Welcoming Ganesha

Lord Ganesha is most sought after and worshiped deities in India. He is always been my favorite in real life as well as in my drawings. We celebrate this festival for the sake of celebrating, to keep our traditions alive. I am not doing a very good job of following it, but I want my children to be aware of it, just as I have beautiful memories of Chaturthi. My day never ends without praying the Lord. Of the very few festivals that we celebrate, we try to celebrate this in a traditional way, be it offering Ganesha's favorite sweets, Garike grass or singing Ganesh Bhajan/Shlokas. In the evening it's a visit to a temple, followed by visits to  houses where idols are kept. Most of our neighbors, friends keep Ganesha idols at home, it's also to judge whose idol is best.

In art world Ganesha is the most flexible subject. The elephant head makes him unique and instantly identify the subject. There are thousands of ways of drawing this God. I have tried to incorporate the spirit of the festival into the paper. These are my humble attempts and the originals are more beautiful. Hope Lord Ganesha blesses me to be do more, strive more and achieve what I want, more than anything else find the satisfaction in my work.

First one was done with acrylic colors, and later filling the background with black gel pen.

This Madhubani style Ganesha is found it in my Pinterest board. I experimented with outline this time. Usually I use black marker pens for the outlining, this time I used size 000 brush. I wasn't consistent with the thickness of lines and so you can see. I have used acrylic on handmade paper.