Shades&Lines

My City

2011-07-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

Here are three ATCs that I painted of my city, Hyderabad. I've been living here for nearly ten years now, and at first the city really got under my skin... it still does, but in the way of Lady Gaga's face implants. The old and the new are just randomly thrown together in my city, and very often people are in such a hurry to go on to their next ill-conceived building monstrosity that they leave the newly finished one just lying on the skyline, steel rods poking out like stiff umbilical cords that haven't been properly tied.

Here's a mess of buildings from the Old City. The old buildings belong to a hospital complex.

Right at the heart of the Old City, the Charminar. Constructed in 1591, it has become a symbol of Hyderabad.

And finally, the truly execrable Buddha statue plunked in the middle of Hussain Sagar, a lake dating back to the sixteenth century. You have to see it to believe how disproportionate its dimensions are. A good example of how one simply can't replicate the artistic style of a long-gone period. The statue's claim to fame is that it's been hewn out of one giant granite block, and that it first sank to the bottom of the lake taking with it all those involved in setting it up (1992). Or so the myth goes.

Awkward Love

2011-07-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

Really crazy swap. Here are my ATCs, done as cartoons. Impossible not to use double entendre for such a topic, and that's just what a lot of us did.

All of them were done with watercolour pencils and here and there a bit of regular watercolours. The last one was a great hit with everybody.

I Love Klimt

2011-07-18T07:50:00.001-07:00

This was the name of the swap on Illustrated ATCs that took place earlier in the year. Yes, I love Klimt too. All the glitter and the sensuousness can be quite heady. We could interpret Klimt any way we wanted, straight copies (quite difficult to do on such a small scale) or 'Klimt-style' as they put it. Here are my paintings.

Adele as an Indian socialite. It was her haircut that really fascinated me, and I just extended that bob into a bun.

One of the ladies, and one of the fish, from Goldfish. Delicious or what?

I love Klimt's Hope. This is another Indianised version.

And, finally, I 'Klimted' good old Gustave himself.

All in all, great fun with watercolours and iridescent paints. ATC sized, all of them.

A Really Long Time!

2011-07-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

I see that I haven't uploaded anything in quite a while. Have been working on my art, though. Let me put up this fortune teller first of all. The reference was from my student and friend Rhoda Alex's photograph. I like the way he's touching up his signboard.

He was done in watercolours, with some white and black ink squiggles. ATC size. I need to send him off to another artist in another country. That's where I've really fallen behind, getting my paintings off to the destinations they should have been in by now. May and June were bad months, when Life decided to do a donkey act, kicking at me randomly, repeatedly, and sometimes viciously.

Heads

2010-04-30T04:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

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.

The Pretty Town of Winchester

2010-02-03T01:03:00.000-08:00

I went to visit Dinah in Winchester, a really pretty place, with the houses straight out of Dennis the Menace or Archie's Riverdale: made of wood, set in open yards, kiddie toys and Halloween corn dollies left outside. Fall must have been spectacular, because the town is bordered by woods. The occasional little red-clothed tree, like this one, was beautiful enough for me, though I do wish I could have made it to Winchester in the Fall.

The day after Thanksgiving was a day misted by rain. Dinah and I walked through the town, just catching up on things. Also, taking photographs to paint from. This painting has come out better than it appears here... looks like my scanner is once again settling in for a long sulk.

Friends Abroad

2010-01-31T11:05:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons why I loved my New York trip so much was because of the friends who gave me such a good time. Here are three of them, painted without any preliminary pencil lines,

I met Shekhar for the first time outside the UN building where he works. I was taking him a package of cigarettes from India, given to me by his brother who is my close friend. Now this is not exactly how Shekhar looks... call it a close likeness, except for that strange right eye I've given him.

This is my friend Dinah, who lives in Winchester these days. We've been friends for decades now, but she no longer lives in India. She took time out to visit me in Manhattan, though this painting shows her in her kitchen. Painted from a photograph I took when I went to her place for a day.

And here's my virtual pal turned real-life friend, Joan. Joan made a long trip to Manhattan THREE times, just to meet up with me and take me out. Her amazing Paris sketch book inspired me to start a New York sketch diary.

Art on the City Streets

2010-01-29T19:07:00.000-08:00

One of the things I loved about New York was the way there was art everywhere. Coming from a country where all public spaces are reserved for unwanted statues of politicians, dead or alive, it took my breath away to see these.

