Author: Riya A

Happy Sunday everybody! I hope that you are all doing well. I realized right after I posted last week that I sorely missed an opportunity. Being that last Sunday was Holi and I remembered a little too late, I decided that this week I would talk about the beautiful and wonderous holiday that is the Festival of Colors. Enjoy!

Holi is the ancient Hindu festival, also known as the “Festival of Love” or the “Festival of Colors”. This beautiful and fun festival celebrates the eternal and divine love of Radha and Krishna, whom I have talked about extensively in a few of my past posts. It also signifies the triumph of good over evil and signifies ridding oneself of past errors, ending conflicts by meeting others, and forgetting and forgiving. People pay or forgive debts, as well as deal anew with those in their lives. Holi also marks the start of spring, an occasion for people to enjoy the changing seasons and make new friends. 

On the eve of the festival, large pyres are lit in many parts of India to signify the burning away of evil spirits. People often throw wood, dried leaves, and twigs into bonfires. On the day of Holi, streets and towns turn incredible hues of red, green, pink, blue, and yellow as people throw colored powder into the air and splash them on others in a fun game that is traditional for Holi. These colors generally carry meaning. For instance, red symbolizes love and fertility while green stands for new beginnings. People will dress in white to make the experience of exploding colors more enjoyable and noticeable, wearing the bright hues as medallions or badges of honor after the festival is over. People also splash water on each other during the celebration. Water guns are used to squirt water while balloons filled with colored water are also flung from rooftops. As common with any Indian festival, food plays a significant role as families gather together for festive meals and distribute sweets among neighbors and friends.

This incredibly colorful festival is my absolute favorite. “Playing” Holi with friends and family is essentially like a giant game of tag that involves bombarding each other with fistfuls of colored powder. It is a lot of fun and overall a beautiful experience. As an artist, the aftermath of Holi celebrations is a sight to behold and a work of art in itself. I plan on doing an art piece in the future inspired by the wonderful Festival of Colors, which I hope to be able to share with you all soon! I know that this was a bit of a different post, but I thought, even from the name of the holiday, it was incredibly fitting for an art blog. I hope that you all enjoyed this week’s post and perhaps learned something new about Indian culture!

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi

https://time.com/5799354/what-is-holi/

As always, if anything that I discussed in this post stands out, or if any questions arise please feel free to comment and share your thoughts!

Looking forward to next Sunday!

~ Riya

Personal website:   https://riyarts.weebly.com/

Hello everybody! I hope that you are all doing well! I wanted to share one of my favorite artists that I came across during quarantine last year. During a year of terrible hardship and pain, as it was for so many around the world, coming across this artist opened my eyes to a new way of expression and truly mesmerizing and beautiful artwork. Enjoy!

Bijay Biswaal is a self-taught Indian artist of national and international repute who has made his mark by encapsulating the beauty that is Indian scenery, culture, people, and religion. What I love most about Biswaal as an artist is that he does not limit himself to mediums. Though he does excel in acrylic paintings and ink sketches, he ventures beyond, using watercolor, oil pastel, collage, cartoon, and caricature. I fell in love with the way that he captures his subjects when I first came across him on Instagram. The way in which he can manipulate acrylic paint to behave like watercolor while maintaining opacity and shine is incredible to witness. He has a way of bringing out so much dimension, movement, and dynamics in his work.

I have myself tried replicating some of his work, particularly his ink drawings of Ganesha the Elephant God, Goddess Lakshmi, and Radha Krishna. I find that using the work of other artists as study pieces, learning how they use lines to create beautiful art, is very rewarding and educational. Just from understanding his linework, I can say that I have a better understanding of how to capture movement in figures and portraits, attributes that I plan to implement in my own way when I create.

Bijay Biswaal has grown a following that spans the world. He is the Indian brand ambassador for Windsor and Newton and has collections in many places internationally including Mumbai, Chicago, Australia, Istanbul, Turkey, London, and China. This incredible artist has provided me with so much joy, and during a time when it was very difficult to grow artistically and find inspiration, Biswaal was able to provide that for me. He has really worked towards redefining realism and creating such a unique method of rendering.

I implore all of you to seek out this incredible artist. I have attached all of Bijay Biswaal’s links below including his Instagram and website.

https://www.instagram.com/biswaal/

https://www.biswaal.in/home

As I say every week, if anything that I discussed in this post stands out, or if any questions arise please feel free to comment and share your thoughts!

