Pastel demo

Sanskarbharti -group where my painting got direction had organized 3 days cultural festival " Kala sadhak Sangam" from 25th to 27th Dec. About 1500+ members/artist from Goa, Konkan, Mumbai, Thane came together. There were presentations ,performances which included forms like Drama, Rangoli, music, literature. From painting group about 10 of us demonstrated how we paint in our Sunday outdoors. I did a pastel demo. This was not a demonstration of how to paint rather it was how we paint as a group. I did half size pastel landscape in about 40 minutes.

BTW I just noticed that exactly year back I did my first post on blogger. I was not sure if this blog would survive but with all your support and guidance it's going strong. big thank you and wish everyone very happy new year.

big tree

I always wanted to paint this perticular location as found this tree growth very attractive ,could not do so as this one is at cross roads and very dificult to sit and paint there. Finally few months back I pulled my car to one side of the road and started painting. The road was not empty as you would think looking at painting .I survived all the dust and smoke -can say this is one of the most dificult painting in that sense :)

trees

Year end is approaching and have been busy with some work .posting one old painting to keep this blog alive

National park -Palms

Mumbai National park is 5 minutes drive from my place and I end up painting these sposts again and again. This is one such painting done today

portrait

painting video

www.maayboli.com is website dedicated to Marathi language and culture(footsteps of Mrathi around the world as site tagline says :) ). Maayboli was the first sites to publish Diwali ank on net which started 10 years back. Diwali ank ( special editions of Mgazines published during diwali days)has got special place in hearts of Maharastrians and has tradition of more than 100 years since firdst diwali ank was publsihed.

One of my painting video is published as part of this year's maayboli.com's diwali issue. (its published on youtube)

Here is the video .The video quality and editing is not good and will try to improve next time.

Those who know marathi can read maayboli diwali ank at http://www.maayboli.com/hitguj_diwali_ank/hda_2009/index.html it's must read

Thank you

Want to thank you all the well-wishers who helped me directly or indirectly with my show "Vasaiscapes".
Sharad Tawade ( http://sharadtawade.com/ ) well-known artist from Mumbai inaugurated the show. Many of my co-artists, seniors , family and friends were around to encourage me.
All seven days turn out was good and happened to meet many local artists from the Vasai town. speaking to likes of Mr. Shanker Modgekar (Author of Figure Drawing Made Easy www.graceartbooks.com/figure.html ) and Mr Arun Marathe ( ex- principal Model Art Institute Mumbai) helped me understand the improvement areas.
It was indeed a happy moment when well-known Marathi author Veena Gavhanakar ( Ek hota Carver - biography written by her is inspiration to many) visited and appreciated the paintings.
Local newspapers and http://www.vasai.com/ website covered the exhibition and provided good exposure.
Again Want to thank you all

Invitation

My landscape exhibition “ Vasaiscapes ” is being held at Marathe Art Gallery -Vasai from 25th to 31st October.
These are plein air landscape done in and around beautiful town Vasai and hence the name of the exhibition “Vasaiscapes”.

Vasai is close to Mumbai and blessed with seashore, lakes and greenery. It's also a historical place mainly known for Vasai Fort and some old Churches around.

Vasaiscape is small showcase of my work and appreciate your presence. Those who can’t make it to the venue, please wish me luck. :)

lakeview

These small lakes are typically full of water during rains and start drying up towards summer.

experiment

Call it experiment or determination :) I somehow tend to overdo the washes and then ruin painting. So in this painting I tried to complete most of the painting in one or two washes only. Sky is one single wash, green foliage in backdrop is single wash, tree on left is single wet in wet wash and rest is done in two washes. Hopefully I have retained the freshness way it is required

This is backside of oldage home at Vasai .

stilllife study

stilllife study.

By the seashore

While doing seascapes I always tend to make mistake of drawing horizon in middle. Here in this simple seascape have tried to avoid that

wada

Wada is old style house.These are found across Maharashtra. these old structures are now making way for new buildings.

This painting is done with reference from one of my old painting

Near Remedy Church

Approach to Remedy Church -Vasai
The house behind is probably home for priest .

Naka

Naka is busy corner in small towns.This is Vasai Parnaka. Done from sketch I had done sometime back. BTW many town in Maharashtra seem to have Parnaka.

waterfalls

These are seasonal waterfalls formed during rains in abandoned stone quarries . Done at my village this Sunday.

karvi flower

Once in while it's good exercise to paint something different than your regular liking. I do not like to paint small flower or similar subject as it takes too much of time and not spontaneous. Here is attempt to paint flower from my photo reference. Karvi is shrub which blooms only once in 8 years. This is typically found in Sahyadri ranges in Maharashtra . Adivasis use Karvy shrub (dried after cutting) for making walls of their huts.

