30 Days Painting Challenge 2016 - Day 3

Todays painting is of Cliffs of Moher, Ireland. Sketched it last year. Painted it today.

30 Days Painting Challenge - Day 2

I have tried an imaginary seascape for Day2.

30 Days Painting Challenge 2016 - Day 1

I am taking up the 30 Days painting challenge starting September 1 through 30, will be posting one painting each day. Sounds interesting. But today was a long day and i got little time to work on my painting. Here is an attempt at watercolor.

I am going study waters of oceans in different shades of blue. Its my favorite theme - Thousand shades of blue.

Here is my Painting for day 1. Hope you all like it.

Watercolor Studies

Watercolor is an inteesting medium to work with. With brush pens and a pan box it is easy to carry anywhere and do plein air. The fluidity of the color creates interesting effects. Here are pics of watercolor studies I did recently.

Rock Garden

Mahabalipuram is full of beautiful rock cit temple and numerous rock lying everywhere is a beauty in its own. I tried different approaches to sketch rock. Initially they all looked flat. With some browsing and tips online I made it look somewhat matching to rocks in real. Here are some sketches done recently.

You are caught!

Conference of Rocks

Rolling Butter

Sketches of Mahabalipuram

The excitement of sketching is not over yet. I took out some of my old pics of Mahabalipuram and sketched a few days back. Mahabalipuram is a wonder , each monument, each rock speaks of its glory. Here are some i did immersed in its beauty.

This is old Light house.

The shore Temple standing as a testimony to time. I Wish it stands for some more years challenging the global warming and raising sea level.

A rock cut cave. 

Sketching at Mahabalipuram

Its been long time i sketched outdoors. A week back I headed out with my CWA friends to Mahabalipuram. Last couple of weeks had been busy at work and at home because of my sis in law's engagement. I was awaiting for a break and right then Muralidharan Alagar announced the outdoor event.  We were a group of around 20. The sun was burning hot though summer is yet to start. I bought a hat and sketched standing near the fences of Five Rathas. Here are some of my sketches.

Portrait Practice

I love working with black pen, but always afraid of doing portraits with them. But for a change, took chance. It was a great learning.

Practice

"Practice makes man perfect" is a famous adage. I am keeping up the sketching practice not just to perfect it, but its exciting and therapeutic to the hectic and boring day. Not much of work at office, tried sketching from the photos shared from the Chennai Weekend Artist's Sunday event of Kothawalchawadi market.

Little Basket - Pencil sketch

This is a cute basket made by my mom for my kid to keep his little toys. 

Did this with 6b pencil on paper. Onion didn't come out well. I have kept it to study another time.

Posture Study @ CWA Meet

As part of CWA 2nd Year cake cutting event , Muralidharan Alagar Sir, the leader of the group had arranged for a posture study. Models were folks from our own group. Manas and Krishnaswamy Sir Volunteered for 45 minute detailed sketching. Balaji Sir, Nithya Madam volunteered for 5 minute quick sketches.

This kind of live model study is new for me, I thoroughly enjoyed sketching running from corner to corner to capture the model from different angles. Though my attempts were pathetic and didnt end in correct rendering, but for every sketch I had a learning. I myself felt there was an improvement in the subsequent sketches.

Here are some of my sketches.

CWA 2nd Year Cake Cutting

A bunch of Enthusiastic and Energetic Lovers of Art gathered at an exclusive space for celebrating the group's 2nd year since it was formed in 2012. They are called the Chennai Weekend Artists.

Some of glimpses of this wonderful event. Special mention to Shankar for the awesome cake and the excellent design reflecting the true essence of the Group.

Early to Office

Its been long since I made early to office. I am always come late and leave late type. But today I happened to feel the morning breeze, chirping birds, bustling tea shops, a great scope of subjects to sketch. But I were rushing to office in an auto, could only watch and enjoy. A camera would have come for help to catch these and sketch back at home. But I carried a mobile phone with a worst camera. So instead I enjoyed the scene and reached office with a fresh and happy mood. Here is a sketch I did sometime back, in a very happy mood. I can distinguish my mood from the lines I draw. :-)

Art from Kirukkal

I do a lot of doodling, yes of course during office hours. They are the best stress busters. I do that whenever i find time during breaks or during meetings. This one did a few days back after random kirukkal.