Looking forward to next Sunday!

~ Riya

Personal website:   https://riyarts.weebly.com/

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all doing well and midterm exams were successful for you all! I took a break last week but I am back to the regularly scheduled program. This week I wanted to share a very personal piece and the story behind it with all of you. Interestingly, oil paint is the one medium that has always intimidated me and that I have shied away from. However, this piece, done in oil paint, is one of my favorite pieces and very close to my heart.

Just as the Plum Blossom pushes through the snow and the ice, flourishing, permeating the air with its beautiful smelling perfume, so has my father. Exuding an air of perseverance, endurance, strength, and commitment, my father has pushed back against many obstacles, whether internal or external, and has thrived. Facing depression and family conflicts, he has learned to push back harder when times get tough. In my piece, I portray a tree growing in a climate of darkness and turmoil. Despite the pain and adversity surrounding the tree, it is in full bloom and flourishes in a harsh environment.

My father was born and raised in India and lost his mother at a very young age. Through hard work and perseverance, my father made his way to the United States on a full scholarship for college and graduate school. He started a family and has, against many odds and difficulties, keeps us intact.

Growing up in a family with strict traditional ideals and rules and personal misgivings, I have overcome my own inner challenges. I have devoted myself to becoming better while using my father as a role model. I have dedicated this piece to my father, the one who understands me and pushes me to be better, the one who understands pain and empathizes with everyone around him, the one who has lost so much but made so much out of it. Like the Plum Tree, the harsher the conditions the more buds come into bloom. I have pushed through my personal adversity to blossom, following my father’s lead. Through his guidance and love, I have come to find the beauty in adversity, the beauty in my culture and religion, and the strength to push through a sometimes difficult personal life. 

This piece, done with oil paint on canvas board with dimensions of 18″x24″ mimics the nature of a flower blooming in the winter… a lotus floating atop muddy water. It is a piece very close to my heart and holds such an important message that I keep with me always. My father is my hero and has taught me so much. I hope that you all enjoyed this week’s post! As always if anything that I discussed in this post stands out or if any questions arise please feel free to comment and share your thoughts.

Looking forward to next Sunday!

~ Riya

Personal website:   https://riyarts.weebly.com/

I have been very busy these past few weeks as I am sure many of you have been as well. So I wanted to keep it short and share a quick post this week regarding one of my favorite techniques in my drawings. Enjoy!

I was introduced to foreshortening as a technique in all forms of art in early high school. Foreshortening is used not only in drawing and painting but also in photography to add interest and visual pleasure. Foreshortening plays purely on perspective and vision, portraying an object as having less distance or depth than it does. In general, foreshortening refers to depicting an object or human body in a picture so as to produce an illusion of projection or extension in space and can be a difficult effect to achieve.

As soon as I tried foreshortening in my artwork for the first time I fell in love with the technique. As a lover of drawing portraits, I found that using foreshortening creates great interest in a piece and makes for a wide arena of creative availability and agency.

In my first foreshortening piece titled Reaching Out For You, I created a portrait of my brother in a stylistic first attempt at the technique. I found that I could keep the rest of my portrait relatively simple and demonstrative with the inclusion of foreshortening. Rather than using very tight methods of rendering, I left the majority of the piece stylistic, focusing primarily on the hand reaching out to the viewer. Let me know what you think of the piece and what you would have done differently!

As always, if anything that I discussed in this post stands out or if any questions arise please feel free to comment and share your thoughts.

Looking forward to next Sunday!

~ Riya

Personal website:   https://riyarts.weebly.com/

From a young age, something I always found interesting was the difference between my culture from that of others around me. I would mostly compare my experiences with the anecdotes of my friends, many of whom practiced some sect of Christianity and attended church. One thing that I thought was noteworthy was the emphasis on shoes and either their removal before entering a place of worship or not.

Being Hindhu and growing up in a religious family, we attended the temple, or mandir, decently often. As we would enter, we were expected to remove our shoes and wash our hands before proceeding into the main prayer hall where the statues of deities stood and everybody paid their respects. This is the custom in all Indian temples and mosques around the world.

My mother grew up attending Catholic schools so we weren’t strangers to the customs at a traditional church either. There, the removal of shoes is not required nor enforced. This difference was something that stood out to me. This very basic and completely harmless difference in cultures is something that I love about religion. The multi-faceted and wide range of traditions ranging from the simplest to the most complex is what makes religion and the practice of different cultures so beautiful.

