Carnival Lights - Oil Painting

I absolutely enjoy looking at the motion, light and color of the carnival rides. "Looking at " is the key word here :-). While I cannot stomach the rides like I used to when I was a teen - I still give in for the ride on Ferris wheel once in a while. The view from atop that giant wheel is incomparable. Here is a little painting that unleashed my inner child..



Done on a 11X14 canvas panel with oil. I am not sure if the photo looks little pixelated to you. I might have to replace with a better quality one at a later date.

Help Japan Challenge from Daily Paint works

I have placed two of my paintings up for auction on Daily Paint Works- Help Japan Challenge. The proceeds from any sale will go to Japanese Red Cross for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. You can see this and many other paintings for sale by other artists, by clicking on the link below.

Help Japan Challenge

The theme was 'home' and anything that was meaningful to the artist. I chose to include Poppies & Lupines and the Mendocino coast paintings because both are the cheerful representation of California - the state I have called home for the past 12 years.


Share the link, see what you like, buy what you can, support your fellow artists and most important of all help Japan.

Pear in a silver bowl - Oil painting

So there was this left over blue, black & grey paint and I thought I'll do one more of the same stainless steel bowl but with the pears instead. So much for keeping it simple and focusing on painting metal... That colorful placemat was a wrong idea - took me twice as much time as the apple painting as I had to paint more details on the mat . But I am happy with the result. Done on a 8X10 canvas with oil.

My setup..

Sorry about the photo quality, most of you know I paint at night. Just wanted to click the setup before the pears became someones breakfast in morning :-).

Apple in a silver bowl - Oil painting

I am working on a bigger still life painting that involves a stainless steel bowl. Painting metal is way different from painting landscapes - a sheer frustration. So I decided to do couple of quick studies to get me over the hump. Grabbed some apples & a stainless steel bowl at home and started painting this. Done on a smaller than usual canvas(8X10) with oil. Took me about an hour & half to complete.

My setup..

Heathers and Willows - Watercolor Painting

This is a painting based on a photograph from my summer trip to Mendocino Botanical Garden. They have a beautiful Heather garden under an old willow tree that always has full blooms in summer. The photograph itself was an attempt to abstract both the subjects. I was quite happy with how the photo as well as my painting turned out.

The photograph..


The painting..


As for techniques, the background was wet wash with lifting & streaking with the brush. The foreground heather was intitally masked with some masking fluid and then finished with impressionistic strokes. Done on a 16X20 watercolor paper.

Both this painting and my previous one "Through the Cracks" are very different from my usual realisim/ semi realism style. I have entered both of them for Filoli Gardens "Expressions in color" exhibit and keeping my fingers crossed :-). I don't think I have shared all my watercolor paintings here on the blog. If interested, you can see more of my watercolors on my facebook album : Here

Through the Cracks - Water color painting

Wanted to share my recent latest watercolor rendering with you all. I primarily use watercolor just for sketching purposes but offlate I have been painting lot of abstracts/ impressionistic style landscapes. Here is one such painting..

Family thinks this looks like broken glass. But this is an abstract representation of tree & water through granite cracks. If you have ever been to Yosemite - Olmstead point, you will know what I am talking about. The inspiration was that but the colors were added for fun.

I used one of my favorite technique for the texture- wet wash with sap green, diox purple and turquoise and tissue paper on top. The tree & cracks were free style following the patterns formed by the tissue paper :-).

Done on a 16X20 Arches watercolor paper