Happy Pongal!

Tomorrow (January 13) is the first day of Pongal, a three-day festival celebrated in Tamilnadu. Pongal, which  means "flow over", is a harvest festival, but celebrated by all Tamilians. The most popular icon of Pongal festival is a cooking pot with sugarcane shoots tied on the sides and brimming over with steaming milk and rice. The overflowing pot is a symbol of auspicious beginnings and is heralded with the banging of metallic plates and spoons (kind of drum roll). I remember doing it when I was little and it was fun. Growing up, Pongal was always fun mainly because of all the wonderful food my mother used to make for three days and no school either. Just eating and playing!

In the countryside it is a big event--the farmers paint and decorate their house, throw away old and unwanted things, buy new clothes, prepare feasts and have country fairs where they bring livestock all spruced up and painted. And everywhere, people celebrate it by making varieties of rice dishes--sweet rice, lemon rice, coconut rice, tamarind rice, yogurt rice--all accompanied by a medley of vegetables. 

Pongal celebrates the transit of Sun into the sign of Capricorn (Thai) and the beginning ofuttaranayana punyakala or the northern ascension of the Sun (its 6-month transit over the northern hemisphere). That is why, the month of Thai  is also celebrated as the season of hope and new beginnings. 

HAPPY PONGAL EVERYONE!

Thanks for visiting. Submitted to Illustration Friday's this week's theme "MYTH".

Artwork by Indira

New Year Resolution

One might ask whether young children can understand the concept of new year resolution. I think they can--they certainly grasp the idea of positive and negative actions, like "not fighting"or  "being friends", and they do have a sense of time like "now" or "later". As I look back at my daughter's childhood, by the time she was 4 or 5, she was quite capable of coming up with a new year resolution for herself, even something like the one above!

Submitted for Illustration Friday this week's challenge "NEW".

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Weekly Challenge #100

Out at I am the Diva, Laura is celebrating the 100th Zentangle challenge, in honor of which, Maria Thomas (the founder of Zentangle) came up with three new tangles. Our challenge was to create a tile using three new tangles. I always find it easier to do ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Art). This being the holiday, I decided to tangle this reindeer. Laura Haams is bit like a reindeer herself, beautiful, gentle and strong and if you look closely you will find her name somewhere in those tangles.

I got this lovely image of the reindeer from the Graphics Fairy, a wonderful site for free vintage images.

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Glowing with the Spirit

The theme for this week at the Illustration Friday is GLOW. This art above is my submission.

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Penguin Book Cover Postcards

I have a special fondness for Penguin books. Back growing up in India, all our English language books, whether literature or history or fiction, were published by Penguin. Their appeal was that they were inexpensive, easily available, and their compact size made them storable and portable. So, when I found out that Penguin had come with a collection of its book covers as postcards, I quickly hopped over to Amazon to get them. The hundred cards came packaged in a nice box. Of course, in a fairly large collection like this, there are bound to be some duds and not all of one's favorite books are likely to be included. I was a tad disappointed that there were four cards from the Perry Mason collection while only one from Agatha Christie and none from Sherlock Holmes. But, I was very pleased that some of the covers such as Oscar Wilde's Plays and P.G. Woodhouse's My Man Jeeves, were actually the editions that I had read. Here is a sample!

Nice Graphics!

A card was sent along with a journal purchase from my shop

From my father-in-law's collection

My Books

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Snow in Slovakia!

The location for this month's Virtual Paintout is Slovakia, a beautiful country with many historical sites dating to pre-medieval period. This week's topic at the Illustration Friday is "SNOW". I decided to combine the two themes and, created one piece of art. What you see above is a segment of the Town Hall Square in Bardejov, Slovekia, one of Unesco's World Heritage sites. It is a place with an interesing hsitory, but I don't know if it snows there. Well, here is to artistic liberty!

This watercolor  painting was done 5" by &7" 140lb coldpress watercolor paper.

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Favorite Art Supplies: Tea Solution

TEA TIME!

When watercolor artists are asked about their favorite art supplies, tea is not likely to be one of them. Most will probably say a particular brush or paper or a color. For me, it is tea. I use tea as the basic wash for all of my yoga art work. The earthy tone it gives is particulary suited to the subject matter and the style of art that I use. It creates a beautiful texture especially on a rough watercolor paper. It also deepens any color that is applied over it. It is also great fun to slosh tea water on a pristine white paper and watch it change color. Sometimes, I can do these for hours!

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