Abstract Landscape: Mustard Fields

I am roaming the world of abstraction these days, and I feel like Alice in wonderland, full of curiosity. :) There is only some degree of control you can have when you create abstract art. To have fun you have to let the colours get a life of their own. As they spread, roll, splatter and mix across your canvas, new forms and interpretations evolve.... and therein lies the charm of the abstract.

So what do you all make of this one, dear readers? To me it is a fields of yellow flowers, with flowing water merging into a multi-colored sky. Let your imaginative interpretation roll, and let me know your views.

The holiday season is round the corner, so Happy Holidays, Merry Xmas, and a Fantastic, Colourful and Creative 2013 to all my readers. That is if we survive the Mayan's calendar doomsday today. :)) Catch you all next year!

Nature Calls

This painting appeared to me in my dreams.... well, almost. As I lay in bed one night, trying hard to fall asleep so I could wake up early the next day, my brain started getting these image flashes. And I captured on paper what I could recall next morning.

This one is definitely nature-inspired, and it reminds me of the myriad colours that one can see in a forest. I especially like the large leaves on blue and the core of the flower depicted by the tiny dots. So what do you all make of it?

Mother And Child

As the winter chill picks up, somehow my mind goes back to the summers....

On my daily walk one such summer morning, I chanced upon this scene in the park. As I turned a bend, there they were right in front of me. A mother and a child, sharing food - the mother cajoling, breaking the food into smaller pieces and prompting the child to eat, the child playful and wanting to finish off quickly so he could return to his play.

Some walkers stopped in their tracks as they saw them. After all, simians are unpredictable. They could snatch something off.... maybe that expensive cellphone even. But I gingerly walked past, almost on tiptoe so as not to disturb their breakfast. For I saw only a mother and a child; the species did not matter.

The camera hasn't quite done complete justice to this one in terms of the colours; upfront the shades look far brighter, especially the yellow in the background, making it really striking. Hope you like it anyhow.

A Fish Without Water!

So there was this fish I had lying around my workspace. First it almost got turned into a bookmark... but then it stuck itself on a rust-coloured card and prompted this message.
 

Now the fish without water sits on my table and reminds me to get some colour into my life everyday!
 

A new month, and the last of the year, is already upon us. And I have just recovered from one of my non-productive, uninspired phases. There are ideas in my head that need putting down, so hopefully we'll get more work done this month.
 

Make the most of the remaining part of 2012 before 2013 takes us all to fresh starts!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Finally it is here.... that day of the year when we need to pause in our tracks, and bow our heads to a bigger force. Call it anything you want - God, Destiny, Luck, and what have you - but the most beautiful part of Thanksgiving Day is the gratitude associated with it. Gratitude for what life offered you. Gratitude for whatever came your way, big or small. Gratitude for giving you the wisdom to accept it all positively, and rejoice in the happiness it brought.

So today I want to thank each and every one of my patrons, friends, well-wishers and followers for making Creative Rumblings what it is. For giving me the love, confidence and encouragement to carry on with my creative endeavours. For touching my life in a positive way, leaving a smile on my face, and a song in my heart!

Sharing with you all these pictures that say it all...

The bottles bring smiles, and the smiles make my day!

Bottles proudly displayed amongst other favourites at another patron's home!

Thank you all, once again, and may the love and creative interactions grow!

The Watermelon Seller

The festivities are finally over and we are settling back into a saner life. Been a long time since any work got done.... hope that changes now as we fall back into a regular routine.

Winter has definitely arrived, and the woollies are out. But bang in the middle of this I'm reminded of peak summertime, and watermelons. Weird, to say the least.

This was the sight that greeted me everyday in the summers as I walked down to pick my kiddo from the hobby class. Searing noon time heat, sun blazing, washing everything in a piercing yellow-white glare. And suddenly these pops of colour would appear at the turn of the road. Circles of green with occasional reds, and of course, the blue of the tarpaulin. Made for an interesting subject!

Folk Motif Bottles

Dancing peacocks, regal elephants, twittering birdies.... they are all there! Presenting bottles hand-painted with folk motifs and embellished with a dash of glitter for the festive season.