A World of Friends

After getting married I thought my friends moving away as i sank deeper into my personals and shared absolutely no good time with friends neither on phone nor met personally. Time flew by jst doing the routine households and catching up work at office. And usual complaints started coming that I am not in touch with people, I am now acting like a very busy working lady. Yesterday I were speaking to you about the Aadi season and the Aai maasam ritual, out of frustration of not knowing where to stay for this one month and still ensure I get to office, I called up some of my close friends who also are married to check if what they are doing about it. Looks like there families are not so particular about it. After speaking to a few of them, I got calls from my other friends inviting me to stay with them, that we will have a great time together, like another chance of bachelorette life. But now I have 4 friends expecting me and into confusion about whom to stay with. Have to see who lives nearer to my office and move to that friend's place. Or may be 1 week at each friend's place. How nice na...

Now I have to start planning on what and all to do being with them to have fun filled month.
Here goes the list
1. Shoppinggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
2. Dieting (My m.i.l doesn't let me do dieting)
3. Eat out all day (Wow! Choice of the restaurant deserves another post)
4. Pedicure, Manicure, Facial, Haircut
5. Painting & Sketching
6. Watching movies at least 2 per day, of course from DVDs and 2 per weekend at Theatre
7. Early morning Beachhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Walk (Only if beach is nearby :( )
8. Call all the friends and talk to them for atleast one hour to each... hv to buy a good booster package 1p per min ;-)
9. TREKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKING
10. Visit all friends
11. And between all this find some time to meet my hubby. :)

A World of Friends is always needed indeed.

Aadi is Coming!

Here is coming the season of Aadi.. The mega sale season. This is the period when all Shopping streets in chennai becomes colorful with massive discount announcements over all kind of items A to Z. And with such attractive discounts one cannot stop the temptation of creating a shopping list and making full use of the weekends.

Added to my shopping list this Aadi
1. Fancy Cotton Sarees - 2
2. Cotton Churidhars - 5
3. LCD TV
4. Bedcovers
5. Curtains
6. New set of Pillows

But with this great season comes a problem for one specific community of people called "newly married" and girl's parents. Now why is that because, its a tradition in all tamil communities to separate the newly weds and send the girl back to her maternal home town to live with their parents. Added with this comes an indirect Dowry system to give varisai to the girl with some pounds of gold plus plus many other items which could swallow not less than a 20K easily. Now why I am telling this at this time is, because I am also in the same community of newly married groups. And my parents are the through the same phase. Leaving the varisai part apart! living away from the spouse, when you are just married, is such an insane thing. Now there is another big problem if the girl is working and her hometown is far away from her working place. Affording a month's leave is not such an easy thing. Forget a month, its so difficult to get even a week's vacation when you are in IT. Now the question is to how to keep the girl away. Such a big confusion is running over at my home. I suggested them that i will stay at my friend's home, but they are not ready to make me stay there. Now another option is to stay with my sister at her congested women's hostel which is worser than living in a doghouse. That hostel is good for her because, she doesn't stay there all time, it would be just 2 to 3 days in a week that she goes there, otherwise she always keeps moving between friends places(She has a big circle of near and dear friends). With all these confusions next week my parents are coming to take me home. I am thinking of commuting all the way from my hometown kancheepuram to my office on OMR. Lets see how it goes. Any suggestions are most welcome.

P.S. Heard from my inlaws that more than keeping the girl and guy away, more important is to not let the girl see her mother in law. That makes me rofls.

My first Post

This is my first post on blogspot, though I am blogging on my company's internal blogging site and rediff blog site. People move on to where there is more crowd, like how we ignore the shops around our town and go to dishydashy crowds of Renganadhan street, like how I moved from my beautiful large home in my village to a small house hidden inside the n number of turns and twists in the concrete jungle of Chennai. Now if you stumbled on this post accidentally , then a thanks to you and if someone introduced you this, then it is a big surprise for me. Now I am starting my blog site not with the intention to become a famous blogger, but this is yet another poor soul, who wants to dispose all that feelings good or bad to a place where people sometimes hear and dropby to scold/shout/appreciate/or just plainly comment. Blog is such a nice space.

Here is a self Welcome.
Welcome Revathy!!!