Water color painting. Butterfly

Hi everyone.  Thankyou for visiting and following my blog.  I found a calendar on butterflies and they were so colorful and designed that I got a jolt to start painting again. This painting I have done on rIce paper from China. I am planning to decoupage this on a pot. So back to work on it.  Do let me know how you like it.

Kashmir valley a watercolor painting

Hello dear friends and viewers of my blog.Thankyou for visiting my blog.I am glad I have seriously started painting again. I have a whole lot of pictures of Kashmir from my holiday and the first painting of the series is here. On our first day we had visited the  Mughal gardens  and second day we were travelling to Pahalgam. After the city sights and a long  traffic jammed bypass road , slowly the scenery changes to beautiful green valleys. We could sight the mountain ranges at a distance It takes about 2 hours drive to Pehalgam from Srinagar.The Chinar trees  and the walnut trees are dominated by the pine woods as we travel to Pehalgam.

The shape of these pine trees reminds me of Xmas cards. There is so much of greenery around. It is hot weather and rivers are thin.The Liddar river appears and disappears as we drive by.

This painting is a very common sight of kashmir valley in summer.Mountain ranges far away and lush greenery around with the conical pine trees. Will be back with the next painting soon and until then hope you enjoy  this painting

Dancer in watercolors an experiment

Hello there. After a small spell of not having the magic of colors from my heart finally I was able to break my non painting days.It is difficult to come back in line after few days of this blackout days. Everything I started to do, proved to be far from satisfactory.So with some pushing and boosted courage I was doing try try try again!..

Reading the book atmospheric watercolors makes you want to breakout and have a blast with colors.But habits die hard,so still there is a lot of clinging onto details and not breaking away from what one learn initially. Yesterday I painted a dancer. Its not a  fully freestyle painting as I had done a pencil sketch earlier.Painting her dress was like going on an adventure allowing the colors to mix on the paper instead of in the palette.I enjoyed painting her dress.I had a hard time making her smile.Overall except for the face I could make  some improvement in this style.When I look at the picture again and again I feel there is something holding her back and its the free motion and the spirit that has to be brought into the painting.For sure I need to attempt this again. Do let me know your comments about this painting.

Do also take a look at another painting of dancers in watercolor in my earlier post http://nandadeviy.blogspot.in/2012/12/dance-drama-in-abstract.html

Rose flower in watercolor

Last week I had posted photos of the flowers in my garden.Finally I got time to sit down and  work on my paintings again.Today I had a long talk with my friend Usha  on our latest experiments with colors.She is also a hobby artist . She is very good with oil paintings and lately she has been experimenting with acrylic and watercolors.

by usha rethish

by usha rethish

Its always a pleasure talking to her and see her paintings. Here is her two watercolor paintings.We learn a lot by reviewing our paintings ,the progress that we make with each one we paint and also learning from each other.The flowers above and the second one with the birds are painted by Usha Rethish.

I came home after visiting her and straight away went to paint my rose . I mixed the crimson and scarlet and a little gamboge hue to paint the petals. As usual the leaves came out well .The thorns  has to improve a lot.So here is my rose straight from my garden after a morning shower.

Tulips in bloom

Tulips are great flowers to paint either in group or as single flowers.They have wide choice for colors too.I enjoyed doing this one as I could use different colors and the each shade enhanced the shape of the flowers.