To stock up, write to me at creativerumblings@gmail.com. And better hurry up, for I only have a few pieces of these. To see a close-up of the picture above, visit our Facebook page.

Goats And Other Cares

October has been a strange month. Oscillating between caring for sick children and celebrating festivals, to coping with disappointing false starts at work. One of those months where you can't put a finger on where time flew. And on the last day you realise, that even though you tried your best, you haven't achieved much to show! Sometimes the background settings take longer than you realize...

Anyhow, sharing with you this drawing I created a couple of months back. Inspired by goats grazing in an open field in front of our house, tended by shepherds in Rajasthani garb, with bright red turbans.

The Room Amidst The Trees

Tried working on a watercolor after the longest time, and was pleasantly surprised. A medium that requires a lot of patience and relies pretty heavily on technique, watercolors were definitely not my preferred mode. But somehow I wanted to try out this scene using watercolors.... call it inexplicable instinct!

I walk past this room, which is in pretty dilapidated condition, everyday on my way to fetch the kids from school. It is surrounded by trees on all sides, and you really need to look closely else you might miss it amidst all the foliage. The discoloured, half-broken brickwork looks so attractive that I found the scene immensely paint-worthy.

When I chose to depict the scene using watercolors, I realized that sustained efforts do yield some results. Even though I have been painting in acrylics for the past year (or maybe more), all that effort had somehow paid off. Well, at least some bit because my control over watercolors had increased considerably. And I found a new level of comfort in handling this medium.

Don't know if I'll stay in this mode or go back to acrylics.... but for sure, every new piece is a new experiment! What do you say, dear readers?

Morning Glory Flowers Again

Things have had a slow start this month. First, the exams and then, the flu. School functions added to the chaos. Finally we are limping back to some sanity so I picked up pace by doing another bottle with one of my favourite flowers - morning glory.

Blue-purple hues popping out from between the greens - a sight for sore eyes! Lately, a lot of butterflies have been flitting around our garden, and so I had to add a black one on the bottle.

Sometimes the simplest of things bring us so much pleasure; like chasing butterflies with the kids and then appreciating the brilliant hues translated on to a bottle!

Orange On Brown

As the sun becomes stronger and the morning breeze turns cooler, you know autumn is right round the corner. Perhaps the reason why I have been steering towards a lot of orange on brown combos these days.

Yes, the subconscious effect can be seen across various media, as you can make out from the picture above.

Have also got an interesting project lined up for home; will share details with you when it is through. The exciting bit - if it works out right, it could mean a completely new medium to play around with! :)

Meanwhile, Blogger has gone and changed its entire look and feel, at least in the background bits. So don't be surprised if one fine day, you see some posts looking wonky.... Hate it when they do this, but can't say we weren't warned. Only too tied up to check out the new features. So now the new deal is upon us, and there is no running away. Phew, another peak to cross....

Ganpati On A Bottle

The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi comes around later this month, and so I thought a Ganpati bottle would be appropriate. The elephant-headed Hindu deity is everybody's favourite, and remembered on all auspicious occasions.

Completed the Ganpati bottle last month, and posting here a combo picture of the same to give you an all-round view.

This bottle captures Ganesha in different poses, and carries different names used to address the lord. His love for sweets is another aspect that this bottle highlights along with his carrier, the 'mooshak'. Hope you like this one!

p.s. - For a clearer picture of the bottle, go check out our Facebook page.

Peach Lilies

Another of the summer lilies.... was finally finished last month.

These peach ones are a real beauty, and stay for many days. So they make for ideal flowers to put in the vase and cheer up your room.

Daffodils

Have just about recovered from a hard drive crash! Went through hell last week as three years worth of data disappeared overnight, including official stuff, personal stuff, and a huge collection of pictures. Over this weekend things are slowly crawling back to normal, so I can breathe again....

In sorting through old pictures, I came across these Daffodils that I had painted in my early glass painting days.


The piece is my tribute to Wordsworth's famous poem by the same name; it remains one of my favourite pieces of poetry till date. The painting hangs in an uncle's home for the past many years now. :)

More Random Sketches

One of the best ways of making the shift from bottle painting to regular painting is to practise some sketching first.

