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.

A happy new year..

Happy new year to all my blog readers... Bit late I know, have been lazy for sometime to post anything.

Did a lot of things at home this Jan and last month.
Like turning these old bangles to new wearable ones. All you need are old non glass bangles, cotton threads (or shiny ones if you like), fevicol. Just wrap and wrap around the bangles and in the end stick the end of the thread with fevicol(or any tough adhesive) to the underside of the wrapped bangle.
The best thing about these is that you can have the exact color matching bangle with the outfit you are wearing -:).

I have painted these fishes in Madhubani. 

Apart from these I am trying new dishes in the kitchen like there is no tomorrow. Eating the failures has definitely made me gain few kilos. I successfully could create my favorite sweet Rasmalai after 3 unsuccessful attempts.

Warli Bookmarks..

Hello readers.. How was your weekend?

 Mine was super, I did a lot of creative work after a long time.

Nowadays you see lot of thick invitations of all size, color, weight. I had kept aside a couple of them, thought I would make something useful out of them. I took one house warming invitation and took out the plain side without any text on it, cut them into equal shapes and size. They were small, I painted a few warli motifs on them and turned them to bookmarks. Why bookmarks?

Bookmarks are hard to find when they are in need in my house. Courtesy my two kids. Elder one always wants them, doesn't know where he keeps them when he lays hands on them. The younger one just wants to play with it, crumple and finally throws into a dust bin. 

I hope to keep these at least for few days and make use of them. 

 After painting, this is how it looks..

Chenne Mane

I bought this Chenne Mane(traditional indoor game of coastal Karnataka, has different names in South India) from the car street of Udupi. People play this game in the rainy season when there is nothing much to do in the fields after sowing. People all over the world visit Udupi mainly being for  the darshan of Lord Krishna. But I visit Udupi for buying few traditional things like the below Chenne Mane. After bargaining for Rs 600 I bought it to B'lore. It was plain looking one and I wanted to paint and polish it.

This is how it looks after painting and varnishing. I gave a thick coat of varnish by mistake, so it looks too shiny.

Linking this to Colors Decor

Lord Ganesha, the Vignaharta..

It's been weeks since the festival 'Ganesh Chaturti' is celebrated and over. Sometime in August there was a competition announced in the local Kannada paper. It was about painting Lord Ganesha in any form and submitting. After intense googling I came upon a simple  painting of Ganesha in lovely Madhubani style. I decided to give it a try, and if at all it came out re-presentable then I would send it across the paper's address. But due to my MIL illness I could not complete it on-time and the whole idea was dropped.
Like the celebrations running late in the daily TV soaps, I finally could complete the picture, frame it and seek the blessings of Lord Ganesha.
After viewing the results of the competition, I discovered that there were lot of talented painters among us and their way of depicting the Lord was simply amazing . I am glad that I didn't participate, I know I would have looked like a fool among them -:)))

Tree of life

Ever since I saw this pic Tree of Life by Himani Shukla, I was dying to do it myself. It was simple but a bit tough on following symmetry. Finally finished it and framed it. Tell me what do you think of it? Too simple right..

Warli on dried bottle gourd.

There are lot of dried fruits,seeds, twigs in my home which I usually find in the empty sites, gardens during my walks and collect them. So far I have refrained myself painting them, keeping them just as they are. But there was one dried bottle gourd in round shape which I could not resist coloring it.  I picked up ultramarine blue, terracotta colors and drew out few simple Warli figures in them. End result not to perfection but I am happy with it.

Madhubani Sun

I tried painting sun in Madhubani. Didn't come out good as I expected, and felt I should have added mustache to the SUN. But this I realized after coloring the drawing. Finally it turned out be too plain. I am thinking whether to frame it or not.

A closer view...

Madhubani Fish

My love with Madhubani continues..
Here is a fish painted in Madhubani style. I have re-used an old calender base.

My first Warli drawing.

This was my first attempt doing a Warli Drawing(I wouldn't say painting since I didn't paint anything, just used permanent marker for filling the drawing). Not very bad for a first timer what do you say? I hadn't intended to frame it. We had to visit the framewallh for few other paintings that we bought, so I was little curious how this would look after framing. You can see unprofessional in the border.