My Art Attack

Hey folks, do you resort to some form of Art when you don't feel motivated enough to continue with routine work?
Oh yes? Absolutely, just the thing to do! 
It has been years since I took up my once favorite hobby.
Thankfully, I am master of my own whims and fancies, and today I chose to grapple with the brush and nudge the under-the-covers dormant art facet in me alive!

The outcome was nothing remarkable, yet I felt happy about the time spent, puzzling over what colors came together to make my favorite shade of turquoise (incidentally I still haven't got the right blend for mera-wala turquoise), at tenterhooks with my brush to stay within the penciled outline, wondering what flourishes I could furnish my initial rendition with, to make it more presentable!

It was a time jolly well spent. My kids couldn't stop giggling at the initial trying time I had with mixing paints and messing up my trial artwork, that I have thankfully trashed!

Well here goes folks, a D-I-Y Art for de-stressing, focussing, and getting in touch with your dormant/non-existent creativity!


1) Okay, so I started with a 16 x 16 cm square - Believe me, starting small helps!
Within this square I drew a lot of random lines and a few curves, so it looked like this. Doodling abstractedly you can call this!

Experts may comment that one has to have a mental image of the final picture in place, but for lesser mortals, it is trial by fire. Add, subtract lines and curves, its still on pencil so feel free to experiment!

2) Filling in the blanks. With much trepidation, I started filling up the various shapes with some solid colors.

Let me tell you, I ran out of colors after regally dishing out the premixed primary colors! Then my White in shining armor came to the rescue. 
Mix the primary colors with each other, with white to get pastel shades, with yellow to get brighter shades or try both, just play along with the results! 
A look at the color-wheel for combinations can help, but don't fuss too much! 
As an ode to the White Knight, I left one triangular shape unfilled - pristine white.
I was quite proud of the sharp pointed edges I had managed to retain with the unwieldy brush tips!
And I assure you firsthand this is not the final product....yes, I was equally dismayed when I saw the outcome of my serious dabbling, mixing and measured strokes! 
Any third grader's mum might have been proud, had this been her kid's latest work!

3) Hmm, I wondered how to make this work, didn't want to set a bad example of repeatedly trashing stuff that didn't work! 'I have to make this work', I thought to myself as I spotted my kids surreptitiously watching the proceedings! 
And so, this happened next,

I picked up the old color pencils, again my favorite White Knight!
Drew curved concentric white lines all across, one shape at a time, each set of lines at a random angle. 
Staedtler Water Pencil colors, are a good bet and are easily erasable. 
Also using slightly darker shades of the paints used, I shaded the corners of all the shapes with the pencil colors.

Things started looking up at once, the dead painting suddenly looked alive!

Don't you agree?

4) Greatly encouraged by this improvement, I decided to experiment with some more pencil strokes. This time I picked up a dark brown pencil and doodled all across with whatever patterns I could come up with. You could derive inspiration from Mehendi designs too!

What a change from the boring, primary class creation, huh?!

5) Next I added a cream - White+yellow ochre 1cm border.

6) Hey! I was feeling pretty Arty by now and I outlined the entire border with black paint using a no.'0' brush. Within the border, I drew with pencil a random border design and filled it up with paint.

And Voilà...

Not bad, I thought for taking up the brush after so many years. And it took me a little over an hour to do this, the most time-consuming part being the painting within the shapes.

And the best part: I felt refreshed enough to look at matters from a fresh perspective...this is my first Arty post!

So folks, do give the other Arts a shot. Supposedly all creative thinking is controlled by the right side of the brain; so your idle doodling could be 'right' thing to stimulate your writing wheels into action! 

Do you follow other hobbies to occasionally recharge or rev up yourself?

If not, please seriously consider doing it and share with me your views and feedbacks on the same.

Copyright © 2016 KALA RAVI