Vasai Fort ruins

This week rain has taken break and gives me opportunity to do plein air painting.

sahebraoart.com

This time I am not going to post any painting but want to introduce very talented watercolorist from Mumbai, India.
Sahebrao Hare is person who paints impressionist style watercolor landscapes. I have seen him paint for last two years every Sunday and have lerant many techniques from him. He has been doing plein air landscapes for years now and he has developed his own signature style
Request you all to visit his newly launched website and look at argallery section. Porfolio section carries other commercial artworks if you are intrested.
here is link to his site http://sahebraoart.com/

Worli Seaface

On 24th July Mumbai was on High alert. Met deparment had predicted higest ever tide (5.05 Meters) and heavy rains. This could have submerged few of the low lying areas of Mumbai. Fortunately it did not rain that heavily. Very next day I went to Worli seaface with family. Just wanted to drive across newly opened Worli sea Link. Sea was still rough and though with sealink as backdrop it would make good painting. As I started painting people crowded around and had to do only quick sketch. This is just 15 minutes effort but think I was able to capture the cloudy scene.

etc.

My blog URL is colors-etc , So far I have mostly posted color painting here is that etc-a small charcoal study. Charcoal as medium is wonderful and bit different from pencil. With different grades of pencil we can create light and shadow shading, still sketch remains line work of sort ,where as with charcoal volume can be created with ease.

Atharva Bungalow

Drawing this bungalow was difficult given fact that it has so many elevation lines to draw. I choose angle which made it rather simple. This is my in-law’s place at Vasai near Mumbai. It is surrounded by few more houses and tall coconut, banana trees. I have done many paintings seating in porch there.

Rainy day

Its raining in Mumbai so outdoor painting is out of question. So its time to paint at home.

Here I have tried an eperiment of sort. I had done this spot few months back durring summer, with same painting as reference I have tried to create rainy atmosphere. I know it could have been better.

National Park lion Safari Ticket Ghar

Borivali national Park is close to where I stay and I keep doing landscapes there. The small house like building you see in this painting is where you buy ticket for Lion Safari, that’s most exciting part of park visit for some. This building also houses permanent exhibition of Lion and tiger pictures which is very informative.

Wai ghat

Wai is place close to Pune (apx 65 to 70 Kms from Pune) and on the way to Panchagani, Mhabaleshwar hill stations.
Wai is known for many temples, old structures on the banks of river Krishna. This place is frequented by many landscape artists as there are many places of intrest in and around Wai.
I had been to Wai twice so far and had done few paintings and made many photographs.
This particular painting is done with photo reference

Lotus Pond

Lilies, lotus seems to be favorite subject for many artists. This is my attempt.

Peace

Few weeks back one of my friend sent me following scrap on Orkut and asked if I could make painting on those lines.

The Real Meaning of Peace

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"There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all the pictures. But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them. One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace. The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest - in perfect peace. Which picture do you think won the prize? The king chose the second picture. Do you know why? "Because," explained the king, "peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace."

Ask was sort of illustration which I had never tried before and was not sure about the outcome. She liked the painting and hope you guys will.

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Rajabai Tower

This is Rajabai Tower view from oval ground. Rajabai clock tower is heritage building and its part of Mumbai university campus ( Now university has two campus so this is part of old fort area campus).This building houses university Library .

Project NH8

For last 4 to 5 years I had a photography project in mind and I had named it project NH8(National Highway 8). From Mumbai my village is about 90 KMs distance and I drive on this NH8 highway atleast once a month. On this way there are creecks ,one rivers and forests range.This area is beutiful especially during mansoon. I had decided to do photography of all these locations and identified spots too but never clicked a single frame all these years and don't see doing that in future. Instead I painted this one last Sunday on one of those identified locations. Also this happens to be my first full imperial size painting done on the location as against my regular half imperial size paintings. It was jsut to test if I can complete full size painting and I was able to finish this one in about one and half hours

Gate 2

Same spot as of my last post. Bit tighter composition and experimented to levae out gate structure white.Hope it has worked.

Gate

After posting paintings done from reference photos this one is again plein air.I enjoy plein air more than doing from reference.