The Wall Street Bull, or the Bowling Green Bull as he is also sometimes called, is a 3,200 kg bronze sculpture by Arturo di Modica, put up in December 1989. I learnt much later, after I came home to India and Wikied information on this bronze beast, that people stroke his horns, nose and cojones because they believe it will bring them financial luck. I did see one young chap crouched beneath those awesome orbs, and thought that he was a pervert. Ah, if only I'd known then what I know now...

LOVE, on 6th Avenue, was designed first for a Christmas card by Robert Indiana in 1964. A couple of years later, he put it up as a sculpture. It's made of stainless steel, and the sides are blue. You can spend quite some time gazing at it, with children climbing up and tumbling through the base of the letters.

Seems it later became one of those iconic and much-copied images. No wonder it seemed as if I was meeting somebody I already had seen somewhere.

A New York Scramble Into the New Year

2010-01-28T21:05:00.000-08:00

Can't let the first month of the new year slide by. After many moons, here is a fresh entry. I was in New York for more than a month in November-December last year. Shiv and I stayed in an apartment in Jersey City the first ten days. This is a picture of JC from the Hudson when I went to see the Statue of Liberty. I painted this on Lokta paper after I came home, and then stuck the painting into my moleskine.

Here's the Lady herself, strong-armed and somehow... sad.

Nothing sad about this view out the window at a Spanish cafe in Jersey, where I sat and marvelled at the raining yet sanguinary world outside while waiting for my bowl of soup-of-the-day.

Fida

2009-08-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

SAHMET is organising an exhibition of 8"x10" paintings by artists known and unknown. This is for M.F. Hussain, whose 94th birthday is on the 17th of September. I got to know of this very late, but just had to paint something because I love M.F. Hussain.

I thought I'd mimic his way of abstracting personality through details of dress or appearance, minus the features. Therefore the white hair, and the glasses. Then, I wanted to bring in his film poster painting. Finally, I thought I'd put in these lyrics because they capture exactly what I feel very often: Ik khwab se dekha hoon, tabeer nahin banti... tasveer nahin banti. (I keep trying to paint a picture, and the picture doesn't get painted. I have this vision, but it refuses to be put down on paper.)

For Hussain, in exile in a faraway country, with love.

Celestial Critters

2009-08-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

I love the ideas people come up with for swap-themes. This one was about "animal guides/power animals". I thought that mooshikan would fit the description: just think of the poor fellow having to carry that elephant-headed tub of motichoor laddus about. Then I thought, hey, let me do the vahanas of the gods and goddesses. I wrote the slokas with my Micron pen, and the pictures are watercolours. Couldn't find a good sloka for Yama's buffalo, though. The elephant is supposed to be Airavat, by the way. The first case of a white mammal growing colourful in his old age.

I, Me, Myself

2009-08-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some self-portraits I did recently. Watercolours on handmade paper, the first from an old photograph of how I used to be fifteen years ago, and the other two painted from the mirror. They were both painted at the same table, lit by the same window, just a couple of days apart. I swear. Maybe the brown portrait is the true one, because it shows my inner self: a self well-hidden under ten extra kilos.

Peter Max Inspired

2009-08-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

I discovered Peter Max through this swap in his honour. Most of Max's bright and colourful work was evidently done in the 70s and 80s. Maybe Max' childhood in Shangai was what whooshed his work with colour. He uses lots and lots of pure colour; no blending, no mixing, absolutely no limits on the palette.

Here are my paintings, all in watercolour. I was apologetic about them being in watercolour and therefore not quite as bright as these photos show them to be... the max that wasn't possible, was the way I put it, and I love my dreadful pun, so there. However, after looking at some of the artist's watercolour work, I think I haven't done too badly with the colour. Only acrylics could be really truly gaudy.

Leafloat

Lotsapotsaluv (Yesssssss!!!)

The Oranges Swimming

Monochromatic Women

2009-07-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

I could have gone on painting more of these women, but I've got to catch the deadline. All of these are watercolours. The green one is a bit of an experiment. The sepia lady has gone through innumerable versions: I just love the solid seated firgure in a sari. Always have. The red one is copied from a sketch by William Frost. The blue girl is my favourite.

Say, any of you ladies and gentlemen willing to pose in the buff for me?

Lammas Animals

2009-07-08T01:52:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm stuck in an animal groove... little Indian animals, creatures of the rainforest, and now, the animals of the harvest. And, in case they seem to be just a set of animals, I've chucked in some oats and paddy and pearl-millet and wheat... for good measure. Heh-heh. Note those bright colours, too.

One of the things that struck me when I was reading up on Lammas, was that the boar is connected with the earth, fertility and the harvest in the West too. In India, the wild boar is the animal associated with Bhoo Devi, the Earth Goddess. Interesting, or no?

