Miniature paintings are my first love and association with Rajhasthan. The beauty and the grace of this kind of traditional painting style has never failed to fascinate me. With a flair for drawing and painting, since many years I have always tried to capture the style, the figures and the beauty of these paintings. Some of my amateur pieces hang on the walls of my mother's home. My initial paintings reflected some of the colours and themes, but practicing the technique is definitely the way to perfection. This painting was done on a piece of plywood, using acrylic colours and a reference of an existing miniature (my amateur style).
Another one was done on paper, using watercolours and the miniatures theme.
Although the figures came out all right, the artistically beautiful faces were something I needed to work on.
Recently I jumped at the offer when a friend refered a miniature painting class. 2 kids, joint family, full time job, family commitments and commuting distance didn't deter me from joining the weekend classes. I dragged along my mom (and originator of my painting genes) to the art classes. And what a blissful time we had. Without using any references, I put to use my sketching and conception skills to come up with a series of 3 miniature style paintings based on the theme "Shringar"
Dr. Pradhan, who was conducting the classes is a veteran on miniatures and traditional painting styles. The first session he explained about the history of miniatures and almost transported us into another era, with his Indian artisan perspective and narrative style. In susbequent sessions he conducted a workshop where we were taught the complicated process of preparing the paper, fine brushes, burnishing, tracing the sketch, working with and mixing mineral colours. A diploma in fashion design can come handy in sketching perfect figures of women for miniatures. But valauable lessons were learnt on face painting techniques. This is the first of my Shringar series, which I completed in the workshop.
Using the same theme, subsequently I completed the remaining two at home.
More about my fascination with miniatures is mentioned in my blog post at http://manishamago.blogspot.in/2008/09/state-of-blissful-oblivion-and-now.html
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