Mustard fields

Normally we associate Mustard fields ( Sarson ke khet ) with Punjab as we see in most bollywood movies. These actors keep running , singing and dancing in those fields. However this is done from photograph I had taken on the way to Pehlgam, Kashmir.Painted in very bold maases, I should have avoided some whites which very not left intentionally

Abandoned house door

Acrylic is such a forgiving medium , can be used on almost any surface , no turpentine odor , no need to change the water number of times but then its boring as it dries up so quickly.
This I done from photo reference on mountboard

Kashmir

I am just back from my holidays. I was in Kashmir with my family.
Once known as heaven on earth , this place is not the same after fifteen years of militancy. The economy here totally depends on tourism and that had taken hit during this period. The region is still beautiful but there is lack of infrastructure. Dal lake is not clean as we would have seen in old pictures. Situation is relatively peaceful now and would feel safe as we can see Army men every where you travel.


When you are on family vacation you are not expected to paint still I carried some colors and paper pad with me. These are few quick sketchy paintings done there . As I could spend hardly 15-20 minutes per painting these are more of sketches than paintings.

First two are done at Pehlgam , small village in valley and last one is in Dal Lake . These boats are called Shikara and one can hire them for Dal lake ride.

I have upl;oaded few srinagar photos on my flickr album. http://www.flickr.com/photos/p_ajay_p

My village

This painting is done yesterday at my Village. The villages are changing .there are concrete roads, trees are vanishing and cement /tin roofs are replacing old tiled roofs.

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different views

Green spots like national park, Aarey colony are lungs of Mumbai .

This is one spot in national park Mumbai done from two different angles and two different times.First one is very recent done last Sunday and second one is done few month back. In second one I had used some salt to get that texure on tree trunk.

Madh jetty

This is done at Madh jetty in Mumbai . This is close yet far from Mumbai. If you take Ferry Boat from Versova Mumbai ( which charges only 2 rupees per person probably cheapest transport available) you will reach here in few minutes or you can spend few hours driving to this spot.

Madh is also common spot for film shoots and there some bunglows here which are rented out for shoots. I have done this painting somewhat away from actual jetty as there traffic of boats is high and before you could even draw the boat it disappeares. What you see in backdrop are Mumbai highrise buildings

calligraphy

After posting few paintings I thought of posting this design I have done for my T shirt.

Its my name written in different Indian scripts. Not that I know all these scripts, Have taken help of software to type this except for the top "devnagari" script which is written with marker. Thanks to my net friends who confirmed the name is correctly written in all scripts

I am not calligrapher so have used photoshop to get desired effect.

Will send this T for printing soon .

Banyan tree

Happy Gudi Padwa, Ugadi -Its new year in many parts of India.
When I started painting landscapes year back ,I used to try and paint every detail of what i could see and then make complete mess of it. e.g. If I wanted to paint tree then i would try and paint each branch and leaf in detail. Then one fellow senior artist told me to try painting masses. He told me imagine its night and you can't see all the details only shape of the tree still you can make out if its mango tree or pipal tree because every tree has its own characteristics. Here I have tried to paint Banyan tree with very few details to suggest leaves and highlighting its aerial roots.

varkari

My attempt at pastels

Varkari is religiuos and spiritual movement in Maharashtra established by saints in 16th century. ( some trust that this tradition is even older )Vari in Marathi means pilgrimage, These varkaris walk from their home town carrying safron flag palkhis (Palanquin) of saints .after walking 100s of miles these varkaris gather at holly town of Pandharpur. This happens twice in year and there are varkaris who do this "vari" every year.

Boats

Seascape done last Sunday. There were so many boats anchored there and so many subjects to paint , I could have done few more paintings but it was so hot that quickly finsihed only this one. Plan to go there but early in the morning.

Moneyplant

This week it was too hot to go outside .This is plant known as Moneyplant in India. This is outdoor plant and have done this painting from life but seating in comforts of home. Outdoor plant grows as creeper over other tree branches and can grow very tall. This can also be grown as indoor decorative plant.
Here I have tried to capture characteristics of this plant with bold strokes.

What if money really starts growing on this plant :)

Spring

March-April months correspond to Vasant Ritu ( Spring Season) , the Lord of all seasons. Here in Mumbai it simply means we have hot summer approaching . Though Vasant ritu is not that pleasant in this part of India as depicted by so many poets , its definitely beautiful because we can see some colorful trees these days.