'Oh! I am sad that it is the last day of the training' said Sunita while leaving for the third day of the Kerala Murals Workshop held recently at Dakshina Chitra. Normally this happens on a minimum 3 day workshop where people get know the others better than an 1-2 day workshop, or when the participant numbers is minimum and most importantly when the people in the workshop share the same passion & feel strongly towards the art. We had an eclectic mixture of people from all walks of life - housewife / IT professionals / Students / Chennai settled foreigner and a couple of NRIs who shared the same levels of intrest. In this post rather than writing about technicalities of Kerala Murals, let me write about how I came across these Kerala murals for the first time.
Hai Guys... It had been a long time I had been active on the blogging side. It is not that I had run out of ideas but all my energies were channelised towards completing the Shivakudumbam painting I had started 3 months back. What initially started as one of the hobbies took over the almost all the free time. Meanwhile I did watch some good movies like - "Angaadi Theru" (heart touching story), "Kalavaani" (Cute romantic comedy) & Neelathamara (mal.), not so bad "Paiyya" and some trashes like Kites (Hindi), Phoonk (Hindi) etc but I didn't have the time / inclination to write them because of this Shivakudumbam. Atlast when I finished the same in the odd hours of yesterday there was a sigh of relief and at the same time an urge to start the next painting. I had even identified what I want to do next, but I don't want to take it up now.
I have (almost) completed the Kerala Mural styled Rajarajeswari painting which Vasuki Ma'm had given for practise. Depending on my mood I may go for the designs in the dress of the Amman, but it is not mandatory. It was a long drawn and exhausting affair which I took it slowly and steadily. I am enclosing the series of "Work In progress" photos in this post, which I took while working on this painting. After doing this I felt that our madam had done the best by giving Lord Ganesha as our first painting because this really took much more work than what was needed for Ganesha. Even though the basic picture looked so plain I could feel that feel of mural appearing in various stages. And... I didn't bother to add my own or 'correct' the draft given by our Ma'm as I believe her draft completely. Atlast I have learnt to make paintings patiently rather than rushing through to see the final product as soon as possible.