A rusty tractor

I walked past this tractor everyday hoping, one day I will draw this and there I was one whimsical evening ready to sketch this thing. After a span of 2 weeks between sketching and painting, I ended up with this:

Mahindra Tractor

Lesson number one: Never sit on uncomfortable surfaces! In my case, a rather sharp one. no matter how brave you think you are, after 20 minutes it hurts. It hurts bad. So what do we do? Bring your own god damn seating arrangement if you love that particular perspective so much, or  like in my case compromise for a much farther point which makes you squint  your eyes to be able to notice the details well and crib at the loss of those beautiful defining perspective lines.

Initial sketch in ink

Lesson number two: Plan your sketching/painting session well in advance. You do not want to carry all your painting material only to finish sketching and realising that the sunset makes it impossible to see anything for painting. I had to break down my session to two visits, and in the land of procrastination, that is a huge gap!


Lesson number three: Create one focal point! I got carried away and emphasized way too much on the closet in the rear while all the focus should have been on the tractor.

I am sure there are many more things I was unsatisfied with in this painting but oh well! every experience is a learning experience.  

Horniman circle garden

Remember the old Lay's jingle: "No one can eat just one"? Well the feeling is quite similar when I describe a sketching session at the Horniman circle garden. You cannot sketch here just once! Circumvented by landmarks like Asiatic library, Elphinstone building, St. Thomas Cathedral church this place is a sight to sore eyes wherever you look.

At 2:30 pm in Bombay's heat, I decided to sketch whatever good was at sight from inside the Starbucks cafe(Which BTW has amazing interiors at this particular place) and not risk the sun outside. I ended up drawing the visible section from the cafe window of St. Thomas Cathedral Church:

Observations and discovery:

1. Choosing a focal point. : Every painting/ sketch has a point in focus, a region of more significance than the rest. This means either using strong colours, sharper edges or putting most details in that area. Eg. : The trees in the background do not have leaves while the ones in the front do as they are meant to be more prominent.
   I did a mistake of putting bright red on the lamp post which draws unnecessary attention.
2. Texture: The plain walls initially were bothering me for lack of life in the picture. No matter how much shadow or layer of colours I put to change the saturation, it seemed lifeless. Then I decided to put bricks and voila! I ended up discovering a new technique while doing that, which involves washing semi dried feature to give a smoother texture. 
3. Shadows: I need to learn how to put it on the sheet! No matter what colour I used for the shadow (Blue/payne'sgrey/purple), it looked comical! Then I discovered this colour "Sepia Coloree" which beautifully complimented the warm colors while also putting the dull shadow without taking too much light. Tip: Check out the entire palette before dabbing the brush like a colour blind monkey!!
4. Leaves: Layers! On wet layer or on dry layer the leaves turn up beautifully. Next time I would try to use shadows too, but for the first time it is OKAY. 

Thank you to Anurag Bishnoi ji for the wonderful colours which is making my learning process faster and more elegant. 

Elephanta caves

My father was visiting me this weekend, so I decided to take him along for the sketch walk. He had always wanted to see Elephanta caves so I asked Kishan to arrange this week's sketch meet up there. The whole trip was lovely! The Ferry ride with occasional spotting of huge Navy ships, the toy train ride, the monkeys snatching our food and finally the caves!

Like a fellow traveller said "This is beyond my imagination. How some people back in 8th century dug out these caves to make something this beautiful!". Yes! the caves are extremely beautiful. Although most of the caves were damaged after the Portugese rule, the most prominent bits still remain intact while the others have been restored.

I found myself a quite place on the side, as I wanted to sketch the pillars and the whole perspective play. The other people were sitting in the main cave and drawing the famous sculptures, and before they could finish, they were asked to move as sketching inside the premises is not allowed! Yup, you read that right. Only once a year artists are allowed to sketch/paint inside the caves. The reason behind this is beyond me.
As the other people in the group moved out and sketched outdoors, I finished my sketch:

Elephanta caves

A broken pillar

We finished the session with a nice lunch at the MDTC restaurant(It was impressive!) and a trip to the Afghan Church. Later, I took my father to Leopold cafe, Theobroma and Jehangir art gallery.

Great Sunday!

