Wood, art & more..

I got a few slabs of oak wood recently and have been experimenting with different media on it. This one started out to be just a freehand pen sketch with some deep shaded pockets. A good friend and colleague suggested I try my hand at wood burning and that I should limit it to the petals. Needless to say I need some practice with the wood burning iron! But I definitely see the appeal. The burnt parts of the petals bring out the flower which would otherwise be camouflaged in the rest of the sketch. I am definitely going to try some more of this technique, maybe on a lesser intricate piece of art. 

Rustic it is!

This is my latest painting, made this one today. Not sure if its obvious, but this one is on a piece of wood, so already in its natural frame! We were driving in Durango, Colorado last week and came across this rustic furniture shop by the roadside. The guy who owned it was a fantastic woodwork artist. We bought a hand built side table from him and I asked him if he had any scrap wood to give away. This was one of the three pieces he gave me. I wanted to keep the natural vertical lines on the wood intact, hence chose a birch tree scenery. All I had to do was polish and wax the surface a little bit and it was ready for acrylics! The paint flowed flawlessly and I even got a blotting effect for the pine tree leaves.

Bubbles

This was inspired by yet another brilliant art making techniques I found online. I had to buy some Floetrol from Amazon which is nothing but a water-based paint conditioner that helps improve paint viscosity. I used a few colors added to Floetrol, poured them in a sequence at the top of the paper along the smaller length and dragged the colors downwards with a wet towel. And voila! The bubbles appear. This literally took 15 minutes and I absolutely loved the outcome. I'm definitely trying this again with different set of colors, maybe on a bigger canvas this time. 

Blazing Sky

I am often tempted to buy art online and frame it in the house. But that's against the rule we generally have at home, everything hung or displayed is either handmade or has a significance. This was one of the things I cam across when I was browsing for art in one of those weal moments! Loved the raging color medley and was a quick acrylic canvas! 

Doilies & swabs anyone?

 

 

I have been following a bunch of Pinterest and YouTube sites bookmarking all the brilliant painting ideas I love and want to try. This bunch is some that I did try. The one on the right is (yet again) my favorite color combination rendered using cotton swabs. So simple yet so artistic. The one on the left is golden color spray painted on a black background using a beautiful doily. I absolutely love the outcome of these, I even made a quick birthday card for a friend using the same technique but different colors.

Pastels and more

A little experiment with many colors all at once! The one on the right is literally my stinginess coming out as it is made by dabbing leftover/excess paint using a crumple of tissue. Talk about using every last bit of the color. The one on the left is using color pencils or pastels. I think I saw this either in a hotel room on one of our trips or online, but loved it and decided to give it a shot using pencils. 

Modern Art

I have done several modern art type paintings in the past few months, have kind of lost track of the dates. But finally getting a chance to upload them all. These here are acrylics with one of my favorite color combinations. This was a quick guilty stroke of brush after having not painted for a long time!

Holidays 2018!

Happy new year everyone!
Tried something new this year. Painted this and scanned them into postcards. Turned out pretty cool, Visatprint for the rescue to do the formatting etc.
As for the painting, this is again mixed media with a watercolor backdrop and acrylic trees. I must say this is becoming my favorite kind of painting. 

Wintery Fall

This one was one of my first proper experiments with mixed media. The backdrop is all water colors and the birch and most of the leaves is acrylic. This was made specifically for our dear friends Lubna and Moin as a house warming gift.

It also inspired me to make holiday cards with a similar media combination, coming up next :)!

Spring

An entire year has passed without an update! And although I feel bad about it, I have been dabbling with water colors and mixed media quite a bit. Hoping to upload them all soon.
This was one at a Paintnite event and was super fun as Satish came along. He painted for the very first time ever (so he claims) and I must say did a fantastic job.

The media was acrylic and the canvas now sits in the make-shift studio of our new home. Hoping to paint a lot more in 2019! 

Geometry again

This was the second of the two colourful geometrical paintings I made. The plan is to eventually frame them both and hang them side by side. You can tell that I kind of lost a little patience there as I got to the end of this one. Thankfully the theme was dropping off the tiles :)! Hopefully the next will be something different and perhaps with acrylics or oil paints. 

