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