Picked up an old edition of National Geographic magazine and tried out these two.

Sketching reinforces the old adage about lines being the most important part in any work of art. It really is all about lines in the end. So pick up a pencil and start off yourself....

Birdwatching

I have been working so furiously on the bottles since April that very few paintings have gotten done during this period. This is one of the few pieces that managed to make it through.

It was lying around sketched for a long time before I finally picked up the paints and finished it in three days flat.

I thought a visual progression would make for interesting viewing, so here goes....

Do let me know what you think of how the painting evolved. For me the journey is always fascinating! :)

Cosmos Garden

In my student days, I used to visit the hills often. And just after the rains, the hillsides used to be covered in green, with flowers popping out of everywhere. My aunt's garden had a huge expanse of cosmos flowers, with their pretty pink flowers bobbing in the breeze.

It is the beauty of that memory from my youth that I have tried to capture in this bottle. Cosmos flowers crowd the base of this bottle, with overhanging berry-laden creepers filling up the top.

And that magical zone in between abuzz with the drone of the dragonflies!

Surely one of those amazing pieces that helps bring in the outdoors....

Think Pink

Okay, I'll admit it. I have been ignoring the blog for a while.... first it was exam time at the kids' school, and then I got caught up doing other stuff. But lately I notice I'm veering towards a lot of pink.

Pink shaded flowers are dominating my bottles, and here is a sneak preview of a half-finished number to prove my point.

The rains are finally here so maybe I'll get more work done now. You know what they say about the rains whetting the creative appetite!

Another 'Found' Beauty

Picked up another 'found' beauty.... on my walk, one rainy morning last week.

Probably the dried-up leftover stalk after the flowers got blown away by the wind. Or maybe the flowers blossomed, then dried up, and the petals disintegrated.

But the remnants look like flowers on their own! And go especially well with the flowers on my Portulaca bottle.

This arrangement now brightens up a corner of my bedroom. The joys of Nature are free, you only need to keep those eyes open! :)

Morning Glory

When my client wanted me to dress up a fat, stout bottle with an interesting shape, I racked my brains for a new design. Flipping through my old pictures one day, I spotted the flower that seemed to be the perfect fit for the bottle.


Morning glory flowers with their deep purple-blue hues, so abundant once the rains arrive, peeping out of nooks and crannies... yes, that is what I covered the bottle with.


And to add to the drama and bring in visual relief, I added a butterfly, a dragonfly, and a ladybird for further effect.


What a colourful vista it turned into.... Just looking at this bottle, you can imagine the insects float and fly past, playing hide-n-seek with the morning glory flowers. And if you are lucky, you may even hear their distinct hum... Bbbbzzzzzzz!:)

An Early Autumn

The rains haven't arrived yet, and even as we grapple with a searing summer, my work table is sporting Fall colors.

An early autumn has descended on my workspace, with reds, rusts, and golds amidst glimmers of green. As I work on another commission.

This beauty will brighten up a friend's room very soon. Are you listening, D??!! :)

Some Old, Some New

The blog turns four this weekend, and what a journey it has been! I thought the time was appropriate to share with you all that one painting which started it all....

Yes, this was the first glass painting I created, when my first-born was a few months old. And then, as I got hooked to the beauty of the medium, there was no looking back. This painting now hangs in my kids' room and I recently created a fishy, underwater-themed pencil holder to match with it.

Pencil holder by day, and if you feel so, can turn into a lamp by night!

The kids loved the double surprise, of course. What better way to celebrate! :)

For The Olympic Truce

I was recently invited to a group called the Olympic Truce started by Don Mc Burney -Director, A Ray of Hope - UNESCO Youth Ambassador for the Culture of Peace. It promotes the United Nations call for the traditional age-old truce to be observed during this summer’s Olympics in London, urging warring parties around the world to lay down their arms as the Games’ ancient Greek founders did some 2,700 years ago.