Warm up sketching at the Ferry

Portrait session at Leaping Windows(March 1st 2015)

Rainy day in Mumbai! As the temperatures were rising in Mumbai, a surprising downpour brought a nice and quick relief. But this meant that we had to cancel our plans of going to Kanheri caves, which is an outdoor location. Mukti(A fellow sketchwalker) suggested that we meet up at Leaping windows at Versova. Since it is our all time favourite place for sketching, we decided to meet up for a portrait session.

Having never had done portraits of people who are not my family members(Yup.), I was a little nervous about screwing this up, but people were so lovely and gave me such wonderful tips! This is the day I learnt about line weight from Alen(Another sketchwalker)

Alen, Leaping Windows

Nidhi, Leaping windows

We finished the day with nice glass of sangria and pizzas. Day well spent!
Here are more sketches from the sketch walkers.

Kanheri caves

Amidst the forest of Sanjay Gandhi National park are these beautiful rock cut caves. You can find out more about the caves in this link.
Although reaching this place from Powai was not at all pleasant in this heat, but after the ride through the forest, the tranquility inside the caves and the view from the top of the cave, I must say it was worth it.

The First portrait is of the gigantic entrance to the main cave. It is impossible to imagine the size of this structure hence I have given an approximate human scale in the sketch to give an idea of the size of the entrance.

Entrance to the cave

The second sketch is of the main cave. I wish I knew more about what this structure was, I found out few peculiar things. The top half of the wall had small holes in them, which were not equidistant. Kishan (a friend) said, they are holes for keeping the wooden skeletons on which workers sat to carve the ceilings. Fascinating!Another thing I found strange was that, not all pillars were ornamental and symmetric, which I found to be quite odd. Not too happy with how this sketch has come out perspective and shading wise but as they say, every experience is a learning experience.

Inside one of the caves

If you visit the place,
1. Do climb up to the top, for the beautiful 360 degree view of Mumbai.
2. Do not bring any food along. The place is full of notorious Monkeys waiting for an opportunity to attack for food.
3. Do notice the 2 gigantic statues of Buddha on the entrance to the main cave.

Here are more photographs from the sketch walk.

Mahalaxmi Temple

I had not sketched for 2 weeks and I was feeling extremely uneasy. With the increased work load in my lab, and my terrible sleep schedule(self inflicted) I was not sure if I would be able to join people for the next sketch walk at Mahalaxmi temple.

Having heard a lot about this place, I was quite excited to go and sketch the temple. So, I pulled an all nighter, slept during the commute and finally reached the place only to be disappointed. Turns out the temple is famous mainly for the devotees and not the architecture or anything that'd involve an artist's interest. So I just sat by the corner of a busy road that led to the temple and started sketching whatever I felt defined a good composition. And here it was:

Near Mahalaxmi temple, 15th Feb

As the rest of the group was heading to see Paul Fernandez's art exhibition, although I was quite interested I chose to go for Kala Ghoda festival. A French lady from the sketch meet up who has been in India since 30 years told me about the deteriorating quality of the festival. So I decided to attend it before it gets even worse. Plus it is my last year in Mumbai. 

South Bombay never stops amusing me, I found an old music store (Rhythm house) which has CDs of Joan Baez! Found a beer shop that claims to have beer from every corner of the world (Yet to go there). Had my favourite chocolate ice-cream while sitting by the lawn of Prince of Wales museum and saw a wonderful art exhibition at Jahangir art gallery.

A nice day!

Prithvi Theatre

Prithvi Theatre is one of the best known theatres of Mumbai. With a cosy and pretty canteen outside the theatre, it makes it one of the best places to sketch people, plants and life of urban Mumbai. I organised the meet up today and it turned out pretty well despite the traffic jam due to Mumbai marathon.

Canteen speciality: The Pav bhaji in the evenings, delicious parathe and the old uncle who plays flute every evening by the banyan tree.



Prithvi, 18th Jan.

This is off the topic and not pretty at all, but I saw two aunties fighting today in the local. By fighting, I mean hitting each other and pulling each others hair. I am scared of travelling in locals now. Although a major population is nice in Mumbai, there are quite many people who do not mind shoving their elbows to make space for themselves or stepping on your feet because they are major jackasses. Did not have a bad experience yet, but I will be really scared to travel in local trains from now on despite the convenience of timely commute it provides me.