All of them are in watercolours. There are little lines and dashes of bronze acrylic too, though they don't show up in the photos.

Rainforest Creatures

2009-07-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

I'm absolutely pleased at the way these paintings have turned out. All the creatures are from the forests of India and Srilanka. They've been painted in watercolours, with Micron pen outlining. What I like about them is the grey and black and white background which sets off the main subject.

Grey does indeed make colour sing.

Cat-Mauled Doll

2009-07-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

She was lying around, her hair all frizzed out in a fine fuzzy cloud stuck to her green hat. The hat itself had come off her wee bald head, just managing to hang on by a fibre. I thought she was begging to be drawn, my friend's little daughter's forgotten doll. So I rummaged about in my son's cupboard and came up with the ideal prop to set her off: a little ceramic teapot that he used to play with before he learnt that he was living in a gendered world.

I think that it makes a charming picture, the detritus of two childhoods... three, if you count the kitten's. Done in watercolours and Micron pen on handmade paper.

Little Indian Animals

2009-07-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

That's what she wanted, this artist from New Zealand. So I painted a slow loris, and a squirrel with five stripes, a bit of timeless primitive art, finger-painting by the Lord you might say.

Dark Goddesses

2009-06-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

Painted four of them. Here are the two I like best: a version of Kali, and Nyx, the Greek Goddess of the Night. Actually, Nyx hardly looks mysterious or as if she is capable of begetting Desire (as she did in the Greek myths); but she's turned out to be a favourite with everybody else. So, looking at my creation through the eyes of others, I've come to see her attractiveness too.

These have been done with graphite, watercolours (pencilled in and then washed) and pen.

Games People Play

2009-06-10T05:41:00.000-07:00

Loteria. I only heard of it because we had to come up with four cards each. It's a card-game that's played in Mexico, apparently. I don't know how they play it, I only know that the deck contains 54 cards, each different, and numbered one to fifty-four. The images range from the abstract, like El Diablito (the Devil) and La Muerte (Death) to solid, clunky ones, like El Cazo (the Saucepan) and La Bota (the Boot).

I chose to do the ones below because they are all connected with water. I almost did them all in blue too, but then I overthrew my prissy, orderly self and here are the results. Orderly, but pretty? Or just pretty orderly?

All my references were taken from Flickr CC.

Stick-Stars

2009-06-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

There was a stick-figure swap posted, and I thought why not. I did these, though I started out intending to paint some Warli-style stick people. I'm so pleased with these (and so are a lot of other people) that I'm thinking of doing a series on classic Indian movies.

Twenty Minutes, All Told

2009-06-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

We were to spend thirteen minutes on one ATC, and get four of them ready in 52 minutes. I laid out the paints, paper, brushes and water, getting this whole lot finished in twenty minutes, including drying time. One thing I'm still not done with however: patting myself on the back. Heh-heh.

Oh, and I have to confess that I spent a lot of time planning the entire thing... but nobody said to include think-time in the final figures presented. I call this set Primaries, not only because those are the colours used.

Blue and One Other Colour

2009-06-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

That was the challenge, to use just shades of blue, with one other colour. I didn't think that white was a colour, but apparently it is. These half-faces were painted using Winsor Blue and Prussian Green, which is actually a shade of blue.

Alohomora!

2009-05-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

May the doors open, may there be a lovely kiddie book to illustrate, not, NOT, oh never, an English textbook! I've been harking back to the days when I painted for kiddie books and magazines. So, when there was this swap of characters from Harry Potter, to be interpreted just as the artist pleased, I jumped at the opportunity. At last, some illustration.

I used the books for reference, not the movies. And, I chose four of the staff at Hogwart's for a portrait session. Here they are: Trelawney and Lockhart and Umbridge and Moody. All these teachers have been painted in watercolours.

My scanner's acting weird, so these have been photographed. That's why the tilt.

Gypsies

2009-05-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

I've been painting ATCs on a new site, not WetCanvas. The swaps are more manageable here, for you only have to do sets of three/six paintings upon any theme. The tough part is that you get negative trading points if you don't send your art within the stated time. Oh I love the pressure... or do I hate it? Difficult to describe the feeling.

Anyway, one of the themes was It's a Hard-Knock Life: Gypsies and Vagabonds. Here are my Banjaran. The moustachiod gent is from a photo by MeanestIndian on Flickr CC.

All these cards are in watercolour, on watercolour paper from Auroville. I've made a special attempt to paint them in muted tones, especially after getting drunk on colour with the Solstice paintings.