I wanted to capture this small element of my culture in a piece of mine. This piece done entirely in ink with accents of red and gold leafing, two colors that are dominant in Indian garb and decoration, is titled My Temple. It is a simple yet self-sufficient name, requiring no further explanation. I wanted to do this piece merely as a rendition of traditional temples in India rather than something deeply conceptual such as some of my other work. I wished to capture the simplicity of the ideals of the Hindu religion: respect, and grounded devotion.

Removing shoes outside of a temple before entering is both a symbolic and conscious desire to leave behind the outer world and dirt before entering the house of the lord. The same goes for any home. Hindus remove their shoes before entering their own homes and the homes of friends, family, neighbors, and loved ones. Seeing as shoes carry the dirt and germs from the outside world, we make sure that we do not bring it into any place of living with us. The thought is that we want to treat the temple as we would treat our own homes.

In other traditions where shoes are allowed in places of worship, their reasonings are completely sound as well. Providing means of hygiene, sanitary purpose, and modesty, reasons for wearing shoes also stand. Wearing shoes inside of places of worship for other cultures by no means a lack of importance and respect. Rather, it is a beautiful thing that emphasizes how so many types of people with so many beliefs, and ways of living exist in our world. We oftentimes forget to accept diversity and equity with open arms but it is an essential aspect of building a better world for ourselves and our future.

As always, if anything that I discussed in this post stands out or if any questions arise please feel free to comment and share your thoughts.

Looking forward to next Sunday!

~ Riya

Personal website:   https://riyarts.weebly.com/

I’m not going to lie, getting inspiration for writing and art these past few weeks has been especially difficult. I could not really give you a proper reason either if you were to ask me why. It seems that with the monotonous ebb of school and combined with mundane life, I have felt removed from my creative side, something which disturbed me greatly when I realized what was happening. So, to try to make my way back slowly into the marvelous world of creation and art, I thought that this week I would dive into a few of my favorite mediums, styles, and techniques that I use in my own work. Enjoy!

As I discussed in one of my first few posts on my column, I grew up scouring over the work of my favorite artists, trying to replicate them detail by detail. I got my start through observation and replication. However, as I grew older and came into my own, it pained me that I did not have a distinct “style” of art that I could call mine. I didn’t have a mode of creation that was unique and original to me. It wasn’t until later on in high school that I truly found the mediums that I could get lost in, a style of creating that felt most representative of me.

I like to say now that I am a “mixed media artist”, that I don’t limit myself, and that I like to use a bit of everything. For me, this means using a mixture of ink, watercolor, and gold/silver leafing. Though I never hold myself back from trying different mediums of art such as oil paint, pastel, printmaking, and diluted henna even, I feel that this combination has provided me with a wide arena of freedom that is almost liberating while not going too crazy.

I am a person that likes form and structure, that’s the scientific part of my brain really coming into play, the same reason that abstract art and avant-garde material tend to upset me greatly. However, being able to create a distinct shape and line structure with ink and pen and then using watercolor, a characteristically loose medium, overtop provides such a cathartic release. If one were to look at the art I have done where I use this combination of mediums, he or she would notice that I love to use circles as well, especially concentric or overlapping circles of different sizes. I don’t have an explanation for this per se, but if I were to gander, I think these small carefully lined-out details give my work some more verisimilitude, some extra authenticity, and interest while adding an element of control and brevity (if such a word can be used to describe art).

I use a lot of these methods in one of my favorite pieces I have ever done, American Dhulan. I also have two small corresponding studies that I did call Her Majesty and Birds of a Feather that really solidified this combination as my favorite. These were very simple pieces that I did on the back of a handmade book because I was bored one day and felt a deep yearning to paint. But I truly believe that it was because of these two drawings that I really found my favorite style of art, something that I love employing in many of my pieces now. The cautiously rendered forms with the smokey overlays of color seem to combine both sides of me perfectly. The streaks of leafing work alongside the circular accents and pops of white create an amalgamation of symbolic aspects of myself.

I love diving into the unique styles and forms of many artists. I thought that it would be interesting to share one of my favorite vehicles of creation with you all this week! If you have not tried laying down a puddle of the right watercolor and lightly blowing to create a beautiful splatter of paint, I highly recommend you try it! As I say every week, if anything that I discussed in this post stands out or if any questions arise please feel free to comment and share your thoughts.

Looking forward to next Sunday!

~ Riya

Personal website:   https://riyarts.weebly.com/