Friday, June 24, 2011

Monkey mind monkeying maround

Yep I am inventing a new word... I think, let me check...

*googles the word*

Never mind, there is already a word called 'monkeying'. What? You thought I was going to google 'maround'?... No! Obviously that's not a word, everybody knows that... I uh... googled that too...

'Monkeying' means to
1. Behave in a silly or playful way.
2. Tamper with.

Ok then... I will add my own personal number three to that.

3. Working on 5 or more paintings simultaneously, and not getting any of them finished for another couple of decades. *sigh*

That's pretty much what I have been doing for the past month or so. I have been working on Hari Singh Nalwa a little bit. I gathered more resources from people for that painting then began to make changes to things that were not accurately done. But more than that I have been working on 5 other projects, simultaneously. Paintings of the Gurus, Bhai Bachittar Singh(!), and Baba Deep Singh. You guys
already know about Bhai Ghanaiya and Vaisakhi speed paintings.

Baba Deep Singh?

Yes, been making lots of changes to it. By changes I mean painting over everything. I also tried several other compositions for Baba Deep Singh. Sticking to the basic idea and narrative, and Baba ji's pose (I love his pose as it is, it's got that leadership feel to it). I ended up with this crazyass, complicated painting, with lots of horses and horse archers. But I figured that is probably changing it too much, to the point where it will be like working on a whole new painting, which in turn will require a lot more time to finish.

So I went back to the original and just sat there and let the brush (pen on tablet... -_-) do it's thing. This is hardly different to what normally happens. I just sit there and the brush just goes on doing stuff. As it is doing it's thing, there would be moments where I would think - that's working! keep it going! Other at other times - meh... that's not... stop, stop... STOP! delete that layer, now. At the end of it all, usually 3-4 hours later, I feel exhausted.

How was summer Bhagat? Great! I just sat there staring at the monitor, watching a painting (or 5) being made...

Well, not really.


(First image: Guru Amardas ji in his old age. Second image: Detail from Baba Deep Singh. Third Image: Detail from Bhai Bachittar Singh.)