Art you Japan?!

 

To be honest, I have been waiting to land on Japan ever since I decided to do this blog. Since much before I started with this blog, I have wanted to try my hand at painting some cherry blossoms and learn some techniques of Japanese traditional art. The strokes, the colors and the subject of the art always caught my fascination and now I feel like I may have gotten closer to understanding the beauty in these pieces.

I recently bought a new touchscreen laptop. So absolutely nothing could stop me from doing this entire piece on my laptop. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a good stylus, so I had to draw it all out with my fingers, so it may not be perfect.

Cherry blossoms or the Sakura are a very important part of Japanese cultural heritage and hence they have become a part of Japanese art, literature and poetry. The cherry blossoms stand as a metaphor for the ephemeral beauty of the living.

With my new found love for digital drawings, I think I might just find myself using the touchscreen option for the next coming posts.

Art you next in China?!

Art you Thailand?!

I was about 10 years old when my parents took me and my sister to Thailand. As I try to recall the time I spent there, the images that float across are those of beautiful Buddhist paintings, statues and their temple architecture with the ornamented sloped roofs. We visited several places around Bangkok, went to some malls, went around the city and did several other touristy things while we were there, but these are the images that stuck in the brain of my ten year old self. When I was now thinking about art in Thailand, I couldn’t pick any other art other than traditional Buddhist art.

These artworks usually depict stories from the Jataka tales and the life of Buddha. The paintings are usually done orthographically or without perspective. Many of these paintings are seen as wall murals in temples enlightening the devotees about the stories of Buddha. My interpretation of an existing Thai mural is of course, neither true to the techniques nor to the materials used. It is merely me paying respect to the artist, artwork and the culture in my own way.

Art you next in Japan?!

Art you Myanmar?!

Kalaga is a very popular art form in Myanmar. Kalaga is a heavily embroidered tapestry made of silk, flannel, felt, wool and lace. Kalaga means ‘curtain’ in the Burmese language. This art form emerged in the 19th Century and today it’s one of the famous souvenirs from Myanmar. They usually depict stories from the Ramayana or Jataka tales. Mythical creatures feature prominently in the Kalaga art form.(Further reading about Kalaga) I made a rough interpretation of a Kalaga depicting a kinnara and kinnari, two lovers and their loyalty to each other. The borders are occupied by the hintha or the bird friezes and the chinthe or the half human half lion creature. The Kalaga itself has a lot of depictions of foliage which engulf the characters and make them a part of the whole. It was a lot of intricate detailing, the depths of which I couldn’t capture here, but I would definitely like to buy a Kalaga when I visit Myanmar. And that’s my entry for Myanmar. Art you next in Thailand?!

Art you everywhere?!

I was walking across the hall, into my room when I threw a backward glance at my room-mate’s pin board or ‘die Pinnwand’ as they call it in German. It was filled with photographs and postcards from different places he has travelled to. Every time I looked at that pin board something new would jump out of it and I would be stuck there staring at some beautiful photos from far away lands and cultures, wondering how life would be, there. It has always been a secret dream of mine to artfully document the different places that I have visited and ones I would one day like to visit, but I never quite figured out the medium through which I would chronicle my explorations and eagerness to discover more. As I was entering my room this morning, I found myself smiling at a cartoon postcard from Spain stuck on his pin board by my globe-trotting room-mate and then I finally had my eureka moment.

Over the next many posts, I am planning to explore the cultures of different countries in the world through their art forms. Every day, a new country, a new art form. I will try to reproduce or re-interpret the art forms with the available resources and time at my end, so please forgive me if I am not entirely true to the original art form. I will provide links and references to any stories, historical titbits and the inspirations for my work so you may be free to explore them further.

I’ll let you wonder how this is going to be different from every other documentation of art forms from around the world while I wonder about that myself. Aufwiedersehen!