Potpourri

I have a bottle of dry petals, leaves and seeds soaked in sandalwood oil on my work table.  I open the bottle ever so often and inhale the smell of distant hills where sandalwood trees grow – the wooded western ghats with its green valleys and trilling waterfalls. I need to experience this sensation in the midst of  Chennai that is getting ready for a gruelling summer. I need my cups of mint tea too through the day.  And those are my new reading glasses, a sassy red one.   

Pink Blessings

The oleander plant in my terrace has been tirelessly putting out gorgeous flowers for the past two weeks. More insects seem to visit my terrace and a few more butterflies have come over too. 

I have been avoiding drawing or painting the plant . On the wall whose colours have turned pale with years the pink flowers appear like a blessing. Even now I pretend that I did not draw this, but it  got drawn out on its own.

I have used dry chalk pastel, rubbed the colours and have worked broadly on my picture.

Flowers In The Pool Of Light

I read late into the night.  My body got stiff  hunching over the books, I stretched at the table. My eyes and my mind rested blankly on the pool of light from the white table lamp.  Suddenly I  recalled something I read during the day at  Daily Paint works . This site is an online painting gallery that features artists who paint in response to challenges that are put up at the site every week. The paintings are auctioned at eBay. For a week now paintings  are sold to raise money for Japan. 

I particularly liked this challenge and I realised that I was sitting across one. Though it was past midnight I started my painting and worked on. Thankfully it was the weekend and I got enough time to rest.

The challenge was to draw/paint any white object on a patterned fabric, and study the colour relationship in such a composition. Here is mine. And as you see, I was reading ‘Ka’ and Srimad Bhagavatham.

The Blue Catalog

I have gone bleary eyed searching Scott Foresman catalog for CDs for primary graders. Alternately I have been formating a lesson for sixth graders – photoshopping  pictures, editing texts. I  searched around for a cool colour to lay my eyes on. What can be better than the soothing blue of the Pearson Scott Foresman catalog?

The dog eared book that I have been thumbing for years has a character of its own and I started drawing the book along with the sixth grade Basal Reader that was on my table. I don’t think I have produced a drawing that is cool to your eyes, the warm brown colour just jumps out of the picture.