It had been a long time since I had done a painting of Radha & Krishna. Now that it is the holi season, I felt that it would be apt to sketch one. Holi has many legends associated with it but the one most known is probably the story of Krishna’s antics at Vrindavan where he smears colours on Radha’s face to overcome his jealousy of her having a fairer complexion as compared to him.
The idea was to come up with a colourful picture with Radha & Krishna in the background. I browsed for some inspiration but with just a couple of hours of Advika’s nap at hand, had to go for a design with minimum brush strokes. Well, at first look, you must be wondering if Advika had dropped some paint on the canvas 
But it is not, the design is intentional! The drop, dab & smudge technique is what I adopted for this painting. The end result was a lil messy but that’s what holi is all about, get yourself coloured, soak in the sun and have lot of fun
With Diwali just around the corner, here are some more ideas to dress up a LED light string. These are more of “Best out of waste” projects.
Pretty flowers made out of egg cartons
Origami cubes made from colorful flyers & waste paper which deserve a much better place than a dustbin
View of the Golu 2015
Handmade Dolls
Bangle Rangoli
World Map with Monuments
Krishna with Gopikas
I started this Madhubani artwork over a year back. Famous on mud walls, these paintings have attracted all kinds of surfaces including my canvas Over the past few days, i somehow pushed myself to complete it so that it is ready before the coming Navratri.
Madhubani paintings have a connection to Ramayana as it is believed that when Rama married Sita, King Janaka ordered few artists to make paintings of their wedding and this went on to establish a new style of painting. Slowly all Hindu deities started appearing on these paintings. Another interesting fact that I read about these paintings is that the artists from the Mithila region used to make these art forms of deities on the trees to prevent people from cutting them down. Maybe we can do the same on Pune streets and make a Swachh Pune.
I have tried to give a Madhubani touch to this Durga painting and believe that the bright colour dyes and the geometric patterns would evoke the festive mood.
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The memory of Rakhshabandhan from my school days is that it used to be the only day when girls used to run after the boys to tie Rakhi Every year I step into a shop to buy a Rakhi for my brother. But this year I chose to make my own Rakhi. As expected, Akshara wanted to follow suit and make some Rakhis for her friends. So, we sat down together and started crafting the Rakhis based on some themes (chota bheem, lion, bird..). The raw materials that I used are very common things that one can find in any household. Just let your imagination flow freely to build these beautiful strings of love and affection.
A closeup of the Rakhi. The base is a circular piece of thermocol. On top of it are multiple layers of paper quills. The ‘pearls’ have been made with Sago (Sabudhana). Click for a better view.
In south India, the third day of the Pongal celebrations is called “Maatu pongal” when cows are decorated and worshipped. Well, Rajaram would not buy me a real cow and hence I settled with decorating a terracota cow cart with beautiful colours. This work of mine is a dedication to the cutest and selfless herbivore on earth, “the holy cow”
Recently I had been to a Crazy Mohan drama called “Chocolate Krishna” which hilariously portrayed our belief in God Krishna and a crazy connectivity with the lord. I was then wondering as to why Crazy Mohan would have chosen Krishna and not any other God. Is it because Krishna had helped the Pandavas win over the kauravas or is it because he looks more liberal?
Well, for my first sketch of some God I obviously chose Krishna as I felt he is more forgiving and would not get annoyed even if the sketch did not come out well
Both the paintings have been made using crayons borrowed from Akshara.
Dolls made out of shuttlecocks
They are very simple and easy to make. The shuttlecock acts as the main structure. I have then adorned them with some muffin paper cups which makes the dress, jelly pouches for the hat , earbuds for the hands, woollen thread for the hair and so on ..Feel free to craft it in anyway your imagination takes you
Well last year too I had made some dolls out of waste yakult bottles. My MIL who is super artistic gave me some ideas and we came up with a museum of dolls
My original idea was to make dolls representing each state in India but ended up making similar ones.
The same yakult bottles can be crafted in a different manner depending on the occasion. My MIL was sweet enough to come up with this beautiful angel which we had made for my friend’s babyshower.The gown was made of simple white crepe paper(pleated) with some glitter on it. A little care needs to be taken when the facial expression is drawn to bring out the subtle smile and the warmth in the eyes. The wings and the wand made them truly magical and adorable
A snowman is very common, but why isn’t a snowman accompanied by a snow-woman? So, i made a snow-couple. Of course, they need a house too, with cotton used for the snow on the roof. The guy next to the couple is an elf, the body of which is a pine-cone found all over the Cyprus mountains.
Snowman: The body is an inverted paper cup. The head is a regular white plastic ball. The ball was glued to the bottom ofof the cup. The hat was made out of a small plastic cup. The muffler and the nose have been cut out of felt paper. The base of the hat is a circular piece of chart paper.
Snow-woman: The body is an old ceramic candle stand. The head is a newspaper ball covered with cotton. The highlighted smile is with coloured pieces of thermocol (polystyrene) balls.
i also tried to make a snow-kid, but turned out to look like thumbelina! A piece from an egg carton was used for the skirt. The head is a cotton ball. The strands of hair are regular woollen threads.
A Christmas three isn’t complete without the stars. I decided to go the origami way and use coloured wrapping paper to make stars of different sizes.I followed the simple tutorial given on Artplatter
To decorate other parts of the tree, i added pieces of cotton to resemble loose snow. I used chocolates of different shapes with colored wrappers along with some cute snowman clips.
Yes, Santa is missing. But then, Christmas is still a few days away. More than us, Akshara is eagerly awaiting Santa with the promise of a gift from him!
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As always with our festivals, it just isn’t complete without an array of sweets and savouries. But, karthigai has its special kind, the pori urundai (Puffed Rice Balls!!) and the Paal Poli (Milk Poli)
A quick recipe for the Pori urundai that i made:
- Four cups of puffed rice (called pori in Tamil) to be lightly roasted.
- One cup of jaggery to be heated with little water until it starts boiling to a sticky lava-like consistency.
- A quarter cup of sugar is to be heated in a separate pan. As it just liquifies, add it to the boiling jaggery mixture.
- Add dry ginger (Sukku in Tamil), cardamom powder and bits of coconut to the mixture
- Continue boiling it until it thickens a bit and you get the required consistency (a small ball should form when a spoon of this mixture is poured into a bowl of water)
- Once this consistency is reached, take it off heating. Start rolling it into balls and that’s it, the pori urundai is ready.
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