Waiting for Sandy

Still haunted by the memories of last year's Hurricane Irene and the freak October nor'easter, 

New Jerseyans wait for Hurricane Sandy and the nor'easter.

My submission for this week's Illustration Friday theme HAUNT. (Watercolor, pen and ink collage.)

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A Virtual Trip to Croatia

This is my  Virtual Paintout submission for October. The location for this month is Croatia.

Watercolor, pen and ink on 8.5x5.5" watercolor coldpress paper.

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Every Drop Counts

This is my submission for Illustration Friday's this week's theme WATER. I have illustrated the concept of rainwater harvesting that is much used in the increasingly parched India.

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More Birds Continued!

Hoopoe

I did this watercolor on a vintage book page that was layered with absorbent ground. 

Orange Headed Thrush

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(Watercolor by Indira Govindan; Photos: Wikimedia Commons)

Illustration Friday: Mirror

My submission for this week's topic at Illustration Friday.

For more of my art check out my Etsy shop.

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Birds!

Since last week, I have started on a new habit...spending an hour or so every night drawing and painting. To keep my enthusiasm going, I decided to start with birds. These are Indian birds. The image sources for these bird paintings are photos that I had taken and the wonderful Wikimedia Commons. Birds 1, 3 and 4 are from Wikimedia Commons.

These are small art, done on Arches rough watercolor paper. I used watercolors, acrylic ink, brush and pen. I also added a bit of collage using old maps.

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Shooting the Breeze

This is my first submission for the VirtualPaintOut monthly project. This is an intriguing project, about which I found out from a a very unlikely source the polymerclaydaily.

Hosted by Bill Guffly, the idea behind the Virtual Paintout is to "give artists opportunity to gather virtually, and paint or draw in the same area". How is it accomplished? Every month Bill selects a geographic area from the Google Street view. The participants take a virtual walk of the area using the Street View maps and create a drawing or painting of something  they have seen. This concept appeals immensely to my love of travel, map reading and painting.

This month's project is island of Zealand in Denmark.  Zealand's largest city is Copenhagen. Having grown up in a megalopolis, my painting usually inclines towards urbanscapes. I "walked" around Copenhagen for an hour trying to find out what kind of city it is. This is what I found:

a. Bicycles galore--whether neatly arranged on the racks, propped against the wall or thrown carelessly on the ground. The street views were obviously captured during the warmer months and there were many folks navigating the city on bikes. Obviously, there is a strong bicycle culture there.

b. Copenhageners are not given to colorful or splashy dressing. The people were dressed in summer clothes of shorts and tees in very pale, being muted colors. 

c. Finally, Copenhagen is a very homogeneous city--a vast ocean of white devoid of any black, brown or yellow specks.

Given the general lack of vibrant or splashy colors, it was a surprise to find the garishly painted Palads Theater, a mega multiplex theater in the Hammerischsgade district. The colorful theater became the inspiration for the painting above. 


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