Merry Christmas!

I'd like to wish all my collectors, readers and everyone else a very Merry Christmas. May you be blessed with a lot of peace and happiness in life. This is a new still life that I painted yesterday. I hope you like it. :)

Merry Christmas
Acrylics on Canvas, 8 by 8 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan
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Now on YouTube - bookmark it my dear readers!

This was looooong due, and am I mighty glad that I finally overcame my laziness! Since videos are *hugely* popular, maintaining an active YouTube channel has been on my to-do list for so long! And everytime I started working on it, I realized it was very time consuming and would so something else instead. Today somehow I decided that I had to complete it.

A year in paintings, Originals by Nithya Swaminathan, 2010

I am a complete novice with iMovie, and was figuring out things with the help of some how-to videos and stuff. I must say of course that Apple makes it child's play with iMovie, to create videos, add music etc etc. I am yet to explore it fully. I have also wanted to do some demo videos of how exactly I paint. I think it is quite interesting to see an artist at work, coz each one of us is so different from the others. I hope to get that done during the holidays as well. A simple short demo of my working with the palette knife. Let's see.

I have right now uploaded two videos, both only of my floral paintings. It does not contain all the florals done this year though. I have omitted more than 50 of them as they were downright embarrassing. However good or bad the work looks, it is I must say extremely gratifying to see all of them together. And to actually think that I have painted quite a lot during the course of the year.

Original Floral Paintings by Nithya Swaminathan, 2010

Looking at the videos, I think the transition time between pictures is too less, kind of changing in a hurry. Let me know what you think. Any feedback is greatly appreciated as I am a complete beginner. Even feedback about the background music, do you think a voice over would make more sense, and so on! Thanks so much for viewing, and please feel free to share! :)

"Ablaze" - New Oil Painting

Last night I was working on a Christmas still life with Acrylics. And painted this one with oils, for a break from my Acrylic paints. Working on multiple pieces at once is great fun but is maddening. And if you throw in a mix of oil and acrylics into this, it is drama of the highest order. New set of paints, new set of brushes, new palette and everything else! Thats's kinda how I work.

I have all my materials, oils and acrylics within reach, within sight. Pick up a different canvas and brushes depending on my mood and just take off from where I left.

Ablaze
Oil on Canvas, 4 by 12 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

My method of working might leave anyone else completely dazed, but it works like a charm for me. I am disorganized as disorganized can be. I paint sitting down, with at least 5 panels around me. So yesterday, as my paint was drying a bit, I was waiting. If I did not have this other canvas within sight, I'd have probably spent the waiting time browsing facebook or some other crap. What I did instead, was pick up this long canvas, pick up my oil paints and palette and stuff, and started painting. Voila! It was completed in half an hour. Or 45 mins at the max.

This was great fun. And after a long long time, this painting is done entirely with a brush. It is not textured. I still love it. Actually love how all the three long canvasses turned out. I think I should work in this format a little more. It has a lot of scope for interesting compositions.

Please click on the image for a larger view. Thank you!

Reading by the Lake V - New Oil Painting

Continuing with the reading series of paintings, this one is done with Oils though. Oil paints are much more fun when used with the palette knife, they are much easier to work with than Acrylics. The drawback of course is that they take ages to dry. What with oil paints "normally" taking so long, the paint is so thick with the knife and drying is a never ending process.

Reading by the lake V
Oil on Canvas, 10 by 12 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

There are some areas that I am not happy with in this painting. Some that I really like too. I am pleased with the overall figure, but the contrast between the guy's nose and the background is very minimal and it is kinda lost somewhere. The background and foreground turned out much better than the Acrylic pieces. I am planning to buy some smaller canvasses and go berserk with oils for a while. I love love love them!

Do you like this one? Better than the ones done with Acrylics? Any comments/feedback? Thank you!

