Monday 16 May 2016

Abstract lotus canvas / painting

Hi folks,

Last weekend I decided to try my hand at painting again and have actually given myself a little (huuuuge) challenge of making  100 paintings.. I may not be able to complete a painting a day, but the idea is to paint something every day - watercolour, acrylic, oil anything really. Inspiration for this piece started on ISD from this post on Finnabair's blog and I decided to paint a lotus because of the deep meaning it holds - rising above the mud to bloom requires great faith in oneself.

As luck would have it, when surfing the net for lotus stencils / sketch I came across Donna Downey's huge lotus canvas and also her '40,000 Facebook fans video' available in her store for free. Equipped with a whole heap of techniques, I began my painting on a 12inch x 16inch canvas (primed with gesso).
Painting the lotus was my biggest challenge - wanted to give the feeling of light falling from the top. This close up was taken on day2 towards the final stages of completion, you can see a lot of turquoise in the background which I later painted over.

The canvas started off with seemingly random strokes and splashes of paint and Finnabair modelling paste (coloured with acrylic paints). When I was happy with the mess, I wrote these words from the poem 'A Psalm of life' by H W Longfellow using a fine line applicator and blue India ink.

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
   Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Let us, then, be up and doing,
   With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
   Learn to labor and to wait.


Then one part at a time I drew circles using the base of a mist bottle, the cap of a gesso tube and whatever circular stuff was on my table, covered the rest of the area in shades of blue. I also wanted the word act to show through, just lucky it happened to be near the lotus.


To finish , I highlighted some of the raised areas using gold acrylic paint and the same paint was used in a fine line applicator to write this on the lotus stem.

Act,— act in the living Present!
   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Linking this project to Finnabair's ISD celebration - making a project with a quote.
Supplies from ItsyBitsy - Camel paint, fevicryl pearl paint, blue India ink





11 comments:

  1. Whoaaa!! 100 days! So cool..and your canvas is awesome Kripa! Brilliant !! :)

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  2. Kripa, this is brilliant, the blue you have chosen works wonderfully here !! love all that is visible here and also that which is not visible but present , Hugs !!

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  3. LOVING the end result....good luck with your goal. It's a GOOD one to work towards. Your lotus is amazing...the bg soooo 'deep'...& the poem. Just goes to show the human condition never changes, despite technological & industrial advances:):)

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  4. This canvas holds many in depth messages...Words are so few to say how much this inspires me...great going...Keep inspiring, Kripa :) Love it loads!!

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  5. Wow..Its Amazing and has a beautiful meaning to it ! The beautifully painted lotus shines through all the mixed media background ,I love the textures ! I am looking forward to your painting ..all the best ,I am sure its going to bring bestest out of you !

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  6. This is gorgeous! The colors are just wonderful and I particularly love the writing along the flower stem!

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  7. Love the depths you achieved! Brilliant job! Thanks for playing along with Finnabair.

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  8. So beautiful, I love your work! Thank you for playing along with us at Finnabair blog!

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  9. Stunnig work with wonderful details!

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  10. Fantastic,Very welldone,i like your paintings and thanks for sharing with us.Suzi has also showcased her artwork at courtyard gallery, World Art Dubai exhibition and also French art gallery Dubai. Realism is quite obvious in Suzi’s artwork and each piece of her Canvas Paintings is available on her digital art gallery is purely a cream of the crop.

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