DHAR DHAR

A Lonely soul in London wishes Happy Birthday to himself!!

There are days and then there is the day. Today was one of those the day for me.

Everything was perfect. Thanks to all the friends for making it such a special day.

I have been showcasing here the eight different paintings that I have recently completed. The first one in this series was the ‘Bulb’.

Today, I present the next one, which I call ‘Hover’. It basically depicts two dragon flies in action. It has been done using water color on specially colored paper.

Hope you will like it.

Lately my posts have been erratic, if at all. There is a very very big reason for that. My Uncle died last month at a relatively young age leaving behind his two young daughters and my aunt bereaved. I was unexpectedly dragged into the situation as I was on a vacation with him and was the only relative present there when the tragic incident happened. Blogging was the last thing in my mind these few days.
Anyway let me make a new beginning and hope the readers whom I have let down will come back.

I am posting after about 3 weeks today. I was very busy with all the exams, interviews, projects, research papers and final preparations for the end, and as such there was no time for this blog. But now it’s all over. No more exams, no more projects, no more classes. It has all finally come to an end. Though I am not officially an engineer yet, I certainly am one unofficially. Being a scientifically inclined man, it helps if instead of expressing something qualitatively, I do it quantitatively. So quantifying the above statement will read something like, “I am 99% engineer”. The remaining 1% will be over after the results are out, that will be on June the 16. Till then unofficial is what I am.
So, after abandoning my blog in this vast blogosphere for so long, I am a bit rusty while starting again. All throughout this time of abandonment, I had planned great things for my blog when I return, but now I find that starting again is easier said than done. So, What are my plans? Well, I am planning to start a serial painting series soon. Tell me what you think about it. There are some other plans too whose details I will divulge as we go along. I think from my next post, I will return to my usual stuff.

Till then,

Goodbye

In one of my earlier posts I have presented “The Sapera“. Here in this post I am going to show the step by step process involved in the creation of the painting.

Step 1: Paper Preparation and choice of pigments.
I started out by wetting the paper. You can do that by dipping the paper in a bathtub or cistern. Next I placed the paper on the drawing board and taped the edges using art-paper tape. The wetting process helps in setting the paper in a perfectly flat position. Doing so minimizes the problem of the paper curling up at the later stages of painting.
The colors I used for this particular painting are shown below. Using the watercolor pencils helps in providing the finer details in the painting. Step 2: Initial Sketch
I didn’t waste much amount of time in the sketching process. Just a light sketch pointing out the main features were done.
Step 3: Head and Turban : First application of the paint
Here I apologize for not taking the pictures of the initial application of paint. You see it’s the first time I am doing a painting walk-through, so please ignore the mistakes.
Watercolor once dried cannot be removed, so the application of color should be fast and accurate. First paint the lightest shade with a bigger brush and a lot of water. After that fill in the darker regions with a medium size brush and try to maintain the relative position of the paint.
Step 4: Head and Turban : Adding the refinements
In this step I have added the eyes and some more details to the face. It is better to build up the color and texture on the face in a step by step manner. Adding repeated washes of the same shade helps in that. For the eyes though this is nor feasible. So, it is better to paint the eye in a single step and not to re-touch it afterwards.

Step 5: Head and Turban : Final Render
This is the final render of the Head and the Turban
Step 6: Hand and Shirt: First application of the paint
The hands and the shirt were also painted using repeated shades of color as was in the Head and Turban. The same procedure is followed here too.
Step 7: Hand and Shirt: Adding the refinementsStep 8: Hand and Shirt: Adding more RefinementsStep 9: Final Touches and the Finished Painting

I recently read one post by Ann Handley titled “Top 10 Signs You might be Addicted to Blogging” on her blog, “Marketing Profs daily fix“. I was searching for that topic bacause I feel that I have somehow caught this highly contagious virus from the internet.

In her post she presents these 10 signs:

1. You check your blog stat a lot.
2. Your significant other suspects you are having an affair with your blog.
3. You “mental”blog. (You think about your blog a lot)
4. You filter everything through your post writing. (You see everything around you as a blog topic)
5. You suffer from “blog envy” (You are jealous when your friend’s blog gets more readers than you)
6. You “binge” blog 3-4 posts at once. (addition: you maintain more than 3 blogs at once)
7. You ditched all your real friends for your blog friends. (addition: Orkut/ Facebook/ Twitter etc. blogger community is your second home)
8. You think you can stop at any time.(But you can’t)
9. Your lunch hour has become your blog hour. (addition: You don’t have any sense of time now a days. You post even at 2 in the morning)
10. After 5 minutes of meeting someone really interesting you ask, “Do you blog?”. (addition: if s/he doesn’t then s/he is not worthy of your friendship)

After analyzing all the signs I came up with these answers for my blog:

1. yes, daily more then twice.
2. I don’t have a significant other, but my mom suspects something.(foreign Internet girl). So, yes.
3. yes, I think about it more than I think about girls.
4. no, my blog topic doesn’t permit that.
5. yes, a lot. I wanna kill that SOB.
6. no, that is below my standard. I will never do that. I usually prepare for my posts days in advance.
7. not yet
8. yes, I can stop at anytime but not today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow either!
9. yes, I frequently post at 2 in the morning.
10. yes (You don’t blog, ehhh!!! Get the f*** out of here)

So there are seven “yes” and three “no”. So according to my calculations I am about 70% addicted to blogging.

Is that good or bad? I don’t think that is any bad thing, after all for creating good quality content the amount of hard work you have to put in is really worth it. You get to know so many wonderful stuff that it attaches a whole new meaning to the word “surfing”. Moreover if you are able to maintain that fine line between your social and blogging life, then it is really a wonderful experience.

Another reason I find my self at this position is because of something which I call “the second phase of blogging”. By that what I mean is that after the first phase, my readership and visitors have really picked up, so encouraged by the unexpected response I am now trying to increase that to even higher levels. That’s why I am now so focused on blogging.

In a couple of month’s I will again try to answer these 10 questions and lets see what my score comes out to be.

PS: Let me know your scores when you answer these questions. Just take the number of yes and write that in percentage form. For example if you have 4 yes than your score is 40%.