The Day That Was - 27th March 2009

Wow, what a day it was. Full of greenery. This was the day when I got up at 6:30 am on a holiday took bath (Yes, thats right, it was a holiday) and reached Lalbagh at 7:45 am. I have never been so committed to the office work as I have been to this activity.
As planned, I was the second person to reach Lalbagh. Myself and Jyotirmoy started searching for a place to start. The location can not be more ideal than the one which we chose. A small hilltop from where you can see the lake and is covered by lot of trees, so there was no problem with Sun shining bright and making us sweat.
An ideal location for "plein air" painting. We waited for others to join and slowly but steadily Sankar, Prabhu, Jagdish Kadur, Usha joined us. We started painting and with lots of chatting breaks we continued. Sharing his experiences were professional artist Jagdish Kadur (who runs an art class in Jayanagar and has his own studio, which we visited later that day) as well as Usha and Prabha. Jyotirmoy was sharing his encounters with the great artists of Kolkata, and how he learnt from them.
Overall it was a great day with lots and lots of creativity flowing in and around. We ended the day at 3:00 pm and then straightaway went to Jagdish's Studio to see his paintings which he is going to exhibit in Chitrakala Parishad starting 1st April. It was a very inspiring visit to that place.
Reached home at 6:00 pm and too bath again.
Will post some pics very soon. In the meantime, please visit our official blog http://bangaloreartforum.blogspot.com for some of the pics which were taken on 27th March.

Gearing up for Lalbagh tomorrow

The 1st activity of Bangalore Art Forum is going to take place tomorrow at LAL BAGH. 

My main intention is to learn from the experts of art. I am planning to take all media which I use for my drawing/sketching/painting and some oils/acrylics as well. 

Outcome of tomorrow will be something interesting. How it goes and what I do there will be reported only after tomorrow.

Stippling - Coming up very soon

These days (as I am free after I reach home) I am back into my art. Right now I am doing some work in stippling or as some call it pointillism or dot-work with a 0.1 black pen. Pretty soon I will be done with it and then I am planning to upload some to my portfolios at artwanted & artmajeur.

I thing which I must confess is that its a real tedious style, but the result which you get are amazing (atleast thats what I feel :-)) After a couple of hours of putting dots close to each other, my hands get really worked out, but the art which appears in front of you, doesn't let you put the pen down.

www.ArtWanted.com/subodhsoni

Recently I registered as an artist on www.ArtWanted.com, which has a huge collection of art in all the possible Mediums like oil, pastel, pencil, acrylic, mixed, pen, ink, charcoal, water colors, etc ... and Categories like portraits, landscapes, still life, illustrations, photography etc. etc. .....
I too have created a portfolio. Please visit my portfolio @ www.ArtWanted.com/subodhsoni
Currently I am a free subscriber but I am thinking of subscribing to their premium membership (as it costs $5 a month, which converts into Rs. 200/- and that seems to be a decent amount) so that I can upload multiple art works of mine. Presently I have uploaded only 3 works. The free membership allows uploading only 3 images a month.
It seems to be a good site for selling art as well. I am not sure if PayPal has an India subsidiary. If it does exist then I am surely going to put up my art for sale on ArtWanted.com

Overall, you get to see a lot of good art on this site

Chitra Santhe 2007 - Bangalore

Yesterday I visited the annual "Art Road Show" organized by the Chitrakala Parishad (A renowned Art College in Bangalore). There were close to 1700 (that's what the statistics say) artists, hobbyists displaying and selling their works. The price of the art was ranging from Rs. 10 to Rs. 10 Lacs.
I got to see lots of beautiful creations in Pen, Pencil, Pastels, Watercolors and other great media.
I met a couple of people who do art as a hobby and have not gone through any professional courses. or haven't learnt Art anywhere. Asking about the process for exhibiting art in "Chitra Santhe" they told me that I can also put up my drawings/sketches and other paintings here next year. I need to visit Chitrakala Parishad during the month of November-2008 and enquire about the same here. They do encourage hobbyists to come up and exhibit their creations.

Some of the real creative stuff which I saw (and bought some of those as well):

1. Small cards with color gradings painted in very beautiful geometric patterns. It can not be described.
2. Acrylic washes - After putting the acrylic paint on the paper/canvas, leave it for drying for about 10 minutes and then wash it with water. The effect that it creates is amazing.
3. Fine point pen sketches - Some really amazing works were there in which the pen was used to create landscapes, abstract forms, still life, portraits and other similar figures.
4. On smooth white paper (calendar like) one person had painted abstract shapes and he created the shapes after it dries with a marker black pen. These paintings are rectangular and long ones and the artist was selling it as 2008 calendars by sticking a small printout of the calendar at the bottom of the painting.
   
5. Very beautiful portraits using just dry pastels on colored papers.

I should put some pictures of the Art which I have bought because no words can describe the art completely.

I showed some of my works to a lady (who pursues art as a hobby and she has joined hobby classes in Chitrakala Parishad) and she was very impressed with my pen sketches. I met a guy from Motorola who has an extra-ordinary talent for art. His charcoal sketches and some paintings were very beautiful. I also discussed with him about the various mediums which I also use and his views on the same.

I really got inspired at the end of the exhibition and decided I should visit Chitrakala parishad frequently in the coming year. Also I should gear up for putting up my works for sale in the Chitra Santhe next year. At the end of the day at around 8:30 P.M. I started back for home, very tired and exhausted by walking around a long stretch of road for more than 5 Hours.

A Sketch of Mine

Here is one of the sketches which I did in the year 2005. It is done on a A3 size white sheet with the Black Staedtler Pigment Liner Pen (0.1mm)