A Rajasthani Girl Playing Flute

This is a 24 by 24 inches oil painting on canvas.

A Rajasthani Couple

This is a 24 by 24 inches oil painting on canvas. It shows a Rajasthani man playing a tabla and his wife dancing. The world is also moving on the tunes.

Lord Ganesha writing Mahabharata

This is 24 by 30 inches oil painting on canvas.

This depicts Lord Ganesha writing the great epic Mahabharata. In the Mahabharata, it is described that Maharshi Ved Vyasa asked Ganesha to help him in writing the text, however Ganesha imposed a condition that he would do so only if Vyasa narrated the story without pause. To which Vyasa then made a counter-condition that Ganesha must understand the verse before he wrote it. Both agreed and the work started. In this process, after every one thousand shlokas, Vyasa used a puzzling shloka(grantha granthi). While Ganesha was in the process of understanding that shloka, Vyasa could compose another thousand shlokas. In this way, Vyasa used thousand grantha-granthis to stop Ganesha's writing speed.

The Compassionate Buddha

This is 18 by 36 inches oil painting on canvas. I used lemon yellow+white for the face and cadmium red+burnt sienna for the shadow of face. I used shades of yellow and orange for the leaves so that they don't appear monotonous.

The Buddha showed the human race the path of peaceful co-existence. He preached the Noble Eightfold Path of Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.

Dancing Ganesha

When music begins, our feet start tapping, our bodies start to move following its rhythm, and before you know it, dancing is in full swing!

This is not dissimilar with painting. Rhythm is created by variety of brush strokes and colours following the movement and shape of the objects. Such rhythm can be seen in this Ganesha painting.

This is 24 by 24 inches oil painting on canvas. I applied two layers of oil paint so that it appears more opaque and colours appear more saturated.

Mansi's oil portrait

Mansi's photo:

Mansi's portrait:

This is my first oil portrait - a child portrait; I have done some water color portraits earlier. The child is my friend Mayur’s daughter who turned 1 yr old on Oct 20 this year.

It was difficult to draw eye brows since children don't have dark eyebrows.

Making a child portrait is more difficult than portraits of adults since children do not have well-defined facial features.

For a portrait, the photo should be taken with camera flash off. Due to flash, we cannot have the light and shadow effect, which has actually happened here.

I defined the shadows on the corners of the face. The lights that are seen on her face in the actual photo are not natural ones, so are not shown. I have neglected details of the dress and the flashed-lights bcoz I don’t want them to be the subject of attention. Hair also need not be realistic.

Painting of a Child

I tried this as a practice for painting a child portrait. This is a 14 by 18 inches oil painting on canvas.

Breaking Free

 

"We're soarin', flyin' 

There's not a star in the Heaven

That we can't reach!"

First I painted the background with sap green/olive green mixed with white flake. Then I had to struggle a bit to get the bird right since the beak and the left wing I had painted did not make much impression. I allowed the paint to dry then applied the colors again.

Taming Horses

This painting involved a lot of blending vermillion hue(a shade of red), orange, crimson red and burnt sienna. For the horses I used ivory black + little white and for the shadows I used light grey with patches of viridian hue+burnt sienna+white.

Landscape

This is the first oil painting that I have done on canvas. The pine tree has been painted with olive green + ivory black, and the flora has been painted using a small sponge applied with limited pigments of yellow ochre, green and burnt sienna.
The mountains have been painted with cobalt blue with various shades of titanium white.

Kashmiri Flower

One more distinct flower that I saw in Kashmir!
I have used mixed media …acrylics for the flower and water colour for the background.

Gazanias of Kashmir

I saw these striped gazanias in Nishat Bagh, Srinagar.

I have used two media, water colour for the background and acrylic for the flowers. This is because I want flowers to be more opaque than the background.

The following are the steps:
Step1:
After outlining the flowers with a pencil, I applied a wash of light yellow and painted the background.
I used flat brush No. 6.

Step 2:
Then I colored the petals with crimson red and lemon yellow acrylic colors.

Step 3:
I completed the shadows of the petals and made the finishing touches.

Deer in the waters

Deer is my favourite subject of painting. They are beautiful creatures.

The most interesting was applying brush strokes to the trunks of the three trees and difficult part was to depict the water splashing from the turbine.

Saakshi’s sketch

 

This is sketch of my friend YP's daughter Saakshi.

I used scale drawing technique wherein we draw grids on photo and enlarge them on the drawing, then do the sketching.

Dawn with Kingfisher

This is a water colour painting.

The Great Marathas and the Mughals

This is a very old sketch that I drew when I was studying in 7th class.

A simple sketch which shows a battle between the Marathas and the Mughals.

Dawn in the desert

I have used faint colours without much overwork. This painting demonstrates a dawn in desert.
I have used broader brushstrokes for the sky and the sun.

In watercolour, there is a risk of spoiling a successful landscape painting by adding the sky later. It is better to introduce the sky at an early stage so that the tonal relationships can be built up together. So, the desert sand and the moving people have been painted after completing the sky. I have used bluish-black to depict the darkness of moving people and animals.

To create balance in a landscape painting, either the land or the sky must dominate. Here, the land (and the objects on the land) dominate and contain strong centre of interest as compared to the sky.

Tree-Top Hut

You can see tree-top huts in Vagamon in the state of Kerala.
In this painting, the hue decreases as the distance increases. The distant trees/leaves have been showed in faint green dots whereas the mud/sand has more hue.

Thick Foliage

This painting shows the thick flora of the Konkan.
The traditional method of applying light yellow wash throughout the painting has been used. Later on, such background helps in using green color more effectively.
Coloring leaves of coconut trees is a fun. You enjoy giving free, loose strokes of green.

Boat on the sea shore: water and acrylic colour

The shadow of boat is a set of few large strokes of brownish-black. The waves have been coloured with white acrylic colour because it is brighter than white water colour.