Puzzle

2009-05-14T05:31:00.000-07:00

Here's something I painted in watercolours yesterday. Am thinking of doing more of these. Now, the question is, if I titled this picture Ah, Tree, what meaning does it convey to you?

Sunstroke!

2009-05-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

I've been chuckling at the irony of it all. I spent the day painting ATCs for a swap on a new site that I've joined. The swap's called the Summer Solstice/Midsummer Celebration. I kept my old, heavy curtains fully closed to escape the sun's rays, and used up three buckets of water in the cooler through the day so I wouldn't die in his arms, and painted these cheerful images of jollity and passion. Please don't miss the phallic Maypole for all the hair.

Must say I enjoyed splashing about with all these ultra-bright colours. I got them for a fortune in a shop in Bangalore. Now, when I have me all these wonderful paints, mithai, as my artist friend dismissively calls them, where are the kiddy books for illustration? Ah, may Sol and Litha bring me some psychedelic creative opportunity!

Splashes of Water and Touches of Paint

2009-04-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

Sharing art is something I love to do. So when a friend of mine suggested that we should paint together, I was excited. Our session was quite brief, though; we painted in the forty minutes that we had before she had to leave to catch the train back to Chennai.

This is what we did: my friend, who's new to watercolours, doodled and splashed colours randomly on ATCs and one A4-sized sheet of watercolour paper. Then the two of us searched the mess for anything we could recognise. We teased out the shape from the splotches, and suddenly we had six paintings, and just forty minutes left to catch the train, forget about going to a bookshop first, and then buying kababs to eat for dinner, and taking photos at the station...

Some reds and yellows and reserved white space turned into this flower.

This ATC also started out as a red and yellow experiment. Not sure whether it suggests wild flowers growing upon an embankment...

This one was the last we did. Patches of yellow and blue with a lot of white space to the right led to some bushes, and then some water, and then a tree leaning over the pool, and then us running out of time. We were thinking of some blue waterlilies, perhaps... or lifting out a white heron...

This little bird we consider to be a poor, ruined thing. Ah, you should have seen this ATC when it was mere splotches of burnt umber and indigo lines. We darkened the indigo lines to bring the bird to life. At that point the painting looked beautiful... very Oriental... even minimalist. And then things got out of control, with a dash of quinacridone here, and a touch of terre verte there. If only this had been our last painting, we wouldn't have had the time to fuss over it.

This painting is slightly more than A4 size. A jellyfish created out of the colours on my friend's t-shirt. My friend now claims to have fallen for watercolours hook, line and sinker.

There was one more ATC, but I've decided against loading that here... it showed a couple making love in the sky, and I might have had to change the settings to warn the innocent or something.

A Banana's Journey

2009-04-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

Here are bananas being sold, by cheerful people.

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by Manjeet Bawa

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by MeanestIndian

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by Stig Nygaard

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by O.Pirata

And bananas managing to look beautiful, with the help of props, of course.

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by Indiewench

Wheeeeee!!! Bananas on wheels!

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by Mckaysavage

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by gailf548

And, finally, the end of the banana.

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by wharman

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by KungPaoCajun

From photo on Flickr Creative Commons by sa-ku-ra

A Phallic Symbol :)

2009-04-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

These are pictures from the last project I was on, in WetCanvas. We had to paint 24 kinds of whatever we chose to paint. There was an artist who painted flowers, another who painted bottles, a third who painted cats, another who painted songbirds... I decided to paint... b a n a n a s. A nice and cheerful fruit, the banana. Associated with babies and picnics and pushcarts and athletes and monkeys and madness and hilarious slip-ups. Easy to paint, too. Also, a banana could lead to just about anything. You could paint banana flowers or leaves, bananas on display or on the tree. Possibilities, endless possibilities. Just what I needed to get back to painting after nearly a month of doing nothing. A phallic symbol, a jumpstart to creativity, laughter-causing not awe-inspiring, which is otherwise the case with these symbols.

AAWWRRRGGGHH! I'm finding it horribly difficult to arrange the images the way I want to. Wonder why. I need to credit the photographers whose images in Flickr Creative Commons I painted from.

Vacation/Holiday Memories

2009-04-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

Though Vacation/Holiday Dreams was the second exchange I joined on WetCanvas, some of my paintings are still to reach their destinations. It was like this: I decided to paint in oils, on canvas. I found out that painting on such a small scale (6"x4") using oils was not at all easy. And then, I'm not temperamentally suited to oils. They take an age to dry, and I'm always in a hurry. But oh, man, am I still skidding.
Here are some of the paintings of this exchange.

People bring places to life.

A woman sells items for puja outside Pasupatinath Temple, Kathmandu.

