Sketches

I am taking a course called Draw Like t is Hot on the Sketchbook Skool. This course teaches how to create illustrated recipes. This is one of the  sketches I did for a home work assignment. The other sketch I did is below where we had to fill up the page with kitchen related things. I did both sketches during the early part of the week. Since then  I have been wasting much time reading election news.

Last Sunday, I finished making this journal. The removable cover is made of canvas which I painted first with acrylic colors and then covered with doodles.

In the happy news department, I was featured in All About You, an e-mail newsletter from Uppercase Magazine.

Linked to Paint Party Friday. Thanks to Eva and Kristin for hosting.

Tiny Art on Matchbox

My time this week was occupied by this fun project, something I had not planned to do at all. I had these empty matchboxes for quite sometime but was not inspired to do much with them till I saw a round up of decorative matchboxes on Design*Sponge recently.

Suddenly, I knew what I could do with the matchboxes. I decided to decorate mine with watercolor illustrations with a botanical theme. I created each label in watercolor using Fabriano coldpress 140 lb. paper. I hand stitched a frame around each little painting and glued it on top of the matchbox. It was a good exercise in small scale painting.

Linked to Paint Party Friday. Thanks to Eva and Kristin for hosting.

Linked also to Try it on Tuesday Handmade by You.

Thanks for visiting.

Chalkboard Art Halloween and Fall Theme

Halloween Chalkboard Art

 Halloween Themed Chalkboard Art

It is October and pretty much all the challenges that I participate are running with Halloween theme. Which is okay because it makes making art quite fun. For some mysterious reason, I have been doing all the Halloween challenges in the form of chalkboard art. It means that I can create any amount of art using just two supplies: one chalkboard and a few chalk pieces. I really do not  have to worry about running out of paper or paint :)

Linked to: Try it on Tuesday
 Moo-Mania
Art Journal Journey

October Themed Chalkboard Art

Chalkboard Art

Dyed, Painted, Doodled and Stitched Canvas Storage Accessories

Canvas Storage Accessories

I so liked the painted and doodled canvas cloth, about which I posted last week, I wanted to more of it. So, I did. This time I used Dr. Ph. Martin's India ink. I diluted the ink quiet a bit as it is highly pigmented and covered both sides of the canvas cloth with it. When it dried, I used Prisma brush pens to draw the doodles. I finished it with a lot of highlights using white acrylic paint. This time I wanted to  make a couple of storage items with it. I made a zippered pouch and a storage bin. Both came out quiet well, especially the zippered pouch. I was concerned that my junky Singer Esteem II will not cooperate using a zipper foot but much to my surprise it did. Now I am emboldened to make more of these pouches as I have about a dozen of metallic zippers left over from a previous project. I feel quiet excited about it :)

Linked to Paint Party Friday. Thanks to Eva and Kristin for hosting.

Painted, Doodled and Stitched Storage Bin

Painted, Doodled and Stitched Zipper Pouch

Halloween Chalkboard Art

Do-Something-Everyday, Oct 19 2016

Halloween offers  such endless possibilities for making fun art using many different mediums. Here is my take using chalkboard art. For substrate I used chalkboard oil cloth and regular colored chalks for drawing. I did a lot of rubbing and wiping somewhat intentionally for a grunged up look. 

The cool thing about chalkboard art is that it is ephemeral. You can erase the old to create a new one.

Linked to Moo-Mania Halloween Party

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InkTober 2016

Do-Something-Everyday, October 6, 2016

If it is October then it is InkTober on social media. I  heard about InkTober for the first time last year. It was created by Jake Parker in which every October artists all over the world take on the InkTober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month. He "first created InkTober in 2009 as a challenge to improve my inking skills and develop positive drawing habits". 

I decided to join in this year and here are three of the six I have drawn so far. The top one is an inky doodle I did while on conversation with my daughter on the phone. The two below are illustrations that I took undertook in the true spirit of InkTober which was to improve my botanical drawing skills, especially herbs and vegetables. You may or may not recognize the vegetables below as they are more commonly used in Asian and African/Caribbean cooking. If you do, please put their names in the comment. 

Thanks for visiting. Linked to Paint Party Friday. Thanks to Eva and Kristin for hosting.

Free Calendar For You

Do-Something-Everyday, Sept 29, 2016

September is ending in a wet and grey mood. The temperatures are definitely cooler and the leaves have begun to acquire their autumnal hue. The beginning of fall is always a little melancholic but the month of October lifts the spirits as it envelops us in its beautiful colors with the message that the festival season is about to begin.

