There is a funny tale about the Ganesha painting that I did in 1997-98 period. In my first year of college, I did a Postal General Art course and in the second year I pursued Watercolour painting.
Following the completion of my graduation, I joined 2D Graphics and Animation program at Vector Institute of Visual Arts, in Prasad Studio. I had a swell six month course and passed out with good grade.
After a couple of months’ hiatus after my networking course, I was bored one afternoon, so picked up a leftover chart paper and decided to draw.
I found a Lord Ganesha’s picture and started out drawing the outline. Soon it took shape into almost close to nice enough state. As always, I asked for my mother’s opinion, and she said why don’t you give it some colour.
Between the pastel colour pencils and watercolour, clearly the watercolour won.
Initially, I wanted it to look light shaded pastel colours but soon overpainting resulted in a darker version, the close body colour that I looked for was the right proportion of Vermillion and Chinese White mixed palette.
But surprisingly the paints were many months old so, they landed up being darker orangish red. But the more details I added to the painting and darker it got. Eventually, it became like the scanned version below.
Lord Ganesha 1997-98 was my first and the second work was the Peach reproduced from the Reader’s Digest End page portraits. Reader’s Digest always carried a painting by renowned artist on their end page.
For a while I used to reproduce those in my art workbook and colour with pastel pencils. I enjoyed reproducing more than drawing my own looking at the person. I always work with photos, images, painting, and never ventured into live drawing.
Thus, I only could replicate and never be an original artist of drawing! But I enjoy recreating the pieces for just fun and frolic.
The surprising accidents of the colour palette resulted in its own version of endearing outcome. When I tried to scan the image for the website that I was working on for my father’s trust KVT (Karkotaka Vayalore Trust).
The scanned image could not be shrunk to accommodate the website needs. So, I landed up drawing a digital version of the Ganesha in MS Paintbrush application. Which was a thumbnail image.
The thumbnail image was made into < a href: //image.jpg </a>. While creating an entire basic HTML website and uploading on to the Netscape website space in 1998 provided me an opportunity to learn website creation.
I had such fun creating the website and learned it reading up the HTML version 3 and Ethernet (plug and play) card which could not be used since all the slots in the Motherboard was already in use.
That was when BSNL had introduced serial line 8-bit Internet connectivity. Around the same time the Windows NT had become GUI-based (Graphic User Interface). So, it was lot easier but very slow process of uploading files and downloading files.
Eventually in three months I mastered the basic html and made the website live which helped me get my first job as a website content writer in the guise of Technical Writer. Even before that I had worked with my father to create booklets.
The Quick Start guide was difficult but made the best available MS Word resources. Though I never used FrontPage but I could figure out the process and option which was close to the MS Word orientation.
I picked up the software part. But the sadly, I did not know how to download the menu options which were all image with ahref. Neither could I figure it out either. But later, I figured it out after couple of years.
I understood it even better when I first created a blog in the Blogger in 2000!
Itinerant Storyteller 