Abstract Portraits

Even though we are well into January, thought I must begin the new year with something special. So here is wishing my readers and followers a wonderful new year and a fulfilling new decade as we start off with 2020. And these wishes come from my family to yours....

Attempted these abstract portraits of the fam; tried to depict some typical individual characteristics in all of them. Hope I have been able to bring those out...

And now that it is 2020, there is yet another project I need to work on - the revival of the Nature Journal. You may remember the month-wise nature journal I created 5 years back in 2015. You can click on the 'nature journal' label to see all related posts. Back then, I had planned to redo the exercise in 2020, simply to capture some interactions with the natural world every month. Over a period of time, these pictorial notes give us a sense of seasonal associations, and point towards changes in patterns that we observe around us. Thereby giving a forecast for bigger changes...

Little Miss Sunshine

When the sun plays rookie and the chill freezes your bones, this is how folks like me warm up....

Meet 'Little Miss Sunshine' who is full of beans and frolicking under the warm sun. :)

Hope seeing her warms the cockles of your heart, as creating her warmed up mine!

Canine Capers

This blog has been running on autopilot for quite a while now; what with festivals, pollution holidays, changing seasons, and just about everything else taking away my creative time. But I managed some DIYs around the house in the midst of all the chaos. Till finally a few chance photos clicked by the sonny got my creative mojo back.

So here's my first attempt at capturing our four-legged friends. But let me give you some background first. We have a bunch of doggos that we share our street with. Each mongrel has a name assigned, and a distinct personality or physical trait. Now what else does the artist need?

Presenting Oreo, the fellow who hangs outside our gate and sleeps under our car. And gets fed by both us and our upstairs neighbours. When we moved house in the beginning of the summer, Oreo was a bullied weakling, with the younger and healthier ones constantly picking on him. Now he is back to his confident self, frolicking around with his detractors. His only weakness now.... bones, of course! :)  And here is the picture of Oreo that got me going...

Now I am working on a series (my third) capturing our street dogs for posterity. But like I've done here, the style will remain fun instead of realistic. Hope you enjoy my paintings of these doggo fellas as much as I love making them. And yes, feedback is always appreciated.

Happy Diwali

Creative Rumblings wishes you and your loved ones a very happy, peaceful and blessed Diwali!

Macrame Plant Holders

Today I thought of sharing something crafty rather than arty, just to give my readers a DIY goal for the coming festive season. Decorating with houseplants is trending these days, and the macrame plant holders I'm showing are so easy to make, they can literally be made in a day.

As we had moved houses recently, we had a lot of used pieces of jute twine lying around from all the packing and unpacking. I decided to use the pieces creatively instead of letting them go waste. 

Since I had learnt macrame in school (and hated it back then), I used those knotty ideas to create these plant hangers. YouTube and Pinterest are full of instructional videos; go check out.

Once the first couple of trials turned out right, I even added beads to the later creations. Don't they look pretty?

I mostly use coconut shell planters for my jute hangers, primarily for three reasons. First, coconut shells are extremely light as compared to ceramic planters, and hence better suited for hanging in small spaces. Second, in case of an inadvertent slip-and-fall while inserting the planter into the hanger, one won't break an expensive ceramic planter. You can replace a coconut shell easily with another one. Thirdly, coconut shells are such an eco-friendly option!

So there you go..... hope that is enough inspiration to get started on some macrame hangers yourself, and bringing in some greens indoors to deck up your abode for the festive season ahead.

Garden Slab Mosaic

When we moved to a new place earlier this year, I noticed quite a few concrete slabs lying around the front garden. Dull and grey, they looked awful. So I had to unleash my creative juices... I decided to give one slab a mosaic makeover using damaged and broken ceramic pieces that I had been saving for a while.

Hubby partnered with me for this project, making it a fun DIY that we both enjoyed. We first covered the slab with a concrete mix and embedded the ceramic and tile pieces into it.

Allowing sufficient drying time, we grouted the slab to seal the embedded pieces and smoothen out the rough edges.

Next I used wet rags to buff the mosaic and clean off the extra bits of grout.

And voila! The boring concrete slab turned into a pretty stepping stone in the front garden.

To read what makes this mosaic project extra special, click here. Now I need more broken ceramics for mosaicing the remaining slabs in the garden. Who all are game to chip in?

Vibrant Vines

I have said this before - inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. To reiterate that sentiment, the artwork I'm sharing here is inspired by bottle gourd vines in my garden! Imagine.... of all the things on the face of this Earth, how can a vegetable growth be an inspiration?!? :D But the vines look so lush, with their rounded leaves and delicate flowers, that I couldn't help capturing them in a sketch.

 

Line drawing on a collaged background, in the style of artist Robert Kushner, one of my favourites on Pinterest.

Remember the cut-up page I mentioned in my last post? This sketch was made on the reverse side of that cut-up page. The top picture shows how the sketch looks against a plain background while the bottom picture shows how the sketch actually looks as a page in my journal.