Spent some time last night looking at Indian miniature paintings and then just plain Indian Painting. I was struck with the detail but simplicity of layout. The portraits often focused on a sharply drawn face with the body being less detailed on down to the architectural frames being simple line drawings. Love the random perspective with architecture. The palette is great (I should pull swatches from it for future reference in the photoshop/illustrator chip method). So the illustration at the top is an amalgam of just visual notes from the looking and interpreting. Am working on another image to get into the swing of things prior to laying down tracks for the Vin piece.
I am loving this Indian art. There is vegetation galore, snakes,very pattern driven images. I love the use of borders from an inset that looks like an embroidered ribbon, to simple line drawings reflecting architectural molding and ogees. They are not afraid of putting a figure dead smack in the middle of a page, subdividing the background almost in half and painting one part pink and the other gilded with gold leaf. No fear of flatness...no desire to render reality as the camera would.
Look at that Shakra picture below. It is pretty much a functional graphic that explains how the shakras work and flow. Love the new orientation of the teeth in the master's face to take the reader to another place> translating the points of import in flaming frames to point out the key information. Need to look at more of this stuff and try and press it on my brain.
We are having a weekend visitor, a designer friend who is very funny and talks about all sorts of things from engine block design, to hard coding, to his relationships with people to how he tries to change. K had a sleepover with the beautiful triplet sisters after attending their mother's painting show and regaling the audience with an impromptu K and the sisters song. A. had all sorts of activity around XC and a long run this morning in the Hector Land Use area in a misty humid morning.
