Puppy Woes

I haven't worked on a floral in a long time and inspired by a couple of artists on social media, decided to give it a try for a new series for 2017. I also wanted the flowers to be based on my mandalas, but more organic. So, I started this piece on a nice, large 24" x 30" canvas on the beginning of this month. The first image below is the progress I had made on the end of day 2. Most of day 1 was working on the background and getting an idea of the layout & the colors. I had to take a day in between to travel for family stuff, but got back to the painting skipping doing fun stuff with the family. Second image below was end of progress on day 3 on working on this piece. 

Decided to take a break and go out for dinner with the visiting family and when I got back to the studio, the painting which was drying on top of my table, was half on the chair, covered in paint! Cue our adorable & anxiety laden puppy Kalai! She decided having mommy home for almost all day and having me step outside a bit was too much to handle. She had jumped all over the studio, unscrewed a bottle of paint and emptied on top of the painting and in jumping off sent the whole thing down to the chair and dripping paint on the floor. She also destroyed a pin cushion and managed to get all the pins out without hurting herself. I attempted to wash the excess paint off the piece in the bath tub and managed to get most of it out, but also some of what I wanted to stay.

I had to have my husband hide the piece, given how angry it made me and the frustration of not being able to do anything about it. After 2 days I started a very similar piece (below) and worked on it for another 3 days. I took it to get critiqued at one of my local art leagues and everyone loved it. Given the positive feedback, I finished another one for my show Dots & Lines at the Addison Center for the Arts.

This week, after a friend suggested it was a collaborative piece with Kalai, I finally managed to go back to the damaged one and work on it. Here is the finished piece, completing a series of 5 floral paintings. Two of them are already in a show and I am hanging another one in a new show starting tomorrow. I will be entering the fourth piece in a member show at an art league later this month. The story of a series 😏

Paints Galore

At least once every couple of weeks or so I get an email or facebook message from someone asking what kinds of paint I use for the paintings I create. I just counted the number of different paints I have in my studio - I have at least 20 brands of paint I use on a regular basis and another 5 or so that I have around. That is a lot of paint! Sometimes I have 1 or 2 colors in a specific brand and in others I might have their entire range. I also have about  8 - 10 different mediums I can use to thicken or thin my paints & add various types of textures to my works. What one has to realize when they start painting and want to ask other artists what they use is, not everyone they come across is a hobby artist. I am also a business woman and I keep investing in my business. 

                                

Since my paintings are created for sale, I make sure I use the best & high quality paint for the job. The paints I use do not fade or yellow or change color over time. They are also ones I love working with. The paints on the palette above are my recent discovery and I am in love with them! I use at least one of these colors in all the works I have been doing recently. I am constantly experimenting with my technique & working on improving my art. That means investing time & money to get quality products and learning to use them properly. To answer the question of what brand of paint I would recommend - my only advice would be to experiment for yourself to see which paints you like & which ones are best for what you want to do. Spend time talking to people working in your art supply store and they will provide recommendations on the kind of work you want to create. Be patient and take time playing with the paints till you are comfortable with their characteristics. I have been painting for a little more than 3 years now and I am always learning & discovering something new with my paints all the time!

FAQ - How long

One of the most frequently asked questions to me at Art Fairs is How long it takes me to do a particular piece / any of my paintings. It is also one of the most difficult questions to answer. Just to illustrate, this week from Monday through yesterday, here is everything I have been working on in the studio -

1, 2. Peacock on 24" x 36" canvas - started with prepping the canvas to quite a bit of progress! Thats from working almost 10 hour days

3. Dragonfly canvas made it back to my table to start the textured lines

4. A new flying owl piece on 24" x 30" canvas - prepped the background, drew the outline & added the eyes

5, 6. A new version of the Chicago flag - prepped 3 backgrounds in silver with interference green / red/ violet mixed in and started painting one.