Neck Out - New Textured Acrylic Painting

During my birthday in July, we had gone on a short beach vacation in the Netherlands. But as Murphy would have it, it was too windy and rainy on the day that we could not even walk on to the beach. In an instinct, like my husband and I make a lot of decisions, we drove to Amsterdam. We went on this awesomely romantic "Amsterdam by Night" cruise through the lovely canals at around sundown. This picture was clicked during that cruise.

Amsterdam doesn't have many tall buildings, hardly any. The guide was telling that this is the tallest building in the city or something to that effect, but I was busy watching the gorgeous light fall on the building and tried to get the best possible picture of it. I knew I would paint it, that very instant. I clicked to paint it infact. Now after some googling, Wiki tells me that this is the Westertoren, the tallest church in Amsterdam at a height of 85m. I clicked this almost lying on my back in the boat, which is why the extremely unique angle.

Neck Out
Acrylics on Canvas, 4 by 12 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

Click on the image for a larger view. I had a blast painting this one. Great fun! Let me know what you think.

Carnation - New Oil Painting

God knows after how long I have picked up my oil paints. My last piece was in 2003, as a rank amateur. I love oils, as does any other artist. The richness in color is quite unmatched. When I started working in 2004, I was hardly doing any painting, and when I ventured again in 2006, I began afresh with Acrylics. One big reason was that with a baby around, I did not want fingerprints and footprints (!!) in my still-wet oil paintings. Acrylics were a safe bet.

Now that my kiddo is four and a half years old, I thought I must teach her that these paints will take time to dry and she cannot feel them until then. I love her enthusiasm in wanting to touch and feel my work, but now I have to curtail that in order to work with oils.

I expected that my love affair with oils would still be intact and that we would take off from where we left. Hardly! Somehow, in the recent past, over the last year to be specific, my speed has increased by leaps and bounds. I can start and finish a piece, even up to 9 by 12 inches in size, in a couple of hours. My speed of working had as much to do with the awesome Acrylic paints, as it had to do with hundreds of hours of practice. I don't have to care about going wrong with Acrylics, I can always paint over. I can do that with oils too, but not until they dry. Which is like 5 days. It is like a chiseling process now, to chip out my mistakes and get myself equally comfortable with oils too.

Carnation
Oil on Canvas, 4 by 12 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

I started one of the Reading series of paintings in oils, and reached a point where I had to paint over something and that had to wait. Realized that I must get over my rustiness with something simpler, not a figure for sure. So what better than a flower for me! Had picked up these long canvasses and it seemed perfect for this gorgeous flower. This was done in an hour or so, and I am slowly getting back at ease with the lovely oil paints. Hope to strike a balance between Oils and Acrylics going forward. I can always work a bit with an oil, leave it to dry and finish couple of Acrylic pieces in the meanwhile :)

Your comments are welcome!

Reading by the lake IV - Impressions of a European Summer

I have named this one too as "Reading by the lake" just to keep with the theme, as they're a series you see. But then, this is not actually from a lake. It is from a nearby park that we used to frequent in summer. Since it was well within the theme of this series and captured the same spirit, I wanted to paint this one too.

Reading by the Lake IV
Acrylics on Canvas, 10 by 10 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

This one I think is my favorite among the series. I am quite pleased with the result. I did this one entirely with the palette knife, including the body and hair. Resisted the brush temptation entirely and am quite happy with that. :) I would love to hear from you, what do you think.

With this painting, I am done with the pending figurative pieces I had I think. Or wait, I have couple of more dancers pending that are half way through. Should get to them after I complete a landscape that has been lying around for a while now. My head spins thinking about all the incomplete work and I hate to get into the New Year that way. On finishing up all the incomplete ones, I hope to make this blog a daily painting blog from next year onwards. Let's see. :)

Reading by the lake III - Impressions of a European Summer

When I go out to shoot photos of people or places on a well lit sunny day, it is amazing how many of them actually get converted to paintings. Almost all the pictures barring a few have great lighting, good shadows and make really interesting subjects to paint. All that I generally do is push up the color saturation a bit and it gets even more exciting.

