Dancing Joy

It was a joy to create this painting - my favorite Dance in combination with my favorite peacock feather!!
Many thanks to Sampada Deshpande for providing me photographs and allowing me to paint from her photographs.
For those who don't know this is Kathak dance - one of the classical dance forms of India. Click here to know more about this dance form on Wikipedia.
The speciality of this painting is that it is mixed media piece with peacock feather and stage painted in watercolor on arches paper; and the dancer is painted in traditional Oil paints on canvas panel.

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Dancing Joy, 16x12 inches, Mixed Media on Canvas Panel

Code# PK_16_018

Here is how I did it: I first sketched the dancer on canvas panel. Then traced the dancer outline on tracing paper. Used carbon paper and tracing paper on top to get the exact outline of the dancer on Arches Watercolor paper. Next I cut out the dancer shape from arches paper. Pasted the arches paper on canvas panel carefully matching the cutout to the drawn dancer on canvas panel. Once the paper was attached to the panel, I let it dry overnight with weights on it. 

I first painted the watercolor part i.e peacock feather and stage.  Once I was happy with the watercolor part, I let it dry throughly before starting with oils. Now the figure was painted similar to traditional oils but I always paint with palette knife, which is what I chose to do for it too. 

I am very happy with the piece and it is my very first mixed media painting!! Love it!

Dazzling Agave (pronounced as uh-gah-vay)

Now here's my new experiment with colors! I took a simple green succulent and wanted to make it look abstract. Hope you like my fantasy -  

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Dazzling Agave - 12x16 inches, Oil on Canvas Panel

I tried to take the best picture here, but nowadays I feel its a challenge to take a picture of my painting. In person, the painting looks a bit different since one can see the depth of color and its variations. The camera doesn't really capture all of it.

About Agave: These kind of succulents are found in abundance in southern and western United States. It was considered sacred plant by Ancient Mexicans. It was a belief that the liquid from this plant purified the body and soul.

I thought this will be interesting for you all to know that the juices from the agave after fermenting, leads to the drink called tequila.