7. Added one more circular layer on the red 24" x 36" diptych mandala

8, 12. Two new 20" x 24" Tree of Life paintings - did the background work last week and started with the trunks and shoots this week

9. Another peacock on 20" x 24" canvas - started from prepping the background on Monday

10. A set of 4 18" x 18" canvas prepped for mandala paintings

11. One more 24" x 36 background prep for another peacock!

When I am working on so many projects in parallel, it is really hard to think of time spent on just one piece. In fact a few years back I did estimate the time I spent on a 16" x 20" piece - turned out to be 38 hours from opening the canvas to the signing off on the piece. Well, when I also calculated what I actually made per hour on piece after selling it for $200 minus the cost of supplies, it got too depressing to think further about time spent on painting single pieces. 

So, please don't roll your eyes at me when I tell you I don't keep track of time spent on a painting, because I really don't and I can't think of a way when I can either. I hardly ever have just one project going on in the studio and given how easily I get distracted - from moving from one work to another, or starting something else when waiting for another to dry, estimating time is the last thing on my mind!

Floral Mandalas

A new series I have started recently are a different style of mandala paintings on canvas. My usual paintings all have concentric circles, but this series is more of a floral style, with next layers of the circle forming out of the previous layers. The canvas are also 16" x 20"  - not a square and with only the floral mandala and my signature, curved in a corner. These canvas can be hung in either orientation! The first two below - Blossom & Elegance, 2015 have already found wonderful collectors their second week on show. I painted the other two - Patience & Growth in the last two weeks and really liking how the series is turning out. 

These paintings are all done with 3-4 colors in the background and 1-2 colors in the textured layers. The textured dots & lines are done in dark & light shades of either gold or silver with one other accent iridescent color. By varying the shade and the thickness of the lines, the mandalas are more dramatic. If you are in the Chicago area, please come see these and my other paintings in person at one of my shows this summer.

 Blossom & Elegance, 2015. 16" x 20"

Textured henna style acrylic floral mandala painting on canvas with mirrors. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2015

 Patience, 2015. 16" x 20" 

Textured henna style acrylic floral mandala painting on canvas with mirrors. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2015

 Growth, 2015. 16" x 20" 

Textured henna style acrylic floral mandala painting on canvas with mirrors. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2015

Painting on a Whim

I painted this Mandala last Thursday night as I was waiting for one of my other paintings to dry. I got a little restless just waiting and pulled out this canvas that was already prepped with the brown earthy background. This is one of my favorite color combinations to paint - brown, gold, white, silver & turquoise. Sometimes creativity flows - fast :)

Earth Mandala, 2014. 12" x 12", 

Textured henna style acrylics mandala painting on canvas with mirror. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2014. www.artbybala.com

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Feeling Accomplished

Golden Tree, 2014 was the 200th painting I have sent to a new home (including everything sold / donated / gifted) since February, 2012. The painting sold at the Holiday Sampler Fair in Elk Grove Village on Sunday. A big thank you to all my friends and fans for being a part of this incredible journey! 

Golden Tree, 2014. 12" x 16", Henna style textured acrylics abstract painting on canvas. 

(c) Bala Thiagarajan, 2014. www.artbybala.com 

Latest Painting: Goldfinch

The Goldfinch painting I have been working on this week is all finished and is available for purchase.

Waiting, 2014. 11" x 14", Textured henna style acrylic animal painting on canvas. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2014 www.ArtbyBala.com

This is a painting I have re-worked from an earlier version I did when I first started playing with acrylics about 4 years back. I have always felt that the initial one lacked the sparkle, though I liked the composition and the background color. 

The first step in the re-work was to outline the new finch, showing its back with more colors. Then I worked on the branches, adding textured lines in burnt sienna and metallic copper. The buds were updated with a shade of fuchsia & deep rose, and with bright green. I added a lot of molding paste to the finch outline to build up the texture. I want to work more on this line and create more depth in later works. 

Next came the colors and the textures. I left part of the original finch in the painting and thought it would be nice to show the two males as competing (establishing territories) - I am a bio geek, what can I say! But the hubby insisted he needs to go & a couple of friends on facebook suggested the same. So away he flew, leaving the entire tree to the new comer :)

2015 Calendars

2015 Art by Bala calendars are almost here and will be shipped starting Nov 4! It is Animal Paintings themed, with high resolution images of 14 of my henna style textured animal paintings. Printed on high quality premium glossy card stock paper and measures 8.5" x 11". There is also room to write on the dates. Only $15 + $3 shipping within US. Get yours today!