Reading by the lake III
Acrylics on Canvas, 10 by 10 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

Compare that with taking pictures now, it gets really pathetic with uniform lighting, hardly any shadows and so on. Doesn't excite me much at all. I was painting a lot of snowy scenes the last couple of winters, but I am not so excited this time. I do have a lot of gorgeous snow references from our Austria trip though, and who knows, some of them could turn into paintings :)

I would love to hear your feedback on this one. And on the series as a whole. Do the "Impressions of a European Summer" pieces excite you? :)

Dancing feet #1 - SOLD

Another painting of mine sold today. This was the first Tango painting that I did and my favorite among all the Tango pieces. I had a blast doing it, and was thrilled that it sold. My client wrote to me saying "This piece spoke to me"! I was floating for a while upon hearing such a thing. It is things like these that make me feel extremely grateful of the fact that I am able to do what I love to. She made my day today :)

Dancing Feet
Acrylics on board, 5 by 7 inches
SOLD

God bless patrons who support artists!

Reading by the lake II - Impressions of a European Summer

I am sure you'd have known by now that I badly need some sunshine. Desperate really, and it is just the start of winter. I am so done with the snow already! In Germany, it rains all through the year. When it isn't raining, it snows. Phew! No wonder no one here ventures even to the supermarket without checking the weather.

So that cribbing aside, I wanted to get to this piece just to fulfill my mission of not having unfinished pieces during the turn of the year. Started this one too during summer actually, soon after the Reading the lake I. I started 4 pieces at once, in similar square canvasses. Unfortunately only one went to completion and the others were lying around. Well, not anymore. I loved this scene too, an elderly couple having a relaxed afternoon at the lake side, book in hand and some chatter. What more does one need in life! I wanted to capture that "perfect afternoon" feeling.

Reading by the lake II
Acrylics on Canvas, 10 by 10 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

I wanted to keep away from the brush as much as possible, but had to pick it up for the bodies. My knife was screwing things up and the brush *had* to intervene. The backdrop, the umbrella and parts of the bodies are with the knife. Some tweaks have been done with the brush. I am not entirely happy with it, the perspective of the umbrella is bothering me a bit, I might tweak after a few days. When it was going on and on without any perceivable change, I decided to stop it for the time being. Must see how it looks in a couple of days.

I enhanced the color saturation a bit and modified some of the colors from the original scene. This one too is like the previous painting, with the paint continuing to the sides of the canvas too. It can be hung as it is without a frame and will still look great. Better still, two from the series can be hung together :-) Your feedback is most welcome.

After my craving-for-sunshine paintings are done, I want to get a couple of still lifes done with holiday decorations and stuff. We do not celebrate christmas, I do not decorate a christmas tree. Despite all that, the season tempts me to buy something and a still life is the perfect excuse. I hope I have the time.

Reading by the lake - SOLD

Last weekend, I was not in town. We had been on a short ski trip with friends and I had no access to mail. And when I came back to the online world, it was unbelievable to see my painting "Reading by the Lake" was sold. I was thrilled to bits, needless to say.:)

This was one of my favorite pieces from this summer, if not THE favorite. It was a welcome break from the hundreds of florals that I painted, and a scene that I thought captured the essence of summer in this part of the world. I would like to thank my client who bought this painting and I hope he loves it as much as I did.

Reading by the Lake
10 by 10 inches, Acrylics on Canvas
SOLD

I have shipped my painting to my client and I am waiting with bated breath to hear back from him. I am usually a bundle of nerves in this period between shipping a painting and hearing from the client. I keep wondering all sorts of things - what if the client does not like it in person, what if it doesn't reach in good shape and so on. The list is endless. Anyway, I hope all goes well and I get to hear a positive response soon. :)

New Painting - Bring me some sunshine!

I was tired of the grey and gloomy November that I badly wanted to bring in some color. The sun simply wouldn't show up no matter how hard you prayed, so I had to create my own little piece of sunshine.:) Coming from a city that has nothing called a winter, the winters here are truly a nightmare. I love how the landscape takes a complete turn around and all, but the cold really gets onto me after a while.

