Asian Inspired Art

Light and Dark. Color and absence of color. Shapes and absence of shapes. Each of these together make a harmonious whole. The wood- burned art on this wooden box depicts the Taoist principle of oneness of opposites (yin yang). The mandala represents the oneness of Universe. And a well known quote from Dao De Jing, "The journey of thousand miles begins with a single step" is inscribed around the mandala.

This week was spent doing what I love best.  Decorating boxes with art and with my favorite motifs.  All of these are now available in my Etsy shop

 In other news:

I am a big museum-goer and my favorite galleries in any museum are Asian and Islamic art. I never get tired of looking at Buddhist sculptures, elephant paintings, jade, porcelain and what have you. Here are a few of the East Asian art from various museums across the globe. Enjoy.

Linked to Paint Party Friday.

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More Doodles!

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The theme for this week's challenge at I am the Diva is to be inspired by the season. I did a tangle last week on a beautiful russet colored fall leaf. So, for this week, the nature inspired theme is more spring-like.

This is a watercolor painting dressed up with a doodle. See below for the original. It is a good thing I like doodling hundreds or even thousands of bubbles. It fit perfectly on this particular painting. It looks like the duck is swimming in a pond coated with pollen.  Actually, there is a pond outside my office that looked just like this in spring.

 I scanned the original painting and printed it on a matte photo paper. I used gel pens to draw the doodles. I was worried that I might ruin the pen tips by drawing on an inkjet image. Luckily the pens held up well.

This a scan of actual fall leaves.

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Linked to Paint Party Friday.

Make Me Some Munchin

 This week's challenge at I am the Diva czt is to use the tangle called Munchin, demoed by Molly Hollibough using a black tile. I usually like this type of repetitive tangles and this was no exception. However, I did not have a black tile. This time of the year, my backyard is filled with colorful natural tiles in various shapes and sizes and I could not resist using one as my tile. I used white and black gel pens, both of which glided smoothly on the leaf.

I painted this kolam to celebrate the beginning of the navarathri season. I have written more about navarthri and the art of kolam here.

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Kolam: A Threshold Art

Navarthri (the festival of nine nights/the festival of Goddess) started on Tuesday. All Hindus celebrate but with great variations across India. In South India, where I am from originally, it is celebrated with Golu, a doll and figurine display at home. It is also customary to draw in front of  the house large designs called kolam. A kolam is usually drawn using a mix of colored rice flour and chalk powder. It is obviously an ephemeral art not meant to last more than a few hours. Typically, a new kolam is made every day.

Here in the US, it is not very practical to draw kolam just using flour and chalk powder. I wanted it to last a little longer than a day. So, I made it with craft acrylic paints. The cement surface was rough and gray. I applied a coat of white gesso first to make the colors come out bright. I improvised using a typical mandala design and adding a few decorative elements here and there. The drawing did not flow smoothly because of the rough surface and it took me about 3 hours from start to finish.

Right now it looks bright and cheerful. Come winter, with ice and snow, most of it will peel away.

It is getting chilly here and sweater and glove weather is predicted for this weekend. Undeterred, the squirrels are still running around hoarding their secret stash.  I caught this one in action from my usual perch aka as the kitchen window. Enjoy.

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Painted Rocks

I had been working to solve a software problem since last night. By mid morning, though the problem was solved, I had an odd feeling of the day not being very productive. So, I decided to complete the Diva Challenge. This being the first week of the month, it is "use my tangle" challenge and this week's UMT is Tri-Bee by Beate Winkler, CZT.  The ease of repetition inspired me and I created it on a small stone. I used a gel pen and acrylic paints for the patterns. The other little stones were a joint painting project with my daughter when she was visiting me a couple of weeks ago.

In other news, I posted a photo of this winterberry bush in my backyard on Facebook. I don't think Facebook had anything to do with it, but the next morning hundreds of starlings landed on my backyard. Their arrival quite worried the resident birds who circled them and stood guard by the bush the whole day even though it was a very chilly rainy day. I managed to capture the backyard drama from the kitchen window with my Nikon D5000.

It was quite interesting to watch.

Thanks for visiting.

Also linked to Paint Party Friday.

My Scheherazade: So Close Yet So Far

This is a collage of Edmund Dulac's Illustration of the Arabian Nights. I got the free image from Dover Publications Edmund Dulac Treasury: 116 Color Illustrations. I printed several copies of it, recolored all of them using watercolor pencils and acrylic ink (this is how the original print looks like). Then I progressively layered the prints to achieve the dimensional look. I learned this technique from Paula Guhin's Image Art Workshop. 

As befitting an illustration of the Arabian Nights, I embellished the castle with several swarovski crystals.

Sometimes, dresses can look architectural too. These are some of the dresses from the "China Through the Looking Glass" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Linked to Art Journal Journey October Theme of Architecture.