7. ‘Waterfalls and a stream’, medium oil : painting by Paromita

Oil on plywood.The water falling over rocks makes a good study. The trees, in front, give the paintings depth. The painting of a stream is inspired by one in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Parmita took up painting after retirement from her job as a Plant Pathologist at an University of Agriculture.

For any queries or suggestions feel free to write on paru.mukerjee@gmail.com

6. Art Exhibition at Lalit Kala Academy, Lucknow

Last year (2011) Parmita held an exhibition of a few of her paintings which got pretty good reviews. Below are some pictures of that event.

A Local Newspaper Coverage of the Event

5. ‘Buddha’ medium oil – a painting by Sumita

Buddha as a concept has appealed to every artist at some point or the other. The main challenge in painting the Buddha is to catch the serenity of expression. In this painting the flora as the background brings to mind the Bodhi Tree and also the fact that an enlightened being is one with Nature as also the Universe. Getting the hint of a smile took some doing. I have used some texturing for Buddha’s crown and the leaves to give it a lift.

Making it like this could look good too.

4. ‘Mother and Child’ medium oil – painting by Sumita

I am not sure whether the doorway took longer to make or the figure! This was the first large painting I made so it is quite dear to me. 

3. Glass Painting : the fun paints

Glass Painting is bright, simple, quick and loads of fun.

 This one made by Parmita is on an ordinary transparent glass plate.

 I painted this glass plate retrieved from my old discarded micro oven. Just put a motif underneath, drew the outline with a transparent outliner tube and poured the glass paints to blend. Took at best an hour.

The aquarium took much longer and some planning. Drew the fishes and other animals on pieces of paper and arranged and stuck them on a glass sized white sheet of paper, put the glass on top and got started. Please overlook the stand on which I had to place the glass to take the picture.

The next beautiful composition by Parmita in  geometric form has taken much more effort and planning. She made a number of geometrical spaces by outlining the glass surface with the outliner and then one by one painted different objects in each section to give this multicoloured effect.

The next painting by Parmita is glass paint on canvas and is giving the effect of an oil painting. The method is the same. 

with glass paints on glass

2. Soft Pastel Sketch by Sumita

On one of our bird watching trips to Lonavala I found some kids playing around, who on seeing my camera wanted a picture of theirs clicked.  I always wonder about, and am also  touched by the innocence of kids and sometimes grownups asking you to take their pictures, with your camera, which you have no way of sharing with them. It must have something to do with every humans secret aspiration for immortality!

Coming back to the picture – the kids managed to look so cute even in their 2 sizes too big hand-me-down clothes, I thought of sketching them. Don’t miss the little boy in the middle getting all tied up in knots, trying to hide behind his sisters,  because I asked him to come forward. Even though I am unlikely to see these kids again and they possibly don’t even remember posing for my picture, I have spent hours studying every little bit of light and shadow on them while making their sketch and feel as if I know them as individuals. 

                               

Soft pastels as  a medium are not the easiest things to work with, even though you may think otherwise, because they are so much like the crayons you have used as a child. Pastels are a combination of chalk, pigment and a binder, usually gum tragacanth, a substance derived from various plants. The ingredients are mixed and formed into round or rectangular sticks or blocks and dried. Pastel is available in three basic forms: hard pastel, soft pastel and pastel pencils.  Pastels with the highest proportions of binder are hard and brittle; others are soft and more crumbly.    Pastel pencils are thin rods of hard pastel encased in wood. Often one needs to mix hard and soft to get the desired effect but its better to work from hard pastel to soft as overlaying soft pastel is easy enough but the reverse does not work. Similarly one needs to work from light to dark as unlike paints like oil, acrylic etc trying to lighten colors using white later, gives a dull effect. Mixing colours to form new shades is also a difficult proposition so one needs to have a wide range of ready colours.

• Pastel depends on the texture of the support to hold it in place – the rougher the texture , the more pastel can be applied. I have found hand made paper is best suited. However one can use any paper also fabric or sanded paper.

• Pastel poses a definite health risk because the fine dust may easily be inhaled and can settle in the lungs. Take precautions like wearing some type of a mask and don’t blow the lose dust instead take your work outdoor and tap it lightly from the rear.

1. Medium Acrylic : paintings by Paromita

The Sun has been a favourite subject for artists. There is no artist worth her salt who has not painted some aspect of the sun or the other, at some point of her life, as an artist. Well I am no exception! But I found painting the sun in the same old way – oh! so boring, so I decided to make an abstract of it ie. not looking like  the real thing. Artists mostly paint the rising or the setting sun because those are the times you can actually look at it and appreciate its beauty. I thought of painting the rising sun and demarcated the lower edge of the canvas as the horizon. The suns rays are of course linear but I decided to digress and instead made them circular in keeping with the preference of the universe for all things circular. To break the monotony of the circles I put some brown verticle motifs which also provided a break from the sun colours. This corner (lower right) denotes earth and its flora.

While the rising sun is orangish I made it a bright gold and instead used all its beautiful colors in the background ranging from alizarin crimson and cadmium red  to peach to pink ie from a dark to a light shade. The golden rays of the sun have also been softly merged with the background at the tips.

The second is a painting of a blue colored bird which my sister tells me is a Nilgiri fly catcher. There was a time when I was painting everything blue specially a lot of blue sea and blue sky. Suddenly I saw the picture of this cute blue colored bird on one of my sisters bird books. My “blue” mood took a fancy to it and I decided to make a quick  bright painting of it, so selected acrylic as the medium of choice. Since the acrylic paints dry very fast merging effects were not to my satisfaction, so I have used small hatching strokes, which overlap.

The third is a mural of Ganesha on thin plywood. It was made with ceramic powder kneaded with fevicol to a dough like consistency. The colors are acrylic with pearl shine.

 This one is of a few leaves of a tree growing outside the house. Some texturing has been applied on the background.

A rural setting.

Night heron with chicks

The sticks have been made using texturing.

A beautiful painting of the colourful macaw

Flowers of the Adenium obesum growing on my terrace.

Some amount of texturing has been done in this painting.

*Acrylic paints are derived from petroleum. Acrylics contain three basic ingredients – pigment, water and synthetic resin which acts as the binder. To improve the paint’s performance other ingredients such as plasticisers are also added.

*There are many kinds of speciality acrylics including the following: irridescent colors simulate the look of metals such as gold, silver and bronze. Interference or refractive colors change when viewed at different angles. Airbrush colors are watery thin.

*Acrylics are suited to hard edged paintings because of its rapid drying time. On the other hand unlike oil paintings your work is dry and ready as soon you have made it.

For any queries or suggestions feel free to write on paru.mukerjee@gmail.com