But all the cribbing aside, we also managed a short ski trip last weekend with friends. We were chilling out, no freezing in Austria and it was great fun. I had never even seen ski shoes before so it was a completely new experience and good fun. Fell down more number of times than I could count.:)

Bring me some sunshine
16 by 16 inches, Acrylics on Canvas
© Nithya Swaminathan

I wanted to paint something really vibrant, and what better than sun flowers! This is from a reference in WetCanvas and I loved painting it. I am not really happy with the compositions of the individual panels, they don't make sense separately. But since it is meant to be as a whole I guess it is not so bad after all.

Your comments are welcome!

Still life with Hydrangeas - Take two

I had started with my Hydrangeas set up on a white surface and was half way through with them. Meanwhile, it was really weird to be painting on white after a long long time. All through this year I was painting on black, and it was like something was amiss! So I decided to paint the same set up again on black. Not exactly the same, but slightly different. I usually take a lot of snaps of the same setup and compose them later, so the two paintings are from slightly different references.

Still Life with Hydrangeas - take two
12 by 16 inches, Acrylics on Canvas
© Nithya Swaminathan

Instead of just varying the surface alone, I also brought in some changes to the palette. The painting on the white background is done with a warm palette, my usual kind of palette with a lot of reds and browns. This painting on the other hand is done with a much cooler palette. I have gone in for a lot of blues and cooler hues like magenta instead of crimson and so on. It was fun painting both and I like both. If I were to pick one though, I like the previous one better.

I would love to hear from you. Which painting do you like better of the two? All feedback is most welcome!

Still life with Hydrangeas - take one

You would be forgiven if you don't even remember this post about having this painting as a work in progress, 6 months ago! I had actually started it almost a year ago, posted an update 6 months later and it has slept ever since. When I was looking back at the year in order to make some year end posts perhaps, what struck me immediately was the number of paintings that were lying unfinished. Nothing new about it, but this year has certainly been different. In all these past years, I had about 5 completed works and a dozen unfinished. Right now, I have about 4-5 works in progress but more than 300 paintings completed this year thanks to my pet project. That, to me is a huge change, by far the biggest success that came out of my mammoth undertaking.

So coming back, I wanted to complete all the works in progress before starting the New Year. And this one jumped at me first, as it had the dubious distinction for being a WIP for the longest time this year. :) This is from my own setup as always. The lace in the set up is my curtain. I had the vase and the plums set up and wanted some drapery around. Tried some other fabrics but did not quite get the look I was after. In a flash of brilliance, I just pulled down my curtain and voila! There it was, as I had in mind and ready to paint.

Still life with Hydrangeas
Acrylics on Canvas, 12 by 16 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan

I was not going after a realistic feel at all, as has been the case these days what with my knife taking over! How it turned out though is quite different from what I had visualized. I think this painting is much more loose in style compared to all my recent work. I kind of let it paint itself so to say. I like the end result, and I am glad I stopped it without ruining the painting. I was not at all happy with the painting when I decided to pause and take a WIP photo. When I saw the painting through the lens though, I felt it was much closer to completion than what I thought. It looked better through the lens than through my eyes :)  Then I decided not to mess any further and keep it as it was, flaws and all.

These are not real hydrangeas by the way, plastic flowers from IKEA in a vase that I really liked :) Your feedback is most welcome. This post is titled take one, as there is a take two as well, as you might have already guessed. Stay tuned.

How to: Set up your Art website easily with Wordpress - Part 1

As mentioned earlier, I wanted to do a series of techie posts to enable artists to migrate to wordpress. If you already blog on wordpress, and want to have a portfolio/gallery also included in your blog to make it look more complete, then this would help you too. But before I go into the details of setting up with Wordpress, this part is actually about what led me to choose Wordpress.

