A Rainy Evening

As I was returning from the office on friday, the rainy evening inspired me to capture the reflections on street onto a canvas. And thus was brought up the idea for my second painting.

first halt

rainy-day (9x12" oil on canvas)

This is the final version and is still to dry. I was too impatient and so putting up this bad photo. I didn't get the reflections the way I wanted and signature came out too big and funky but overall, I really love this one.

This was completed in little more than 2 days precisely. I am still not very good at getting the layers correctly in single time and therefore need to wait between the layers to dry up to correct my mistakes, otherwise this is probably a one-day project for experienced artists.

my first one on canvas

I thought I would never get it complete but finally I have.

hibiscus

I have looked at it so many times by now that I cant even make out if its good or not...but I am just glad that I feel its complete now.

I have just started playing with the colors and it seems I have already wasted 24 years without them..but never too late.

overcoming the initial hitch

I loved sketching and drawing as a kid but somewhere down the years, as happens with a normal indian kid, I drifted completely apart from what I did for simple pleasure to something that my mind was programmed to do - get in IT. Getting back hasn't been easy and lack of a formal training tends to lower one's confidence to get started. But all the efforts to overcome this glitch have been worth it.

Formal training can teach you techniques but fine arts is something that is more to do with an innate inclination and natural endowment. I did not even know how to prepare a canvas or what surface is ideal for different kind of paints. But there are resources out there ( aah cmmon I m talking google) and you can find information if you are desperate enough. With my job, I cant afford time for regular arts degree. So I am what you can call self-learner. And one thing that I have learnt is that once you stop thinking that you are competing against the people with degrees and long experience in formal arts, and start enjoying the activity just for your own sake, it will be a priceless experience.

Someone has said, painting is nothing but the understanding of lighting on a subject. It is not merely a way to capture nature on a piece of canvas, it is going one step ahead and making the nature's picture more colorful with your imagination for what can beat the combination of nature's beauty and creativity of an artist's imagination. So, here's to the artist that dwells in each one of us...