portrait

portrait  demo by Azhar Inamdar 

I love portraits. People, especially faces, to me, are a fascinating subject. So expressive and varied—there is emotion and character and life in every subject.

First, what is a portrait? The extremely open-minded among us will argue that any photo can be a portrait—face not required. A hand, a wisp of clothing, a musical instrument. To each his own. For me, a portrait is a painting  that would allow me to recognize the person depicted if I met them on the street. A face is an essential ingredient.

But beyond that, the possibilities are limitless. Do you include the environment and the subject’s body? Just head and shoulders? Profile? There is no wrong way to make a portrait. But the goal in portraiture should be more than just reproduction of a person’s features. We’re not making mug shots or identification badges after all. Ultimately you want to make a painting that makes a connection with the viewer.

This is a wonderful portrait by Azhar Inamdar. He indeed captures his subject. And so brave to do it publicly!

To begin he applied a warm grayish tone to the canvas. Used a large old brush to scrub a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna onto the canvas. Wiped it down with a clean rag.  The effect is a slightly warm (in color) surface that he painted on allowing us to judge colors more accurately

This was originally a 2 hour session. This particular oil painting was done in the “Alla Prima” method which simply means that this painting was completed in one session as opposed to the artists normal way of working in glazes.

    illustration: mp

Painting with a friend

I tried following excuses not to paint

I needed a place of my own, may be first I get me a studio!

I don’t get time from work

Will I do it right

May be after six months

Then I realized giving such lame excuses is an art it self! How wonderfully I was able to do that.

I talked to Samhita about it. She was giving similar justifications to her self too.

After a couple of meetings we decided to do what worked in the past.

Paint together!

We remembered that painting together has always created an energy that leads us back to a place where the ideas, motivation and inspiration start flowing again. I fondly remembered painting with my friends samhita and khadija back in college days. We’d spend a Saturday/Sunday together painting and eating and catching up on each other’s lives.

We missed that friendship and wanted to recreate that

We talked and started working at samhita’s place.

We soon realized the longer the non painting period lasted the harder its going to get back to brush works. 

There are so many ways to express feelings and opinions for my friend she loves to do intricate pen work. And I like working in watercolors. And now it seems like we still got the spark... we can spend the free time in hand playing with colors and pens.

I have waited to write about this for a couple of weeks... May be because I did not want to jinx it! 

I don’t know where we are going with this activity, I don’t really worry about it... but I do know that there is a lot of joy in painting with a friend.

Too much independence frightens them all

Old sketch.. 

What happens if there is no such a thing called textbook?

Well, life is not so easy without those textbooks…are there standards? Yes.. if you want.

There are a lot of labels here

Right family, right school, right art, right way of thinking. It only saves one the effort of thinking for your self.

Do me a favor. Do yourselves a favor. Stop talking and look. You are not required to like anything. You are required to consider everything.

I have not worked at all....Nothing seems worth putting down. I seem to have nothing to say. It appalls me but that is the way it is.
Georgia O'Keeffe

You invite things to happen. You open the door. You inhale. And if you inhale the chaos, you give the chaos, the chaos gives back- Dave Eggers

Illustration - SB

That’s why it’s important to have interests – then you don’t get sucked into this culture of obsessing about yourself. — Jerry Hall

They say everything in life happens for a reason. I understand whats happened, now I just need to figure out the reason..

Let it flow and let it go..

Some incidents bring out the pain for my wounded Inner Child.

I don’t want to take things personally. 

Why learn art history?

Lets just think of why history? History serves many factions at once. You just have to figure out is to what you seek from it.

It makes us reason, wonder about the immensity, richness, it trains our mind in terms of evidence and logic. Imagine if you did not remember anything about your life. Would you not wonder is to how exactly you got here?

We live in a world full of images, at some point in our human history, probably about 30000 years ago; we began to create pictures and figurines.. Archeologist call this period the "creative explosion." But why did people suddenly decide to start creating images of the world around them? He created images about what he wondered, simply about things he did not always understand. Then man created society..culture and everything was dominated by it- even the arts. Today we have the arts of those people for us to understand how it all began..

If you want to cherish art, you just have to look and observe. It is not always necessary for you to try to figure out and understand what the artist is trying to say. All you have to do is watch. If the painting is to your taste you will enjoy this watching, and you can continue to watch as long as your interest holds out, as long as you enjoy the experience of watching this painting. If the painting evokes only repulsion/ dislike, even then stay and watch and try to identify what it is that is evoking the repulsion /dislike. The painting or a sculpture is an invitation for you to meet yourself, to take a journey into yourself - of self-understanding. As you enjoy the experience of this self-awareness, you are well on your way to appreciating art.

But then as you may begin to see deeper, fine artists have to be trained both in the techniques of their mediums and in art history and their audiences must have some knowledge of art history as well.

For example 

Queen Maya’s dream,

Railing medallion from the bharut stupa

Shunga, 2nd century BCE, red sandstone.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, nestled in a fertile valley along the border between India and Nepal, a child was born who was to become the Buddha. The stories say that before his birth, his mother, the queen of a small Indian kingdom, had a dream.

A beautiful white elephant offered the queen a lotus flower, and then, entered the side of her body. When sages were asked to interpret the dream, they predicted the queen would give birth to a son destined to become either a great ruler or a holy man. One day, they said, he would either conquer the world, or become an enlightened being—the Buddha. We cannot appreciate the carving if we do not know what visual knowledge existed before the artist’s time that made this medallion also if we did not know anything about Buddha and his mother dreaming about her son’s birth.

