Form and Color

An Impression from Kanazawa Japan by Brad Nelson in watercolor, July 16, 2018 A lthough I have touched upon various forms of arts in this blog, one form not described so far has been watercolor paintings. I was reminded of that when a friend from Canada, Brad Nelson, sent Diwali greetings today along with one of his works in watercolor that he produced earlier this year on a trip to Japan. It is the illustration used here. Watercolor art to my mind requires a refined and sensitive touch by the artist and it leads to an angelic or spiritual effect that perhaps no other painting medium can produce.

Drain the Swamp, Oil on Canvas When President Donald J Trump entered the Presidential race one of his promises was that he would drain the swamp, i.e. clean the Capital of the United States of America of undesirable practices and persons. More than a year on after winning the election, he has not yet drained the swamp it seems but perhaps managed to fence it a bit. With such thoughts on my mind, I completed my latest oil on canvas called – Fencing the Swamp. The painting is still wet and needs to dry out, be signed and some finishing touches put on it. I shall replace this image with the final one when done. As mentioned in earlier posts I only paint sporadically and this was a return to oil painting after a gap of several years. Update, 2nd July 2018 I have replaced the finished and updated version today. Photographs never produce the actual work exactly because of light effects, atleast with my not so professional camera but it gives a fair idea.

Two Together - Color Sketch on paper by Ashok, 1991    If either falls, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him  that is  alone when he falleth; for  he hath  not another to help him up. Eccelestiastes 4:10 Yet one who loves God, walks in the company of angels In 1991 I visited a friend in Egypt. His village in the Beni Suef province is situated on the banks of a branch of the Nile River. On my return with thoughts of the Nile, I made some sketches with colored pens on paper. Most have been lost now but this one remains. On the lower right corner my name Ashok is signed in Arabic of which I have a rudimentary knowledge from my stints in the Middle East. File photo of me and Mehmood Mohmed Mohamed from September 1991 on a visit to his village Manhara in Egypt. Also in photo is his son Hanafi

   EYE OF THE UNIVERSE Right now I am preparing a note about God for my new blog devoted exclusively to spirituality and considered adding an image at https://ashokbabaji.blogspot.in/ For that I took a NASA image in the public domain and made digital alterations to it to make it more suitable for the article. The result was quite nice and perhaps good enough to share in this blog on art as an example of digital art. While preparing a physical work of art such as an oil on canvas   takes a lot of time, digital art can be produced rather quickly with modern tools and software. The image can be used as an aid in meditation on God as our Universal Father and Mother, not as that belonging to any one religion.

An old tree and a younger one, oil on canvas by Ashok M. M any wonder at the huge price of works of arts like some oil paintings on Canvas that are auctioned by leading auction houses from time to time while they find other works of art in a flee market going for a few dollars, some that seem just as nice or nicer. How is the value of a work of art fixed? An answer to this can be found if we go back to the beginnings of human civilization. At first, humans traded goods in kind, for example a sack of grains for an animal skin. In time however humans invented coins and currency that were easier to carry to the market. A sack of gain was considered equivalent to a certain number of coins as was an animal skin. Thus based on the demand and supply of goods, monetary values were determined for all the things humans need. The invention of money also permitted humans to accumulate and store wealth in a compact manner. In time similar values became associated with preciou

Dark Clouds of Armageddon, Oil on Canvas by Ashok M. W hen a work of art remains in a single hand, that of the artist and creator, he may leave it unnamed, name it and change the name if he so desires. Once it is sold, he no longer has a right on it and it is not appropriate to do so. Personally, I have been a scientist and academic and painted of and on over the last several years when time and inclination permitted. Many of the works were destroyed later in the belief that an oil and canvas has a very long life and I would not like to leave for the world something that is not the best. Not having to depend on art for a living, I have also not sold my paintings. Some have been gifted and others (about half a dozen) remain in my possession and adorn the walls of my home. At times I use a picture as illustration for a note or an article. Today morning, I added one to an article ( here ) about a possible apocalypse the world might be headed for. It was earlier been named

Today I took a portion of an image from an older oil painting illustrated in this blog and with some digital alterations and text ( Words of Buddha that I found on Facebook) produced this poster that I shared on twitter