To celebrate the start of the new month, I have a free monthly calendar  for you. I designed this calendar using my own art. You can see the picture above and the link for download is below. Feel free to print it for your personal use.
October Calendar. 


Last week, I showed here the beginning of the threshold floor art. It is now completed.

Thanks for visiting.

Linked to Moo Mania. (Fall Colors)

Linked to Paint Party Friday. Thanks to Eva and Kristin for hosting.

Welcome Fall 2016!

Do-Something-Everyday, Sept 22, 2016

One of my favorite collage techniques is using vintage book page as background in my paintings. Once upon a time, I used to do this by either directly painting on the book page or collage the art on the book page using glue. Now, Photoshop enables me to do this digitally while preserving both the book page and the artwork. The book page is from an old Tamil (my mother tongue) magazine. The artwork is a watercolor of the last flower blooming in my garden on this first day of Fall. I scanned both and digitally collaged them in Photoshop.

Linked to Paint Party Friday. Thanks to Eva and Kristin for hosting.

Speaking of Fall, I spent most of my afternoon today sprucing up my front stoop with a new floor art (kolam/ rangoli) in readiness for the festival of Navrathri that is starting next Friday. The one I did last year had become quite weather worn.

This time I am doing something different from the typical South Indian style of floor art. The two photos below are progress shots. It is still very much a work in progress. I will post a full photo once it is completed.

After a quiet August, with cooling temperatures and ripening berries, the birds and the critters are back in my yard. Yesterday,  I saw all 8 robins, 4 bluejays, 4 starlings, two finches, a nuthatch and a titmouse, a chipmunk, rabbit and several squirrels, all at the same time. This is how spring started. The predictability of nature's rhythm is indeed very comforting.

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K is for Kateri aka Catherine

Do-Something-Everyday, Sept 19, 2016

For this week's challenges, I am posting a few photos from hundreds I took on my visit to one of my favorite places in the U.S., Santa Fe, New Mexico. The photo above is the statue of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha installed outside the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. She was the first North American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic church. She was an Algonquin-
Mohawk woman from New York but here she is all dressed up in New Mexican finery looking suitably beatific. I suppose a little bit of artistic license is okay.

Linked to Image-in-ing and, ABC of Wednesday where the letter is K this week. My word is Kateri which is the Mohawk version of Catherine, the name given to her upon conversion to Christianity.

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H is for Hairpin Bends

Wayanad , Kerala

Do-Something-everyday, August 30, 2016

The letter is H at ABC Wedenesday. I have chosen the word Hairpin Bend as it is called in India which in American English is referred to as "switchback". Driving around these narrow highways can cause your heart to heave but the view from the hills is worth it.

Have a happy Labor Day Holiday!

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Sunlight

 Do-Something-Everyday, August 28, 2016

This week's theme at Our Beautiful World is Sunlight, a subject with endless photographic possibilities. Here are some of mine. Also linked to this week's   Image-in-ing 

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Summer and Green: Going, Going....

Do-Something-Everyday, August 21, 2016

Yesterday, I took a walk along the Passaic River Trail before the big thunderstorm hit the area. Everything was summery green. Summer and green go together. Like love and marriage.

The river glistened in the afternoon sunlight.

 Though it was hot and humid, there were glimpses of the cooler season approaching.

Seasons come and go. Sometimes, they seem long and sometimes they are short. Our internal clocks too shift gears in anticipation, especially if your work cycles is tied to seasonal cycles. For me, working in higher education, fall is when new students come and classes start. Even when I am doing the same things I did the previous fall, it is still a season of new beginnings.

Linked to:
Our Beautiful World (Summer)
Image-in-ing
ABC Wednesday where this week's letter is G and I have chosen the word Green.

Thanks for visiting.

World Elephant Day

Morning Prayers

Do-Something-Everyday, August 11, 2016

Elephant, one of a few living megafauna, is endangered due to habitat loss and poaching. It is shocking to contemplate that if we do nothing about it, twenty-five years from now we may be living in a world without elephants. August 12 has been dedicated as World Elephant Day to create awareness of the urgent plight of African and Asian elephants, and to share knowledge and positive solutions for the better care and management of captive and wild elephants. Elephants hold a special place in Indian culture and mythology and they are a recurring motif in my artistic work. 

Visit World Elephant Day website to know more about this issue.

Linked to Art Journal Journey (Nature)
Linked to Moo-Mania (Moon)
Linked to Paint Party Friday

Full Moon in July

Below: Elephants at Muthanga and Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuaries, Wayanad, Kerala, India.