We could not know that Michelangelo’s sculpture represents David if we were unaware of that. Within the historical tradition of fine art an adolescent male carrying a sling represents this biblical hero. We therefore not only need to know something about the history of artistic styles, but also about historical meanings or symbols. With knowledge of traditional visual symbols, we can easily interpret images that would otherwise entirely elude us. Fine artist take it for granted that their audience is familiar with these symbols. To deny history is to alienate us from our own roots, community, culture, and species.

Creative people might appear to be perfect, in light of various features we have credited to them. But highly creative people are complex beings who also possess what most people consider being socially undesirable. To begin with they can become so absorbed with their ideas particularly during stages of creative process that they strike others as hopelessly self centered. They may also lack social skills, becoming tactless, forgetful and inconsiderate to others.

Always seeking new ideas to replace old ones, highly creative people sometimes appear to be faultfinders.

They tend to set their clock according to rhythms of their ideas; they seem difficult and stubborn and yet at the same time flexible and open minded. This does not make them any easier to get along with, but giving highly creative people the freedom they need to develop their ideas gives rich rewards that benefit us all.

Does one take this complex personality for granted? We are all imperfect - the creative and the non creative. So because I need the solitude to gather my thoughts and produce them creatively gives me the license to be impolite?  Does it make me less creative otherwise? We are all in a hurry to label everyone, everything. We want to place them in a compartment. This can only bring a gap between us and the creative ones. Artists will not compromise to come two steps down and the rest will not want to climb two steps up. To avoid disappointments a handshake is possible. No? 

Measures of beauty

I have been trying to understand human body form in art. It’s amazing how we enhance a few body parts and neglect a few.

British academic Nigel Spivey explains- why is our modern world dominated by images of the body that are unrealistic?  In his T.V. series ‘How Art Made the World’

Neuroscientists theorize this has something to do with the workings of the human brain, and point to a neurological principle known as the peak shift. In essence our brain is hard-wired to focus upon parts of objects with pleasing associations. So if you were an artist, the tendency would be to reproduce human figures with parts that mattered the most to you.

While learning Indian art history I have been going through a lot of such images where certain body parts are measures of a female body.

In India mature women were considered beautiful. Fully grown ladies who are in their 30s, but why? To gain an answer I must learn the living conditions, environment, their beliefs, and their culture.

The Venus of Willendorf is one of the earliest images of the body made by humankind

The people who made this statue lived in a harsh ice-age environment where features of fatness and fertility would have been highly desirable.

Incase of our ’fly whisks bearer‘ (Late Mayuryan, c.200BC.,Chunar sand stone, H. 5 ft4 inches,Patna Museum) same logic can be applied in terms of fertility.

Why then now we have discarded this image’ of a woman?

Every culture develops some kind of art. It has to do with the introduction of various cultures. Imagine a family with 8 children in today’s times.

Today’s Indian culture is – hum do hamre do

In most cases its just one child, for several different reasons. This makes me wonder is may be the woman is not just a child bearer any more thus she may not have to look like one even in artistic images. And very rapidly we have dropped the fact of her looking like one. (Hips the breast being grotesquely big)

Unfortunately we are being faced with the extreme side of her which is – size zero

This is nothing but corruption of feelings, and that reflects in every form of art.

As I say if you are looking at a painting look beyond the paint..

If you are appreciating a woman, look beyond the mere symbols of fertility or size zero.

new works by m

my version of mp

colourful me

dont look back unless the view is good- SB

Illustration- mp

*feed my head - II

*feed my head

stupid pretentious forever happy couples with super happy photographs makes us puke 

only thing left to do is kill now?

weekend fun

Had a great weekend of girlie and childish fun... lots of alcohol, name place animal thing, great food... 

and we sang to...

"I will survive

as long as i know how to love

I know I will stay alive

I've got all my life to live

I've got all my love to give

and I'll survive

I will survive"

a song for all girls!

bee sting

Swing

Sharing another song for the day. Love the new Zero 7 album.

Thought you'd be forever the same
When did you become so easy to change?
Can't like who I won't
No, that's not true

I do know
Just can't figure out 
How to pin down
There will be no unguarded kisses

The Runaways - Cherry Bomb

Listening to old songs today. The Runaways were an American all-girl teenage rock band that performed in the 1970s.

thought for the day

No Hope No Fear

Life in Bold Colors

delusion

“No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.”

Christian Nevell Bovee quotes

new

happy

self potrait

testing a new technique

saturday blues

Pulp- Like a friend (great expectations' soundtrack)

Don't bother saying you're sorry.
Why don't you come in?
Smoke all my cigarettes - againe.
Every time I get no further.
How long has it been?
Come on in now,
Wipe your feet on my dreams.

morning cure, summer garden tea

Hope, dangles on a string

Kings of Leon- Holy Roller Novocaine

My darling you look lovely
I've come to lay you down
Uncover your head and submit to me
We'll make a joyful sound
I don't care if you're by yourself
Or you're all alone when you need my help
Keep that smile on your pretty face
Cause you don't have much I can't take away

The National - Runaway

What makes you think I’m enjoying being led to the flood
We got another thing comin undone
That’s taking us over

when we realised we lost our innocence to boys it was time to head to d for dario's

discovered a new cozy place in koregaon. the courtyard with peacocks and the little purple and blue branding with old style wooden furniture is really charming.

we had a lovely chat about art. mp had a little animal story which really moved me. after months of losing touch with reality this story will stay with me for life. the excess in my life has made me so desperate for love. it will come along someday and i will be smitten and crazy. time to drink the wine. cheers to that mp!

more new work

art appreciation - new beginnings

i am so proud of mp for doing this!

She is initiating a first ever course in our city on art appreciation and art history.

trying my luck