You can now purchase them directly from my website!

Click the link here: http://www.artbybala.com/calendar

Unexpected Award

It is not often that I paint on a theme that is given to me. I suppose the only time I do that is for commissioned paintings. After the big move however, I joined my local artists association and they had a show on 'Trees' starting in two weeks. I wanted to use that opportunity to show my work to this group and started working on a tree painting in my henna-style with lots of texture. 

Native Roots, 2014. Henna-style textured acrylic painting on canvas.
12" x 16". (c) Bala Thiagarajan, 2014

I was pleasantly surprised to find out a week after the show opened, on a random trip to the library, that the painting got a honorable mention. I am thrilled and looking forward to the next show with a Spring theme!

Progress on a Painting

In my last post I wrote about the steps in starting a painting. Today, its about the progress on the piece. 

Step 5: Filling in the outline. Usually I prefer to do this with one solid color if its an animal I am working on. I do dab on the paint thick in this step as I don't want to do multiple coats in small areas.

Step 6: The most tedious and fun step in the painting. Doing the textured lines. I love to use metallic gold and silver for the texture and use them as much as I can. I bring in more variety to the patterns here and also get to play with the thickness of the textured lines. I start in the middle and move my way out on the subject.

Step 6: Accents - in the octopus I used white dots around the animal to sort of give a relief and also used some metallic green dots in the background. 

Step 7: One of the most satisfying steps - signing my name! I actually write my name in Tamil, my mother tongue in the front. 

Step 8: Remove all pencil marks, correct mistakes. 

Step 9: Seal: I use a gloss or high gloss varnish to seal the painting. I usually do just one coat.

Step 10: Paint the sides black with black gesso. Steps 9 & 10 are something I learnt from people selling paintings on Etsy. I am so glad to have found these two steps that make my paintings look well finished and ready to hang. 

Step 11: After its completely dry, I put a hanger in the back, and with a sharpie write my name& website, sign in english with the year.

Now, its ready to go on FB and list for sale on my website :)

Starting a Painting

Over the last three years, I have been learning a lot about painting. As a self-taught artist, its been a steep learning curve starting with the most basic stuff on mixing colors to refining my techniques. And to top it all off, I had to learn how to properly finish a painting from Etsy! (more on this later).

Most of my paintings are done with acrylics on canvas and here is a quick look on how I do it and how I learned to do what I do. 

• Step one is do a ground layer on the canvas. I prefer a very light yellow as the grounding background on my paintings. There has been times when I have skipped this step, started out with the colors I want for the background and regretted it. Using this grounding layer helps cover up missed spots later on, especially when there is only a thin layer of paint. In many instances, the ground layer would still show through, but be part of the background and add more depth to it.

• Step 2 is doing the actual background. I have started to play more with my background colors than doing my basic stuff. My usual basics is doing a blend of tones of the same color with a mottled look (that might disappear once the painting is complete).

An octopus I am just starting today 

• Step 3 is sketching out the subject. I start with a charcoal pencil for the initial sketch. I have learned the hard way about erasing the sketch lines after the painting is complete. Charcoal seems to be the most easiest to get rid off. 

• Step 4 for me is to sort-of finalize the outline using a marker, usually black or brown. It is ok if there are small errors here, as the next step of filling in the subject can correct those. 

In my next post, I will write more progress steps and photos, as I work through this octopus!

Summer Fairs

Spring is almost here and summer will be upon us soon and with summer comes all the wonderful summer fairs. This year I am planning to do more events than I did last year! And the month of May is already looking to be pretty busy and I am starting to paint a lot, both large and small pieces in preparing to be ready for the summer events. Here is a series of small works I am doing for the summer shows - all of these are on 6" x 6", Textured acrylics on canvas. Sides are painted the same background colors and the right & left ones have patterns. These definitely add a little extra color to one's space!