Paint Me A Leaf

While I always talk about sipping tea in the garden and knitting, here is what I absolutely love doing. It is something that I have always done, and have always loved. Though I love all sorts of handicrafts and have dozens of half-pursued hobbies, what really appeals to me is painting. Painting of any sort, on anything, with any type of colours. Of late, this love of painting has mostly concentrated itself of painting on fabrics.

I wonder, how I never mentioned that I love sarees. If there is anything else that I love more than a saree, it is a hand-painted saree. One can easily guess that is because it combines two things that I adore: painting and sarees. I recently could manage to somewhat sort out my craft almira (That is what I call it, because of it's contents.) and found out my forgotten swatches of hand painted fabrics, that I made during a week long fabric painting course a couple of years ago, after I got fascinated with lovely hand-painted chiffon sarees that I saw army ladies wearing at parties.

No, no, we are not painting a saree here. That is still a long way ahead. With so much inspiration lying around, my fingers got itchy to paint on fabric. I decided to start small and bought a couple of dupattas, those that you buy and get dyed to match your salwar-suits. So, while I was posting about all the flowers and knitting and leopards and what-not, i was also going into the kitchen, and doing a couple of brush strokes here and there, when you were not looking. I am not showing you those dupattas, not now. 

Now, as the suspense is darkening, and you are about to leave this page, here, let me tell you that I had this old unused cotton dupatta, and when I bought a kurta, I thought of using the dupatta, but did not like the idea of a plain dupatta. Nowadays, I am also found frequenting the crafty alleys of Pinterest, pinning images like this one or this one. So this new habit came handy as I painted the pattern on my sketchbook to get the feel of colour and design. Ah, long lost love!

And then, began the real painting on dupatta. I really did not like the effect, since what looked good painted on paper was not quite the same on a different texture. This cloth is also hole-y and the paint job did not give the smooth effect that it gives on a fabric like chiffon.

I cut up the outer rim of the leaf on a potato so that the leaf size stays uniform. But once, as I wiped paint off the stamp enthusiastically, one side broke off. Nothing a little brush stroke cannot fix! 

So, here we are, ready with the dupatta, three potatoes and 10 odd days later. Hey, I am not that lazy, I have a toddler who tugs at my kurta, right when I am at the most crucial moment of creating something, like when I have perfectly mixed a lot of paint which will dry on the mixing plate, and ruin the brush too, or the cake batter is half mixed...you get the drift, right!

So, this one is finished, and only time will tell whether I will ever wear it or not. Meanwhile I am going through various ideas for yet another painting project. Thanks for bearing with me!