Monday, February 18, 2008

A Hundred Tales Swapped, So Many Remain...

Yes ladies and gentlemen after an immense amount of procrastination I have finally decided to put up my 100th post. It was a case of nervous nineties, or rather nervous ninety nines for me as I spent so much time posting it.

It has to be something really awesome - But how will you beat your normal awesomeness? Will they like it - what they read you regularly, do you really think they have any taste? What should I write about -now thats a tricky one?

These were some questions and thoughts that kept me tossing and turning, completely sleepless at nights (Well, not completely sleepless - but whats 7-8 hours between friends, or even 11?)

And so I decided to acquiesce to the wishes of a number of people who wanted me to share the output of my most popular post till date (this http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-old-shauk.html , yes this was even more popular than the TB6 Mockba one [ http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2007/09/late-night-mockba-story.html ] or the Katrina Kaif letter [ http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2007/04/letter-to-katrina.html ]). Yes, I've decided that for this special occasion which marks 100 posts on this fledgling blog, and is near enough to the 1st birthday of this blog, I shall showcase a few of my paintings. They may be juvenile but I've decided to share it with the people who visit my blog regularly. They deserve a ..er..treat.

But before I begin, there are a few, actually one, ground rule that you have to follow:

1. I do not believe in constructive criticism. Nope, nada. If you feel you have some criticism that would change my life and catapult me to the league of Renoir or Picasso, hang on to it. I may ask you for it sometime later. But NOT now. It has taken me years to restart my painting and I do not want to be disheartened.

SO keeping the 'Rule' in mind I welcome you to the Galleria de Swapnil. As your guide and host I shall be giving you a running commentary about the..ahem..works of art you are going to see. The wine, cheese and canapes are on the small tables to the side of the paintings. Please help yourself.

Madames et Monsieurs, behind the curtain is the first painting I painted when I had the urge to paint that fine fine morning. It hasn't come out very well but still deserves a place of pride in the gallery because it reintroduced me to the joys of brandishing a paint brush.

The discerning eye will see the painstakingly done tree trunk as well as the slightly rosy sky.

This next was also done a couple of days after the first one. I wanted to try my hand at a dark painting.

The discerning eye will again see the gradients in the sky from a dark black at the top to the dirty grey near the ground, the way night does actually fall. Also, the snow at the bottom also has gradients to try and give the distance effect.

Note: The camera picture does not do justice to this painting. This is actually my favourite, inspite of all the paintings being my babies.

The next one is a very simple composition where I was trying to learn how to paint clouds. Its not very easy, and I'm really satisfied with the effect that has come. This is also my cellphone wallpaper right now :)

Note: I painted this at 4 am in the morning. Just got up at 4 and couldn't sleep. Yes, we artistic types are a little eccentric.

This last one was the most diffcult for me till now. By this time I had decided that I'd be putting up my paintings for my hundredth post. And please do not laugh but I actually felt pressure before painting this because I knew that people would be looking at it. In fact this was the cause of not posting for so long. But last night I finally painted it.


And this one was for learning to paint trees and to get depth (a foreground and a background in a painting - Yes, I know its not evident to the naked eye but this has been achieved here. If you look hard enough, you'll see that a branch of the tree in the foreground is overhanging the cottage at the back thus [supposedly] giving the desired effect).

So as the famous bunny would say thats all folks!

And thank you for reading on for so long. I am still wonderstruck that this blog has a 100 posts now. I've enjoyed every moment of writing here. I hope I can continue to indulge in writing here. (Darn, this is sounding too much like a farewell speech. What I actually want to say is WOO HOO 100 posts!! And hundreds more to come. Read on! :) )

7 comments:

तुषार वर्मा said...

first one is by far the best one.

Jhoomur aka JB said...

oi...do you only do trees or can you do people and 'characters' -- if situation is discussed with you -- as well? Used to write a series called princess loona where i wanted one painting/picture/sketch to go with the story...something like a graphic novel but not with as much detail. tried sketching myself, first it takes me way too much time and then of course i am not that skilled. would u be interested?

Swapnil said...

Tushar: Thanks..er..I think

Eve:
YAY! Look ma my first job offer for painting!
Of course I've read the Princess Loona series and your sketching is way, way better than mine. I'm just trying to rediscover my hand at all things artistic. I think I could do what you're saying, but I haven't ever tried my hand at sketching based on discussion. And yes I do do people and characters - that I honed while sitting in boring lectures :)

bhumika said...

Hey Swapnil, congrats on your 100th post! Lovely paintings, especially the 2nd one (ya i liked it before i even read the NOTE you'd written below). what's more, you already have an alternative job in hand! :) Good going...

Swapnil said...

Bhumika: Thank you :)
Well, if you liked the picture, you should see the actual one - its gorgeous (ahem)

Alternative career..hmm what kind of money are we looking at? :)

raindrops said...

So Piccaso is in making.....Do continue blogging though u have got couple of job offers;)
So wen can we have an invitation for ur exhibition.. gr8 going!!

Swapnil said...

Raindrops: Thanks..but it'll still take a lot of time to be a Picasso - hmm give me a week, okay?! :)