The group offers a unique platform to showcase our personal art interpreting the portrayal of peace. I have decided to submit two pieces to this platform. Both represent the flight of birds, which to me is a compelling image of peace and freedom.


The first one is my tribute to the Mumbai massacre, done in pen and acrylic. Here the flight of the birds represents our ability to rise above the anguish and bloodshed unleashed by a terror attack. Read more about this here.


The second one represents the graceful flight of the gulls above a serene sea, their large wings flapping rhythmically. This one is glass painting on a bottle. For the entire artwork, see here.

Hope you all like these different portrayals of peace.

Purple Sunbird On Gulmohar

After seeing trees laden with Gulmohar (Flame of the forest) flowers on my daily walks all through spring, I had to paint them again. The bright red and orange flowers with their pretty leaves were transferred on to a bottle earlier this month.

But this time I added a new element - the purple sunbird. That little blue bird with a long curved beak that sucks nectar out of spring flowers.

Every morning as I sat under the shade of the Gulmohar, the sweet call of the purple sunbird was sure to reach my ears. Turning to look up, I could see it flitting from branch to branch, and flower to flower.

So now when you spot a flash of blue in between the red and green of the Gulmohar, you'll know the purple sunbird visited you! :)

Coastal Vacation

Summers are here and it is vacation time. Why not head for the coast? This bottle takes you right there.... come away with me on a coastal vacation.

Where the sun shines bright amidst tall palms

An imposing lighthouse stands at the edge of the rocks

And the seagulls brighten the skies with their graceful flight

So have you been on a vacation lately? Are there any special place memories you'd like to cherish?...

...Then get them captured on a bottle, and add them to your decor for posterity. Or gift one to your guests as a takeaway. They'll surely love it!

Experiments With Fabric

Nothing spectacular, just some simple experiments I tried out recently at the insistence of my daughter.

A kurta neck embellished by freehand design.

Ladyfinger printing on a kurti.

Idea and execution of both by yours truly! Random summer pastimes....

Green Duo

Drying on my bedside today morning...

...this pair of green bottles, with simple floral vines adorning them.

Sometimes, less is more.

Wish all my readers a happy weekend!

The Owl And The Bees

Strange title for a bottle, isn't it? But there is a story behind it, so read on...

This bottle is inspired by a huge Peepul tree that stands right in front of our house. Throughout the year this Peepul tree is a hub of activity.

Come spring and the bees are busy building up their hive, stealing nectar from the flowers in our garden and other surrounding flowering trees. In fact, this year I got to taste some of that honey, and it was delicious.....Mmmmmm!!! So one half of the bottle depicts that experience.

When the tree sports dense foliage, and the weather gets cooler, the nocturnal visitors appear. Noisy bats hanging upside down I have seen many a time. But what I'd really love to see is a cute little owl, with its wise face and round eyes, just like the one on this bottle.

So, on the occasion of World Environment Day today, this bottle is my ode to the Peepul tree and the creatures it is home to. Unless we care for our flora and fauna on a daily basis, what is the point of marking such days! What do you feel, dear readers?

Creative Rumblings Featured On Lifestyle Portal

Am totally elated to announce that my work was recently featured on Tanya Munshi's Lifestyle Portal.

You can read the complete article here. A big 'Thank You' to Tanya for being so encouraging and helpful.

Also, now the name finally has a face.... so if you visit the About Me section of this blog, you'll find me smiling back at you! :) Am off on a vacation next week, so catch up with all my wonderful readers in June.

Warli Village In A New Combo

I recreated a village scene in the Warli style for a recent commission. Traditionally, Warli is done on brown background with white chalk. Click here to know more about this painting style.

But I decided to give the traditional a twist. Since the bottle was black, I felt using white would only seem too predictable. So I went for a pale yellow, and the results are for you to see.

So there is the palm tree, almost representing the Tree of Life in this setting, because most activities happen around it.

The women folk are busy with the household activities like threshing crop and fetching water from the pond.

A celebration and dancing are also depicted in this village idyll.... where humans, birds, and animals co-exist in perfect harmony.

The fish pond is a new element that I added to the village scene, and I am happy with the way it came out. Hope the client is just as pleased! :)