to it after a couple of days, when I can tweak it some more. What do you think?

40. Waterlily #12

One of my friends commented that all the even numbered lilies have turned out better than the odd numbered ones. I have to completely agree with that, and also add that it is coincidental. I don't assign an even number to the better paintings :-)

Waterlily #12
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

Which ones do you like? Any favorites so far?

39. Waterlily #11

Today was a weird day. My daughter had her kindergarten reopened after a 3 week break today. And I had about 5 hours of uninterrupted time for myself to paint. But as luck would have it, I was totally not feeling well. The only thing I wanted to do was sleep, but somehow managed to keep myself awake and complete 2 paintings. I have three more at about 90% completion, which I hope to get done tomorrow. :)

Waterlily #11
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

This one was a toughie. All the underwater leaves and the dirt etc gave me quite a time. Such beautiful leaves in such hopelessly dirty water :) Let me know how you like it.

38. Waterlily #10

I decided to keep this painting really simple, not play around too much. So this one took very less time, less than an hour for the whole painting. That's normally way less time than I take for a painting of this size. The other lilies were all around two to two and a half hours I think. This is one color combo that really appeals to my senses, purple with green. I like how the purple flowers look against all that green. And these lilies are so very different from all the other ones, in that they almost look like spikes and not delicate petals :)

Waterlily #10
Acrylics on board, 5 * 7 inches
Copyright Nithya Swaminathan

Let me know your comments!

37. Powder coated

This one's too from a neighbor's garden, along our stroll :) I don't have to tell you that there was not a human in sight, as no sane person goes walking in this kind of weather. Apart from the fitness freaks of course! (I almost faint seeing the runners.) All the playing in the snow resulted in a throat infection for me, so pathetic that I had to go in a search of a doc today, it being a holiday here and all that! I hate going to the doctor, and this trip today took away 1 hour of my precious time. I could've done one more lily otherwise. Huh!

Powder Coated
Acrylics on gallery wrapped canvas, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

This reference is full of pebbles, completely covered in snow. I wonder if the structure of the pebbles comes across clearly. It is a beautiful reference and I am not sure if I have done justice to it. I admire artists who paint snow that actually looks like snow, it is a big challenge. And it is one of the top most things that I want to improve in my art. I hated how I painted snow last year, in all those winter scenes. It looked pathetic beyond any redemption! So I continue taking baby steps in the direction to "painting better snow" :)

36. Cotton Candy

I love winter and how beautiful the landscape looks in winter. Even without snow, there is something very appealing about the barren trees and the muted landscape. In my opinion, it is even more a visual treat than fall. If only the weather wasn't so hopeless, I'd stroll around clicking everything that I could lay my eyes on!

Cotton Candy
Acrylics on gallery wrapped canvas, 5 * 7 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

On the 2nd of Jan, we woke up to a complete white cover all around. The New Year started with so much snow that we were quite thrilled to see it. My daughter loves to play in the snow, make snowballs, run around leaving deep footprints and all that. So we just went for a walk and clicked some pictures of the snow. This painting is from a garden in one of the pretty houses along my road. I love to feel fresh powdery snow. And the winter sun shining on the snow was so lovely that it immediately tempted me to a painting!

Snow being such a difficult thing to paint, I am not sure how I did. I am not entirely happy, but I am working on it. Let me know your comments.