Colourful Geometry

Another one inspired by Etsy! We just bought a home and I have been scouting websites like Etsy for home decor ideas. And then when I come across such paintings I feel I can paint them too and frame them. So this is the first of two that I made, I loved the colour combination and more so the pattern when I saw it! This one is water colours again as I needed to use shades of colours. 

Fish

This fish could be compared to the "Betta" fish or the Siamese fighting fish, a tropical species which is supposed to be quite aggressive. But undoubtedly is beautiful! I saw this fish painted on a souvenir plate last month, in a store within the San Diego zoo. I loved the colours and promptly took a photo of the plate so I could try and paint it. And here it is, painted with water colours right after our trip. Its always tricky for me to be able to paint fish scales or anything tiny for that matter, using water colours. But the abstract nature of the fish, with its multiple colours, makes it slightly easy. The scales could very well be haphazard and still look pretty. 

Tahitian Sunset

A proper acrylic landscape canvas painting finally! Thanks to Paintnite and the artist Maci C. This was my first time to a Paintnite event and it sure was fun. Although I wasn't drinking while painting like most of the bunch there (as I drove to the event), I did enjoy the company :).

The experience certainly boosted my confidence to make canvas size acrylic paintings. Mixing of colours is actually super easy as the colours don't dry as quickly as water colours. The sky didn't come out quite as I thought it would. I was happy with the sunset and the water though. I think I should try a mixed media painting next. Stay tuned :)!

Almost Spring

I guess an oil painting will have to wait for a little longer. It had been more than three months since my last painting and I was getting a little anxious picking up my brushes. After too many evenings of "almost" sitting down to paint, I decided to go for my comfort zone again, water colours. I was looking for a Paintnite event in a near desperate attempt to get back to painting regularly when I came across one of the ads with a 'painting for the evening' thumbnail. It caught my eye and instead of signing up for the event I decided to paint it at home (although painting with a group of people and wine would've been nice too!). I still seem to be struggling with leaves but was quite satisfied with the output :). The satisfaction helps as it motivates me to keep painting. Here's to many more in 2017!

Sunny Day

It has been a while I painted and could feel the rustiness in the recent one I did. The busy work schedule, vacation, job changes and city move did not help either! But hoping to keep at it more regularly from now on. This was inspired by something I had seen on a greeting card. The colours caught my eyes as always. I had to make do without the white colour that I was missing. And the proportions in the painting certainly did go for a toss. But its a reboot to my otherwise forgotten blog :). Hoping to do more oil paintings now!

Self Portrait

The last class was hands down the toughest for me. I am not very good with faces/portraits and guess what the theme for the last class was - self portrait! Of course our teacher did not expect anatomically accurate portraits, more like what you think of yourself to be or what you visualize yourself to be if put on a canvas. I had to start with my favourite colour combination, was like a motivation for me to keep going and not give up :D. To avoid having to paint the face in full, I decided to go for a side profile. But this has definitely inspired me to try a hand on portraits and paints faces more often. 

Reflection

The aim of this class was to be able to paint reflections. Although the more difficult part was to paint the transparent glass and still make it look like a glass! I almost gave up at some point while trying to get the glass right. But the outcome wasn't too bad I thought. I have to try and paint more glasses to be confident though. The apple behind the glass was to bring out the "magnified" effect. Another fun evening painting :)!

Abstract

The following class was abstract painting. After a little theory about composition and colour, we were literally told to paint whatever comes to mind. I started with the warm colour combination, the one on the left. When I reached a point, Guy, our teacher, told me to leave the blank space as is. He thought it adds to the abstract effect. I moved on to another canvas, this time with cool colours, the one on the right. You can probably tell that I got lost at some point in time. I came home and finished this one up later. 

Conch

This was probably the hardest thing I had painted until that day. We were asked to bring a tiny, preferably natural object and blow it up on the canvas. The idea was to be able to give attention to detail and bring out the smallest of features on the canvas. This was a conch kept on my wooden desk. It was quite a lesson to realize the different colours just squinting of the eyes can bring out. But was super fun painting the hidden crevices and the spherical part.