Kailasanatha Temple, Ellora, India

It has been a very long time since I posted in this blog. I have been meaning to resume but the longer the break the tougher it is to get back. An unexpected break from work today motivated me to post something to get started once again.

A few days ago I made a quick impressionistic pen and ink sketch of the Kailasanatha Temple, at Ellora, in Maharashtra, India. The sketch is based on a photograph in Good Ideas' album Hindu Temples on Facebook. 

This is a rock cut temple carved out of a single rock, and one of the biggest of this kind. It is approximately 1300 years old and there is an interesting story about the construction, or should I say the sculpting, of this temple.

The king of the region was seriously ill and his loving queen prayed for his recovery. She made a vow that if the king was cured she would not only build a temple, but also fast until the topmost part of the temple was in place. 

In due course the king recovered and it was now time for his queen to keep to both her promises. But every temple architect who was consulted said that it would take years for a befitting temple to be constructed. And surely the queen could not survive fasting for such a long period.

But one temple architect came up with a very clever solution. He proposed carving a temple from a huge rock and working from the top downwards. This would allow him to sculpt the top of the temple in about a week, allowing the queen to fulfill her vow.

Whether this story is true or not in all its details, experts are of the opinion that this temple was indeed sculpted out of a single rock, and also that it was carved from the top downwards!

Chennai Weekend Clickers

 The Chennai Weekend Clickers (CWC) is a group of photo enthusiasts who meet and go on photo shoots together every Sunday in and around Chennai. I am not sure when this group was formed but for the last three years they have held exhibitions of their members' best photographs of the year. For the year 2013 their exhibition was held at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai early in Dec. It was a very popular exhibition and very well attended.

 







Muralidharan Alagar, from my sketching group at PencilJammers, is also an avid photographer and a member of CWC. He was therefore able to get us permission to do some spot sketching of photographs that caught our fancy and also permission to post our sketches online on the understanding that we would do only quick sketches and not very detailed ones.

There were around 200 photographs on exhibit by about 40 photographers and we had a wonderful time, first viewing and admiring the work on display and then picking the ones to sketch. We PencilJammers also spent some time chatting, comparing notes with one another and interacting with a number of visitors who found our sketching interesting and wanted to chat us up.

We spent around three hours at the exhibition,but probably only a couple of hours actually sketching. During this time I managed to do nine sketches, directly in ink, and then added some charcoal shading later at home.

Until a couple of months earlier I had done very little sketching in public and on location. I used to sketch at home, mainly using reference photographs, and liked to take my time doing it. But since joining PenciJammers in late-September 2013 I had begun to like sketching in public, on location, and also directly in ink. I had also been attempting, during this time, to sketch quickly and in a somewhat loose style. As a result, I particularly enjoyed this sketching experience immensely.

Grand Island Lighthouse

WetCanvas is one of several art communities that I am a member of. Currently I am active in the pen and ink forum where we have a pen & ink project every month. Val, our host, painstakingly selects some wonderful reference photographs on a variety of subjects and all of us use these to come up with our own versions which could be entirely in pen & ink, or ink washes, or even ink and other media. 

For August 2012 Harry Seiler's very nice photograph of the Grand Island Lighthouse (also known as the Grand Island East Channel Light) in Michigan, USA was one of the reference pictures. (There were ten reference photographs in all and you can see all of them here.) I did two different versions of it. My first one was a 10 minute ball point pen thumbnail while the one that I have posted here took me around two and a half hours.

 In the thumbnail I had concentrated only on the massing of the lighthouse but in this one I focussed on the lighthouse and tried to get a slightly out of focus effect for both the background and the foreground. After I had completed it I felt that I should have used thinner lines for the background but by then I was stuck with the result of my heavy handed approach. That unfortunately is the way it is with pen & ink.

My Second Blog

I am very glad to say that from the day I decided to do it (towards the end of May 2012)  I have been quite regular with my "30 minute" sketches. In fact so far, on the days when I have not had the time to sketch during my lunch break, I have come home and managed to do one to keep going at almost a sketch a day. And I have been posting these sketches in my second blog to track my progress.

 I am hoping to achieve two things through this exercise: 1. To improve my quick sketching skills. My aim is to be able to sketch fast without sacrificing details (or at least the illusion of details) and to do that with a refined technique, and 2. To develop my watercolour painting skills.


Last Saturday I kept to my resolve to paint every weekend and did one small watercolour sketch - a landscape in monocolour. This one took me about 30 minutes but, when it comes to painting, I have decided not to impose time restrictions on myself since I will only be doing it at home and probably only on weekends.

 I had actually planned to do another one on Sunday but wasn't able to do that. Hopefully I will manage a cople of watercolours this weekend. Let me see...

I propose to share some (but not all) of these quick sketches on this blog too on a weekly basis. If you would like to see the rest of these quick sketches, or if you would like to know anything about the sketches that you see here, you could check out my second blog, Racing Against The Clock.

Old Harbour Hotel, Fort Kochi

From the Kumarakom area my wife and I drove down to Fort Kochi for the next leg of our holiday. I enjoy travelling through Kerala. The landscape is always lush and green, and there is so much to see regardless of which part of Kerala one is in. But this time the drive was not as pleasant as I had hoped it would be. Some major pipe laying project was in progress and the road was in very poor shape for most of the distance.

When I was a teenager, and even into my mid-twenties, I used to visit Fort Kochi at least once or twice a year. Since I used to live only a few miles away across the backwaters, these were day trips. I recall that there were very few hotels in the area and it was difficult in those days to get food to my taste over there. That was not the case a few miles away at Ernakulam. This was about 35 years ago. Since then Fort Kochi has transformed itself into a tourist destination with plenty of hotels and cafes.