I have seen a lot of artists using a Mac. A LOT actually. The Mac seems to be a very popular choice among artists and photographers, myself included. While the Mac is indeed fantastic for image processing and image organizing, choosing iWeb for my website was a bad idea. The main factor that influenced my decision in favour of iWeb was the ease of maintenance. It is unbelievably easy that my daughter could do it. For a largely static website, it is indeed a great choice. But then, I did not want a static website really. In my home page for instance, I would like to have my most recent works displayed and this display to be updated automatically everytime I upload new work. iWeb makes this like this extremely difficult, for those who are not proficient Mac users if I may add. It's been only a year since I converted, so there could be stuff possible with iWeb too, but well given a choice I'd spend my time painting than doing it.

The things that I looked for in a solution are:

1. Sleek and minimal look and feel, sans any clutter. Uniform look and feel in my portfolio and my blog pages.

2. Easy to update.

3. Adept at handling images - converting them to a portfolio, sorting images into sub galleries. In short easy to upload, organize and maintain my works.

4. Facilitating collectors to buy directly from my website without having to login to a store or anything of that sort.

I had quite a few issues with iWeb, most of them related to the way images and photo galleries are organized. If you look at it, the other pages, like the Artist statement or Biography, they are largely static. It is the image gallery that is the crux to a good artist website and I found iWeb severely lacking in this.

Some of my pet peeves were:

1. No permalink for each image in the gallery

Now if I have to link to a single image in any blog post, I cannot. Only the album as a whole has a unique link and each image is just bookmarked there. This is a major drawback in an Artist portfolio where images are the key. These days, with the omnipresent facebook like button, it really helps if each image has it's own page and a like button to go with it. Makes it really easy for someone to share your work with others.

2. Not very easily customizable

It took me quite a while to actually get to know where the files of the templates can be found and how to tweak them etc. I am one who looks for a ready made template but I like to add my modifications to it. I do not like my website to look like any one else's, so the template/theme being unique is very important to me. iWeb cannot really be customized at the code level, like modifying the CSS or something. I did look through a lot of video tutorials later on and saw that it indeed is quite a flexible platform, but I prefer meddling with code anyday. That's just a personal choice again, and not something prefered if you do not have a technical background.

3. Cannot add links to images

You can create an image gallery in iWeb in less than 30 seconds. You just need to drag and drop your images and it organizes them into a beautiful gallery with a slideshow option embedded. In a blink literally. But now, if I want to add a paypal button below each image, I cannot. If I want to give a link to my blog post about this particular work, I cannot. These things really get onto my nerves. iWeb also offers very little customization on how these images appear, their borders, frames etc. I spent days on end trying to figure out how to add a paypal button below each image, without sacrificing the features that the image gallery offered, all in vain. Of course as I said earlier, if this is indeed possible and if someone could enlighten me, I would gladly stand corrected. I would definitely like to know, out of curiousity.

4. A good for nothing blogging platform

iWeb also offers the option to blog, but it is a joke really. It has absolutely nothing in terms of features and it is something even less than primitive. When my whole idea when I moved from blogger was to integrate my blog and website, and here I was left with only two options - one, to still have them separate defeating the whole purpose of my move and all the $$ I spent in hosting. Two, was to choose a blog template that is similar in look and feel to my iWeb template and allow seamless navigation between the two. I chose the latter, and for a long time was updating two different sites literally and taking a lot of time to make them look seamless. I guess I came up with this brilliance in one of those moments, and would strictly not recommend it at all. I cannot even think anyone else would be that stupid to come up with this idea.

So that is in a nutshell why I finally made a move from iWeb. While I have moved to wordpress, I'd like to add a word about good old blogger here. Within weeks of my move, blogger introduce the "pages" feature, thereby making it ridiculously easy to integrate a blog and portfolio. If I had not spent money on hosting, that's what I'd have done. I might revert after my hosting ends in another couple of years, but it is too early to tell. As of now I am thrilled with Wordpress and could just choose to stay. More techie tips and tricks soon to follow.