Sketching & PAINTING

MY ART JOURNEY

My interest towards art started at a very young age when my aunt would send me handmade greeting cards for Indian festivals. I started liking them so much that one day I just took out a sheet of white paper, the colored pencils from my school supplies and started copying one of the art pieces. When I finished it and showed it to my mom and others at home they were all impressed; this is how my first innings in art began. I continued to copy any art piece that I liked and use whatever simple art supplies I had. One day, during a deep cleaning of the house, my sister found all my artwork. Really annoyed, she gave me an ultimatum to either learn art in a professional manner or she would just get rid of all my artwork. Thus began my journey of learning art the right way! I started taking lessons in oil painting from a very good teacher. I learned the basics of painting, what kind of brushes to use, what kind of oil paint to use, how to hold the brush and other basic techniques. I feel that I did the best paintings under her guidance. The lessons continued for a little over 2 years, when they had to be abruptly stopped due to my business trip abroad. During this trip I met my future husband. Immediately after returning from the trip I got married and had my first child soon after. 4 and 1/2 years later I had my second child and art just took the back seat in my life and stayed there for many many years. It was only when we moved to the USA and started celebrating my kids’ birthdays that my second innings in art began.

I slowly started using my interest of art in decorations for kids’ birthday parties which got noticed by new friends. They started requesting me to do some projects for their kids. After lot of contemplation I finally got the courage to dust out my art supplies and see if I still had it in me. Today, when I look back at those paintings they surely look very novice with no professional touch at all. It may not all be due to me being out of touch but also being unaware of what kind of art supplies to buy. Back in India my art teacher always guided us with these aspects. But here I was on my own- and mind you- it was not the internet era still and our best friend google did not exist then. But having said that, I continued to work on different projects and I realized slowly and steadily that the quality of my work was improving.

During this phase I painted quite frequently mostly based on requests from family and friends. Unfortunately this second innings came to an end when I restarted my career and joined the workforce in the USA. With work, home and my kids’ school and extra curricular activities I had no time left for my interests or passions. It was not until last year, when the pandemic began, my third innings finally started to take effect. My inner passion just woke up one day when I saw my niece’s acrylic painting. I had never touched acrylic paint in my life and so was curious to know all about that art form. Now I was empowered with interest, YouTube, Google, and was awestruck at the amount of information that was available online. With the help of few YouTube videos I understood I could just paint with whatever art supplies I had at home and so the very afternoon I dusted out all my art supplies and thus began my third innings!! Around the same time, one of my very close friends had started posting her pencil sketches on Facebook which just blew my mind. They were so amazing and inspirational that I just couldn’t help but pull out my son’s sketching book and a few drawing pencils and start sketching. But at this point I hadn’t really done any research on sketching per se. Instead, I just used my existing ability to attempt it. Looking at the sketches I had done, my nephew encouraged me to look at some of the YouTube videos that explained how to sketch and all the supplies needed for professional sketching. I took his advice and since then it has been a life changing journey that has brought me immense joy.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND DEDICATIONS

With the help of tutorial videos, I have been able to improve my acrylic and oil painting techniques as well. Every sketch & painting has been a joyful and learning experience. With all my friends’ and family’s consistent encouragement I have been able to sustain my motivation and the drive. I am hoping to have a very long 3rd innings as it has rejuvenated my life. As I said in the very beginning, this website is just a collection of all my art- very old, old and the new, dedicated to all my family and friends who have been a driving force in this journey of mine.