A little girl at the carnival in Patras.

A Konda Reddy woman in her hut in the Khammam forests.

Many of the picture-pretty places in India are pilgrimage centres.

Morning dawns in Benares, as photographed by my husband.

A girl and the Buddha. This was some sort of a burial shrine in Nepal.

Trees can have so many place-related associations that most vacationeers have at least a couple of snaps of the leafy denizens that they came across on their travels.

Trees in the Himalayas, photographed by my son when he went on a trek.

A lone tree, braving the elements in the Himalayas.

Toddy palms in the South of India. Ah, what can I say about toddy... a little sweet, a little white, a little, just a very little, fermented... the blessings of a bountiful Earth.

Zentangles

2009-04-21T00:14:00.000-07:00

A WetCanvas artist, Rose, introduced us all to zentangles. There are zentangle sites out there, and they sell you pre-cut cards, and suggest designs. However, it's easy enough to do if you simply let go, and slide down the years to when you were at school, doing what you did best in all those boring classes... d o o d l i n g.

Just boldly block in some spaces in a small square or rectangle of paper, and go ahead and doodle. Patterns will emerge all on their own, and you will know when you have finished.

If ever art could become a sort of meditation, then this is it. Reminds me of white-clad women and their rosaries, orange-clad monks and their japamalas, Greek seafarers and their kombolai... you put down mark after mark after mark with your pen, and lo and behold you've forgotten what you were worried about, and you marvel at what your worry has transformed into on that little bit of paper.

At the Anything Goes Exchange, some artists did not want my... ahem... divine creatures. I did these zentangle-inspired ATCs for them, all Micron pen on watercolour paper.

Scattered Yin-Yan

Haystack

Nautilus (on lokta paper)

Petal Lash

Winding Melodies

Tuberoses

Palm Lines

Startracks

In Flight

Gods and Goddesses

2009-04-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

Anything Goes, proclaimed the WetCanvas exchange. I thought, 'why not paint women (and men) of spirit and substance?' I had a great time painting these ATCs, all in watercolours except for the laurel-wreathed god.

She who favours a pink lotus and a white elephant, and she of the blue waterlilies and the wild boar...

She who attends upon childbirth, and she of the harvest...

She of the veena and the peacock, and she of the lute and the dragon...

He who herds cows, she who fled her mother, and he of the laurel wreath.

African Brush

2009-04-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

The exchange was called Out of Africa. I did not sign up for it, but I kept looking in to see the vivid African images that were being posted. Then I saw that one of the participants, an artist from Sudan, couldn't receive mail from the U.S. and Australia, and those countries couldn't get mail from Sudan. So I offered to act as go-between, and the cards started pouring in. People who were from other countries not affected by the postal stand-off also routed their cards through me. And, most of them included an ATC for me too, for acting as go-between. The first lot of cards took an age to reach Sudan, but did finally arrive. The second lot will also eventually reach. Meanwhile, I couldn't resist painting a few African faces myself.

Zulu Dancer Masaai Woman, from photo by wwarby on Flickr Creative Commons

Masaai woman, from photo by steve withers on Flickr Creative Commons, Masai child, from photo by Stevie Weaver on Flickr Creative Commons.

Masaai woman, and elder, from photos by wwarby on Flickr Creative Commons.

Masaai tribesman, from photo by The Dilly Lama on Flickr Creative Commons.

Everyday Items

2009-04-20T02:42:00.000-07:00

Ha! Just spent a lot of time uploading a post that never uploaded. Well, I thought it might be a good idea to put in a sort of synopsis of my painting past. The themed work I've done these last few months have all got to do with art exchanges on WetCanvas. Everyday Items was the first art exchange I've ever taken part in. I painted more than twenty postcard sized pictures of things that my life is usually strewn with. All of them were watercolours, and in some I used a pen too. Here are the ones I liked the best.

A boot from Texas, and a lamp from my hotel room, a brass girl reading, and my boy writing, a clay pig, and a fabric horse...

A temple elephant, and a musk melon, a couple of bird-whistles, and lots of paints...

Mangoes in a wooden bowl, fallen jack leaves and a seed, a bumblebee on the Crepe Myrtle tree, and pickles with a spoon all ready.

First Post

2009-04-20T00:48:00.000-07:00

I've started a blog! This is something that I find incredible, and yet, for something as important as my first post, I can hardly find any words. I do hope that this stupefaction passes and I can write sensible things.

I hope to keep a record of the things I've painted, the thoughts I've had. Sometimes I have this suspicion that I'm running the Red Queen's race... let's see what my blog logs.