Heads

An art-historian friend of mine gave me a stack of cards measuring 13x18 cm. They're rather interesting to work on, because the thin paper that's stuck on them is very absorbent. Just touch the brush to it and I swear you can hear it go SSHHHLOOOOP as it sucks in the paint. I thought I'd paint these quick heads... just features and expressions straight from the brush.

All Sort of Windows

More postcard-sized watercolours on handmade paper. These pooches going on a drive were done from emdot's photograph on Flickr.

I painted these brushes in a milk-jug from 1Happysnapper's Flickr upload.

Here's the greatest erection any man ever got up for a woman, the Tajmahal, seen from the Red Fort in Agra, where Shahjahan spent his final years in imprisonment. This is the view of the Taj I like the best, and I always wonder how it must have felt for a king to view his creation from prison. Thanks to rednivaram for the reference.

Another Islamic window, this time from the Charminar in my city. This was painted from a photograph I took when I went on a photo-walk with the Hyderabad Photography Society. The burqa clad girl in the picture actually ran back to the window and briefly opened her veil for me to photograph her.

From elNico's photograph on Flickr, this one shows a sunset bringing back some dreary windows to life.

This time the colours are more or less true to the paintings, but these images are not clear at all. I have to get me a scanner, a refrain I've been whining for awhile now.

Travel Windows

The 'new' exchange at WetCanvas is getting old, and I still have many more windows to paint. I thought I might do a little cut-and-paste, taking out pictures from my journal and sticking them on postcards. Here are four pictures that I'm thinking of cutting up.

This first one shows the view from my sixth floor window at Hotel avenue Regent in Kochi. It looks better than it does here, but unfortunately it takes up all of the page, and cutting it to postcard size would mean leaving out the drapery or the sunlight on the wooden floor. Let's see what can be done...

This one is the scene through the windshield of a Meru Cab, with the driver frowning in concentration as he makes his way through the chaotic traffic of my city. No problems with cutting this one to size.

Here's one of a plane seen through the large windows at Kochi airport. I always reach there much ahead of time, and always draw the scene outside. I have more aeroplanes, and am thinking of painting window frames on them.

Here's my favourite, that I'm finding very hard to tear out from my journal. Kochi airport again, with this little French boy looking out the window.

All of them are on handmade paper which has a generous sprinkling of dried petals. I used my Gioconda charcoal pencil, watercolours, and my trusty Sakura brush pen that gets past all airport security.