We stayed at The Old Harbour Hotel, a small but exquisitely furnished hotel, very close to the waterfront. This building was originally built by the Dutch and used as a warehouse. Later it passed into the hands of the British and was used as a tea auction house and also as a residence. Recently it was bought by an Indian and converted into the present hotel with the help of a Dutch architect. My friend, Mohan Pulimood was involved in the project, and it was he who recommended the hotel to me. I am glad I took his advice.

Coconut Lagoon, the eco-resort

After a blissful 24 hour stay aboard a houseboat we were dropped off at Coconut Lagoon, a beautiful eco-resort near Kumarakom. This resort is just a few miles outside Kottayam, but can be reached only by boat. Normally the guests are picked up from one of two jetties (piers) and brought by boat right up to the hotel's reception block. But, since our houseboat was too large for the channel leading into the hotel we had to alight a short distance away.

We were received with sandal paste and flowers by a young & pretty lady dressed in traditional Kerala style. She was accompanied by a musician playing a welcome tune on a flute. We discovered later that the musician, when not engaged in receiving guests, was on hand to give the guests free lessons on how to play some of the instruments.

The buildings in Coconut Lagoon are all over a century old, and some even date back to the 18th century. They have all been dismantled from their original locations from all over Kerala and painstakingly reassembled at this resort.

The reception block for example, is a "nalukettu" design with a central four-cornered open courtyard. It was originally built in 1860 and located at a place called Vaikom. It was purchased by Coconut Lagoon in 1993 and was re-assembled at its current location with the help of a master craftsman.

The dining block is a larger and more imposing structure. It is an "ettukattu" design, and has two courtyards. This is the oldest building on the site.

Most of the buildings at Coconut Lagoon are representative of several types of traditional Kerala architecture and have all been reassembled conforming to the "thachu shastra" style of carpentry. All these buildings are very tastefully located amidst coconut groves and a network of irrigation canals.

The houseboat experience

Our houseboat had two air-conditioned, bath attached cabins for the guests, and a covered viewing deck equipped with comfortable lounge chairs, a dining table & chairs, a flat tv, and a ceiling fan. In addition to this was the kitchen and crew area. The crew consisted of three persons - two to take turns at the helm and the cook. They were efficient, courteous, and very eager to ensure that we enjoyed our stay.

 The entire houseboat experience was extremely enjoyable. I am now convinced that travelling for pleasure should be done only at such a sedate pace. It was extremely relaxing to sit on the deck and watch the beautiful countryside slide by.

 We were told that the tourist traffic this year was poor on account of the global recession. It did not seem that way to us. The waterways had plenty of houseboat traffic as the photographs that I am posting will confirm. Of course, in addition to the houseboats, these waterways see a lot of everyday activity just like any busy street in a city.

 While going down the canals of Kuttanad I was amazed to learn that the waterways in this region are actually several feet above the level of the adjoining land. The water is saline for several months, and is suitable for cultivation after the monsoons. Paddy is cultivated in these fields when the water loses its salinity.

 If you would like to , you can read more about it here.

Nashik

Recently I visited Nashik to attend a wedding. Nashik is one of the more important cities in Maharashtra, a state on the West coast of India. After Mumbai and Pune (formerly known as Bombay and Poona), Nashik is the third most industrialised city in the state. It is also the vineyard of India and enjoys a very pleasant year-round climate, something that cannot be said about too many places in India. It is located about 180 km from Mumbai and is connected by an excellent road.

Nashik is also a very old human settlement and is associated with many of the events narrated in the Ramayana. It has many old and important Hindu temples, and one of these hosts an extremely well attended congregation of devotees, priests and sadhus once in every twelve years.

The Ramayana is one of the two major Hindu epics. It relates the story and adventures of Prince Rama who spends 14 years in exile along with his wife and brother to uphold a carelessly given promise by his father. Most Hindus believe that the Ramayana is based on fact . Many also believe that a major part of Rama's exile was spent at Nashik. In fact there is a place, not far from the river, called Sita Gupha or Sita Cave which is where Rama, his wife Sita, and Rama's brother Lakshmana are believed to have lived. This stretch of the river is also considered holy and there are several temples along its banks.

My sketch shows the narrow street, lined with very old buildings, through which one walks from the river to Sita Gupha. The ladies in the sketch are my wife and my colleague. When I showed them this sketch each instantly identified the other, but not themselves.

TOMCO, Ernakulam

TOMCO, Ernakulam
What you see in this sketch was once a prosperous soap factory in Kerala, a very picturesque state on the south-west coast of India. My father worked here for many years.

When I was very young, which was more than half a century ago, we lived right next door to this place. A huge amount of my time was spent watching the workers enter and leave the factory. Very few people owned cars then. Most of them either walked, cycled, or rowed to work. Yes, Kerala is ridden with canals and backwaters, and even today the waterways are in popular use.

The long tiled shed to the right of the factory entrance was the cycle shed. The factory and staff housing was flanked by the backwaters on two of its sides, and these had several jetties (piers). The employees who rowed to work would leave their canoes tied to one of the jetties and pick them up again at the end of their work shift.

By the standards of those days, there were excellent support and recreational facilities for both the workers and the residents. My memories of the place and those years are therefore very pleasant.

Unfortunately, this tiny bit of paradise did not survive into the twenty-first century. A few years ago the entire property was sold to a multinational giant who seem to have bought it only for its real estate value. When I last heard, the factory was idle, the staff quarters were lying vacant, and the entire property wore the look of a ghost town.