Vaaka Bhadra Art

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An accidental artist, an intentional physicist and an occasional story-teller entered a quaint English pub.

Each ordered a pint of the house lager and unleashed their combined creative powers!

02/11/2025

Turning all of 33 today, this was a year that truly humbled and grounded me. Counting my blessings, holding onto things that matter, and occasionally patting myself on the back, this year was unlike the previous 32 years. The gratitude that I am sometimes overwhelmed by, comes from being surrounded by some amazing people in my life. We may be far apart at this moment, but do know that you are treasured.

Until we next meet, I'm sending you my love, my peace and a wee smile to keep 💚

The only resolution I have for next year is to paint more, to find myself more. Here's a start to it- a finished painting on an unusual canvas for me, a pair of ol' boots. Presenting to you, 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa', painted by yours truly paying homage to Hokusai, and shoe-modelled, by yours truly again. 👋

Not good enough if I'm not silly on my birthday now, innit! 🤸🏾‍♀️

05/09/2025

What do you say to your most preciously adored writer, who shaped your life and living, who helped you find an escape in the darkest of the hours, when you finally meet them in the flesh?! I had years and years of stories to tell her, Arundhati Roy, when I saw her at arm's length at a book signing in London, last evening.

She read to us, talked to us, about her mother, herself, the world, about compassion and solidarity, laughter and pain, hope and reason, and, loving and fighting. Making us laugh, smile, tear-up, gasp, and think, she poured her heart out- how exhausting that must be!

In the end, when I met her to get my copy of signed, she shed the most alluring smile at me, when decades of stories reduced to a raspy mumble- she understood, and held me with her gaze. I felt seen, kindly and surely! Calmed and panicked at once, I quickly unfolded a small piece of my art that I had carefully packed for her, and told her about my dream of growing into a Gulmohar from mortal remains (that was the painting). To death and beyond, we will be Gulmohars, I wanted to tell her. She kept smiling, with a slight nod of affirmation perhaps.

Some heroes need to be met with, so we know that the world is a beautiful place.
For hope, and to divorce it from reason ❤️

03/09/2025

Sulochana- Her, with beautiful eyes

അമ്മാമ്മയുടെ ആണ്ടായിരുന്നു കുറച്ചു ദിവസം മുൻപ്. എന്തോ എന്നോട് പറയാൻ ഉണ്ടായിരുന്നുവത്രെ- അമ്മ പറഞ്ഞതാണ്. അത് കേൾക്കാനോ അറിയാനോ സാധിച്ചില്ല. ഒരിക്കൽ അത് എന്നിലേക്കെത്തുമായിരിക്കുമല്ലേ! വരയിലൂടെ, എഴുത്തിലൂടെ, പുള്ളിക്കാരിയെ ഓർമ്മിക്കുമ്പോൾ അതിലേക്കുള്ള ദൂരം കുറഞ്ഞു വരികയായിരിക്കും.

25/11/2024

Life drawing sketches from last week
Charcoal - regular and white - on sepia-toned paper (lighting varies)

16/11/2024

Life Drawing yesterday evening .lifedrawing
1 min to 20 min poses

23/10/2024

Learning from the Masters- J M W Turner

Oil painting on canvas, trying to re-create, rather learn, Turner's Romanticismo techniques and style. Turner's use of the yellows and greys is quite impactful at creating turmoil of the sea and the sky in this painting, 'Wreckers, Coast of Northumberland'. I loved playing with this dramatic colour palette, abstract brushstrokes to re-enact the violent and subliminal confluence of mist, storm clouds, the roaring waves painted of a distant castle and several sea vessels. Oils have been wonderful to play with his techniques in Romanticism!

18/10/2024

'When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes.' This was Modigliani's working principle, choosing to reflect the depth of his relationship with the sitters for his paintings. Modigliani's many portraits have hazy or blurry eyes, or none at all, when he hadn't formed a deep, meaningful connection with his model. Just a small dive into art history last week revealed this surprising quirk of the artist. How weird, I thought, but it also made his works more meaningful to me that the artist in him had to lose a part of himself while gaining a humane connection with his subject, through this process. Alas, that must be torture, assessing the threshold of forming soulful connections with your sitter (models, muse, wife, in Modigliani's case) while gestating the creation itself.

Funnily enough, on the contrary, I've always resorted to sketching an eye whenever I get scared of losing touch with my inner artist. I like getting lost in the details of the iris and the skin folds, and the lack of pressure of drawing to the subject's likeness sets me free in this case. But this is the first time I'm painting an eye in colour, with oils that too (where I'm a complete beginner), so it was challenging from start to finish. It's far from a perfect painting, the blending is off, and the anatomy is sketchy, but hey, I'm just learning to play with this new medium! Thanks to the wonderful encouragement of my tutor, I'm marching on :)

Now that I'm done with it, it feels incomplete yet alive to me. Like there exists a face that fills out the rest of this painting, somehow.

Like I've accidentally looked into someone's soul, kept a piece of it, and tossed the rest! Our brains are scary beings 😳

13/10/2024

Day 2 of oil painting, and I chose to do a seascape from my hometown, Kochi. Vivid colours after a tropical spell, fishing nets that rest over the horizon and mangrove thickets that balance the blend of the backwater blues and the dramatic skies - you'd see all that in one frame.

We were taught to use the impasto technique for this session, so I'm in love with the texture of this piece! Swipe to see what I'm talking about. I've been told that given the amount of paint that this technique uses, drying times can take up to 6 months or so. Well, that's a first for me. Guess learning never ends :)

Hey, fellow mallus- do you recognise the song in the background? It's been running in my head since I was halfway through the work and fuelled me through the rest of it. Been ages since I binge-listened to 'Ore Kadal' tracks, and today is the day.

Address

5 Sloane Terrace
London
SW1X 9DQ

Website

http://www.vaakabhadra.com/

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